I was talking with a few of my gaming friends, and one of them mentioned how they saw Beavis and Butthead while playing Call of Duty. They also said that they were not huge fans of that move. Upon hearing this, it took me a moment to find words, a lot of moments.

I looked it up on YouTube, and sure enough I found a video where this crazy cross-promotion event was happening. People could pay to get Beavis and Butthead skins for their characters.

Now, unlike most realistic-looking skins, the Beavis and Butthead ones look pretty cell shaded. The video has them roaming around a typical Call of Duty multiplayer firefight. This realistic shooting game full of gritty operators were getting massacred by Cornholio. It got me thinking about other titles that have started to embrace crazy promotions like this, and I have concluded that cross-promotion has probably gone too far.

A lot of people have been calling this the “Fortnite-ification” of video games (Fortnite being the most high-profile title to have characters from different fandoms). This includes everything from John Wick to Vegeta (Dragonball Z) to Rey (Star Wars), Hatsune Miku, Patrick Mahomes (NFL), Green Arrow (DC), Chris Redfield (Resident Evil), Ariana Grande (Singer), and Chun-Li (Street Fighter). And this huge list is just under two percent of the one that fellow GiN columnist Vincent Mahoney and I put together.

Call of Duty has followed this trend starting with Rambo and various wrestlers, which were met with a resounding meh. Things really came to a head with the release of the American Dad skins. That was the first time cell shading came to Call of Duty, and it stuck out like a sore thumb. But they also had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Splinter, The Terminator, Ash Williams (Evil Dead), and multiple Walking Dead characters. All of those playable characters are also in Fortnite.

Destiny even had a Star Wars crossover with multiple skins that muddied the water. The infamous Cup Noodles case from Final Fantasy XV also comes to mind. My point in writing this piece is that we have a problem with cross-promotion stripping the identity out of the games they are in. That is why I refer to this as a cross-promotion singularity because everything is cross-promoting so much that it loses what makes it special. Each title has its own unique visuals and characters, and I hate to see them ruined by putting random people or characters into them.

I am not saying that all cross-promotion is bad, mind you. For example, having horror icons join the Dead by Daylight universe makes sense and doesn’t feel out of place. Having Jason hunt down teenagers in a rundown campground is just what he does. But Jay and Silent Bob in Call of Duty makes no sense in any context. It doesn’t add to the gameplay element like Jason does to Dead by Deadlight. It’s just random cosmetics in multiplayer.

I know some gamers have had issues with cross-promotion. So much so that Battlefield 6 developer Dice said they will not be doing these sorts of cosmetic skins. I want games to take pride in their aesthetic and not to dilute their brand with indulgent cross-promotion. I am hopeful that what is happening in Call of Duty is just an absurdist point in gaming history.

Meanwhile, I will be taking a small vacation and unplugging for a little bit. It might be nice to put the controller down for a few days. See you all when I get back!