Liam McIntyre of Spartacus fame was quite amused by how the Menace skin looked and spent Chapter 2 Season 5 grinding for it. Todd Lasance also attempted to grind for the Menace skin, though ended up being fine with getting the Potassius Peels skin.
Banned in China: Fortnite is banned in Iraq for its perceived "negative" influence on children.
Despite being free-to-play, Fortnite made more than $1 billion in microtransactions less than a year after launch.
Fortnite drove Epic Games' value up to $8 billion, compare that to the $825 million they were valued in 2012.
The game, as of June 2018, makes over $2 million a day and made Epic over $300 million in May 2018 alone.
In March 2022, Epic announced that for two weeks, they would be donating 100% of proceeds to accredited charities providing aid to the victims of the war in Ukraine. After the initial 24 hours, they announced they'd already raised $36 million, with the total at the end of the two-week period topping $144 million.
The cultural impact has been compared to that of Minecraft (commonly regarded as the first massively popular game for post-Millennial children & teenagers), and for very good reason. In less than a year, the total player count tops 125 million.
Reports and news uncommonly cite Epic Games as a newcomer to the video game scene, or consider Fortnite as their first big hit. In actuality, Epic Games has been around creating and developing games for almost 30 years, and they've had quite a few big hits (Unreal Tournament comes to mind), and are also developers of the popular Unreal Engine, now in its fifth iteration. It's just that Fortnite is a success so completely out of proportion to everything else they've ever made that the vast majority of Fortnite's players are folks who have never played any of Epic's other titles before (and certainly know little about Unreal Engine).
Bizarrely, Fortnite itself is sometimes referred as its own company in particularly low-effort reporting, which can annoy fans of Epic Games' other titles.
Far more commonly, Fortnite is used as a catch-all term for Battle Royale and Creative, despite Save the World also being part of the game.
Creator-Driven Successor: The Fortnite Festival mode is effectively a new Rock Band title in all but name, due to being co-developed by Harmonix and having almost the exact same gameplay and Lead Guitar / Drums / Vocals / Bass Guitar split as Rock Band games, but adapted for more conventional controls- additonally, support for Rock Band instruments, complete with the mechanics of that series (minus vocals), is planned for a future update.
Creator's Favorite: For the Ariana Grande/Rift Tour concert, Donald Mustard recommended players wear their favorite skins to the event. While he contemplated over some of his favorites, the one he ended up going with was the Paradigm.
Distanced from Current Events: Chapter 3 Season 2 was a deliberately war-themed season named Resistance that centers around the Imagined Order invading the island, which just happened to start around the same time that the Russians began invading Ukraine. As a result, there were no teasers posted on social media leading into this season due to the potential coincidence. Subsequently, the following season would instead have a trippy island-wide party theme with a new threat established to be completely alien and lacking any military attributes.
The Battle Royale mode was made to cash off the success of PlayerUnknown's BattleGrounds. The number of differences between the two allowed Fortnite to escape such scrutiny even with Bluehole Studios' attempt to sue Epic Games for copying them.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, released on October 12th, 2018, had zombies in areas of the Blackout Battle Royale mode that were taken from CoD Zombies levels. About two weeks later, Fortnite introduced cube monsters into their Battle Royale mode as well. Though this is heavily debatable, since Fortnite already had zombie-like 'Husks' in its universe long before the Battle Royale mode was ever a thing.
When competitor Apex Legends released, it brought with it some mechanics that proved too popular for Epic Games to resist slapping into Fortnite at the first opportunity.
First came the "ping" system, which allows players to mark locations, loot, enemies, and a slew of other important items and actions for teammates with the press of a single button.
Not long after came Reboot Cards and Respawn Vans, lifting the player respawn mechanic from Apex of obtaining a Banner Card from a player's remains and finding a Respawn Beacon.
Apex's sliding and wall-climbing movement abilities would also be added to Fortnite later in the development cycle.
There are a whole slew of battle royale games launched in an attempt to steal the thunder of Fortnite. One of which was Cliff Bleszinski's Radical Heights, a desperation move after LawBreakers became one of the flops of the decade.
