Evil Dead‘s Ash Williams was heavily rumored to be one of the DLC fighters for Mortal Kombat 11. It never came to fruition, and Bruce Campbell still doesn’t want his iconic character making an appearance in the upcoming and semi-announced Mortal Kombat 12.
Campbell spoke about this with The AV Club in an interview about Evil Dead Rise and explained why Ash is the star of his own show.
“No, I don’t want Ash to appear in other people’s games,” said Campbell. “Other creatures like Freddy and Jason should be in the Evil Dead game. You should be able to play as Freddy. You should be able to play as Jason and then have Ash fight those guys. So the video game format is much more welcoming, and then you make a side deal with however you get the likeness and the character of Freddy, you let the game company make those deals. So that’s what I would do. But, no, I’m not interested in loaning Ash out. They need to come to our house.”
Campbell’s words are quite peculiar since Ash was a playable character in Dead by Daylight, a skin in Fortnite, and also starred in Poker Night 2.
Ash was not officially confirmed for Mortal Kombat 11, but there were many clues that he was supposed to make his way to the 2019 fighter. Datamined information right after the game’s release pointed to Ash (those files were later removed, though). An official marketing email had legal speak at the bottom mentioning Evil Dead. Richard Epcar, who plays Raiden and Joker in Mortal Kombat 11, mentioned Ash’s existence. The gameplay trailer for Shang Tsung also has a chainsaw revving in it, which didn’t match any of the fighters — Shang Tsung, Spawn, Joker, Terminator, Sindel, and Nightwolf — in the Kombat Pack. Ed Boon himself has also mentioned the debacle on Twitter multiple times, saying he should get approval to speak about what happened.
Campbell shot down the rumors of Ash being in Mortal Kombat 11, something he later said got him a call from Warner Bros. He stated in that same interview right after the game’s release that no one had contacted him, while also noting that he wanted Ash to have a cameo if things lined up and not be a playable character. However, about a year later he talked about the sticky legal business it takes to get Ash in a game like that, and while he mentioned that he “may have been talked to about it,” he said he didn’t know what was going on with it.
