Over the last few weeks, there’s been a huge push from MultiVersus fans to see Breaking Bad’s Walter White added to the game. Fans of both the fighting game and the TV series are advocating for the character over on Twitter and Reddit, and even the lead developer on MultiVersus, Tony Huynh, has retweeted accounts demanding it.
As you’ll know from looking at the MultiVersus roster, characters can come from just about anywhere, which is why it has its fair share of incredibly strange character choices. It’s not a ‘bad’ strange, not at all, but the inventiveness of putting players between Tom and Jerry as they fight, and even making Arya Stark somehow fit into a teen game, is nothing to sniff at. So, it’s not outside of the realms of possibility that we’ll eventually see the Breaking Bad character here.
You’ve got to wonder why people are pushing for it so hard though, and the simplest way to do that has got to be to speak to the person behind the increasingly-popular ‘Walter White for MultiVersus’ Twitter account. So, that’s exactly what we did.
“Walter White is nobody’s first thought for a roster spot, but the idea clearly resonates with people when they hear it,” says Dave, the creator of the account and a “lifelong fighting game aficionado who’s been a Breaking Bad fan since its premiere”.
Despite the account being made just a couple of months ago, Walter White for MultiVersus has already accrued over 17,000 followers, and as Dave points out, “Walter White is the second-most requested character” in the MultiVersus Discord server. So what is making people so passionate about this character in particular?
“Breaking Bad has never had a [major] official videogame and it has never had an official crossover,” Dave says. “We’ve had crumbs like a shut-down [mobile] game or Far Cry 6’s in-game cosmetics. The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad’s sister show, has had collaborations with games like Tekken, Fortnite, and Brawlhalla. I think there’s a ton of hunger for both things from fans.”
There’s also apparently a big push because of the way the characters in MultiVersus interact with each other. “Just imagine a face-off between Walter White and Batman, or him rubbing shoulders with frequent Albuquerque tourist Bugs Bunny,” Dave says. In fairness, you’d be hard-pressed to avoid a smile if Bugs shouted ‘What’s up, Doc’ to this hard-done-by chemistry lover.
So what kind of violence would Heisenberg even inflict on his foes if he were to join the lineup? It would make sense, given that the roster already has plenty of basic characters, that White would end up as an expert-level character, and given that he’s not all that physically intimidating, it also makes sense for him to play as a support or a mage.
“Walter is often shown to have a knack for invention, and my ideal moveset for him would consist of improvised weaponry, traps, and tongue-in-cheek references to Breaking Bad,” Dave imagines. The show itself has White using poisons, gases, and even a turret at some point, and it’s not hard to imagine those translating over well.
“I also personally love the idea of a money mechanic where Walt gains money by hitting his opponents with chemistry-themed attacks, allowing him to power up kill moves like smacking opponents with an overstuffed duffel bag or burying the money with a shovel hitbox.” We’ve already got a money mechanic in the game thanks to Finn, so maybe the two could work well together as a team.
So, could it ever happen? Ultimately, it’s hard to say that there are any MultiVersus characters that are truly off limits. Tony Huynh seems to genuinely appreciate the community that has rapidly built up around the platform brawler, and seems to be a people pleaser on top of that, regularly retweeting fan requests for characters like Marceline.
As Dave noted, fans of Breaking Bad have been starved of any videogame content, despite the series’ creator recently claiming efforts had been made to get into the hands of gamers. Execs will know there is an appetite and audience for it.
Even if it never happens, it’s nice to see something so positive coming out around new characters, and the interaction between the devs and the fans as well. Hopefully they’ll never break bad.