Overwatch: Masquerade Reaper contains interesting literary references

With its creative genius, Blizzard has always managed to conceal and incorporate numerous references in its Overwatch cosmetics. Many skins are more or less subtle nods to works, customs, beliefs, films... Today, we will focus on Masquerade Reaper.

Initially taking its origins in the comic strip Masquerade released in July 2017, Reaper is represented as the representation of death. Long awaited by fans, the skin will finally be added to the game for the fourth anniversary of Overwatch with some graphic changes. Renaud Galand, lead character designer, specified that the skin had to be modified to suit the Chinese market.

References to the Phantom of the Opera and Red Death

Masquerade Reaper hides a reference to the 1925 movie The Phantom of the Opera. You can see inscribed under his arms "Beneath your dancing feet are the tombs of tortured men !" It's a famous quote by the ghost disguised as the Red Death, a character to whom the skin also refers.

The description of the skin is also a reference to the book The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe released in 1842, giving more legitimacy and explanation to the red outfit worn by Reaper for this fourth anniversary.

There are chords in the hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion, even by the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.

Edgar Allan Poe on The Masque of the Red Death

Enough to delight literary and theater fans. Another research project and a story brilliantly illustrated by Overwatch teams.

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