God of War Ragnarök has been out for players to enjoy for what is coming up on a month now, so there’s a good chance you’re either fairly deep into the game’s 20+ hour story or have seen the credits roll on Kratos and Atreus’ journey through the Nine Realms.
If so, you may have reached the section in the game during which Loki is sent out across the vast world in search of pieces to a mythical mask that Odin would very much like to see completed. Another little tidbit you may have observed is that said mask looks suspiciously like the mask that Jim Carrey donned in the 1994 film, The Mask.
To make this resemblance juicier, fans of the film and its source comic books may remember that The Mask, within the film and comic universe, was actually crafted by the trickster god Loki himself. You can put two and two together.
If you’re wondering whether or not God of War Ragnarok’s mask is an intentional nod to the Dark Horse comic and the Jim Carrey film, you’re not alone. The game’s director, Eric Williams recently broached the topic with IGN:
“I don’t think it was 100%. I think I told them I wanted it to be wood because we wanted to carve things into it. It was more about what the carvings were, like, there’s carvings from different languages on the mask when you look at it up close. Maybe somebody snuck something in that I didn’t even know about!”
In summary, if it was an intentional The Mask reference, Williams didn’t know about it. Perhaps it simply boiled down to a coincidentally similar look due to the fact that the game’s mask needed to have carvings on it, hence it being made from wood.
Still – with Loki involved in both properties, surely there’s someone over at Santa Monica Studio giggling to themselves about managing to sneak in a reference to what is quite frankly a banger of a film.