In Memoriam: To Joel Crabbe and Karolina Grochowska, previous Epic employees that passed away during development. They appear as Mythic Survivors in Save the World.
Limited-time items are never accurately listed with when they're going to be removed from shop. Some items are listed as only being shop for the next 24 hours… only for the timer to reset back to 24 hours the next day and to suddenly disappear from shop afterwards. This is to encourage FOMO, the fear of missing out on these special items.
In the same vein, Fortnite influencers who received their own cosmetic sets claimed that their sets would never be released again in shop, which ended up being false when they returned multiple times.
Fortnite's first birthday brought with it bonus missions and events for both game modes, with special rewards.
Battle Royale got 3 special missions: play 14 matches for 5,000 XP, deal 1,000 damage for a #1 cupcake emote, and dance in front of 10 birthday cakes for a Spray depicting a cake with balloons. Finishing all 3 missions got you a birthday cake Back Bling. The Battle Bus was also reskinned to be covered in confetti, streamers and balloons while the heater for the balloon was replaced with a giant "1" candle and the song was changed to a peppy little ditty.
Save the World got a Fortnite Birthday questline which gave the player a "Birthday Brigade" Ramirez character, plus tickets that could be spent on Birthday Llamas that gave Heroes and rewards from all the previous events (but not quest items).
Quietly Cancelled: The game's unexpected success forced Epic Games to deliver more resources towards it, affecting both Paragon (2016) (which got cancelled and its assets being made available at the Epic Store for developers) and Unreal Tournament 4, whose development halted mysteriously after the July 2017 update, but it wasn't until December 2018 that Tim Sweeney confirmed that the latter game was officially cancelled, though available in a permanent pre-alpha state at the Epic Games Store until January 24th, 2023, after which it gets retired from the store altogether.
Screwed by the Network: Apple removed Fortnite and Epic Games' entire account from the iOS App Store in August 2020 after Epic implemented the Mega Drop, a major asset of which was a significantly discounted in-app payment system that bypassed and violated usual Apple policy (most relevant being how Apple receives a 30% cut of all in-game microtransactions). This was actually a premeditated move by Epic, and immediately afterwards, they filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming that Apple was holding a monopoly on distribution of software (including games like Fortnite) through the App Store, seeking injunctive relief through fairer means of competition. The judge made her ruling on September 2021, which left both Epic and Apple screwed in their own ways: Apple was found in the legal wrong for the exclusive nature of their microtransactions and demanded they now inform customers of alternate payment methods outside of apps, but Epic was also found in the wrong as the App Store itself was not deemed monopolistic, and thus they had to pay damages for directly violating its policy. While Fortnite players in most countries have been out of luck since then (with the appeals delivered by both companies being rejected), due to a law permitting the use of sideloading in the EU, Fortnite was able to be republished in countries that are members of it in 2024.
Sleeper Hit: Fortnite was first announced at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, and attracted very little attention; it was seen as an in-between project sandwiched by Unreal Tournament releases at best while trying to crib Minecraft's mojo without understanding what made that game so unique. And, of course when it released in 2017, it wasn't an instant success, with the exclusive player-versus-environment mode struggling to find an audience despite its fairly engaging construction options. When the Battle Royale mode came out, though, something strange happened: the game caught enough attention over time thanks to streamers, and to the unique gameplay that the building system, inherited from Save the World, encouraged when combined with a battle royale paradigm, that the audience ballooned to levels previously unheard of. Now, Fortnite is a legitimate cultural phenomenon to the surprise of everyone, including its creators.
Donald Mustard enjoys teasing future story developments on his Twitter and Instagram.
For RWBY skins; Arryn Zech (the voice of Blake) voiced interest on Twitter in getting RWBY into Fortnite, soon prompting Troy Baker (a good friend of hers and other Rooster Teeth associates) and Donald Mustard to also reply with equal interest ("Paging Donald Mustard""You never know [shrug emoji]"). The Rooster Teeth official Twitter also started following Fortnite's official Twitter immediately after this (and later, Donald Mustard) as well. Zech has also approved of fanart of RWBY characters in the game. The RWBY crew would later clarify at Anime Expo 2021 that a collaboration could be possible as long as it has enough support from the fans.
Superplastic, the company owning Guggimon and Janky, teased on Janky's official account that he had a possibility of becoming a playable skin… though only if they earned $10,000 in their limited NFT sale, Janky Heist.
Epic Games knows how contested the Tilted Towers area is in Battle Royale:
In Season 3, when they began dropping hints about the arrival of a meteor that might potentially alter the map, fans were convinced that Tilted Towers was going to be destroyed. Then we discover that Dusty Depot has suddenly become Dusty Divot.
The trolling happened on June 30th, 2018 (Season 4), when a large missile was launched from a supervillain's hideout on the hill next to Snobby Shores. When the missile reached its altitude, the warhead turned around and activated a targeting laser pointed right at Tilted Towers. Just before it could impact, a portal in space-time opened up and the missile disappeared, only to reappear a few moments later over Moisty Mire, where it would fly across the map, and redirect its course to the general direction of Tilted Towers, only to miss again and disappear back into another portal. It finally emerged over Loot Lake and exploded in the sky, literally shattering the sky.
In Season 5, one of the cubes started to roll towards the area. Despite wishful thinking, the cube simply strolled through the streets, smashing the newly constructed building in the process.
Season 7 starts with the invasion of an iceberg that bashed into the southwestern coast of Battle Royale island, essentially destroying several locations like Flush Factory. The fallout stops just short of Tilted.
A large belief of trolling came with the return of old skins (such as Power Chord or the Red Knight) in the Season 5 item shop. Not the skins themselves but also the strategic inclusion of certain emotes (such as "Take the L" or "Waterworks") in the same shop rollout trolling those who believe they've got the rarest skins in the game.
Season X sees a MASSIVE update especially for STW fans, with the Battle Royale dance emotes, custom pickaxes, music and loading screens getting ported over to STW, while the upgraded pickaxes in STW become usable in Battle Royale. There's even the option to "disguise" your player character with a BR skin, meaning that the mostly soldier-based BR skins can be seen doing Dragon Slash or deploying TEDDY or BASE. Everything except STW going FTP.
Troubled Production: While the Battle Royale mode had a smooth and quick development process thanks to piggybacking on existing assets and code, the same could not be said for the core Save the World mode. It took at least six years to make and was the first game to use Unreal Engine 4, which wasn't finished at the time and slowed production down as a result. Epic Games was also looking into using the games as a service model and reached out to various MMORPG game designers and Chinese conglomerate Tencent, who had experience with the model, for help. This led to many senior employees at Epic Games, including lead designer Cliff Bleszinski, leaving the company. Darren Sugg, one of the MMORPG game designers hired by Epic Games, then had to pick up the slack Bleszinski left behind when he left.
Vaporware: For whatever reason, the Brilliant Bomber skin has never been released publicly. In spite of this, Brilliant Bomber is the placeholder character for the player in the Rift Tour trailer.
The original premise of Fortnite is a group of heroes gathering up materials during the day in order to set up a fort to defend themselves at nite. The current game forgoes this premise for more varied mission types, and the closest it gets to the original idea is in the "Survive the Storm" event.
Across the game's lifespan, numerous cosmetics have appeared in the game's files that were eventually removed for one reason or another. While most of these consist of things like backblings, pickaxes, emotes, and loading screens (including some originally meant for crossover skins), a few of these have consisted of full-blown skins that were meant to be released at one point or another, with the most famous of these being Gemini (a humanoid robot with a rabbit-like head, later reworked into Astro Assassin) and Brilliant Bomber (a skin meant for the Sunshine and Rainbows pack that was reworked into Brite Bomber).
The Infinity Blade was supposed to be a startup point for Mythic-tier weapons in the main modes. This was shoved back to the bulletin board after massive backlash over the overly powerful sword.
In an interview on the This Week in Marvel podcast, creative director Donald Mustard said that Dusty Divot was not the initially planned location for the meteor to hit, and hinted that Tilted Towers was on the chopping block instead.
