All Apex Legends anime references from the Gaiden event skins

The Apex Legends Gaiden event patch gave the battle royale’s cast a host of skins that paid tribute to popular anime like My Hero Academia, One Piece, Naruto, and more.

In its latest content updated, Respawn Entertainment gave various Legends cosmetics with strange colorways. The seemingly random skins made a lot more sense after seeing the Apex Legends anime short that the studio released alongside the patch.

That’s when people like Reddit user ‘NerdMaster18’ connected the dots to find fit all the skins to their appropriate anime references. Some make more sense than others, but it’s still a great passion project that quickly became a hit for fans.

For people still trying to make out what the Apex Legends anime references are about, there’s a full breakdown below.

While there were a few skins that were hard to place, seeing them side-by-side to their source material really pulls back the curtain of Respawn’s thinking.

For example, the green-haired Mirage is meant to reference My Hero Academia’s Izuku Midoriya, while Fuse takes after Fullmetal Alchemist protagonist Edward Elric.

Apex Legends anime skins:

• Wattson – Naruto (Naruto)
• Octane – Luffy (One Piece)
• Mirage – Izuku Midoriya (My Hero Academia)
• Revenant – Unit 09 (Neon Genesis Evangelion)
• Fuse – Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist)
• Bloodhound – Ken Kaneki (Tokyo Ghoul)
• Crypto – Goku (Dragon Ball Z)
• Seer – Tuxedo Mask (Sailor Moon)
• Bangalore – Sailor Mars (Sailor Moon)

Respawn have included references to anime in game teasers before, but never actually incorporated them into the game.

There was the cryptic inclusion of popular manga a year ago, which never amounted to much except to showcase the studio’s love of anime.

The Gaiden event skins have been extremely popular among the Apex Legends community so far, so here’s hoping more anime cosmetics are one the way.