Balatro creator declares one Joker a reference to an infamous 17-year-old meme, even if it wasn't originally intentional: "This is less of a 'confirmed' and more of a 'lmao it is now'"

The endlessly engrossing poker roguelike Balatro is full of surprises, and the latest is that one of its Joker cards unintentionally referenced an infamous old meme, and solo dev LocalThunk has now seemingly baked it into the game's canon.

Depending on how much time you spend online, you may or may not have a strong reaction to the word "loss." Back in 2008, a four-panel comic – part of the Ctrl+Alt+Del (or CAD) webcomic series – was posted online, depicting protagonist Ethan rushing into a hospital to find female lead Lilah in a bed after having suffered a miscarriage. It should go without saying that this situation and plot point obviously isn't funny, but the internet being the internet had a rather surprising reaction to it, largely spurred on by the fact that the tone of this particular comic was so wildly different to what had come before it in previous CAD instalments.

One thing led to another, and for some baffling reason, 17 years later, minimalist recreations of the four panels are still being created and shared. If you've ever seen a two by two grid with a few strangely placed lines or images inside it, it was probably a Loss reference. This whole thing has taken on a life of its own beyond the original tragic subject material, and that brings us to today. Over on Reddit last week, user potatolad6698 shared a screenshot of Balatro's Four Fingers Joker (which lets you pull off Flushes and Straights using four cards) alongside a mirrored screenshot of Ethan's raised hand in the first panel of Loss. "Is the Four Fingers hand a reference to Loss?" they ask.

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There's a definite similarity with how the fingers are placed (although again, it's worth keeping in mind that the comic panel has to be flipped for it to match up with the card), and LocalThunk has now weighed in on the matter. How? By sharing the post along with a bunch of very specifically placed lines, referencing… well, you already know.

Responding to one fan claiming that this reply means the reference is "confirmed," LocalThunk says: "This is less of a 'confirmed' and more of a 'lmao it is now.'" So, it definitely wasn't an intentional reference LocalThunk had in mind when the Four Fingers Joker was created, but the dev seems happy enough to call it one in retrospect.

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