Anticipation for Injustice 2 fans is at an all time high, as earlier today NetherRealm Studios announced that the Fighter Pack 2, the second DLC pack offering three new fighters for the game, will be revealed at Gamescom 2017, just one short week away.
This announcement has rekindled some still-smoldering speculation as to which three characters from the DC Universe (or not) would be made available via the Fighter Pack 2, and much of this speculation is based off a small series of Tweets sent out by NetherRealm head Ed Boon which appeared to show silhouettes of many recognizable characters within and without the DC Universe. These silhouettes were behind the already-revealed and released Starfire, Red Hood and Sub Zero, all three of whom were a part of Fighter Pack 1. To many, this signaled that those in the background would be a part of Fighter Pack 2, and, eventually Fighter Pack 3.
And many of these silhouettes undoubtedly belong to notable characters from the DC and Mortal Kombat Universe. You can see in this image (the first one of its kind) that the character in the middle of the three on the right is certainly Raiden from the Mortal Kombat series. The one in the middle on the left is definitely Black Manta. After seeing these two, you’re immediately going to think to yourself “Aha! I got you this time, Ed Boon. You think you’re so smart!” and you’ll ultimately conclude that Raiden and Black Manta are two of the characters set to be included in Fighter Pack 2 or Fighter Pack 3.
Here’s the thing though, while I wouldn’t rule them out, it’s much more likely that Ed Boon is, once again, trolling us. As anyone who has followed NetherRealm Studios should know by now, Boon is a compulsive troll who uses social media to toy with eager fans, whom he knows hang on his every Tweet. In fairness to Boon, even his most innocuous Tweets are often (if only jokingly) twisted into a cryptic tease about the next character in another game. Still, though, Boon’s Tweets have openly invited speculation on Spawn in Injustice 2, Popeye in Mortal Kombat X, and even at one point a remaster of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (too mean, Ed).
Beyond just Boon’s perennially coy facade, NetherRealm Studios has played the “guess the silhouette” game before. Twice, in fact. The first was with Mortal Kombat X, where screenshots and playthroughs of the early MKX roster had silhouettes supposedly of the unannounced characters. Except, as many fans soon figured out, these silhouettes were actually of people and characters such as Rorschach from Watchmen, a T-1000 from Terminator, Barack Obama and the guy from The Lego Movie.
And, as if fooling us once wasn’t enough, NetherRealm Studios did the same thing with Injustice 2, when early gameplay videos showed an apparent silhouetted roster that, predictably turned out to be nothing close to what the actual roster turned out to be. Who even knows what those silhouettes actually were? So now, when I see that Fighter Pack 2 is coming out, and there’s a few silhouettes that will give it all away if I just study them hard enough, cross-referencing them with every imaginable DC comics and Mortal Kombat character … Yeah, I’ll pass. Knock yourself out, though. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.