No More Heroes 3 Hired Shao Kahn To Voice A Cat

Close your eyes and picture a cat. A fuzzy feline, purring away in the afternoon sun. Now, imagine that cat can talk. What does it sound like? Cute as a button? Perhaps a little sassy? Nothing like Shao Kahn, former emperor of Outworld and major antagonist of the Mortal Kombat­ franchise, right? Well, that’s the path No More Heroes 3 has chosen because, as we all know, director Goichi “Suda51” Suda is a crazy person

After its E3 2021 presentation, Nintendo provided demos for upcoming games through its Treehouse sessions. No More Heroes 3 was there, right alongside Metroid Dread and Mario Golf: Super Rush, but didn’t make it to the live stream for obvious, Mature rating-related reasons.

Still, it’s hard to complain when the company uploaded almost half an hour of footage for the upcoming game to YouTube, especially when that footage includes a brief snippet of Ike Amadi, who played Shao Kahn in Mortal Kombat 11, voicing Travis’ cat, Jeane. Just be sure to turn up your volume or you won’t hear him over the occasional commentary from Nintendo’s Bill Trinen.

I don’t know about you, but I love it.

No More Heroes 3 continues the story of Travis Touchdown, who somehow managed to become a world-renowned assassin over the course of the previous two games despite being a complete loser. (Okay, the laser sword probably had something to do with it, but I digress.) Suda51 saw fit to revive the franchise that made him a household name with 2019’s Travis Strikes Again spin-off, and now he’s back in the director’s chair for another mainline installment.

Although a constant presence in previous games, Jeane the cat was never a major part of the No More Heroes story until Travis Strikes Again. The side story gave her a voice through the text-based, visual novel interludes, during which she regularly chats with Travis, but it wasn’t until the ending credits of the main game that we were treated to it. Up until that point, Jeane had been content to lounge around Travis’ apartment and meow, so it came as quite a surprise that she could talk.

Fun fact: Jeane’s single line of spoken dialogue in Travis Strikes Again (she’s the one who says, “Shut up, I can’t sleep!” in the video above, by the way) was apparently recorded by Kris Zimmerman-Salter, who was responsible for the game’s casting and voice direction.

No word on what happened to Jeane for her voice to change so dramatically in the two years that have passed between Travis Strikes Again and No More Heroes 3. Maybe it has something to do with the aliens invading Earth, or maybe it’s just another one of Suda51’s eccentricities. He’s way too punk rock to be restrained by things like continuity and traditional voiceovers, after all.

Maybe we’ll learn more when No More Heroes 3 comes to Nintendo Switch on August 27.