Overwatch 2 players were shocked to learn that some of the heroes they’ve been playing might have been born in the same generation as them.
Because of the game’s near-future setting, many of the characters who are in their 50s or older are technically part of Generation Z and Generation Alpha as their birth year falls sometime in the late 2000s or 2010s.
A Reddit post revealing this detail has surprised some players, as they can’t imagine heroes like Sigma, Reinhardt, and Ana, all of who are canonically in their 60s, acting like or saying the same zoomer phrases as them.
“Does that mean that Reinhardt grew up with skibidi toilet?” one user asked.
“It’s why Ana is such a good sniper, she grew up trashing kids in Fortnite,” another joked.
Others were more mortified by the news that these characters could have grown up in the same time period as them, cringing at the possibility.
“Oh damn, that’s horrifying to think about,” one Overwatch 2 player said.
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Players also applied this logic to other members of the cast like Soldier 76, who is in his mid-50s, which means he would have been born around 2020.
Of the current Overwatch 2 cast Ana, Torbjörn, Soldier 76, Reaper, Reinhardt, Moira, Roadhog, Sojourn, and Sigma are in the right age range to qualify as either Gen Z or Gen Alpha depending on which cutoff year is used.
While imagining Reaper and Roadhog doing TikTok dances is a fun exercise, one player pointed out that the Overwatch universe might not be set in the same timeline as the real world.
“Has it been ever confirmed when the OW universe diverged from our own timeline or if it’s an entirely different universe with a mostly similar history to our own? OW universe may be one where TikTok and Fortnite don’t even exist,” the player said.
Overwatch 2 is still adding new characters so even more generational representation might be coming Gen Z’s way in the future.