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.