Seven years after it took home Game of the Year at the 2018 Game Awards, God of War is still collecting accolades. The one I'm telling you about today, admittedly, isn't as formal or official as the game's inclusion on Rolling Stone's 2025 list of the best games of all time, but it is far more entertaining.
The honor I'm speaking of is God of War's apparent influence on the new Bollywood Netflix film, Mahavatar Narsimha. Clips from a battle scene in the movie are circulating around social media for the simple fact that some of the animations appear to be one-to-one replications of animations from God of War's epic battle scenes.
Before I angle your eyes toward the below video, I feel a responsibility to let you know similar videos are being shared in spaces that are propagating some deeply and overtly racist views. The GamesRadar+ team, which includes someone of South Asian descent, helped me locate a video whose sharer didn't express any of those views, but I'd probably avoid comments sections on this topic generally. Just a heads up.
Copy and pasted 🤭 pic.twitter.com/JiNDv41ysENovember 17, 2025
Anyway, in case it wasn't obvious, the scenes in the above video are chopped up and spliced together to put the God of War resemblances on clear display, but there's no denying the similarities.
However, when I watched the full battle scene on Netflix, which I strongly suggest you do, I saw clear inspirations from a bunch of different iconic media. I only watched the scene once, but I immediately saw clear homages to Mortal Kombat's brutal fatalities, old Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee movies, and even the Marvel Cinematic Universe's signature large-scale battles. It's really quite the spectacle, and frankly, sick as hell.
It's also very much worth noting that this sort of thing isn't uncommon at all in Bollywood movies, which are often heavily inspired, and in some cases frame-by-frame, by Hollywood movies. What's unique in this case are the apparent tributes to popular video games like God of War, Mortal Kombat, and Lord knows what else is hidden in there that I missed. Cool stuff!
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