Mortal Kombat 12 "leak" is way too perfect to have been an accident

The first big Mortal Kombat 12 teaser has arrived via a "leak" that's just too perfect to have been an accident.

The teaser took the form of a few lines of text hidden in plain sight in an image posted to Twitter by NetherRealm Studios producer Jonathan Andersen. The post has since been deleted, but ResetEra user CaptainKashup grabbed a copy before it disappeared. At first the image seems to just be a nostalgic look back at promotional materials and concept art from the Mortal Kombat and Injustice games, all arrayed across a desk.

The computer monitor in the upper right part of the image is largely out of frame and partially obscured by the art, but we can make out a few details: a couple snippets of an email saying not to "share any part of this video" because "fans eagerly scrape the internet for any trace", and a few files sitting on the desktop, including one named "MK12_Mast…" and another with the word "Reptile" in it.

Given the reference to a video in the email message and the file with "mast" - as in "master" - in its name, it looks a whole lot like NetherRealm Studios is teasing a Mortal Kombat 12 trailer. The mention of Reptile also points to great news for fans of the acid-spitting lizard dude who debuted way back in the original Mortal Kombat but wasn't playable in Mortal Kombat 11.

NetherRealm Studios head Ed Boon said back in December that he wished he could announce the developer's next game, but cited more "variables involved than we are allowed to disclose." If NetherRealm is ready to drop cheeky teasers like this, it looks like those variables might have just about found their place in the equation.

NetherRealm confirmed back in July that it had ended work on Mortal Kombat 11 to double down on its next project.