Shang Tsung is a boss and player character from the Mortal Kombat series. A powerful evil sorcerer, he is a demonic shapeshifter who absorbs the souls of those he defeats in order to maintain his youth and power and is able to change his appearance, including by morphing into other characters while retaining their abilities and movesets in-game. Shang Tsung is usually portrayed as the right-hand man of series archvillain Shao Kahn and the main rival and archenemy of the series' early protagonist, Liu Kang. Shang Tsung debuted as the main antagonist of the original Mortal Kombat, serving as the in-game tournament's grandmaster and the game's boss. He has since appeared in several games and other media spawned from the franchise, and was received positively by game critics.