Fortnite's Biggest Unsolved Mysteries

If you're only playing Fortnite in order to win another hard-earned Victory Royale, you're missing out. Oh, sure, Fortnite: Battle Royale's 100-player winner-takes-all slugfests are among some of the most exciting, silliest, and just plain best things going in gaming. There's a reason why Fortnite has seemingly taken over the world. It's really dang fun.

But there's a lot more to Epic Games' incredibly popular take on the battle royale genre: in addition to the player-versus-player mayhem, it's got a story. A good one, even. You might just have to work a little to find it. As it turns out, Fortnite's alliterated map is chock full of secrets, and many fans spend just as much time trying to unravel the game's many mysteries as they have shooting at each other. Here are the mysteries that we can't wait to see solved, but be warned: in Fortnite, every answer leads to more questions. The rabbit hole is very, very deep.

After four seasons of surreal serialized storytelling, the Fortnite team decided to do something different with Season 7. The new season still brought a slew of changes to the Fortnite map — there's are snowy hills to explore, ziplines to traverse, airplanes to fly, and more — but as far as ongoing mysteries were concerned, Season 7 opened with nothing.

And yet, some observant players noticed that there might be something mysterious in the works. While Season 7's early updates mostly served as a way to outfit the game with Christmas lights and other holiday-themed decorations, a Redditor who goes by PM_ME_GRAPHICS_CARDS noticed that there was also a rock formation between Tomato Temple and Wailing Woods that looked kind of like a person. Even weirder, the rocks seemed to be moving, striking different poses between updates.

As of this writing, it's not clear what it all means. Some fans think that the rock man might be the key to Fortnite's next big event. Others argue that the stony figure is a joke who will come to life and destroy that cursed building in Tilted Towers yet again. Many assume that, like so much of Fortnite: Battle Royale's other weirdness, it's just a bit of quirky fun. Until we know for certain what that seemingly sentient pile of rocks is or isn't up to, though, it's a mystery that's still waiting to be solved — and that's just how we like 'em.

At long last, Fortnite's mysterious pink cube is gone. It didn't go quietly. In the beginning, the cube seemed like a force of nature, slowly moving towards Loot Lake while destroying everything in its path. Before long, however, it started to show its true colors. At the beginning of Season 6, the cube powered a moving, floating island, while the runes it left in its wake created shadow stones that transformed players into wraiths. Eventually, the island shattered, and in the Fortnitemares special event, cube fragments started spawning zombies — sorry, Cube Monsters — that ran amok on Fortnite's odd little island.

Clearly, "Kevin" was up to no good, but its reign of terror didn't last long. Just as the Cube Monster invasion began to wind down, the cube began running out of juice. Cracks started appearing on the cube. Its days were numbered. The final, fatal blow landed on Nov. 4, 2018, when the cube, seemingly overwhelmed by power, exploded during a special in-game event. That was it. The cube was finally gone.

The questions that the cube raised, however, remain. Shattering the cube didn't seem to get rid of those zombies — sorry, Cube Monsters — as the creatures stuck around for another limited-time event. It disappeared before players learned whether or not the cube was part of the Visitor's grand scheme, what the shadow stones and runes actually meant, or why the cube started an interdimensional invasion. Kevin the Cube clearly had a plan, but it's still not clear what that was — and now that it's gone, we'll never know the truth. Bummer.

On a very basic level, meteor strikes make sense. Superheroes make sense. So do rockets, time travel, and monsters. What happened when the cube exploded does not make sense. Not even a little bit. Oh, the aftermath of the cube explosion was unique and thrilling and unlike anything that Fortnite has ever done before. It's also completely inexplicable. Here's an attempt anyway.

The cube exploded, releasing a surge of blinding white energy. When their vision returned, players found themselves floating in a surreal, all-white void filled with angular, crystalline structures. Other players were there. So were some of Fortnite's rifts, which came together to form a giant butterfly that visited each and every player. Then came another blinding flash of light, and players found themselves hurtling towards a series of newly formed islands in Loot Lake.

In other words: huh?! Does this mean that Kevin the Cube wasn't really evil? Does it imply that the rifts are sentient? And, oh yeah, where the heck did everybody go, exactly? Even by Fortnite standards, this one is weird and baffling. It's not just one new mystery. It's a bunch of them all rolled up together. Start investigating, folks. We're going to be decoding this one for a while.

In Fortnite: Battle Royale, players fall from the sky onto a mysterious and deadly island filled with all kinds of mysteries. Sound familiar? Then you probably watched Lost, the '00s television phenomenon that hooked millions of viewers with its soap opera-esque drama, unconventional storytelling structure, and unexplainable weirdness. Heck, like Lost, Fortnite: Battle Royale  even has its own mysterious hatch, which suddenly appeared in Fortnite's Wailing Woods in May 2018.

A number of months later, the hatch still isn't open, but fans think they know what's inside anyway — and, once again, your Lost-sense should be tingling. As of Fortnite Season 6, there's not just a hatch in the Wailing Woods. Now, there's a whole bunker, and if you head inside, you'll find not just a network of tunnels but an entire research facility, kind of like the one that the Lost crew found at the beginning of the show's second season. Like the Dharma Initiative, it looks like Fortnite's still-unknown scientists were trying to harness their island's mysterious power, too: you can find one of Fortnite's rifts in one of the bunker's laboratories. So, yeah, that's ominous.

Many fans assume that the hatch and the bunker are related by virtue of geography alone. The bunker isn't the only underground secret that Wailing Woods is hiding, either: busting through some of Wailing Woods' brand new cabins reveals a network of tunnels, some of which haven't fully opened yet. Could there more secrets lurking in Fortnite's subterranean depths?

We still don't know who lives on Fortnite: Battle Royale island, but we hope they've got good insurance. Between the superhero battles, the space-warping rifts, and all of those pickaxe-wielding hooligans, no structure is safe. If you don't believe us, just check out the most tragic building in the game, which has had the dubious honor being destroyed not once but twice during Fortnite's season-ending special events.

Despite persistent rumors, Tilted Towers survived Season 3's meteor shower more or less unscathed — with one exception. While it was Dusty Depot, not Tilted Towers, that suffered the brunt of the meteor strikes, one building in Fortnite's de facto downtown district wasn't so lucky. The structure spent Season 4 in ruins, and then, over the course of Season 5, was slowly rebuilt. By September 6, 2018, the shop — now a sporting goods store — was ready for business. The owners even put up a banner and balloons to celebrate its grand re-opening.

So, what happened when the cube came to town? The building was crushed again. This time, it looks like it's final. When Season 6 began, the decorations were gone, and the store was filled with trash. Meanwhile, we're left with two pressing questions: exactly who thought that the site of a meteor strike would be a good place to sell athleticwear, and why is that one location so inexplicably cursed, anyway? If previous Fortnite mysteries are any indication, we'll never know.

At first, it seemed like a bug. When Fortnite: Battle Royale's 3.4 patch hit in late March, people playing on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 noticed that their controllers were randomly vibrating. Most players dismissed this as a glitch. Epic even said as much. The only option, the developer said, was to turn the force feedback on controllers off, to make sure that the unwanted shakes didn't interfere with all of the game's good old-fashioned killing.

But it wasn't a mistake. It was a message. As Reddit user Vigilancefoetracer discovered, the seemingly random vibrations were actually Morse code. After some quick decoding, Vigilancefoetracer deduced that someone calling for help. See, the translated message read "SOS D 5 418." Players quickly figured out what the first two parts of the code meant: D5 is the region of Fortnite's map where the Tilted Towers reside, while SOS is self-explanatory. The "418" was less obvious. Most people surmised that it was a date (April, 2018), and concluded that Twisted Towers would be destroyed by Fortnite's encroaching meteors sometime that month.

They were partly correct. A meteor shower did indeed hit Fortnite at the end of April, but the Towers (mostly) survived. Meanwhile, fans still don't know who sent the message, or how that individual knew about the meteor strike ahead of time. At this rate, they may never figure it out.

The fourth wall-shattering controller stunt isn't the only time that Fortnite: Battle Royale flirted with coded messages. In late April 2018, just a few days before the meteors arrived, in-game televisions started broadcasting emergency message adorned with a Loot Pinata, Fortnite's single-player loot crate equivalent and the game's de facto mascot.

Of course, this being Fornite, there was more going on here than it seemed. Players realized that an audio file played during the broadcast contained another helping of Morse code, and like the controller vibrations, it contained an ominous warning. According to those who translated the sounds, the hidden message says, "They don't want us to k..." That final word isn't completely clear, but most fans assume that it's the beginning of "know."

But what don't they want us to know — and who are "they," anyway? So far, we've got no answers. Inspired by a line from Fortnite's single-player Save the World, many players are taking this to mean that Fortnite is home to some kind extraterrestrial threat. That fits — the whole hidden message and forbidden knowledge thing certainly has an Area 51-type vibe about it. Still, that's just a fan theory. We won't know what they don't want us to know until Epic spills the beans — unless, of course, they already have. Maybe the truth is out there. Maybe we simply haven't found it — yet.

Not all of Fortnite's mysteries come from the stars. A few have their roots in the past. Fortnite Season 5 introduced time travel to the game's increasingly complex storyline, but even before that, the game's been signaling that some of your favorite prehistoric creatures aren't as extinct as you think they are.

So, yeah, dinosaurs. We're talking about dinosaurs. Shortly before Season 5 began, a large animal skeleton appeared in Moisty Mire (which, as of Season 5, has been dried out and transformed into a desert), but even before that, there have been hints that so-called "terrible lizards" are lurking somewhere in Fortnite's world. Just a few days after Fortnite's meteor shower, fans found a giant footprint lurking just south of Snobby Shores, near where a house used to be. It's not the first time that the ancient critters have made an appearance in the game, either. Not only can fans purchase stylish Rex and Tricera Ops skins, but they could earn a dinosaur skull banner icon during the game's third season.

Of course, the whole dinosaur thing could just be some Hollywood magic. After all, the footprint is surrounded by one of the film sets that appeared during Season 4. At this point, it's hard to say exactly what's going on. That's what makes it a mystery!

Before Fortnite Season 4 became all about rockets and time-altering rifts — more on those in just a moment — superheroes took center stage. Not only could players earn exclusive superhero skins by completing the game's Battle Pass challenges, but lairs and secret hideouts started popping up all over the map, too.

In addition, Fortnite's season-specific loading screens, which players unlock by working through the Battle Pass, seemed to be telling a superheroic story: in one, Omega, the villain of the piece, broke out of prison. That ended up leading to a full-on superhero brawl, followed by a major plot twist: in the final loading screen featuring the characters, Omega is seen relaxing on a film set with Valor, one of his supposed foes.

What gives? We know that the rocket found in the supervillain lair is the real deal, given its profound effects on Fortnite's map (not to mention that it actually, y'know, flies), but the combination of the loading screens and imply that the whole conflict was all for the cameras. So, are Valor, Omega, Carbide, and the rest actual superheroes? And if they are, where the heck did they all go?

Now, here's where things get really interesting. As previously mentioned, a meteor shower served as Season 4's big climax — and when the rocks started falling, Fortnite's real mysteries began. To begin with, these clearly aren't regular meteors. After particularly large meteorite demolished Dusty Depot, a shady government agency set up a camp around the interstellar projectile and started studying its effects. In addition, the impact site was surrounded by "hop rocks," physics-altering materials that launched players into the air. That's not normal. Something funny must be going on.

Things cleared up a little bit during the seventh week of Season 4, when it turned out that there was an escape pod in the meteor's core — and that whoever was riding in it escaped. According to Fortnite's Season 4 loading screens, which relay Fortnite: Battle Royale's story, the mysterious passenger is actually The Visitor, a strange character who also happens to be one of the special skins that Fortnite players can earn. After exiting the meteor, the Visitor made a beeline for Fortnite's supervillain hideout, where he launched the rocket that helped bring Season 4 to a close.

But who is The Visitor, and where did he — or she — come from? Are his motives pure, or is he up to no good? So far, that's all still unknown, although some of Fortnite's other mysteries might hold some answers.

Let's take a step back. Before Fortnite: Battle Royale had an ongoing storyline, it was easy to dismiss the game's odd set-up. It didn't really matter why people were jumping out of flying busses and shooting each other. It was fun. That's all that mattered.

Now that Fortnite: Battle Royale has honest-to-goodness stories and lore, however, we've got some questions. The Fortnite map is full of abandoned houses, empty buildings, and closed businesses. So, where did all of the people go? It seems like there's a link between Fortnite's complete lack of non-player characters and the ominous storm that slowly closes in on Battle Royale players and offs them if they spend too much time in its violet rays, but without more evidence, that's just conjecture.

An explanation could be on the way, though. In addition to the Battle Royale, Fortnite also has a cooperative mode known as Save the World, and storms pop up there, too, although they work a little differently. Instead of making the maps smaller, Save the World's storms spawn monsters that players must work together to defeat. It's also why 98% of the population disappeared, although it's not clear where the victims went. There's a very good chance that the two storms are related, and while Save the World hasn't revealed the storm's origins yet, the information could have profound effects on Battle Royale's plot — if it ever surfaces.

Maybe there's one big mystery that ties all of Fortnite: Battle Royale's various unknowns together. Maybe this is all related, and maybe it's building to one giant revelation — one with intergalactic origins.

Outside of the Visitor, aliens haven't played an immediately obvious role in Fortnite's evolving story, but little hints have popped up here and there that indicate that extraterrestrials are very, very involved in the ongoing plot. There's the aforementioned hidden message. Before the meteor struck, players saw UFOs hovering around the descending objects. At least one Fortnite resident must've seen 'em too, because they left a heart sign welcoming the aliens to Earth on a Tilted Towers rooftop. During the rocket launch, some players heard alien-like voices. When Kotaku asked what the meteor was, Epic responded with a picture of Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, a television personality best known for spouting insane theories on the History Channel's Ancient Aliens.

Those small pieces add up, and if there's not something otherworldly going on in Fortnite, we're going to be very, very surprised. Look at it this way: if Thanos, a native of the planet Titan, can make an appearance in Fortnite, it stands to reason that other visitors may not be far behind. Heck, we've already met one of 'em. From all indications, that's just the tip of the iceberg.