Life hasn't always been easy for Johnny Cage. As a hammy actor and star of the fictitious cult B-movie Ninja Mime, Cage's entry to the first Mortal Kombat tournament was a desperate bid for credibility in order to prop up a failing career as a martial artist-come-action movie star. From the very beginning, Mortal Kombat's comic foil has often struggled to be taken seriously both within his own universe and in the eyes of the players who exist outside of it.
Much like Cage's transition from actor to savior of EarthRealm, however, his image and reputation have only grown over time, with no new series release truly complete without his presence. Whereas once Cage was the franchise whipping boy, a two-dimensional comic foil noted for his $500 sunglasses, self-aggrandizing chest tattoo and smug victory pose, he's grown into one of the franchise's most beloved, popular and arguably most powerful characters. Assessing Johnny's abilities and exploits reveals a hero of quite remarkable strength and power.
At the beginning of his lifespan as a fixture of the Mortal Kombat universe, Johnny was little more than a gag character serving as the series' comic relief and, quite often, its resident punching bag. The actor's appearances in earlier MK entries -- titles noted for their lack of subtlety and self-awareness -- marked him out as the perennial frat boy as he swaggered around in dated sportswear and overpriced shades. His reputation was not aided by Linden Ashby's brilliant but hammy portrayal of the arrogant B-lister in the eponymous 1995 movie.
By the time of the franchise's soft reboot, Cage's cockiness had been dialed up to 11, the egotistical thespian displaying unprecedented levels of self-obsession and brash machismo. Cage's stock pre-match line of "I make this look easy" made him a target for gamers. The internet became awash with fatality compilations in which Johnny seemed to take a disproportionate amount of spine-ripping, head-severing punishment.
Johnny persistently acted like a fool. His appearance in Mortal Kombat 9, for instance, revealed him to mistakenly believe that the likes of monsters like Baraka were in fact actors in prosthetics. The series had always, however, been hinting at Johnny's abilities beneath the bravado. He was an undoubtedly competent fighter capable of dispatching more seasoned combatants with relative ease. While they aren't fully explained until Mortal Kombat X, Cage had boasted access to his mysterious "green powers" since the very first title, granting him a force-ball ranged attack, as well as powerfully enhanced kicks and strikes.
Cage's ending in MK9 revealed these green powers to be so strong that they are a danger to civilization itself. Raiden was forced to transport Johnny to the Realm of Order to train him to harness these forces. In MKX, it was finally disclosed that Johnny's signature green attacks are due to his being a descendent of an elite group of Mediterranean warriors bred to possess superhuman might. It's a lineage of such immense power that it even aids Johnny's daughter, Cassie, in defeating Shinnok at the climax of MKX. Johnny's constant brushes with death throughout the Mortal Kombat timelines also seemed to grant him powers outside of his signature verdant energy. In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, Cage is deemed worthy enough to receive supernatural visions of Shinnok attempting to control the realms.
Johnny's powers would be nothing without tangible exploits with which to back them up, and there are few who can boast the achievements credited to the Cage family patriarch. While it is generally accepted that tiers are rendered obsolete in story-mode fights and that any character can beat any other in service of the narrative's demands, Cage bests Baraka, Reptile, Sonya and Kano while most of the time still laboring under the illusion that he's part of some high-budget manufactured production.
More impressively, Johnny boasts two of the most significant scalps in all of the realms. His canonical defeat of the multi-limbed Shokan warrior Goro in the original Mortal Kombat movie is still one of the most remarkable victories in all of Mortal Kombat history. Also, his besting of Scorpion during the same movie's climax was a most impressive feat. Best of all, Johnny is able to defeat the Elder God Shinnok, regarded as one of the most powerful beings in the entire universe, when he utilizes his long-dormant powers in order to save Sonya and Raiden from the fallen deity in MKX.
The strange, and often wildly inconsistent logic of Mortal Kombat means that it's often tricky to get a handle on each character's respective power levels and abilities. What's clear, however, is that beneath Johnny Cage's cocky, brash exterior lies a warrior whose true power remains potentially limitless. It would certainly be a pleasing revelation to discover that in a world full of Elder Gods, highly skilled warrior monks, revenant demons, cyromancers, necromancers and despotic Khans, it is in fact the "Silent but deadly" star of Ninja Mime who boasts the greatest powers of all.