John Tobias

Overview

John Tobias, along with Ed Boon, is the co-creator of the widely-acclaimed Mortal Kombat franchise. Before joining Midway, he was an artist for The Real Ghostbusters comic book. Tobias then served as the main artist for Mortal Kombat and was credited for developing the series' storylines and character models beginning from Mortal Kombat until Mortal Kombat 4.

Goodbye Midway, Hello Gigante

After the box office failure of Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (the sequel to the well-received Mortal Kombat film), Tobias, along with other MIdway key staff members such as John Michicich and John Tsui, left Midway in 1999 and formed Studio Gigante a year later. At the time, he was developing Mortal Kombat: Special Forces and left the game unfinished when he quit. Ed Boon helped finish the game but without Tobias' original input, Special Forces became a flop.

Following his departure, he was hardly mentioned in any of the Mortal Kombat's "making of" documentaries but was referred to as "four people who made Mortal Kombat 1". Studio Gigante only developed Tao Feng: Fist of The Lotus and WWE Wrestlemania 21 and the company ceased production in 2005. Tobias now works as a freelance video game consultant. Although no longer an employee of Midway, he still keeps in contact with Ed Boon and other Mortal Kombat staff.

Recent Work

In 2008, Boon gave Tobias a call asking if he would be interested in illustrating the Kollector's Edition comic book for Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe and Tobias agreed. This was the first time he worked on the Mortal Kombat franchise in almost nine years.

Additional Info

The character Noob Saibot is named after Ed Boon and John Tobias with their last names spelled backwards.