The Loop

	This page may contain speculation and/or fan interpretations.
	Due to lack of official information some information on this page may therefore be partially incorrect.

The Loop was an artificial sub-dimension within Reality Zero where everyone trapped inside would be fighting endlessly to death in a time loop. Those people were deprived from their memory and their ability to speak and followed by a deadly Storm, which resets every 22 minutes. It was managed by the Imagined Order.

People in the Loop or who were once trapped inside are called "Loopers".

The Loop

The Loop is an endless pseudo-time loop of Battle Royale, created and managed by the Imagined Order. Every 22 minutes, The Storm slowly closes in on the island, resetting the loop when the last person survives (if there is any). This last survivor if located at the exact center of The Storm would escapes the loop^[1]. Upon entrance of the Loop, inhabitants are rendered mute and their memories start to deteriorate. Despite this, the loop does not reset the environment of the Island, nor does it reset any deeper thoughts of feelings or emotions^[2]. Loopers can still communicate via non-verbal means, such as how Batman communicates with Snake Eyes, enabling Batman to escape the loop^[3].

The Loop itself is run by a computer program named the Loop Control System,^[4] when the Loop Control Computer is off, The Loop itself is offline.^[5] During The Devourer of Worlds event, Tony Stark describes to The Looper, that he hacked the Loop.^[6] However, the Loop had to be monitored constantly^[7] or remotely controlled by the Imagined Order.^[8]

Loop Effects

• Memory Manipulation
  • The Loop deteriorates your memory, especially your sense of identity.^[9]

• Inability to speak
  • The Loop removes the ability to speak, forcing the Loopers to communicate through non-verbal communication.
    • Certain person, however, retained their ability to speak, such as Bunker Jonesy,^[10] Harley Quinn^[11] and The Looper.^[12]

• Restricting Metahuman Abilities
  • Your special abilities are restricted due to memory loss causing you to lose knowledge of your powers.
  • Your body will be vulnerable to bullets.^[13]

• Creation of Snapshots
  • Escaping the Loop creates a Snapshot, an exact moment of a Looper once trapped inside the loop. A Snapshot is a perfect copy of a looper having the exact same appearance, abilities, memories and personality as their original self. However they tend to evolve differently than them, this is the case of Jones, Geno and Batman's Snapshots.

Outside of the Loop

Outside of The Loop, or the Extra Loop, is the location a Looper ends up after escaping The Loop. All usual effects of The Loop are gone, but the escaped Looper is still trapped on the Island and unable to remember the reality they come from. This place was notably featured in Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point, as well as during Chapter 3.^[14]

Extra-Loop Effects

• No Language Barrier
  • Everyone will speak the same language and can understand each other.^[15]
• Memory Manipulation
  • The Extra Loop let you recover the memories of every loop you lived, but not those from before one's arrival on the Island.^[15]

The Storm

One of the main forces that maintains the loop is the storm, a sentient entity member of The Army of the Last Reality. It was externally controlled by the Imagined Order thanks to a shield and wast amount of energy, likely coming from the Zero Point. If a disturbance were to happens to The Storm, The Loop would start to break down.^[16]

Breaking the Storm

Due to a poor understanding of the connection between the Storm and the Loop, Midas attempted to push back the Storm using the Device which temporarily broke the Loop (this allowed the first meeting between The Looper and Agent Jones) and resulted in The Wall of Water.

Imagined Order

The IO created the Loop and manage most if not all of its aspects. They kidnap people from countless realities and put them inside. All this in order to study the fighters, their powers, their time spent in The Loop and when/how they discover how to escape. The final goal of the Imagined Order is to find the perfect organizational system, for the perfect civilization. Some Loopers who escaped The Loop were also recruited by the Imagined Order.

In The Bridge, I.O. Loop Control room is a spherical monitor room with a massive computer named the Loop Control Computer in the middle with multiple panels.

Loop Immunity

To prevent the Loop's abilities from affecting certain individuals, materials that can be used to shape new reality like The Zero Point are required to make loop shield devices. A sealed environment suit can also stop the Loop effects. Swimming deep underwater also works.

Sealed Environment

A sealed environment keeps The Loop's effects away,^[17] but doesn't allow the user to escape The Loop, as they still need to escape The Loop through the Eye of The Storm. If the suit gets damaged, all of its effects wear off and The Loop resets the memory. Known users of this method are the members of The Seven, IO Guards and Lex Luthor.

I.O. Technology

The Imagined Order developed many forms of technology that allows them to enter The Loop with no memory loss. The most known one is a Portal Device, which was commonly carried by Agent Jones. If a Portal Device gets destroyed or overloaded, the user gets stuck in The Loop. A small device was also given to Deathstroke which created a small force shield around him with the same signature as The Storm, allowing him to bypass The Loop.

