Jax Briggs

"Bring it!!"

- Jax Briggs's Battle Cry in Mortal Kombat (2011)

"That knocked some of my rust off."

- Jax after defeating Kung Lao in Mortal Kombat X

Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs is a Special Forces commander with cybernetic enhancements and a hero from the Mortal Kombat series of fighting games.

Appearance
Jax is depicted as an African American man, having dark skin, black hair and brown eyes. Jax's most striking feature is his impressive muscular upper body build, keeping his torso bare in all but one of his appearances. In his first appearances, he wore karate pants and boots. From Mortal Kombat 3 and onwards, he wears a pair of bionic armor-plating that covers and protects both of his arms.

It is not known whether his arms were replaced or upgraded in the original storyline. However, it is possible that he may have used bionic implants until the events of Deception, where he may have willingly had his own arms removed in favor of mechanical replacements. In the alternate timeline of MK 2011, he was forced to use metallic arms in order to survive, after having his organic arms telekinetically dismembered by Ermac. In MKX, he wears a camouflage vest with his last name Briggs on his right upper vest pocket with his left upper pocket acting as a storage for his cigars and he still wears his dog tag around his neck, along with two more additional pockets near his abdomen. He has an American flag wrapped up and tied around his upper right arm and he wears green pants with some additional color of black on them and wears black army boots.

Personality
Jax is clear-headed, careful and always keeping a watch on what his men are doing. When the need arises he is the best on the battlefield with the attitude and ferocity of a lion.

Powers and Abilities
Jax is quite a hardened combatant due to his life as a soldier and is capable of being ferocious, but staying focused. His most notable trait is great physical strength, so much so that he can shake the earth with a punch and crush heads with ease. With his bionic implants, Jax's strength is even more increased, using pistons to increase the force of his blows, and they also carry portable missiles. He is also quite a skilled technician and scientist, having developed the portal technology of the Outer World Investigation Agency and uses a machine gun in combat. As his alternate weapon fighting style, Jax uses a pair of tonfa.

Trivia

 * Jax's original name was going to be Kurtis Stryker, but this was recycled later for another character introduced in Mortal Kombat 3.


 * He was originally going to be a kickboxer, but this was scrapped due to similarities to a number of Street Fighter characters. He originally wore a yellow martial arts gi, but this concealed his physique so it was dropped. There was game footage of Jax shot with his original gi costume, but his actor split the pants during shooting.


 * Before Sonya was created, Jax was conceived with her scenario, but since there were no female characters, Midway conceived Sonya as his replacement.


 * Interestingly in Mortal Kombat Unchained, when Havik performs a fatality where he eats the opponents arms and vomits the remains, he still vomits meat when he does it to Jax, despite Jax's arms being metal.


 * His code name is "Cobra" according to early production shots of Mortal Kombat Special Forces.


 * When Jax is knocked off the sky temple in Armageddon, he yells "Oh my god! This is not happening to me!"


 * His fighting stance from MK3 is similar to that of some of the male ninjas and comes from the Shaolin Fist fighting style.


 * Jax is one of the only two characters to have his own game, the other being Sub-Zero.