As bad as it may look, considering I also quoted myself in the Mindblowing Actor Stuff thread, I'm gonna repost this so that it doesn't get lost at the bottom of a random page:
Everyone knows that Arnold Schwarzenegger was at one time the highest grossing actor in the world, which he owed to his many roles in high profile action movies during their heyday, the 1980's.
Bill Paxton is an actor that I don't think of as being associated so closely with action movies, though he has been in quite a number of them. Surprisingly, he has appeared in more than a few with Arnold Schwarzenegger. While many may be aware that he was in True Lies, where he played this ridiculous motherfucker:
Before that he was in another Schwarzenegger fueled action classic, Commando, where he played the guy that Clint Howard later played in Austin Powers 2:
And while he doesn't appear with Schwarzenegger on screen, he starred as that annoying cop in the sequel to Schwarzenegger's Predator in Predator 2:
His most notable action movie role is probably in Aliens, where he played this unbearable ass:
And while it may not seem like it, this is also due to his Schwarzenegger connection. His casting in Aliens is likely due to his relationship with James Cameron, whom he met while working on the original Terminator:
Alright, you may be thinking "there's no Bill Paxton there," so I encourage you to take another look:
Just look at that tooth gap! Who else could it be?
Another actor famous for his ultra masculine roles in testosterone fueled 80's movies is Jean Claude van Damme:
In fact, Van Damme was so well associated with pretending to beat people's asses that he was pegged for a starring role in the ass beating simulator Mortal Kombat:
Er, wait a minute
There we go.
Anyway, Mortal Kombat took influence from a great many martial arts movies from the 70's and 80's, and it's star was going to be Jean Claude van Damme. However, when he pulled out of the agreement his character was turned into Johnny Cage. But, besides martial arts movies, Mortal Kombat also took influence from the unavoidably monolithic filmography of Arnold Schwarzenegger, basing the appearance of the character Kano on the Terminator:
Mortal Kombat its self became unavoidably monolithic, spawning toys, comic books cartoons, and even movies. In the movie, Trevor Goddard played Kano:
The first Mortal Kombat movie had money for one big name actor, and instead of doing the logical thing and having Jean Claude van Damme play Johnny Cage, they had this guy do it:
Ah, okay, that's where he belongs.
Anyway, they spent their actor budget on Christopher Lambert; at some point someone decided that he should play Raiden. The movie was an unprecedented success, and spawned a sequel which starred even more unknowns, including this guy:
You don't know who that guy is, but his name is Brian Thompson, and he had minor roles in action movies like Sylvester Stallone's version of Beverly Hills Cop, which he called Cobra:
Having looked at him twice in a row, you're probably saying to yourself "that guy looks kind of familiar," and you're right, because you also saw him further up in this post:
I know what you're thinking: "I KNEW that wasn't Bill Paxton!"
NO! Not the blue haired guy, the guy next to him. That's Brian Thompson.
Now, you'll notice up there that one of the pictures of Brian Thompson has him playing Shao Kahn, a character in Mortal Kombat. You'll also remember that another Mortal Kombat character was based on the Terminator, but it was more than just Kano's appearance that was based on the murderous machine; Mortal Kombat is famous for letting you brutally murder your opponent at the end of a fight, a special move which the makers of the game call a fatality. Here is Kano's fatality:
Kano Heart Rip
Now here's the scene in Terminator that that move is based on:
Terminator heart rip
That's right. Shao Kahn was the first Mortal Kombat character ever to suffer a fatality, and it happened 8 years before the first game even came out.
