Prince Inspired Rain, Mortal Kombat’s Most Brutal Ninja Fighter

Earlier this month, the music industry lost a gem. The phenomenal singer Prince died at Paisley Park Estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota. Prince's innovating style towards music made him a sensational star, but not many people know that he also inspired a famous Mortal Kombat character commonly known as Rain.

Mortal Kombat is one of the most famous fighting video game franchises. The game is loved for its brutal ninja fighting between characters. Mortal Kombat's most notable characters are Scorpion, who is hot like fire; Sub-Zero, who wields cryokinetic power; and Reptil, who spits acid. However, among all these characters, the most famous is Rain, because he was created as an homage to Prince.

In a 2011 interview on the official PlayStation blog, Mortal Kombat's co-creator Ed Boon stated that when they started to work on Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, they thought of using a color which they never had used to create their Ninjas. The color purple came up immediately, and Boon, who is a huge Prince fan, thought of the song, "Purple Rain." This gave birth to purple-clad ninja known as Rain.

Boon further admitted that during the time of character development, he was probably listening to "Purple Rain."

Rain was named after Prince, but that has nothing to do with my tweet. I'm really listening 2 the Purple Rain Album. pic.twitter.com/6GzNz8Lj5N

— Ed Boon (@noobde) June 27, 2014

 "When we were working on Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, I was thinking "what ninja color have we not done yet?" ... and I'm a huge Prince fan, so I was thinking Purple Rain. I was probably still listening to the album."

Gawker's Media Network site, Kotaku, reported that after the creation of Rain, it was featured in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and went on to appear in the further game series. Rain comes from a royal celestial lineage and, as his appearance has evolved throughout the last decade, the brutal ninja characters started to look even more like Prince.

Directly or indirectly, we think that Prince made his contribution in the gaming world as well.