Freddy Krueger Only Has One Glove

The cameo is a curious thing. Glimpsing a familiar face amongst an otherwise anonymous throng, like a loved one emerging from the scrum of an airport terminal, provokes a brief but heady euphoria that is almost impossible to supress.

Cinema has been exploiting this basic human response for some time now. Audiences consistently whoop with delight when the youthful protagonist saunters past a background player reading a newspaper, only for the newspaper to lower, revealing the exuberantly haggard face of Stan Lee. I don’t know why we are surprised when this happens, because it is always Stan Lee. If you look closely at the pivotal scene of Kubrick’s Spartacus, you can see a grubby Stan Lee squatting on the mountainside revising an early issue of The Amazing Spider-Man. Check. I’ll wait (don’t, I won’t).

In most cases, cameos are reserved for actors and characters who are tied to a particular franchise or genre. During 2008’s The Incredible Hulk, Norton’s Bruce Banner has an incidental exchange with a security guard played by Lou Ferrigno, the bodybuilder who loaned his mighty green guns to the 1970’s TV series of the same name. In the screening I attended, this nod to the movie’s televisual ancestry elicited a few chuckles and murmurs of approval amongst Hulk devotees. “Oh look,” we said to ourselves, “There’s that guy. That guy from that thing I saw.”

In the video game world the rules of the cameo are a little more indiscriminate. This was first brought to my attention when the Gamecube version of Soulcalibur II introduced Link (of Link and Zelda fame) as a playable character. What is Link’s connection to the Soulcalibur universe, you might justifiably enquire? “None whatsoever,” would be the emphatic response. His inclusion was a novelty, a throwaway ‘what if?’ scenario that a developer decided to realise in the hope it would liven up the afternoon, and possibly shift a couple more units to the Zelda die-hards.

It seems that there are a lot of dull afternoons in the Namco Bandai offices, because the Soulcalibur series now boasts continuity-defying appearances from the likes of Todd MacFarlane’s Spawn (Soulcalibur II, Xbox), Tekken’s Heihachi (Soulcalibur II, Playstation 2) and even the God of War himself, Kratos (Soulcalibur: Broken Destiny, PSP).

The most jarring of these mash-ups is doubtlessly the cameo appearances of Darth Vader and Yoda in Soulcalibur IV. There are so many things intrinsically wrong with the sight of Vader’s iconic red lightsaber clanging playfully off Mitsurugi’s steel katana that it’s difficult to know where to begin.

Putting aside the ridiculous backstory detailing precisely how Vader found himself at this particular Stage of History, the Dark Lord of the Sith sticks out like a sore, plastiod-encased thumb amid the fantastical feudal backdrops and ancient weapons. As with Link, his purpose is not to convincingly blend-in with the universe, but simply to be there. He’s Darth Vader. You like Darth Vader, right? Precisely. Now stop asking questions and hit the squeaky girl with your uncharacteristically impotent laser baton you whiney little bitch.

All of which brings me to Freddy Krueger. Still raw from his dunderheaded celluloid re-imagining at the hands of Michael Bay’s production company, Krueger was added (via purchasable download) to the roster of Neversoft’s successful reboot of the Mortal Kombat series. Unlike most of Soulcalibur’s guest stars, the sweater-sporting, razor-fingered child murderer actually sits rather well alongside the campy gods and elemental psychopaths which populate the MK universe. The fatalities also happen to be a perfect vehicle for Krueger’s trademark sadism, giving one of horror’s most enduring creations another opportunity to transform unsuspecting victims into fountains of blood and neatly-diced portions of matter.

So there I was, about to doff my cap to the most thematically congruous cameo in brawler history, when I noticed Freddy’s glove. Correction: Freddy’s gloves.

Soulcalibur IV‘s developers may have reduced The Empire’s most notorious mouth breather to bonus character status, but at least they remembered Vader only uses one lightsaber.

Giving Freddy an extra set of razor fingers may not seem like a big deal, especially considering the liberties already taken when implementing crossovers of this nature. The trouble is that Krueger’s single, solitary glove is as integral to his character as Wolverine’s claws, Michael Myer’s mask, Leatherface’s leather face, Spock’s ears and Kirk’s gut. If Spock had strolled onto the bridge of the Enterprise one day with four ears instead of two, an ensign would surely have picked up on the numerical discrepancy and alerted somebody senior (although not before running a level three diagnostic and staring woodenly into middle-distance for a bit).

In actuality, what Neversoft has added to MK‘s character list is a cosplaying Edward Scissorhands. Which is fine. I just wish everyone would stop calling him Freddy Krueger. I know who Freddy Krueger is. He’s cruel. He’s scarred. He wears a brown fedora and a striped red and green sweater.

And he only has one glove.