Data miners have discovered evidence Batman will be coming to Fortnite in the near future. No stranger to surprising collaborations, Epic Game's insanely popular battle royale just recently began an event which saw the world of Gearbox Software's Borderlands combining with Fortnite, not only adding in multiple Borderlands-themed items and skins to the game but also creating a Pandora Rift Zone on the multiplayer map near Paradise Palms which contains a near-perfect recreation of the Borderlands art style, down to the design of loot boxes and environmental assets.
In the past, Fortnite has also teamed up with Marvel and Disney in order to help promote The Avengers. Before the release of The Avengers: Engame, items like Iron Man's glove and Hawkeye's bow became available for players during a crossover event titled Fortnite X Avengers: Endgame. In that update, players could choose to either side with Thanos or the Avengers and compete in challenges which recreated the hunt for the Infinity Stones.
Now, according to a Polygon report detailing data mining and leaked images, it seems like Batman will be the next franchise to get the Fortnite crossover treatment. Discovered on the Fortnite subreddit earlier this morning, images hidden within Epic Game's latest content update show batarangs, grapnel guns, a cape, and, most excitingly, a new Gotham City-themed map.
It is also reported that data-mining revealed the existence of three encrypted skins for the game, two male and one female. Although it's too soon to tell which superheroes will be joining the Dark Knight, a bigger question on many people's minds is "Which of the many Batman costumes are they going with?" Players may not have to wait very long to find out, as Polygon goes on to remind everyone Saturday the 21st is World Batman Day, an actual holiday which this year marks the 80th anniversary of the detective's inception.
With the recently released Gears 5 currently beating Fortnite in player numbers on the Xbox One, perhaps the massive popularity of Epic's long-running battle royale is finally beginning to wane. Large scale collaborations like those with The Avengers, Borderlands, and others may have started out as a marketing benefit for Fortnite's partners, but as time goes on maybe the battle royale game is beginning to need pop culture icons like John Wick just as much as they need them in order to stay in the public consciousness. While a crossover with Batman sounds exiting, a key aspect of that character is his aversion to killing, making Batman's chances of surviving the massive shoot-outs Fortnite is known for rather low. That grapnel gun looks like a whole bunch of fun, though.