Sheeva

Sheeva is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series created by Ed Boon and John Tobias. Making her first appearance in Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), she is of the multilimbed Shokan species from the otherworldly realm of Outworld, like Goro and Kintaro. She has served as the personal protector of Outworld emperor Shao Kahn's queen, Sindel, while harboring a bitter hatred for Motaro, who is of the Shokan's sworn enemies, the Centaurians. In the 2011 reboot, her role in the storyline is that of Kahn's bodyguard and jailer, holding Sonya Blade and Kitana captive on separate occasions.

Created as a stop motion-animated figurine like Goro and Kintaro, Sheeva was added into the MK series due to fan requests for a playable version of Goro. However, out of all the characters from the first generation of games, she has featured the least in the overall series continuity to date, only appearing as a playable in two additional titles after MK3 and its upgrades (Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy) in addition to small roles in alternative Mortal Kombat-related media, while appearing on no official merchandise. Reception to the character has been mixed in terms of her presence in the series and her finishing moves.

Appearances

In video games

Sheeva belongs to the ancient race of the Shokan, described as a subterranean people living in Outworld. Like all of her race, she possesses a tall, muscular build, red eyes, four arms with three fingers on each totaling 12 fingers, and two toes on each foot, however special to her only is the horns on her head. When Shao Kahn resurrected Sindel as the first step in his invasion of earth, he appointed Sheeva to be her personal protector. Sheeva became distrustful, however, when Kahn appointed the centaur Motaro to lead his Extermination Squads into battle. She saw this as an insult, as the Shokan and Centaurs have long been mortal enemies. She served the emperor in Earthrealm, but when she returned to Outworld, she was shocked to learn that Shao Kahn had betrayed the Shokans, and had launched an offensive against them. She joins her fellow Shokans in fighting Kahn’s warriors. The Shokans are far outnumbered, and cannot hope to win, but when Shao Kahn is defeated by Earth’s warriors and recalls his troops from all fronts, Sheeva takes this opportunity to get revenge on her nemesis, Motaro. Days later, she learns that Motaro has nursed his Earthrealm ally, Kano, back to health. Although Motaro had rescued Kano, it was merely to imprison him so he could later face the wrath of Shao Kahn for his failure to defeat Sonya. He gets imprisoned. Some time later, Sheeva arrives to the palace. The Shokan warrior kills Motaro outside of Kano's cell. She was on her way to assassinate Shao Kahn as well when Kano offered his assistance if Sheeva let him out of his cage. Kano and Sheeva proceeded to the throne room of Shao Kahn. When they arrived at the door, Kano suggested that he go in first to distract the Emperor. Kano would give the signal for Sheeva to enter and slay the preoccupied Shao Kahn. But Kano betrayed Sheeva and informed Shao Kahn of her assassination plot. When Kano called her in, Shao Kahn thrust a sword through her chest from behind.

In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon it is possible that Sheeva has escaped from the Netherealm some how, this is unknown how though as it was never confirmed. In Armegeddon's Konquest mode, Sheeva is seen in the Netherealm along with Kintaro, Havik, and a legion of demons all apparently working in an attempt to overthrow Shinnok's rule at his spire. However, Shinnok later reveals that they were only apparitions created as a test for Taven, thus making it clear that it was not the real Sheeva. In Sheeva's Armageddon ending, she defeats Blaze and is met by the Elder Gods. She becomes the Goddess of Destruction, destroying realms using a Kamidogu; she then recreates the realms however she sees fit, but exactly what they are remade into is never revealed.^[1]

Sheeva also appears in Mortal Kombat 2011. In the Story Mode, she is Shao Khan's bodyguard, also serving as a jailer when Sonya and later Kitana are held captive, and must be fought several times by the characters the Story Mode focuses on. She is last seen defeated by Kabal in the streets of New York City after he escapes from Outworld. Despite this, she does not appear in Mortal Kombat X.

