Now, we don’t quite know why someone was skulking around the bushes on Lotus, but one eagle-eyed Valorant players seems to have spotted Freddie Mercury – you know, the former Queen front-man and general music legend – in Riot Games’ popular FPS title. Don’t worry if you’re wondering how you could have possibly missed Freddie Mercury in Valorant, though, it’s not an obvious appearance – and you might need more than One Vision to even see the resemblence. Why? Well, because he has been found in some sort of shadow, or a water stain.
That’s right, and we promise this isn’t any sort of Radio Ga Ga, April Fools’ Day nonsense, either. Eagle-eyed Valorant player ‘N9_m‘ has taken to Reddit to share an image that shows a shadow-like stain on a wall on Lotus that bears a striking resemblence to Freddie Mercury.
As you will be able to see for yourself below, to make your own judgement, this possible homage to the late rockstar can be found through a crack in a wall obscured by some large leaves at the edge of the map.
If you look into the top left of the image below, you’ll be able to see exactly where on the Valorant map you need to go to find this. Although, you might be left saying ‘Save Me‘ to some of your teammates if you’re not careful. This is one of the best competitive FPS games out there and we can’t imagine a Killer Queen or a Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy (or anyone, really) won’t take advantage of you snooping around to score an extra elimination.
So, here’s the image – handily with Freddie Mercury for comparison.
And, here’s what the player who found it had to say, too.
Is it just me, or is this Freddie Mercury?
by u/N9_m in VALORANT
Interestingly, if you take to the comments of this Reddit post, one fan has reinforced the thoery that this is an intentional homage to Freddie Mercury by considering where the icon was born and where the Lotus map itself is located.
The Valorant map Lotus is situated in the Western Ghats of India (on Omega Earth) and Freddie Mercury was born in Zanzibar (which is now part of Tanzania, on real Earth) to parents who were from the Parsi community of Western India – somewhere where he spent a lot of his childhood. So, ‘mikelclal’ (the Reddit commentor who has put two and two together) seems to err on the side that this is intentional.
Of course, Riot Games hasn’t confirmed or denied whether this is indeed an intentional tribute to Freddie Mercury – and perhaps we’ll never know – but we feel like We are (all) the Champions for having it brought to our attentions.
Would an Agent based on Freddie Mercury crack the upper echelons of our Valorant tier list? We don’t know, but you can read up on the Valorant ranks here if you’re looking to Play the Game yourself. You can also Bicycle Race to this guide if you want to know when the next Valorant Night Market dates are and what skins you can get (okay, we know that one was bad).