World Forge Visor

The Batman Who Laughs' visor made from World Forge, a type of material similar to the Zero Point. It keeps his memory and speech intact.

Timeline

Before Chapter 1

According to Bunker Jonesy, The Imagined Order started various experiments with The Zero Point, One of the experiments was to send Agent Jones into the Zero Point to see what will happens.

Season 4

In Season 4, The Visitor, a member of the mysterious Seven makes his way onto the Island via a meteor crash, and nearing the end of the season attempts to escape it using a rocket, in the Blast Off event. However, during this attempt, the rocket creates several rifts in the sky, causing a sideways rift between reality, a Sideways Rift. One of the results of this is a person from the real world, named Drift, being inducted into the loop.

Season X

After the events of The Final Showdown event, the Zero Point is left exposed, and creates another bridge between realities. This time however, it brings another member of The Seven, named The Scientist. Initially arriving outside The Loop, The Scientist escaped from the meteor and began building Rift Beacons, in order to open several rifts in the sky in order to bring the otger members of The Seven for their plan: to contain The Zero Point. AFter all the rifts were opened, The Scientist began working on another rocket, but realize that to trigger his device, he needed to be inside The Loop. The Scientist decided to record tapes, in order for him to remember what he has to do once inside The Loop if he ever loses his memory. These tapes detail some of the effects of the Loop for the first time explicitly. The Scientist succeeds, and launches a rocket alongside several unknown members of the Seven, and along with them collide The Meteor with the zero point in order to contain it's explosion. While initially a success, interference from people outside The Loop that was not calculated caused the Zero Point to become a black hole.

Chapter 2: Season 1

After the result of the End event, Athena was converted into two new Island, Apollo and Artemis. As The Bridge was intact, the Imagined Order could restart The Loop once again, however they contracted E.G.O. to map the new Island.

Chapter 2: Season 2

In this season, Midas first appears on the island and begins to build a device which harnesses the power of the Zero Point to push back the storm. This is unsuccessful, and instead a Wall of Water is created, flooding the entire island. The Storm being connected to the Loop was first revealed here, and this one was temporarily broken. As a result of this, The player is continuously transported to a mysterious office, and a familiar face interacts with the player, showing surprise that they can understand him as they came from outside the loop. John Jones is the man present, and he is the first person aside from the Scientist to be audible.

Chapter 2: Season 3

In Chapter 2: Season 3, Thor is transported to the island to warn the inhabitants of Galactus' arrival, but begins to lose his memories and voice. However, after briefly remembering why he was here, he quickly brings other Marvel characters to island, and in particular, Tony Stark.

Chapter 2: Season 4

After arriving on the island, all the Marvel heroes and villains began to lose their memories. Later, they all escaped the loop, under unknown circumstances, with Iron Man seemingly being one of the firsts. Throughout the season, he constructs a Stark Industries lab and works on a plan to stop Galactus from absorbing the Zero Point. During the The Devourer of Worlds event, with the players help, Tony Stark manages to send Galactus far away from the Island, but the Zero Point was left exposed. During the event, Tony Stark mentions having 'hacked' the loop and made a few million clones of Battle Buses, aiding to his ability to communicate with the player, as with other members of Thor's crew.

Chapter 2: Season 5

John Jones is tasked by Doctor Slone to stabilize The Zero Point, reseal The Bridge, and make sure nobody escapes The Loop. Despite this he goes back into the Loop to recruit various hunters from different Realities to help him make sure nobody escapes. Bunker Jonesy reveal to The Looper tehre is a way to get out of The Loop during a conversation they had. During several quests, he gave them clue related to The Storm.

Chapter 2: Season 6

In the Zero Crisis Finale, Agent Jones disregards Doctor Slone's orders to escape and to not collaborate with The Seven to reseal the now vulnerable Zero Point. With the help of The Foundation, he is able to reseal the Zero Point (if only temporarily), but as a consequence is now inside of The Loop himself. During Spire Quests, The Looper learns that, like all the other Jonesy snapshots, Bunker Jonesy ended up losing his memory, but it was by being locked up in the Bunker for "decades, if not centuries" that he finally regained his memory and that he understood that once in the loop, we are only a snapshot of the person that we are and therefore that he is not "the real" Jonesy.

Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point

Batman entered the loop through a huge rift in the sky. He figures out how the loop works by creating a shack and filling it with items from the each loop, and they always stay there meaning with the loop, locations with changes don't get looped and destroyed or back to how it was. He also finds out how to escape the loop, he later escapes and find out there's an extra layer of the Loop.

At the end of Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point Issue 2, Catwoman escaped from the Loop thanks to the help of Batman, it would apparently require being in the center of the Storm and killing the last survivor by himself (the last survivor must not die of the Storm).

In Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point Issue 3, Batman successfully escapes the Loop and enters the Extra-Loop with the help of Snake Eyes but is confronted by Deathstroke who is holding Catwoman hostage.

In Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point Issue 6, Batman and Catwoman successfully escapes the island and regain all of their memories.

Chapter 2: Season 7

The Bridge Loop Control room was revealed in Impostors mode. A spherical room with large computers. It utilizes Cube monolith panels which are used to control the Loop.

Chapter 2: Season 8

A certain cosmic metal from World Forge made The Batman Who Laughs immune to the Loop's memory resets, so he enters it and goes on killing spree.

Chapter 3: Season 1

Reality Zero was flipped and Apollo was replaced by Artemis, an island inhabited by the Seven and the Loopers that they freed from the Loop. With the partial destruction of The Bridge the conditions of the Loop are unknown.

Chapter 3: Season 3

After the defeat of the Imagined Order and the destruction of The Bridge, the Loop is no longer under the I.O.'s heavy protection and control, meaning that the Loopers are now free. The Seven look for a way to bring everyone home while researching the Reality Tree, but things don't go as planned due to a new and mysterious threat.

At this period, the Loop's status is unknown. Considering The Loop needed to be monitored by the Imagined Order and that the installation of The Bridge were necessary for it to work, The Loop may have stopped working.

Chapter 3: Season 4

Fracture

As The Herald destroyed Reality Zero, and therefore The Loop (if it still existed) along with it.

Chapter 4

After the annihilation of Apollo and Artemis, and the creation of Asteria as the new Reality Zero, all the people who have been brought into Asteria now simply live on the Island without being trapped inside The Loop. As the Zero Point is later revealed to be petrified and unusable, that The Loop System is absent as the Imagined Order was no longer here to recreate it and manage the Loop and that Paradigm recovered the Loop Breaker project files for her plan, it's suggested that The Loop wasn't recreated in the new Reality Zero.

Chapter 5

As Jones created Helios and plenty of realities by generating a new Big Bang in the past, Asteria's inhabitants fled their dying reality and ended in a completely new reality. Just like the previous chapter, the inhabitants aren't trapped in The Loop and simply live their lives and can be killed.^[18][19]

Gallery

The Loop breaking down during the Device Event

Batman's storm movement board

Trivia

• Zero War writer Christos Gage answered a question on Twitter about why The Storm was still present (in-game) after the defeat of the Imagined Order: "That seems to suggest that The Loop is not something created or maintained by the Imagined Order, but rather something inherent to the Island, don't you think ? (Though the Order seems to like dropping people onto it)" suggesting the Imagined Order never created The Loop nor maintained it.
  • This statement is contradicted by Impostors mode, which revealed The Loop was run on a computer.^[4][5]
    • Iron Man revealed he was able to hack the Loop itself^[20], implying it was running on a system.
  • This statement is contradicted during Chapter 2: Season 8, which revealed that The Storm was in fact related to The Last Reality when it helped to give birth to new cubes,^[21] during Birth of Corruption Cubes mini events.
    • This element is further reinforced as Fortnite: Save The World revealed Storm Kings were actually Corruption Cubes.
    • Additionally, in Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point Issue 1, Batman deduced from The Storm's movements that it was remotely controlled by someone having at their disposal an immense amount of energy^[22]. The Device Event confirm this, as when Midas managed to to break shield that allowed to control The Storm, the later became out of control and revealed its sentient nature.
      • During The Device Event, once Midas started to push back the Storm, The Loop itself started to destabilize, showing that The Storm is an important component of it, implying that The Loop is not natural, but was instead created.
    • Impostors mode revealed that IO was responsible for creating Chests, Supply Drops and Ammo Boxes which could be found inside The Loop^[23] and revealed that The Bridge had a room called "Loop Control".
    • In Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point Issue 3, we learn that IO's PsyOps division was responsible for erasing memories of Loopers.^[24]
    • In Batman/Fortnite: Zero Point Issue 3, we learn that IO can also determine which fighter will face another.^[25]
  • In Impostors mode, it is revealed that the Imagined Order can put offline The Loop.^[26]
• In Batman/Fortnite: Foundation, The Foundation confirm that The Seven seek to destroy The Loop.^[27]
  • Paradise Quests Part two revealed the existence of a project of the Seven named Loop Breaker. ^[28]
  • This strongly imply that The Loop is not something natural as Foundation later confirm several time his goal is to put everything in the natural order of things in Batman/Fortnite: Foundation and Fortnite X Marvel: Zero War.
• After Chapter 3, The Loop itself was never mentioned again.
  • However, during Chapter 5 all people who arrived on Helios's Reality Zero were still called Loopers, whereas newcomers such as gods and Wasteland Warriors as well as native inhabitants of Helios were never referred to as such.

References