The Epic versus Apple trial kicked off its second week today, finishing up cross examination with Epic head of marketing Matthew Weissinger. In continued discussion of Epic’s unspeakable inappropriateness, Apple’s lawyer had some questions about Fortnite’s cursed banana, Peely.
Apple’s lawyer was going over the Fortnite mode select screen with Weissinger, establishing that Fortnite is in fact a game that exists. (Earlier in cross-examination, the lawyer noted that even though Weissinger is the last of Epic’s witnesses, Epic has yet to show Fortnite to the court. What could it mean?!) They went through the various game modes before getting to the squad select screen, at which point Apple’s lawyer described for court and call,
“We have a large yellow banana here in a tuxedo.”
“Yes, that is Peely,” Weissinger said.
“And that’s Peely, did you say?” the lawyer continued, clearly swallowing the Lovecraftian dread consuming him at the sight of the beast. “And in fact in the tuxedo he’s known as Agent Peely, correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“We thought it better to go with the suit than the naked banana since we are in federal court this morning,” the lawyer said.
From there they moved on to discussing whether or not Agent Peely was exclusive to a particular season’s battle pass, mind-bendingly declining to finally ask Epic why it decided to create the horror of Peely, unleash it on the world, and then continue to iterate on increasingly monstrous versions of Epic’s flagship nightmare monster. But at least we’ve established that Peely is unfit for polite human company, something I have been insisting on for years. I don’t know who will win this case, but if the federal legal system can’t stop Peely, what hope is there for the rest of us?
Update, 5/10/21, 2:03pm—Epic’s lawyer spoke to Weissinger again, and she too had questions about Peely. Calling her line of questioning “a little bit of a digression,” she said,
“There might have been an implication that to show Peely without a suit would have been inappropriate, do you recall that?” Weissinger did. “Is there anything inappropriate about Peely without a suit?”
“No there is not,” he replied. Admittedly, this is true: Peely naked and Peely clothed are equally horrifying.
Bringing up a picture of Peely, Epic’s lawyer asked, “Is there anything inappropriate about Peely without clothes?”
Faced with one of the great existential questions of our time, Weissinger considered deeply before replying,
“...It’s just a banana, ma’am.”
[Correction, 2:19pm: Upon closer listen it appears Weissinger says “It’s just a banana, ma’am” and not “banana man” as I transcribed earlier from the terrible audio on this call. Either way, the point stands: Peely sucks.]