Mortal Kombat featured multiple direct references to the games, including Scorpion’s command of “get over here!” after impaling Sub-Zero on his kunai. The moment is also notable due to his voice being considerably different in that instance, and the reason for the choice stems from the source material.
Scorpion’s real name is Hanzo Hasashi, a ninja from feudal Japan who, naturally, is portrayed as speaking with a Japanese accent. However, when he returns as a fire-breathing revenant at a dramatically judicious moment in the climactic battle against the cryokinetic assassin, the famous line was delivered in a growling American accent without any explanation, and this harks back to a similar decision during the first game’s development.
Ed Boon, the co-creator of the franchise, was actually the voice heard in the original releases, a creative decision carried over from his previous work for producer Midway on sports game High Impact Football, where he and the other developers provided the grunting and shouting of the players due to the studio being too small in the early ‘90s to justify the expenditure of hiring professional voice actors. Thus, the film’s use of an incongruous accent for a Japanese character was intended, like many other moments peppered throughout, as a reference to the games.
Even considering Mortal Kombat having the likes of Sub-Zero and Mileena also speaking in distorted voices to signify their demonic nature, as well as Scorpion’s speech being warped from his regular human voice heard in the prologue, there’s no real justification for the undead warrior to use a completely different accent that one time. It does, however, function perfectly as a callback for the fans who make up a large portion of the movie’s audience, which is doubtless the reason why it was added in such a manner.
