NetherRealm Studios' Mortal Kombat 11 continues to make headlines thanks to the string of new characters being added through DLC, with players still getting used to brutalities for DC Comic's Joker as they wait for Todd McFarlane's Spawn from Image Comics to be fully revealed. One fan of the series, a British YouTube channel named BabyZone, decided to see how far they could push the concept of big-name fighter additions by using deepfake technology to insert a number of celebrities into the game.
Deepfaking takes an existing image and replaces it with another in such a seamless way that it can be hard to tell something has been inserted over the original content. In their Mortal Kombat 11 video, BabyZone includes six celebrities replacing fighters across a number of in-game cutscenes: Bruce Campbell over The Terminator, Jean-Claude Van Damme over Johnny Cage, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson over Kabal, Bruce Lee over Liu Kang, Jackie Chan over Kung Lao, and Keanu Reeves over Sub-Zero.
While the concept of deepfakes is admittedly terrifying, it can have some fun applications as seen with the Mortal Kombat 11 overhaul. BabyZone even describes the usage as "Celebrity Skins," which offers up the hypothetical possibility of NetherRealm using real-world celebrity visages as if they were the once pre-order exclusive Kold War Skarlet.
The video is full of little nods to fans of the different celebrities spliced in, like the ice-shooting Sub-Zero specifically being a trigger-happy Keanu Reeves from John Wick; or Jean-Claude Van Damme joining Mortal Kombat after playing Guile in the oft-rebuked 1994 Street Fighter movie. BabyZone has played with the concept of messing with movie canons before, like recreating a scene from the Oscar-winning 2019 Joker using an MK11 fatality.
The full replacement isn't perfect in this video, but deepfakes often aren't as the technology still hasn't reached its full, possibly dreadful potential. Usually it's a clever concept that carries through a successful project, like when a Death Stranding deepfake video with Hideo Kojima playing every character surfaced late last year.
If nothing else, BabyZone's video can certainly be called entertaining in its concept and execution. Recently Mortal Kombat 11 Director Ed Boon had to dissuade a rumor that they were adding G.I. Joe's Snake Eyes into the game as DLC, but maybe there's something to be said about keeping more celebrity cameos in mind going forward.
Mortal Kombat 11 is available now for PC, PS4, Stadia, Switch, and Xbox One.