Mortal Kombat 1‘s alternate look for Johnny Cage is actor Jean-Claude Van Damme, and series co-creator Ed Boon showed the character in action in an episode of Hot Ones.
Mortal Kombat 1 will feature a number of famous faces, like John Cena as Peacemaker, Antony Starr as Homelander and J. K. Simmons as Omni-Man. This week, too, Megan Fox was announced to be portraying Nitara, a character who had not been seen in the series for almost two decades.
However, Boon explained that the crossover between Mortal Kombat and the Belgian martial artist and actor was a very special moment for the original developers.
Before Mortal Kombat became the sensational success that took the world by storm, the intention was to develop a Van Damme video game. “We actually wanted to see the words ‘Van Damme’. Bloodsport was big, and so was Universal Soldier, I think,” Boon said.
“So we called his people, and we were like ‘we want to make a game based on Van Damme’, and I don’t know if he declined or just never got to him or something like that.
“But this is, you know, a couple of 20-something-year-old kids who wanted make a video game – I could see how Van Damme would go ‘no, we’re not doing this,’” the co-creator admitted.
“So we tried a number of times, going back and forth with him. This time, we hit the lottery, and we got him. We actually have his voice and he’s going to be the Johnny Cage character, and it’s the absolute full circle moment that we had,” Boon concluded.
As shown in the episode, Van Damme looks like he has walked out of the 1990s and into Mortal Kombat 1, showing a younger version of the actor inspired by the films that Boon referred to.
The Van Damme skin for Johnny Cage is unlocked for players if they purchase the Premium edition of Mortal Kombat 1. This also includes Shang Tsung, six playable characters, five Kameo characters, a week’s worth of early access to these downloadable content characters and 1,250 Dragon Krystals.
In other gaming news, Bethesda has assured Indiana Jones fans that they will learn more about the game in the next year, after keeping its cards close to its chest since 2021.