Fortnite lovingly trolls comet theorists with a new Tilted Towers scene

A Fortnite astronaut reads a picket sign.

The comet in Fortnite's sky keeps getting closer, and now Epic has snuck a new teaser into a very familiar part of the map (but maybe not the kind of tease you'd expect). It's a strangely familiar rooftop scene that can be found in the central-western part of Tilted Towers. A treasure chest has a chance of spawning there so it's quickly becoming a popular drop location - you'll need to be quick and/or deadly if you want some time alone to appreciate the various little touches. Here's a picture of the overall scene (with the floor in the corner already broken down by somebody who beat me to the drop).

A rooftop scene from Fortnite.

It seems to be the site of a gathering, hastily abandoned much like everything else in Fortnite Battle Royale's map. The seats are all pointed toward a staticy television set, but the immediate focal point is all the picket signs that were left behind. One pair of signs shows a city skyline and a flying-saucer-like object both surrounded by hearts, implying the get-together was a welcoming party for extraterrestrial visitors (probably a reference to the rooftop scene in Independence Day).

Another sign just shows a rudimentary drawing of the comet, so I guess whoever made that one was generally excited for astronomical events. My favorite of the bunch, though, is the one that simply says "TODAY"... scratched out and replaced with a hastily written "TOMORROW." You could take that as evidence for something big happening in Fortnite tomorrow (Wednesday, April 25). But I think it's more likely that Epic's just poking a little bit of fun at all the theorists who keep saying they've figured out when the comet will finally arrive, only for the date to come and go without event.

Four of the new signs from Fortnite.

Mild trolling from the developers aside, everything is adding up to something happening very soon. This Reddit user connected some dots from Fortnite's Save the World mode (in which the comet also appears) to suggest that the object in the sky isn't just an icy space rock, but rather the home of alien visitors. And probably not the friendly kind of alien visitors, since they're attempting to communicate with Husks, the mindless(?) zombie enemies of Save the World. The two modes are only tenuously connected, but new stuff added for one often shows up in the other.

The new "Impact" mode that dataminers spotted in Fortnite Battle Royale's files could finally set things off some time this week. And in any case, we'll probably know what's going on by the time season 4 begins very soon.

Make sure you clean up your last set of objectives with the help of our Fortnite Battle Pass Challenges guide

Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.