Cultural Impact
Kitana was featured in comic shorts in the humor magazine Cracked, having been renamed as Princess Kittykat, and in the novel This Is How It Starts by Grant Ginder. The character became a popular subject of cosplay. Tanya Jordan won the Ms Fitness Southern California competition with her pole dance while dressed as Kitana in 2010 and the FHM Premiere Vixen champion Karen Bordador had a photo session while dressed as Kitana in 2011. In the Halloween 2011 special edition of Monday Night Raw, professional wrestler AJ Lee dressed as Kitana for the Divas Battle Royal contest and jokingly attempted to perform a "Fan Lift" on her rival. Io9's Charlie Jane Anders included Kitana's costume among 2011's "sluttiest and weirdest" store-bought Halloween costumes, but Justin Amirikhani of Complex.com praised it as one of "last-minute video game costumes that actually look cool" and Brian Altano of IGN included it among "ten ridiculous (or ridiculously sexy) video game inspired Halloween costumes" of 2012. That same year, Mike Jackson of Computer and Video Games wrote the magazine was hoping to see more "hot" women cosplaying as Kitana.
Kitana has quickly become one of sex symbols of the Mortal Kombat series, in a display of what one author described as manifestation of "pseudo-Japanese Orientalist fetishes." One of the many urban legend-style rumors surrounding Mortal Kombat II in the early 1990s concerned the supposed "Nudality" finishing move (also known under other names, such as "Sexuality") that would be performed by Kitana stripping naked. The nickname of an American adult model Cherie Roberts is "Kitana Jade" since 1999 (Jade being the name of another female ninja character in the series), while Kitana Baker is an adopted name of an American model born as Christi Josenhans. During the development of the Mortal Kombat reboot game, the God of War series' director David Jaffe explicitly wrote how his character Kratos would have "a FUCKALITY" with "Sonya AND Katana " if he would join the series. Following Internet backlash, Jaffe explained he does not advocate rape and this comment was just an "intentionally juvenile" joke to suggest that "as a reward, Kratos gets a threesome with two of the hottest chix in gaming." The made-up word "kitana" also became an occasional misspelling for the word "katana".
Read more about this topic: Kitana (Mortal Kombat)
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