When the fighting game series Killer Instinct got rebooted in 2013, everything changed for the better. The character who was changed the most was Spinal, who went from a comically frail skeleton experiment gone wrong to a Swedish ghost pirate doomed to walk among the living via a curse cast by another fighter. Many people think that the Norse representative of the series is the heroic Tusk. In truth, Spinal is not only anther Norse representative, but one that specifically fills in the gaps left by Tusk. The reboot turned Tusk into an immortal guardian who purposefully styled himself after norse culture when he took a liking to their ways.
What has become to me as I’ve read various sagas is that “Viking” and “Nordic Warrior” are two different things. Warriors are men of honor and loyalty who fight for kings and such, while Vikings are raiders who live as outlaws to all but other vikings. Spinal is a Viking, and Tusk is a Nordic warrior. Tusk has the typical Aryan look of pale skin, blonde hair, and turquoise eyes (sometimes entirely blue, other times more so green). He wields a great-sword reminiscent of Icelandic crusaders and named blades such as Balmung. Tusk’s stage is Icehaven, which is a blatant expy of Icelandic shores with a frozen viking ship decorating the background. Spinal’s stage, in contrast, is Shipwreck Shore, a shipwreck in the Caribbean (probably to highlight the fact that despite in most aspects being Swedish, Spinal’s curse is Babylonian) that resembles a nightmarish rendition of Tusk’s stage.
Spinal on the surface seems unrelated to Tusk or vikings, but it takes little digging to unearth the connection. Spinal’s condition is very similar to the draugr of Norse myth rather than a generic undead skeleton. He possess supernatural strength and cursing abilities, he is a fully corporeal corpse (his flesh has simply rotted away due to having been animated since the time of ancient Babylon) as opposed to any sort of specter. The most obvious and decisive evidence, however, is Spinal’s theme in the reboot: “Warlord,” one of many excellent compositions by Mick Gordon. The lyrics to the song are Scandinavian chants that incorporate old Norse terminology into traditional Swedish. The translation portrays Spinal as a pagan war deity deserving of all titles including some exclusively used by old Norse culture.
Tusk and Spinal are explicitly stated to be enemies, which is more than a little fitting. Tusk is an immortal warrior who follows Norse traditions and follows their way of life. Spinal is an undead viking raider whose ship was wrecked and he was cursed to forever walk the earth. For all his malevolence, however, Spinal is not a being of pure evil. His malice is born out of his curse; he has plenty of personality that shows a sadistically jovial warrior who lives for battle much like a Berserk. Speaking of Berserks, Tusk’s rage mode is quite literally a berserker rage. Spinal is outright stated in his story bio to be nothing more than a mischief maker at heart and this is portrayed through how he seldom takes the side of the main villains of the series such as Fulgore and other Ultratech combatants.
Tusk is honor, loyalty, order, faith, and life. Spinal is chaos, bloodlust, pagan, undead, and maniacal. Both Tusk and Spinal represent the Nordic warrior; they each represent an extreme of the spectrum. Spinal is the pagan Viking raider, and Tusk is the crusading honor-bound warrior who serves a higher power to keep order and tradition. It’s entirely possible the yin-yang relationship between the two was unintentional. The game refers to Spinal as a pirate raider and Tusk as a Viking, but Spinal’s theme shows that at least some of those working on the game understand the connection. All of that being said, Spinal is easily my favorite character on the Killer Instinct roster. If not for reading the sagas of Njal, Egil, and Grettir, I never would’ve realized that he was more than a simple skeletal pirate, and much of Tusk’s nods to old Norse culture would’ve been lost on me.
