In the games, Jax is first depicted as the commanding officer of Special Forces operative Sonya Blade and subsequently becomes one of the warriors defending Earthrealm from various threats.

Jax was originally named "Kurtis Stryker," and was to be in the roster of the inaugural 1992 first game of the franchise while possessing the storyline of pursuing Kano and his entrapment on Shang Tsung's island.

The character was ultimately postponed upon the developers' realization that there were no female fighters in the game, which resulted in Sonya Blade taking his place instead and inheriting much of his originally intended storyline.

[6] Played by bodybuilder John Parrish, Jax was originally conceived for the game as a kickboxer dressed in shorts and a headband, but this concept was nixed due to potential similarities to Street Fighter's boxer character Balrog.

The design was aborted thereafter by the developers as they felt the character did not look big enough, so Parrish was called back by Midway several months later for a re-shoot, for which he went shirtless with simple black tights.

[9] In early development screenshots of Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, released to the public in 2001, Jax was seen facing off against Scorpion while wearing his MK3 costume,[10] but he was given a complete makeover for the finished product with a military-themed, while in MK vs. DC Universe and the 2011 reboot, he sported a pair of dog tags around his neck.

Jax has gone shirtless in all iterations of his main costumes in the Mortal Kombat fighting games, with the exception of MKvsDC, in which he was fully clothed with no skin exposed save for his head and face, and his bionics were adorned with green LED lights.

[11] Jax's first game appearance came in Mortal Kombat II (1993), where he is on a mission to find his Special Forces partner, Lieutenant Sonya Blade, who had gone missing in Outworld while attempting to apprehend Kano.

Major Jackson "Jax" Briggs makes his first chronological appearance in the 2000 action-adventure game Mortal Kombat: Special Forces, in which he attempts to stop Kano and the Black Dragon crime organization from stealing an artifact capable of opening portals to other realms.

[note 1] While returning to Earthrealm, Jax and Sonya find the malfunctioning Lin Kuei cyborg Cyrax stranded in a desert, and bring him back to the OIA headquarters, where they restore his humanity and recruit him as an agent of the Special Forces.

However, in the battle against the titular Deadly Alliance of Shang Tsung and Quan Chi, Jax and his allies are killed and resurrected by the Dragon King Onaga to become his slaves.

[17] After Liu Kang's victory over Shang Tsung, Sonya is held captive in Outworld before being rescued by Jax, who does not take part in the second tournament after his arms are psychically obliterated in a confrontation with Ermac and he is transported back to Earthrealm for medical attention.

While Raiden and Liu Kang commune with the Elder Gods, the Lin Kuei ninja clan and Shao Kahn's wife Sindel attack.

[24][25] In the DLC story expansion Aftermath, a time-travelling Fujin helps bring the present Jax to his senses, leading to him abandoning Kronika's cause before the final battle.

[28] As in the games, Jax often appears in alternate Mortal Kombat media as one of thunder god Raiden's warriors chosen to defend Earthrealm from Outworld forces.

[34] White said in a 2011 interview with MTV that he was originally to play Jax in the first Mortal Kombat film, but he turned it down in order to star in HBO's 1995 Mike Tyson biopic.

[38] He makes a single-panel appearance in the special-edition Mortal Kombat 4 comic packaged with the 1998 PC release of the game, contacting Sonya by radio as she pursues Black Dragon member Jarek.

In the miniseries U.S. Special Forces, released in two parts in January and February 1995, he and Sonya work to capture an original Black Dragon character named Rojack.

[40] Jax then featured in the six-part "Battlewave" miniseries that year, where he is brutally attacked by Goro and left in a coma, but awakens to fight off an assassination attempt and joins Cage on a mission in Outworld,[41] where the Earthrealm heroes succeed in breaking up a wedding between a brainwashed Sonya and Shao Kahn.

"[48] While Wes Fenlon of PC Gamer was also supportive in that the ending "tackles a heavy subject in its short running time", he considered it "unsurprisingly vague on the details.

"[55] However, in describing black characters in video games as "over-reliant on outdated, one-dimensional stereotypes", Laura Francis of GamesRadar+ remarked that Jax's "huge bulging biceps and loud demeanour are his primary defining traits.

[57] Kyle A. Harris of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, in a 2016 study titled The New Blackface: The Transition of Black One-Dimensional Characters from Film to Video Games, categorized Jax along with Final Fantasy VII character Barret Wallace and Balrog and Dee Jay from Street Fighter as "hulking figures over six feet tall with extremely huge muscles and brash personalities."

He was considered as such by GamePro in their 1993 character rankings, in which they placed him second out of the game's twelve playables behind Mileena: "It’s hard to fight against a good Jax [player] that knows how to control space and use his projectile well.

[71] In Prima's official guide for the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot, Jax "has generally changed over the years from a defensive machine to an offensive powerhouse," and displays no particular advantage over other characters but is very disadvantaged when playing against Shang Tsung.