By Kotaku | Created at 2026-06-23 18:59:58 | Updated at 2026-06-23 21:08:14
2 hours ago
Constant crossovers continue to plague the video game industry. Every company is throwing its games and characters into a Fortnite-shaped blender and feeding the cross-promotional slurry to fans whether they want it or not. Persona 5, a game I quite like, is one of the guiltiest examples of this. Atlus has been loaning out the Phantom Thieves to any company that will pay. The students of Shujin Academy have shown up in so many games that later shut down that it now feels like a Persona 5 collab is as much a kiss of death as anything else. The latest potential victim? Call of Duty Mobile.
A new trailer for the collaboration between the two games has given us our first actual look at uncannily realistic versions of Joker, Ann, Makoto, and Sumire as they’ll appear when the “Take Your Heart” event begins in the Activision shooter on July 1. Rather than plopping the Phantom Thieves into the game with their typical anime-inspired art style, Call of Duty Mobile is making these characters look more like your standard military sim operators. They look almost like dolls in a way that makes me deeply uncomfortable. But hey, if you want to pay money to put child soldiers in the middle of a battle zone, you can do that soon!
Call of Duty Mobile x Persona 5 Royal collaboration – new trailer pic.twitter.com/fZa0rlVy6o
— Faz (@ScrambledFaz) June 23, 2026
Call of Duty Mobile has become the series’ dumping ground for collab skins over the years, having also recently included characters from The Boys and Godzilla, just to name a few. The abundance of crossovers and otherwise “silly” or “out of place” skins that have invaded Call of Duty in recent years has become a major point of contention for some players, to the point that Call of Duty Modern Warfare 4 developer Infinity Ward has openly promised it won’t be using “clowny” skins in the upcoming military shooter. Whether that stays true down the line remains to be seen, but it’s clear that some COD fans are tired of seeing every piece of gaming food on their media plate touching each other.
I don’t even go here, but I do hate seeing my Phantom Thieves turned into weird Call of Duty skins. I’m generally just tired of crossovers altogether, and the novelty of seeing characters from one thing show up in another has worn off. It’s getting embarrassing how video games keep sacrificing their own identities to reference others.
