The official website💯 has confirmed that Johnny🌠 Cage will be a playable character in , despite not appearing in the reveal trailer.
After years fo being one of the worst-kept secrets in the gaming industry (especially after be🦄ing casually mentioned during a Warn🐬er Bros. earnings call in February), NetherRealm has finally confirmed that the game that it's currently working on is indeed the next Mortal Kombat, although it's one that reinvents the timeline and seemingly starts things from scratch.
Neth♛erRealm revealed Mortal Kombat 1 through a cinematic trailer, similarly to what it did for Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11. The trailer showcased several of the characters that will be playable in the gam♏e, including Liu Kang, 𒉰Shang Tsung, Scorpion, Raiden, Sub-Zero, Kitana, and Mileena, albeit in a reimagined format.
Although that's already quite a stacked roster considering it was only just announced less than an hour ago, the official Mortal Kombat 1 website has revealed one more character that wasn't featured at all in the trailer, at least as far as we can tell - Johnny Cage.
, one of the questions asks which characters will be available and the answer reads, "Mortal Kombat 1 will feature reimagined fighters like they’ve never been seen before, including Liu Kang, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, Raiden, Kung 𒊎Lao, Kitana, Mileena, Shang Tsung, Johnny Cage, and many others."
This isn't the only mention of Johnny Cage within the FAQ, either. In the section detailing how much Mortal Kombat 1 is going to cost, it reads, "The Kombat Pack will feature a Johnny Cage character skin with the likeness of famed actor and martial artist, Jean-Claude Van Damme (available at launch), early access to six new playable characters (available post-launch), and five new Kameo Fighters (available post-launch)".
Johnny Cage having a Jean-Claude Van Damme skin seems to suggest that he's still a Hollywood actor in Liu Kang's universe, although that's yet to be officially confirmed since we've not seen any screenshots or videos of him in action. Including a skin for him that has him dressing up as a famous actor and martial artist certainly seems to imply that he hasn't changed all that much in this universe, however.
It's not too surprising that, despite seemingly taking place in an alternate universe that features younger versions of the characters we know, regular old Johnny Cage is back in action. Considering all of the uproar and attention that Karl Urban's casting as Cage in the Mortal Kombat 2 movie recently got, it'd be a huge missed opportunity if he somehow wasn't.