Mortal Kombat 1 “First Look” at Jean-Claude Van Damme as Johnny Cage

Ed Boon has been touring the press to promote Mortal Kombat 1 ahead of its release this month. Despite his appearance on the YouTube show ‘Hot Ones’, where guests perform a hot sauce challenge while answering questions about a topic.

Mortal Kombat fans got a “first look” at Johnny Cage’s Jean-Claude Van Damme skin. Boon calls it Mortal Kombat’s “absolute full circle moment” to include this famous martial artist and actor:

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…”

Let’s go!! For some reason it looks so much better than I thought it would. pic.twitter.com/JkXca4RjQ3

— GHOOSTIE (@Wendighast081) September 7, 2023

This full reveal can be seen at 5:50 on the Hot Ones’ YouTube channel.