It looks like Conan the Barbarian won’t be sounding exactly like the actor again
Mortal Kombat has a history of bringing in big guest characters for 13 years now, and there’s usually quite a bit of hype surrounding actors reprising roles they sometimes haven’t performed in for decades.
NetherRealm Studios recently unveiled their big plans for the future of Mortal Kombat 1 with the Khaos Reigns expansion and Kombat Pack 2 where fans are going to be seeing some familiar faces — quite literally.
Along with three returning series fighters in Noob Saibot, Sektor and Cyrax, MK1 also has a trio of guests as well technically joining the battle across realms for the first time with the Terminator T-1000, Scream’s Ghostface and Conan the Barbarian.
A couple of these picks are quite interesting because they both connect back to famed actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Mortal Kombat 11 already received a Terminator crossover with the T-800 using Schwarzenegger’s iconic destructor turned protector, and it looks like his appearance will be relegated to pretty much the same thing with Conan.
Peter Weller came back for the first time in pretty much forever to portray RoboCop again in MK11 along with Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo, but the developers went with an Arnold soundalike instead for the T-800.
And it looks like recent history is going to repeat itself with Mortal Kombat 1 since Roger Jackson is back as Ghostface’s voice and Robert Patrick is lending his voice for the T-1000 as well.
“Kombat Pack 2 also brings a new batch of guest fighters into the mix with Ghostface, the recurring identity donned by antagonists from the Scream horror movie franchise, voiced by Roger L. Jackson; T-1000, the liquid metal-based Terminator and deadly cybernetic assassin from the Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) film featuring the voice and likeness of actor Robert Patrick; and Conan the Barbarian, the towering warrior from the Conan the Barbarian (1982) film featuring the likeness of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger,” reads the official press release.
If they had Schwarzenegger providing the voice work for Conan, NRS would have told us there after the disappointment fans already had with MK11.
Instead, it seems most likely that Chris Cox will again be providing his closest Arnold impression for Conan like he did in the last game.
Cox has long been in MK1’s credits, which led some to believe he’d play Homelander in place of Antony Starr as the other prominent actor absent from the fighting game though we’d learn more recently that someone else did that work.
While this doesn’t appear to be officially confirmed as of yet, Cox replacing Schwarzenegger again is looking like the most probable solution by far.
We’ve never really gotten a real confirmation as to why Arnold wasn’t in MK11 himself, but it may have simply come at a time when he was too busy with Terminator: Dark Fate.
Considering Schwarzenegger previously campaigned against violent video games in the past as well, he may have also simply refused the role.
That idea may hold a bit less water now, however, since he did apparently provide the voice for Dutch in Predator: Hunting Grounds.
At the same time, Schwarzenegger has never really been involved with video games directly outside of a few other Terminator games.
As he quickly approaches his 77th birthday, Schwarzenegger’s roles have significantly slowed down in recent years too with his only credit for 2024 being in an Agent State Farm short — so he may also just be semi-retired at this point.
Arnold hasn’t officially portrayed the barbarian since 1984’s Conan the Destroyer, and though he’s wanted to return to the character for over a decade now with The Legend of Conan constantly hanging in limbo, it seemingly won’t be happening in MK1 either.
The actor has spoken out multiple times that Producer Fredrik Malmberg has been holding back any new projects by way of owning the rights of Conan though we’re not sure if that includes video games too.
With how likeness licensing works, there’s a chance Arnold may not have really been involved with the process for MK1 at all.
Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns is set to launch on September 24 with Noob, Cyrax and Sektor as the playable fighters that will be added to the game at the same time, so we probably won’t learn much more about Conan, Ghostface or the T-1000 until 2025.
It is already known, however, that players can’t simply purchase Kombat Pack 2 by itself and must instead pick up the full expansion similarly to Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath.