Quentin Tarantino Is More Involved With His Fortnite Crossover Than You Might Think

I’ve dipped my toes in the Fortnite pool quite a bit. I was there in the beginning, when it was still in beta mode (though that lasted a few years, I think), but I didn’t last long. Ever since, I have been pulled back in, usually by friends, because of certain promotions. Fortnite keeps going because it’s constantly introducing new “skins” and events that allow you to play the game as some of your favorite characters. Recently, they took a trip to Springfield, USA.

Fortnite involves being air-dropped onto a giant map, collecting guns, and trying to eliminate other players as the map gets smaller and smaller, forcing you into conflict. You can play alone or in a team of up to four people. So, given the newest crossover, I was able to fire an Uzi at a bunch of characters while dressed as Marge Simpson from a Treehouse of Horror episode.

My older brother once described the game as like “dumping out your action figures and playing with them all at once,” and I don’t necessarily disagree. That element certainly exists with all the crossovers that have included superheroes, cartoon characters, and One Battle After Another. But you’re still playing the same game every time. You’re still trying to grab a cartoonish gun to shoot other players. Not every toy in your box will line up with that style of play, whether they were sanctioned for the game or not. Other times, it fits pretty well.

That certainly feels like the case with the newest Kill Bill crossover. The Bride will be making her way to the land of drinkable shields and breakable walls. Having Uma Thurman’s classic character play shoot-em-up with a bunch of silly characters makes a lot of sense. When I first heard about it, I assumed it was a simple licensing situation, as is usually the case. That’s certainly half of it, but the rest includes a long-lost Kill Bill story that Quentin Tarantino gave to the game.

“I showed up to the meeting thinking that they would want to license characters and they want to get my ideas about what could be a fun thing to do,” the director explained at a recent event for the game. “But no, they had something else in mind.” The man behind Jackie Brown couldn’t pass up an opportunity to pat himself on the back, saying, “They very innocently asked me, ‘Do you have something that’s, like, eight to 12 minutes long that could be good for our purposes?’ Now they didn’t say, ‘Can you make sure that your iconic characters are wrapped up inside of that?’ But that was implied.” Okay, Quentin, relax.

Tarantino ended up giving them the script for The Lost Chapter: Yuki’s Revenge, which he claimed was too crazy and action-packed to have been included in the films. It sees Yuki, the twin sister of the bodyguard Gogo from the first film, attempting to get revenge on Thurman’s Bride. The idea sounds primed for the zaniness of the game, and provides a fun way to celebrate the film series’s twentieth anniversary, something that makes me feel fairly ancient.