Overwatch’s foot fetish takes its approach to fashion to a new level

Blizzard’s team of shooters, Overwatch, pranked players in February with an item of footwear. It was a Greek-style warrior sandal. A screenshot showed the strappy shoe worn by Ramattra, an Omnic tank hero and the 36th playable character added to the game’s roster. Not the sandals themselves, which were part of a special event inspired from Greek mythology but the fact that a real human foot was attached to the sandal. As if the bizarre inclusion of the manicured hoof was too subtle, Overwatch’s official Twitter account posted a close-up of just Ramattra’s toes with the caption: “Poseidon Ramattra has toenails. Discuss.”

Overwatch’s character designs have long toed the line between horny and practical. But Blizzard’s tweet illustrated that the line is much blurrier in a time when all aspects of a character, not just bulging pecs or booming bustlines, can be hypersexualized. A piece of Twitter commentary from 2019 showed how many heroes in the game’s then-31-deep roster had some sort of barefoot or open-toe situation; the accompanying graphic revealed that a majority, 17 out of 31, had at least one skin where the character’s feet were visible, with six being women’s feet, seven being men’s feet, and the others belonging to either animals or robots.

Six new characters have appeared since the tweet: Echo, Sojourn Junker Queen Kiriko Ramattra Lifeweaver. Lifeweaver (as a human and Ramattra as a robot), both have feet visible on their skins. Lifeweaver, the game’s first out pansexual hero, is not only wearing sandals into battle; much like Poseidon Ramattra or ninja character Genji, he dons some futuristic barely-there sandals that suggest some kind of coverage of the soles of his feet. Meanwhile, the tops of his feet are fully exposed, something that, once again, Overwatch’s social media pointed outEnjoy the moment.

In fact, Overwatch’s social media accounts have a penchant for pointing out when a character’s skin has a foot-baring design. In February, Blizzard’s Twitter account for the game also shared four pictures of archer Hanzo’s feetThe caption for the image is a picture of his sandals. So great was Overwatch’s toe titillation that people have begun to question on official forums whether staff at Activision Blizzard might harbor a secret foot fetish.

And while the sheer level of footbaiting is notable, what’s also exceptional is that, unlike with other video game designs that seem completely impractical, the shoewear is both accurate and often on male feet. While we can have a lively back-and-forth about whether it’s right to give an Omnic toes, there’s no doubt that Poseidon Ramattra’s shoewear reflects a common Greek shoe.

According to the book, Greek sandals served a purpose other than causing the Internet to go crazy. They were by far the most popular type of Greek footwear. Shoes, Sandals and Slippers: Classical Antiquity Footwear: Feet Sadie Pickup, Sally Waite. In depictions, gods wore sandals as well. Nike, goddess of victory and messenger god Hermes are depicted in a statue at Athens’ Temple of Athena adjusting a sandal. The shoes were a great way to move around in battle and provided the necessary support for soldiers as they traversed the rugged terrain of Greece. Overwatch characters wear a variety of Japanese sandals. Some of them resemble the waraji, straw sandals which would have originally been worn by both warriors and ordinary people.

Not that being accurate matters in a game where a hamster drives a talking machine to crush his enemies, but this accuracy puts the game in a kind of win-win situation, one in which developers animate accurate shoes and the game’s social media is able to successfully turn that footwear into a sort of fetish wear.

It’s not new that video game characters have been sexualized, but the particular way that Overwatch’s social media sexualizes its characters’ feet feels like the culmination of decades of separate phenomena finally converging. It’s not just that a sexual attraction to feet is super common (it is) or that there is an entire digital industry dedicated to the exchange of feet pics for cash (there is), but the peculiar and specific ways those phenomena converge in the gaming community. Lara Croft topped the list of most popular video games characters on Pornhub’s site in 2021. When you type her name into Pornhub’s search box, you get a flood of results related to tentacle erotica. In the same year D.Va from Overwatch was the most-searched character in video games. There’s even a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to the history of Overwatch pornography.

Overwatch’s obsession with feet is a continuation of an old tradition that has seen video game heroes without shoes. There’s even an entire page on TV Tropes, a site dedicated to cataloging recurring themes in popular culture, about video game characters who go barefoot. Ryu from Street Fighter and Ken are also barefoot. This is true for dozens of other characters across all genres, times, and audiences. But even if there wasn’t the impetus on the part of game developers to see their characters fight sans footwear, horny gamers would find ways to compare notes about their favorite feet. Take, for instance, an official Tier Maker list dedicated to how video game characters’ feet smell, a list that includes foot fan faves like Bowser, Wario, and Sonic.

The idea that Overwatch’s social media acknowledges the importance of its characters in our sexual lives, particularly when they are associated with what many people would consider an unconventional form of sexual expression might be strange. But in playing with the way that these personalities have become part of our imaginations, Overwatch’s social media understands and even acknowledges the way that its characters stick with us outside of the time spent taking, killing, or healing in-game. These characters are ingrained in our minds by design alone, long after we have put away our controllers.