Ahead of the launch of Mortal Kombat 1 later this month, series co-creator Ed Boon has been doing the press rounds to promote this new entry. Surprisingly, he’s shown up on the YouTube show ‘Hot Ones’, where guests do a hot sauce challenge while answering questions about a particular subject.
As part of this appearance, Mortal Kombat fans have been given a “first look” at the Jean-Claude Van Damme skin for Johnny Cage. Boon notes how it’s the “absolute full circle moment” for the Mortal Kombat series to be able to get this famous martial artist and actor in the game:
Ed Boon: “When we made the very first game our original intention was to make Van Damme the arcade game, we actually wanted to see Van Damme, and again Bloodsport was big and Universal Soldier I think it was, so we called his people and we’re like we want to make a game based on Van Damme, and I don’t know if he declined or it just never got to him or something like that but again this a couple of 20 something-year-old kids who wanted to make a video game, I could see how Van Damme would go “no, no we’re not doing this”… so we tried a number of times going back and forth with him, this time we hit the lottery and we got him and we actually have his voice and he’s gonna be the Johnny Cage character…”
If you want to see this full reveal on the Hot Ones’ YouTube episode, you can catch it around the 5:50 mark of the video.
Boon’s appearance on Hot Ones follows yesterday’s reveal of Megan Fox as the Outworld vampire Nitara. You can learn more about this returning character and Megan’s involvement in Mortal Kombat 1 in our previous coverage here on Nintendo Life: