Kids received’t forestall developing to Keanu Reeves to name him ‘Fortnite guy’
Who is that this guy to you? Is it Keanu Reeves, liked A-listing actor who’s suddenly having a big comeback in our widespread culture recognition? Is he the guy who played Neo inside the highly influential Matrix movies? Maybe you already know him as John Wick?
Well, if you ask a child, they’re likely going to inform you that’s the fellow from Fortnite, the struggle royale game that came out in 2017. But up until very currently, Keanu Reeves wasn’t virtually in Fortnite. All the identical, Keanu kept getting children coming up to him to name him “Fortnite man,” according to a recent E3 interview with Epic Games’ innovative director Donald Mustard.
Keanu “was beginning to have most of these children come up to him, all these teenagers on the road, and that they weren’t doing the everyday ‘Oh you’re Neo, oh you’re Wick,’” Mustard, who talks to Keanu, advised host Geoff Keighley. Instead, they stored referring to Keanu as “Fortnite man!” right to his face.
Likely, the children were referencing a shape-sporting character called The Reaper, who is colloquially known as John Wick using Fortnite fanatics. (Which makes experience: One of John Wick’s aliases is “The Reaper.”) The Reaper has ended up a big part of the sport’s way of life, as Fortnite devotees will frequently wear the skin to talk that they’re hardcore participants. And John Wick, of course, is performed by using Keanu Reeves.

In line with Mustard, the humorous element is that Keanu had no idea what Fortnite became while this first started taking place, nor did he sense that The Reaper seemed much like him at all. But the run-ins with youngsters got familiar enough that Keanu and Epic Games decided to truly make a reputable John Wick skin manifest so that human beings might forestall difficult a John Wick knock-off for the fundamental aspect. This is outwardly how Epic Games could get a natural John Wick skin brought into Fortnite in advance this yr.
What receives me about this anecdote is that it’s a perfect distillation of how tons Fortnite has taken over the sector. While the game references all forms of pieces of pop culture, for lots of kids who play the game, Fortnite will, in all likelihood, be their first advent to the concept in query. This is why there was this type of ruckus over crediting the creators of dances that grow to be as emotes in Fortnite — with out a visible reference, humans will simply assume Fortnite is wherein the whole lot originates. Even Keanu Reeves.