The Mortal Kombat series has been stagnant for years now. MK vs. DC was an original idea -- and fun to play for the most part -- but the core series has looked the same since Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance was released way back in 2002. It doesn't help that the characters have had little to no development in that time either. Enter a former Midway employee named Vincent Proce and the best redesign of the players of this stale brawler so far [via Unreality]:

You're looking at a bad-ass recreation of Scorpion, wearing yellow blood of the demon that helped resurrect him to exact his revenge. Raiden (who looks even more like the lightning-wielding baddie from Big Trouble in Little China), a super-hot Sonya, and Kano have also been recreated with their own enhanced storylines. Unfortunately, these were never used. We'll just have to hope that the character work in Mortal Kombat 9 shows some of the quality and originality of what was done here. A better shot of Scorpion and pics of the other three reworked character designs after the jump.