'Fortnite' Chicken Dance Emote Is an 'Arrested Development' Easter Egg

One of the absolute best running gags from Arrested Development just invaded Fortnite: Battle Royale in the form of a new dance emote, making it the single best way for you to complete Week 2’s Challenge to “dance in front of different film cameras.”

Over the weekend, Fortnite introduced a new dance emote aptly called “Chicken” to its shop, but don’t expect it to riff on the “Chicken Dance” you did at your aunt’s wedding in 2008. Instead, developer Epic Games decided to reference something much cooler: Arrested Development.

Specifically, this “Chicken” emote is a direct port of Gob Bluth’s Chicken Dance. Throughout the series, the entire Bluth family is fond of teasing the show’s protagonist, Michael, for being a bit of a coward, so everyone in the family has a chicken dance. Magician-moron Gob Bluth has perhaps the most entertaining variation. The Fortnite version uses identical body movements but adds vigorous clapping noises and legitimate chicken sounds, which makes doing this over someone’s dead body perhaps even more offensive than teabagging them.

In case you’ve never seen it in action, here’s a clip from Arrested Developed that shows Gob’s chicken dance alongside his sister Lindsay’s:

Players have been requesting emotes straight out of Arrested Development for months, but only now have their wishes been granted. Could we get other chicken dance emotes for other members of the Bluth family in the future? We can only hope so.

Fan demand, it would seem, has a lot of influence on Epic Games when it comes to emotes. After fans started an online petition to get Orange Shirt Kid’s dance put into the game, it was immortalized as a Season 4 emote accessible to anyone.

Virtually all of the dances get somewhat generic names and descriptions, probably because stealing a dance and adding it to a video game could be some kind of copyright violation. Orange Shirt Kid’s dance in Fortnite, for instance, is called “Orange Justice,” sort of making it an easily missable inside joke. This new dance is called “Chicken” with a generic description that reads: “Top of the pecking order.” It’s possible many Fortnite players have no idea that it relates to Arrested Development.

For any of the ongoing Fortnite Challenges that require you to dance in front of some object — whether it’s a forbidden location, hidden dance floor, or video cameras — virtually any dance emote will work, including “Chicken.” So finish off that Challenge now before Week 3 kicks off Tuesday, May 15 at 4 a.m. Eastern, and do it with the “Chicken” dance for a bit of extra fun.