page_title: Mileena
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Mileena / Appearances / In video games / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Got the bo when training ninjutsu. The nunchucks are perfect for relaxation and the sai just look awesome.
context_page_description: Mileena is a player and occasional boss character from the Mortal Kombat series of fighting games. A dual sai-wielding assassin, she acts as the evil twin and magenta palette swap of Princess Kitana in Mortal Kombat II in 1993. She has been promoted throughout the Mortal Kombat games as its semi-ironic sex symbol, especially since Mortal Kombat: Deception when she began a pattern of wearing more revealing outfits.
  The series' 2011 reboot made her even more psychologically unstable, not to mention cannibalistic, and her resemblance to her sister has greatly diminished. In the backstory of Mortal Kombat X, Mileena is the sole surviving heir of Shao Kahn and vies for the Outworld throne with the warlord Kotal Kahn. Despite some criticism for her character designs, Mileena has become one of the most popular characters in the series.
context_section_description: Mileena was the first evil female character to appear in the series, created by John Tobias for Mortal Kombat II simply to accommodate another palette-swapped character. Tobias recalled: "I took advantage of Kitana and Mileena being masked sisters to make a play on the veil myth… One sister is beautiful. One is ugly. One is good. One is evil. Choose wisely before asking one on a date." According to Acclaim Entertainment's producer Robert O'Farrell, the game was given two female fighters so it would better compete against Capcom's Street Fighter II, which had only one. Mortal Kombat co-creator and producer Ed Boon described the sisters as the "female versions of Scorpion and Sub-Zero". 
  Since her debut, Mileena's characteristic weapon is a pair of sharpened, dagger-like sai, that at first she has been using in combat only as projectiles and during some of her finishing moves (eventually, the sai were given more use in Mortal Kombat 2011). Only in Mortal Kombat Gold does she use a European style longsword (similar to that of Scorpion in Mortal Kombat 4) as her primary physical weapon. Prior to the release of MK2011, Mileena was one of the five "legendary characters" spotlighted by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, alongside the likes of Scorpion and Sub-Zero. Her MK2011 X-ray attack was altered to incorporate sai stabbings after fan feedback "to fit Mileena as far as her style, her brutality." Her trademark moves through the series include double-sai throws that can be performed midair, teleport kicks, and on-ground rolling attacks. Mileena also utilizes her sai in most of her Fatalities, including immobilizing her opponents prior to the killing sequence (such as her "Rip Off" finisher in MK2011), while she pretends to kiss her victims in others. In MKX, both of her Fatalities exhibit her cannibalistic traits. There was a popular but completely false urban legend-style rumor regarding a supposed "Nudality" finishing move in MKII. Her Animality in Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy sees her transform into a skunk that sprays the defeated opponent.
  Mileena is physically identical to Kitana, the most glaring exception being her half-Tarkata face with large and exposed fang-like teeth (which got noticeably downsized for Mortal Kombat Deception and Armageddon). Boon described Mileena as "Anti-Kitana" and said that her large "sharp, nasty teeth" have been not originally planned and were only drawn for her infamous Fatality "Man-Eater" (featured in UMK3 too), in which she sucks up the entire body of her victims and then regurgitates their clean bones. After MKII, her teeth were almost never used again during gameplay until MK2011 (in a leap attack to bite an opponent in the neck and in one Fatality to gnaw on the killed enemy's severed head), with a sole exception of one Fatality in Deception in which she uses them to tear off the opponent's head. Mileena's skin color appears to be at times mildly darker than Kitana's, but is always lighter than Jade's. After the two were given more varying appearances in Gold (hairstyle of all Kitana-derived characters is loose in MKII and pinned back in a bun in UMK3), Mileena's hair is usually much shorter than Kitana's and is most often worn gathered in a ponytail. One element of Mileena's anatomy that has often changed is her eyes. As her supposed twin sister, Mileena shared Kitana's eyes in MKII; her eyes then became "undead" style all-white (similar to the eyes of Scorpion and Noob Saibot) in UMK3. In Deception, Armageddon and Shaolin Monks, Mileena's eyes return to normal, but are yellow (Kitana's eyes are brown). In Mortal Kombat 2011, however, she has Baraka-like yellow eyes with slit pupils (her eyes are also sometimes seen as glowing whole), except of her alternate UMK3 style costume (available through pre-order bonuses and later in a DLC package) in which she has human eyes once again. In MKX, her facial appearance has undergone major changes on her facial appearance based on those from Mortal Kombat Legacy live-action series, such as having a human-like mouth, 
caption: A sample pair of blunt sai (along with a pair of nunchaku and a bō). Another sai-wielding character in the series is Li Mei, who substituted Mileena in Deadly Alliance
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