Rumors say that John Carpenter no longer makes movies not because he is not in shape to make them (because he goes out, he goes on tour with his band), but because he prefers to collect checks for the reboots of his classics and play video games (with which has always had a close relationship: he has written more than one script in estimable titles from a couple of generations ago). Perfectly legitimate, but this relationship goes back a long way (and no, we’re not talking about the infamous ‘Halloween’ game for Atari 2600)
Six years before the arrival of the legendary Mortal Kombat in the arcades, a Raiden transcript was already making its appearance, as one of the unforgettable Coup Storms in Little China. Specifically, Lightning, who manipulated and launched lightning bolts with his hands. The primary idea was the discovery of Raijin, the Chinese god of thunder in a museum, as the game’s co-creator John Tobias explained on Twitter. But his primary appearance, of a stocky demon with a huge drum, obviously didn’t fit the fighting game.
So Tobias and Ed Boon replaced him with a warrior who shot ratyos. They made several sketches, one of them confessedly inspired by Lightning from Carpenter’s film. The triangular hat the character wore helped give him a distinctive silhouette, according to Tobias. That’s where the similarities end, because while in Carpenter’s film Lightning is a henchman of the villain Lo Pan, in the game he is a god more powerful than the rest. of the fighters (if you’re wondering why he then appeared in the first game as a fighter, well: that wasn’t actually the real Raiden, take retrofit).
The passage of time has made fans of the game and the movie wonder if other characters from Little China Heist could have inspired Mortal Kombat, and at least one of them makes sense: Lo Pan is a fairly passable copy of the villainous sorcerer. Shang Tsung. And on the good side? Wang is Liu Kang and KJack Burton is, obviously, Johnny Cage. Different profession, but in everything else, nailed.
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