Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes on What the Hell They’re Doing in a ‘Call of Duty’ Game

When you think of an ideal soldier, you probably picture someone like Captain America — a regimented, disciplined, muscular person fighting for justice. It’s much less likely that you think of two weed-dealing slackers who spend most of their time chilling in front of a New Jersey convenience store. Nonetheless, Jay and Silent Bob (Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes) were recently added as playable characters in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Call of Duty: Warzone.

According to both Smith and Mewes, who joined me for separate interviews via Zoom, the pairing of these characters and Call of Duty is perfectly natural, especially as part of the game’s 4/20 promotion, which has previously enlisted the likes Cheech and Chong. The two were also happy to discuss how their own IRL friendship compares to that of Jay and Silent Bob’s and what other video games they’d like to see their characters in.

Before getting to Call of Duty, I wanted to ask you more broadly about the friendship between you two. How does the friendship between Kevin and Jason compare to that of Jay and Silent Bob, both in similarities and differences?

Kevin Smith: I think in terms of differences, the most glaringly obvious one is, in real life, the dynamic tends to be flipped. I’m the insanely vocal one who’s always talking and Jason is pretty quiet. He doesn’t feel the need to constantly be hearing the sound of his own voice. 

In terms of our similarities, we’re obviously pretty ride-or-die and have been for three decades, just like the characters depicted in the movies. There’s great affection between these two, just like there’s great affection between me and the actual Jason Mewes. Jason is the fuel in the rocket ship that got us out here in the first place. All the good things in my life happen beside him, not by myself.

For example, we’ve got our footprints and our handprints in the forecourt of the Chinese Theatre. I’m not there as “Kevin Smith, Director,” I’m there as Kevin Smith, half of Jay and Silent Bob. And, with Jay being the talkiest part of the equation, and Silent Bob being the visual shtick of a guy who says nothing, Jay had all the heavy lifting. There’s a reason why, 31 years after our first appearance in Clerks, that Call of Duty would say, “Hey, we’d like to bring you guys in and introduce you to a whole new generation of cats that maybe don’t know you.” That has everything to do with Jason’s likability and his maestro performance as that character for the last three decades. There aren’t that many actors who can get away with playing the same role for three decades and still have public affection on their side, and that has everything to do with who Jay is. 

Jason Mewes: I feel like the hetero-lifemate thing is similar. The vibe you get from watching the movies and the friendship and their lifelong love of one another, that’s 100 percent ours. The difference is, I don’t call him “lunchbox.” I’ve never talked to him the way Jay talks to Silent Bob like, “Knock it off!” or stuff like that. Also, sometimes we do, but we don’t get to spend that much time together now. Definitely back in the day we’d spend every day together, but then he got married, I got married and we don’t get to see each other as much. He’s on the road, I’m on the road. Whereas with Jay and Bob, it seems like they are together from morning until night every day.

How does Call of Duty fit into the wider View Askewniverse for you?

Mewes: I guess it fits in the timeline. If you’re talking about the fake world of Jay and Bob, where does it happen? Maybe Jay and Bob are doing Dogma and then they went and chased Suzanne the monkey down, and all of a sudden they find themselves in this war zone.

Smith: I figure most of their appearances are in-continuity. We somehow make them all work. The benefit of characters like Jay and Silent Bob is, you could always default to, “Well, this is all going on inside their heads.” So, them running around and taking to the battlefield seems in-keeping with everything that they’ve been doing in movies and comics and TV for 31 years.

When they asked us about bringing Jay and Silent Bob and Bluntman and Chronic into the game, it was an instant no-brainer for me because that’s relevancy. That’s somebody going, “Hey, you still matter to the culture at large.” Now, for Jason, he is a dyed-in-the-wool Call of Duty player, so he was beside himself. It was probably about six to eight months of him constantly going, “When are we doing that?” And when we actually did it, Jason was beside himself again. He referred to it as his favorite acting he’s ever done, which really hurt my heart, but whatever. 

And it plays in the game — you can see it. They captured him amazingly and then, afterwards, he had to go and do a voice recording. I have maybe six things that I say in the game, but Jason was there for six hours. He had something like 28,000 things to say, different phrases and whatnot, and he loved it. Ever since the skins have dropped, I have seen Jason playing with himself in a whole new way. I saw him playing with a bunch of other Jays on one team and they were fighting an army of other Jays. It was kind of adorable. It has really lifted the spirits of a guy who’s about to hit 50 this year.

When you think of rigid discipline, Jay and Silent Bob aren’t the first characters that come to mind. Wouldn’t they be the last guys you’d want in your military?

Smith: Look, if I was picking a team, I wouldn’t be going with those guys. But here’s the thing I’ll say, as having previous experience as a stoner for a long chunk of my life: It makes you oddly focused. It would seem antithetical to be a stoner and a sniper or somebody who can run and shoot at the same time, but it oddly dials you in. That’s why they get to do these 4/20 promotions within the game. So many people who are stoners enjoy the game because you bliss out and dial in. So, in that way, it kind of makes sense to include Jay and Silent Bob.

Mewes: I don’t think they’d do very well at bootcamp, but I feel like they’re a good team to throw off the other team, the Crimson. If you look at all the operators in the Crimson, it’s all robots and demons and stuff, so they had to throw in a pair of dudes that will throw them off their game.

Are there other favorite games of yours you could imagine Jay and Silent Bob being incorporated into?

Smith: I mean, why not Pitfall for heaven’s sake? This is a game I spent so much of my youth playing when Activision ruled the Atari market. I would also like to stick Jay and Silent Bob in Galaga. Heavens, one of my favorite games of all time — this is going to be embarrassing — is Mappy, it’s a game about a mouse that runs around and you have to steal things before these cats catch you. We can easily retrofit that for Jay and Silent Bob.

Mewes: I think Fall Guys. I’d love to be in Apex. I’d like to be in Marvel Rivals as Bluntman and Chronic. But Call of Duty, and I’m not just saying this, is definitely my go-to. I started on Halo and I went to Call of Duty, and I’ve been playing Call of Duty ever since. Sometimes I play Apex, sometimes I play Fortnite with my friends, but for the most part, it’s been Call of Duty since I started playing these games on Xbox One.

Jason, last question is for you because some people have been asking this online, in Call of Duty, do you say, “I am the clit commander!”?

Mewes: Oooh. I don’t know. I don’t think so, but that would be awesome. It works perfectly. It might be in there.