“Peaceful Hips” is an emote that was added to Fortnite earlier this month. Part of the “DC Series,” it cost 400 V-Bucks and referenced HBO’s show Peacemaker, specifically a dance move the character does in the season 2 intro that has him flapping his arms and swerving his hips around. That was all fine and good until the comic book series’ big season 2 reveal last week cast it in a different light. Epic Games has now pulled the cosmetic over concerns about its “creative intentions.” In plain English, Epic is worried it might be intended to look like a Nazi Swastika.
“We’re disabling the Peaceful Hips Emote in Fortnite as we inquire into our partner’s creative intentions in this collab emote,” the battle roayle’s official account announced over the weekend. “Assuming it’s not coming back, we’ll issue refunds in the next few days. Sorry folks.” All of this weirdness stems from the following dance which players were previously able to buy separately or as part of the Peacemaker bundle:
It wasn’t until Peacemaker season 2 episode 6 that some people started seeing it in a different light. Full spoiler warning ahead if you haven’t watched yet and don’t want to know what happens.
Chris Smith, AKA Peacemaker, doesn’t want to leave the alternate dimension where things seem “perfect” despite that menacing suspicion that something is very, very off. It turns out that this Earth-2 the mercenary’s been hanging out in is actually Earth-X, our planet in an alternate timeline where the United States lost to Hitler’s Germany in WWII. In case the lack of any non-white people didn’t give it away already, the big reveal comes when Chris realizes there’s a Swastika on the American flag. It now seems like that Nazi theme may have made it into the Fortnite emote. Forbes notes its similarity to a dance Donald Duck performs in the Disney short “Der Fuehrer’s Face” when he’s trained to become a Nazi.
The headscratching part is how Epic Games didn’t know about this twist coming ahead of time, or who at Warner Bros. or HBO would have tried to keep its “creative intentions” hidden. The show is written and directed by James Gunn, the creative force fueling Superman and the rest of the rebooted DC universe right now. Epic would have seemingly developed the emote in-house, suggesting that it didn’t initially raise any suspicions internally. Live by the branded cosmetic, fail by the branded cosmetic, I suppose.
