Mortal Kombat 1 tried to get John Wick as a playable character

Keanu Reeves won’t get over here or give up his spine anytime soon, as he refuses to lend his characters to the Mortal Kombat series. But it’s not for a lack of trying, as the minds behind the newly released Mortal Kombat 1 made the attempt to get John Wick in the game.

Ed Boon recently told Rolling Stone that he and Warner Bros. Games envisioned getting Wick in Mortal Kombat partly as a throwback to the fighting game franchise’s origins. “When we were making Mortal Kombat (1992), the whole team was in the midst of Bloodsport, Enter the Dragon, and all the Terminator movies. I could certainly see the John Wicks of the world… as a matter of fact, that is one of the ones that we tried to get – John Wick – in Mortal Kombat, and we didn’t get it.” Keanu Reeves has been actively against allowing both John Wick and Neo from The Matrix, saying that the Mortal Kombat games are their own entity. Still, Reeves himself has been down to enter the gaming world otherwise, appearing in Cyberpunk 2077.

Still, Boon knew how he could have utilized Keanu Reeves elsewhere. “One of the things that I entertained with this game – and this is the 10 out of 10 version – which we didn’t do, was, ‘What if every character in this game was played by an actor?’ Like we got Keanu Reeves to play Kenshi… this is, like, pipe dream. We’re not even thinking of their salaries and all that stuff. What if we made a game that had an actor, a famous, recognizable actor play every character and Johnny Cage was absolutely the one who would have been played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. So, the thought did come to us.”

Even without the inclusion of John Wick, Mortal Kombat 1 – which was released on Tuesday – is not without big names. This time around, Dave Bautista helped in the promotion while Megan Fox provided the voice of the vampire Nitara. But the biggest get is undoubtedly the aforementioned Jean-Claude Van Damme, who appears as a skin for Johnny Cage, the character he inspired.

Mortal Kombat 1 is the 12th game in the series and the first since 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11.

Do you think John Wick would have made a good addition to Mortal Kombat 1?