Around the same time the skins of Kurohomura and Razor were added to Fortnite, skins of Sergeant Albeck and Nightshade Selene were found in the game's files, suggesting that the Battle Breakers-themed crossover was once planned to be significantly larger.
While the release of Star Wars: Squadrons was celebrated by Epic Games with the release of the Vanguard Squadron X-Wing glider, files in the game seemed to suggest that five themed outfits (likely involving several Fortnite default skins in Vanguard Squadron uniforms) would have either released alongside or instead of it, suggesting that the collaboration could have had been larger as well.
While Captain America would go on to receive a skin in Chapter 2: Season 3, a file within the game during its Endgame event suggested that an "outfit" version of them could have been released as early as Chapter 1: Season 8.
In the document Epic was forced to reveal in the wake of their lawsuit against Apple, numerous cosmetics for Chapter 2: Season 5 were forcibly leaked by Epic themselves. Out of this list, multiple cosmetics have yet to be seen in Fortnite to any capacity, with this list consisting of John McClane, Katniss Everdeen, The Bride/Beatrix Kiddo, Snake Plissken, Samus Arannote who was confirmed to have been rejected for the chapter due to Nintendo being uncomfortable with cross-platform appearances of their characters, The Rock (although this likely morphed into them being cast as the Foundation), and an emote for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)".
For the same season, a headless model for Tyler Rake was found in the PAK file that contained Dude. This, alongside it being known that a portal teasing their addition would've appeared on the island, suggests that a skin for the soldier was originally planned for the season, before being scrapped for a presently unknown reason, with its file and model being repurposed into Dude.
During the same time the The Suicide Squad-themed skin of Bloodsport was released, two additional files within the game suggested that they were intended to be released alongside skins for King Shark ("Sea" in the game's files) and Weasel ("Fuzzy" in the game's files).
Originally, files pertaining to the Crown Clash Challenges seemed to suggest that a skin directly based off Fall Guys was planned to be released in Fortnite (either being a character in Fall Guys-themed apparel or a bean itself). While the Crown Clash Challenges event was done in order to promote Fall Guys, these files were eventually scrapped in favor of releasing Major Mancake, a skin with no direct ties to the party game whatsoever.
In a 2024 interview with Gamefile's Stephen Totilo, Donald Mustard confirmed that Chapter 3 was supposed to be one and the same with Chapter 4, with its story events continuing after Chapter 3: Season 4, the Seven to remain unchromed, and the main threat of the story to be Geno as opposed to the Herald. However, due to Executive Meddling on Tim Sweeney's behalf (given their desire to expande Fortnite's vision beyond Battle Royale at the cost of less Live Events and a less-sigificant story), the story's events were accelerated to allow for Donald Mustard to step down during the events of C3S3.
The 2023 Rainbow Royale event was originally supposed to be celebrated with the Belle of the Beach cosmetic set (featuring an original skin known as Harmony Lee, which was designed by the content creator NotFury). However, due to grooming allegations made against NotFury during the same time as the skin was supposed to release, the set was promptly scrapped and erased from the files.
As per a description error on his dedicated teaser video, it is known that Ares was supposed to be a part of Chapter 5, Season 2's battle pass, with their place assumingly as bonus skin being swapped out with Korra at an unknown point. Ares would later release as a free skin given out to subscribers to Fortnite Crew in April 2024, with them originally appearing as a boss for the season at launch.
Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Reportedly, Abductors in Week 10 of Chapter 2 Season 7 were temporarily turned off for debugging because players found ways to stay in the Mothership (which is located off the map and outside of the storm) to win games. As a result, players had less time to complete the Week 10 quests, which required players to get abducted into the Mothership.
Word of Saint Paul: According to her artist kitsunexkitsu, Marigold doesn't have any children, unlike Midas.
Word of God: When a fan asked Donald Mustard to sign their copy of Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point with a character who will play an important role in the future but currently appeared to have a minor role, Mustard drew Singularity. Additionally, he revealed in the same statement that Singularity's role would arise within the next couple of years, also indicating that the story of Battle Royale has been planned out for at least that long.
accidentally revealed the existence of the Nintendo Switch port early.