10 Video Game Franchises That Deserve Their Own Netflix Series

Despite a rich backstory and dozens of provocative characters, the early Mortal Kombat games didn't dedicate much time to world-building. Aside from a few screens of text, they were all about the bloodshed.

Storytelling improvements in the most recent games show just how much this world can benefit from giving each character a bit of extra screen time. The 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot in particular gave compelling backstories to numerous characters such as Mileena, Cyrax, Kabal, Sheeva and Cyber Sub-Zero.

The love 'em or hate 'em movies couldn't really focus much on more than a handful of characters, with a lot of fan favourites receiving silent roles. Aside from these hit-or-miss adaptations, a handful of serialised stories attempted to bring these characters to smaller screens yet missed the mark in various ways.

Most recently, Mortal Kombat: Rebirth reimagines fan favourites such as Reptile and Baraka as deadly serial killers, participating in a tournament put on by the criminal underground. The follow-up series, Mortal Kombat: Legacy, only dives into Outworld for a couple of episodes.

A new Mortal Kombat series could choose to incorporate Outworld from the start while still straddling the line between fantasy and realism. The characters' backstories could receive a dose of fresh perspective, yet still adhere more closely to their storylines from the games. Best of all, with no censorship and a higher budget, most other issues that fans have had with previous series could be resolved from the jump.