The default emote "Dance Moves" is a reference to a scene from the episode "My Half-Acre" of the TV series "Scrubs" from 2006, where Turk auditions for the hospital air-band by dancing to the song "Poison" by Bell Biv Devoe, during which he does the dance featured in the game. Following the default dance's popularization as a meme, it would be discovered that the dance had also been referenced in the episode "Darby the Plant Sitter" of the animated series "My Friends Tigger & Pooh" from 2009, in which Tigger does the same dance as a "grow dance" to try and make crops grow. This discovery briefly caused some confusion from unaware players as to where the dance originated from.

In late 2023, Garry's Mod creator Garry Newman received a copyright takedown notice from the film production company Invisible Narratives. The notice alleged that Garry's Mod violated the copyrights associated with "Skibidi Toilet", an animated webseries created by YouTuber Alexey Gerasimov produced in the Valve software Source Filmmaker using assets from their games Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Garry's Mod (which Valve published but did not develop), and other pre-existing copyrighted material. The Skibidi Toilet copyrights were registered as part of Invisible Narratives' production on a film adaptation of the series directed by Michael Bay. The takedown claimed there was "absolutely no licensed Steam, Valve, [or] Garry's Mod content related to Skibidi Toilet", despite the fact that many of the assets the series uses were originally created by Valve and the Garry's Mod playerbase up to almost two decades before it existed. After Newman posted the takedown notice publicly in July 2024, Gerasimov became aware of the mistake and contacted him to resolve the issue and retract the takedown.

Later on December 18, Epic Games revealed a collaboration with Skibidi Toilet for the game Fortnite, adding the character Plungerman as a playable skin and the titular Skibidi Toilet as a back bling. Seemingly forgetting about the controversy that occurred a few months prior, many unaware fans speculated if a lawsuit could play out due to the use of Valve's assets, despite their models in Fortnite being stylized, legally distinct versions of them. After being flooded with questions asking about it, Newman became annoyed and released a statement clarifying that he had no "basis, want or need" to file a lawsuit against Epic Games or Gerasimov as he did not create any of the assets involved in the production of Skibidi Toilet in the first place, and asked the public to stop asking him about it.

The appearance of Blanka's (a guest costume from the Street Fighter series) alternate style "Blanka Delgado" was based on Boman Delgado from the Rival Schools series.

The appearance of Cammy's (a guest costume from the Street Fighter series) alternate style is based on how she appeared in Final Fight: Streetwise.

In 2024, Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, claimed that the reason why Peter Griffin looks buff in Fortnite is because Epic Games "didn’t have the budget to create his actual body". An accurate Peter Griffin would also have been too big a target and not be balanced for the PvP modes in Fortnite. MacFarlane also revealed how the character got into the game in the first place:

According to a court document leaked during Epic Games' lawsuit with Apple, Samus Aran from the Metroid franchise was considered for a possible guest playable character in Fortnite, but was ultimately rejected by Nintendo. Epic executive Saxs Persson would later reveal that Epic tried to negotiate with Nintendo several times in the past to include their characters in the game, but have continuously fallen through, stating:


Chief creative officer Donald Mustard would also later state that the deal fell through because Nintendo preferred to have the character only be a Nintendo Switch exclusive and was reluctant to license out any of their characters on competing consoles.

In 2017, a poster could be found in various maps in Fortnite depicting Jazz Jackrabbit, a series created by Epic Games in their early years.

When the Street Fighter skin set was released for Fortnite, a back bling of an arcade machine was released that would show attract mode footage from Street Fighter II. Coinciding with this, a texture was found in the data, under the name "FrenchFry" showing animation from Family Guy in a similar format. While many believed this confirmed that Peter Griffin was planned to be featured in the game alongside a back bling that would show Family Guy clips, it was later stated by a reputable Fortnite leaker named FNBRUnreleased that the Family Guy content could've only been added for one of two reasons: to annoy dataminers, or to internally test the Street Fighter graphics in a humorous way.

Griffin would eventually be added to Fortnite in Chapter 5. To coincide with his addition, a video titled "Peter Griffin Seeks Fitness Advice From Meowscles" was released: animated in the same style as "Family Guy", it features Griffin getting a fitness exam from Fortnite character Meowscles, ending with him drinking an expired bottle of Slurp Juice in order to become "swole", explaining his design in the game. The expiration date on the Slurp Juice is a reference to the date when the leak originally happened, and the trailer also used the leaked back bling. Despite appearing to be animated by Family Guy's animation department, the video noticeably does not feature any spoken dialogue, or voice acting by Family Guy creator and Griffin's voice actor Seth MacFarlane.

In May 2024, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) fined Epic Games €1,125,000 for using "unfair commercial practices" aimed at children in Fortnite. The investigation found that Epic Games "exploited [the] vulnerabilities" of children through design choices in the game's Item Shop. Examples include the use of demanding phrases like "get it now" or "buy now" on certain advertisements, which the ACM deemed an "illegal aggressive commercial practice", as well as countdown timers that were used on some ads for items still available in the shop after the countdown ended, exploiting a fear of missing out by making items that were still available for sale falsely seem scarce. Epic Games immediately made changes to the game in response to this report, including removing countdown timers worldwide and adding time indicators for shop refreshes and item removal dates. As of May 24, 2024, players under 18 years of age in the Netherlands can only see items available for 48 hours or more in the store. However, the company still planned to appeal the decision, claiming that the ACM's findings contain factual errors about how Fortnite and the Item Shop operate.

The Summer Skye skin is based on "Ava", a fan-made concept by artist NolloBandz. Ava was created as a tribute to other fan-made concepts that were added to the game, including but not limited to:

• Aura's coin pouch and Pinkie's mask (both characters made by artist Fantasyfull).
• Rapscallion's striped sleeve (made by artist RexSadio).
• Dark Rex's sleeve (another character made by NolloBandz).
• Boxy's cardboard parts, Angler fish tattoo, and Cozy Chomps' shark slippers (both characters made by artist sharktoofs1 who would later design some official Fortnite skins).
• Meowscles, which is an exception to the fan-made content in the design; he is actually an original creation by Epic Games, although he is based on a different fan concept by RexSadio.

The remaining confirmed fan community references as described in the original Ava artwork Reddit thread whose creators are currently unidentified in this submission are as follows:

• Kneecaps-the box guys
• Gold sack and the small gold patch on the pants-aura and guild
• Minty stuff
• Tender defender on the shield

The idea of building forts stemmed from an idea where players had to play mini-games in order to complete their fortifications. They later changed it so that the forts built themselves whenever the player opened up the "edit" function.

Fortnite was stuck in development hell, with such development beginning as early as 2011 when it was first announced at the Spike Video Game Awards. The earliest idea for Fortnite was a horror-style third-person shooter similar to Gears of War, another series developed by Epic Games and later sold off to Microsoft.

Fortnite was originally made using Unreal Engine 3, but later shifted to its successor Unreal Engine 4 due to new high-tech functions that its preceding engine lacked. Because of this, the game was almost a PC-exclusive game and was set for a 2013 release, as Epic Games did not want to wait months for a game to get approved by console manufacturers, such as Nintendo and Sony, although they later acknowledged that a console release could not be ruled out. As Epic shifted to Unreal Engine 4 however, they immediately ran into development problems, which resulted in them hiring MMORPG developers to help finish the game.

The idea for a "Battle Royale" mode stemmed from battle-royale type games including PUBG: Battlegrounds, a game that had been released halfway through Fortnite's development. The staff at Epic Games loved these games so much that they decided to take the formula and make it a separate mode within the game.