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Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, a prolific character actor known to gamers for his portrayals of Mortal Kombat’s evil sorcerer Shang Tsung, has died. A Variety report says Tagawa’s death was the result of complications from a stroke he suffered on December 4.
Tagawa was a classic ‘that guy’ actor, with IMDB listing credits in more than 140 films and television shows going back to an uncredited appearance in the 1986 Kurt Russell classic Big Trouble in Little China. It didn’t take long for bigger roles to follow: I recall seeing him first in an episode of Babylon 5 (yes, I am a B5 nerd), in which he played a cool, quiet, capable guy who took care of a problem while other people focused on other things—a description that could probably be applied to many of his roles, really.
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And while we all know Tagawa for his 1995 turn as Shang Tsung in the first Mortal Kombat film, that actually wasn’t the only time he played a character from a videogame. In 2010, he returned to the fighting game film franchise biz, portraying Heihachi Mishima in Tekken.
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He also had a 25+ year career in videogames, although he’s less well-known for that, possibly because he appeared in a grand total of four games over that span. His first, according to Mobygames, was in the 1997 FMV joint Soldier Boyz—the resolution is terrible but you can get a look at it on YouTube—after which came appearances in Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu, World of Warcraft: Legion, and Mortal Kombat 11, in which he reprised his famous film role.
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The Variety report says Tagawa is survived by three children and two grandchildren. He was 75.
