The newest character to be added to Mortal Kombat 11 is none other than series mainstay — and my personal favorite character — Johnny Cage! In what is easily the best character reveal trailer so far, we get to see Johnny in his purest form. Check it out below.
We get to see callbacks from Johnny’s variations from Mortal Kombat X. We see his stunt double moves return, but this time with an actual stunt double (made extra hilarious by the stunt double’s obvious excess of hair), plus his brass knuckles from his Fisticuffs variation.
We also get to see some extra moves, like Johnny Cage throwing his sunglasses as a projectile, blinding the opponent with a camera flash, and miming himself in an invisible box as a counter move (calling back to his film within the game, “Ninja Mime”), and his fatal blow has him stabbing the opponent with a fake Oscar for Best Actor.
But easily the best part of the trailer is Johnny’s Fatality, where Johnny attempts to uppercut Kabal’s head off three times — a reference to a glitch from Mortal Kombat 2 — as the fight is revealed to be taking place on a movie set. You can even see Ed Boon listed as the director on the clapperboard before Johnny is finally successful and hurls the head at the camera while flipping the bird. Last but certainly not least, we see Johnny Cage celebrating his victory with an action figure of himself from Mortal Kombat 2011.
While all the character reveal trailers have been great, it is very clear that the team at NetherRealm had a lot of fun with this one, putting as many Easter eggs, references, and sly callbacks as they could. Johnny Cage easily has the most personality out of any character revealed so far, and I hate to be the Mortal Kombat 11 character to follow his act.