Design and gameplay

Sheeva, whose name was derived from Shiva, a Hindu deity of destruction, was introduced into the series due to fan requests for a playable version of Goro.^[2] She was not included among the selectable fighters in the SNES and Sega Genesis version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 due to memory constraints, though she appeared as a glitch character in the SNES version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Sheeva's blood was green in MK3 through Mortal Kombat Trilogy (although if this was done simply because she was a Shokan, it made little sense, seeing as both Goro and Kintaro had red blood in previous games). She was the first character to have this particular blood color (not counting the censored Japanese version of Mortal Kombat II, in which all characters had green blood). Her blood color was changed to red in Armageddon.

Until the release of MK: Armageddon, Sheeva had not appeared as a playable character since MK Trilogy, nor did she have had any substantial cameos; only her corpse was found in the Netherealm in Mortal Kombat: Deception's Konquest mode and is seen running through the graveyard in the game's Krypt, in which almost all MK characters had cameos. Her fate after MK Trilogy was revealed in the text from Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance's Konquest mode. In Armageddon's arcade mode, Sheeva sometimes appeared as a sub-boss before the final fight with Blaze. She is the only Shokan character that can perform aerial combos, and the only Shokan character that can be thrown by normal characters in the game. While she has Goro's offensive moves, she is female so that she would be smaller in size and therefore the same height as the other fighters.

In other media

Sheeva appears in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, played by Marjean Holden. The shooting script included a lengthy fight scene with Raiden that was omitted during filming; instead, she was simply crushed by a falling cage in Kahn's throne room. Her only action sequence was a brief quarrel with Motaro, though the film did acknowledge that she was once Sindel's personal protector. In a 2001 interview with fansite Total Mortal Kombat, Holden expressed her displeasure at the filmmakers' treatment of her character. In the shooting script and novelization, Sheeva met her demise in an extensive fight scene with newly mortal Raiden, but the scene was never filmed and her screen time was scant in the finished print, with Raiden instead fighting two Raptors and Sheeva's death simply coming from a falling cage. "Here was a character, that was one of the most popular [in] the video game...and they killed her without even so much as a fight! Something I was not happy about at all. That was one of the reasons I wanted to do the role, was for the sheer fact that there were really great fights in the movie for this character, and they all got cut out."^[3]

Sheeva has a small role in the animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, in which she harbored a long-standing animosity toward Raiden. She was voiced by Dawnn Lewis.

In the 2015 Mortal Kombat X prequel comic miniseries produced by DC Comics, Sheeva is crowned by Kintaro as the current leader of the Shokan in a peaceful treaty with Kotal Kahn, following the death of previous rule King Gorbak. Sheeva mourned Kintaro's death when a possessed Sonya Blade killed him in battle.

Reception

Reception of the character has been mixed. Also in 2011, Wirtualna Polska featured her among the top ten villainesses in gaming, as "an attraction for connoisseurs of unusual beauty and even more unusual quantities of the various parts of the body."^[4] In 2012, UGO.com ranked her as the 28th top Mortal Kombat character.^[5] Sheeva ranked 36th on a 2013 fan poll hosted by Dorkly that rated the entire series roster. Den of Geek ranked Sheeva 34th in their 2015 rating of the franchises 64 characters. However, Game Informer listed her as one of the characters they did not want for MK2011, stating that "despite a somewhat cool ground-pound move, she was an addition to the series that never really served a purpose or did anything particularly noteworthy."^[6] GamePlayBook ranked Sheeva fifth on their top 10 worst characters in the series. She was ranked as seventh goofiest Mortal Kombat character by Topless Robot in 2011.^[7]

Sheeva was featured in several lists of the best, and sometimes worst, finishing moves in the Mortal Kombat series by various publications. In 1996, her "Skin Rip" move received the most votes for favorite Mortal Kombat 3 finishing move from GamePro readers.^[8] In 2010, IGN ranked her "Manly Forearms" from MK3 as the third best Fatality.^[9] In 2011, she placed third on the lists of both the best ("Skin Rip" in MK3) and the worst ("Jackhammer" in MK3) Fatalities by GameRant.^[10][11] In 2012, GameFront ranked her "Stripped Down" Fatality from Mortal Kombat 2011 as the third best in the series,^[12] while her other Fatality was also ranked as the ninth best in this game by Paste.^[13]

References