Why Were the Actors Replaced in Mortal Kombat? The Bizarre Story You Didn't Know

You surely know that the first Mortal Kombat games were made with real actors. But there's a detail you may never have noticed: have you ever realized that the actors in the first two games aren't the same actors who played the characters in Mortal Kombat 3? And have you ever wondered why that happened?

Although there are many photos of actors in competing games, the truth is that the reason is much bigger. Let's uncover behind-the-scenes secrets in a story involving money and copyright disputes surrounding Mortal Kombat, because Midway was sued by the person they least expected.

The Birth of a Legend and the Shadow of Van Damme

In 1992, Midway released the fighting game that would change the course of history: Mortal Kombat. It was a resounding success in arcades worldwide, and with its arcade success, it was natural that the next stop would be home consoles, where the game also exploded in sales.

But the origin of the project is quite different from what we know. The initial idea was to make a fighting game between ninjas, but Midway immediately discarded this, as they were obsessed with an actor who was the martial arts phenomenon of the time: Jean-Claude Van Damme. He had already established himself as an action and martial arts star in films such as Bloodsport (1988), Kickboxer (1989), Lionheart (1990), and Universal Soldier (1992), and the Midway team wanted to digitize him to create a fighting game with him.

Negotiations with Van Damme didn't progress because the actor was already committed to another contract, but even without Van Damme, Midway decided to proceed with the fighting game, maintaining the inspiration from the actor. The first character created was Johnny Cage, and if you look closely, the initials JC are the same as Jean-Claude's.

Remember Johnny Cage’s punch to the lower parts? It was taken directly from a scene in the movie Bloodsport. But what Midway didn't yet know was that Johnny Cage would also deliver a low blow to the company in an unprecedented lawsuit in the gaming industry.

Motion Picture Technology and the Rise of Daniel Pesina

At the time, Street Fighter 2 was the hit of the moment, but Mortal Kombat brought something revolutionary: Motion Picture technology. The idea was for everything in the game to be as realistic as possible, so they put real people in the game. They filmed real actors performing choreographed movements and blows, digitized these images, transformed them into pixels, and inserted them into the game. The actors hired were elite martial artists, and among them, one name stood out: Daniel Pesina.

Pesina is an American martial arts master and, in the first two games, played Sub-Zero, Scorpion, Smoke, Noob Saibot, Reptile, and Johnny Cage. Being more experienced than the rest of the cast—which was composed of young fighters—Pesina commanded a certain respect behind the scenes, something that eventually went to his head.

During the filming of Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 and in preparations for Mortal Kombat 3, he offered opinions on the speed of the moves and the game mechanics, acting as if he were the "official choreographer" without anyone having requested his consultation. He was present at all the filming sessions, even though he hadn't been cast, giving his opinion on everything, and this began to create discomfort among the other actors, who approached the creators, Ed Boon and John Tobias. After a conversation with Pesina, he said he understood the situation and promised to simply do his job as an actor, but that didn't happen.

The Spark of the Conflict

Things took a turn for the worse in 1994 when Daniel Pesina approached Ultimate Game Magazine, one of the most influential gaming magazines at the time. Without any authorization from Midway—which owned the project—he led a press conference with other cast members. In issue number 63 of the magazine, Pesina was presented as the "unofficial leader" of the actors and claimed to be the official choreographer of Mortal Kombat. And the story only gets worse: he showed confidential photos from the production, revealed behind-the-scenes secrets of Midway, and even gave the company's contact number to fans.

In Pessina's mind, he was an indispensable part of the game's creative process, but in reality, he was just a hired actor, afreelancer. Pessina claimed to have invented movements for each character in the game, spoke of bonus characters that never made it past the planning stage, trying to sell an image of a co-creator that Midway didn't acknowledge.

First Round in Court: The Liu Kang Case

Shortly after this event, Midway had to deal with Ho-Sung Pak, the actor who played Liu Kang. Pak already had some fame for being Raphael's stunt double in the 1991 film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He stated in court that Liu Kang's movements were his own creation – that only he could do them – and that the production company was profiting from his martial arts skills.

Midway's defense presented the original recording tapes, and although Pak executed incredible shots, he almost always missed the landing, falling onto mattresses placed by the production team. Midway proved that all the game's movements were digitally corrected, and what players saw wasn’t a fluid and unique movement, but a technical correction to the game's frames. In the end, to avoid negative repercussions from what happened, Midway reached a financial settlement with Pak, and he was fired from the franchise, but the worst was yet to come.

Second Round in the Courts: The Class-Action

With the success of the Mortal Kombat port on home consoles, Daniel Pesina convinced the other actors and led a class-action lawsuit against Midway, Williams, Acclaim, Nintendo, and Sega. He argued that the money from console sales wasn’t included in the original contract, which only allowed the use of his image in arcades, and that the use on home consoles violated his rights and generated profit solely for the companies.

Faced with the impasse, the court applied a test that went down in industry history. To verify if the actor's image was truly what added value to the game (which would make them "co-authors"), the court conducted a survey with 306 Mortal Kombat players, showing them a photo of Daniel Pesina alongside the character Johnny Cage and asking who he was. Only 18 people made any vague association and only a single person recognized it.

The court concluded that the public didn’t buy the game because of the actor, but because of the character Johnny Cage. The verdict was that anyone under that suit could be Johnny Cage or any other character.

Copyright Law

Based on the US Copyright Act of 1976, the court ruled that the home console games were adaptations of the arcade original and, as Midway held the intellectual property rights, it had the full right to exploit its work as it saw fit. After the legal defeat, Midway fired everyone involved in the lawsuit, who were replaced on Mortal Kombat 3.

Daniel Pesina didn’t accept defeat easily; he made a commercial for BloodStorm dressed as Johnny Cage, trying to convince players to migrate to the new game. He also got involved in the Tattoo Assassins project, a game that copied Mortal Kombat's technology, but which was never released.

To this day, Pesina maintains his version in interviews, swearing that the idea for Mortal Kombat originated from a conversation between him and John Tobias, and that Ed Boon supposedly "took advantage" of the idea. The curious thing is that he never presented any evidence of this when given the chance in court. Original recordings exist showing Ed Boon and John Tobias giving technical instructions from the first day of filming to the actor portraying Johnny Cage, which disproves Pesina's claim that the creators only appeared halfway through the project. He also claims that the creation of Scorpion's iconic harpoon move ("Get Over Here!") was his, but behind-the-scenes videos show Ed Boon teaching the actor how the move should be executed.

Currently, Pesina runs the Master Pesina's Martial Arts Institute, offering in-person training, martial arts choreography seminars, and appearances at gaming and pop culture events.

The story of Mortal Kombat is a lesson in how greed and a lack of understanding of copyright can cost entire careers. Daniel Pesina almost destroyed one of the world's biggest fighting franchises before it even reached its peak.

But as fate loves irony, 30 years later, in Mortal Kombat 1 (the 2023 reboot), Midway (now under the NetherRealm label) finally managed to close the deal that started it all: Jean-Claude Van Damme finally joined the game as Johnny Cage and, one way or another, justice was served for the creators.

Did you know this story? Were you aware of this epic legal battle? Leave your opinion in the comments.