The photo used in the article.
Ermac was a fake character in the game Mortal Kombat. The hoax came from a screen in the first game that calculated how many times a certain event happened. One of which was "Ermac", an abbreviated word for "Macro error". Basically to count how many times a glitch happened in gameplay.
In "Electronic Gaming Monthly Magazine", an article came up talking about a hidden character in the game called Ermac. The description of the character was that he was a red ninja character, similar to Scorpion. But not that much was given out about the character. A photo of the character was taken by the writer for the article, in very low quality. Saying that he only had a Polaroid to take it. Others say that Ermacs was just a glitch that caused Scorpion to turn red and his name being replaced with Ermacs. But it wasn't proved yet that he was fake.
Playable in Mortal Kombat[]
Ermac in the newer games.
During the hoaxes popularity, Midway put little easter eggs in the game that say he was there. This was done as an April Fools joke. With a scrambled line hidden in the game, unscrambling the sentence, it read "Ermac does not exist". That was true until the release of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 for the SNES and Sega Genesis. When pressing a certain code on the secret code screen, you could unlock Ermac. He was a red ninja character that had telekinesis and could teleport behind other opponents.