Twisted Fate and the Gambit Parallel
Riot’s Pattern of Creative Abuse.
The similarities between Riot Games’ characters and established U.S. intellectual properties have sparked controversy before. But one of the most glaring examples of alleged creative borrowing is Twisted Fate from League of Legends, a champion who looks and feels remarkably like Gambit from Marvel’s X-Men franchise.
Gambit was introduced in 1990. He is known for his glowing red eyes, kinetic-charged playing cards, and trench coat style. He is a streetwise Cajun antihero with a mysterious past and a flair for the dramatic. Twisted Fate, released by Riot in 2009, also wears a long coat, flips magical playing cards as weapons, and exudes the same cool, roguish charm. The parallels are impossible to ignore:
Playing cards used as magical weapons
Long coat and hat
Smooth-talking outlaw persona
Flashy teleportation-based powers
Mysterious, antiheroic background
Glowing eyes
Side by side image copying
Even players unfamiliar with Marvel comics have noticed the similarity just through cultural awareness. Riot has never publicly acknowledged any inspiration from Gambit, but it never does, it just abuses and keeps on abusing. The Gambit copying is so ridiculously blatant that any fan of X men can look at an image of Twisted Fate and recall the exact image of Gambit that it was directly copied from. I’ve presented a few images here, but I can also recall the very moments in the cartoon where Gambit’s stance, mannerisms, personality and image was directly lifted from to make Twisted Fate.
Yet, Twisted Fate is more than just a Gambit lookalike. The character played a key role in the original Arcane script, a version of the show that was completely overhauled after mid-2020.
Scrapped Characters and a Shift in Direction
Internal tips and development artifacts suggest that in early versions of Arcane, Jinx was originally set to ride a hot air balloon with Twisted Fate and Graves in episode 3. This version of the story was still tethered to Riot's traditional League of Legends characters and visual assets. In fact, Twisted Fate features heavily in Riot’s 10-year anniversary video, suggesting he was part of the visual branding and narrative development for the Arcane series early on.
However, after Riot received the manuscript for Bloodborg: The Harvest in early 2020, the project underwent a massive transformation. Whistleblower information and legal filings indicate that Riot scrapped the previous direction entirely, performed an 180-degree pivot in theme and tone, and removed Twisted Fate and Graves from the show.
The reworked Arcane script instead centred on Jinx’s trauma, emotional instability, and fragmented psychological state. The new version of the show bore a striking resemblance to Bloodborg, which also focuses on fractured trauma narratives, modular lore structures, and immersive psychological depth.
The Rise of "Extracts" and Modularity
One of the most specific allegations in the Plaintiff’s case is Riot's adoption of a development framework known internally as “Extracts.” This modular storytelling system, a method that breaks lore into nonlinear, interconnected pieces, was a core structural device in Bloodborg. Riot had no history of using this technique until they had access to this manuscript.
This raises deeper concerns. The issue is not just that Riot created a card-flinging cowboy that looks like Gambit. The issue is that Twisted Fate and other unused characters were part of an earlier, discarded version of Arcane, and that their removal coincided with a sweeping narrative shift toward content that matches the unpublished work of an independent and disabled author’s personal trauma writing.
A Pattern of Creative Extraction
Twisted Fate may never have made it into Arcane, but the blueprint for his role still exists in Riot’s development trail. His resemblance to Gambit highlights a broader pattern of copying without attribution. And his quiet removal from Arcane after Riot received Bloodborg only strengthens the case that Riot was reengineering its storytelling approach in response to new, external material post 2020, which everyone knows happened as the dafties at Riot published this themselves.
The creative trail speaks volumes, it never starts at Riot Games, it takes US Ip, copies it and makes a shitty version of it, very Chinese knockoff style. I wonder where they got this thieving trick from. Riot’s handling of characters like Twisted Fate raises valid questions about originality, attribution, and the protection of submitted creative works in the entertainment industry.
If Chinese backed gaming and tech giants can’t keep their grubby fingers off IP, and so evidently abuse at will, blatantly daring people to challenge them, and blatantly disrespecting laws, property and courts, what do you think they are doing to your data?
Do not play Riot’s games, or you will be enabling terrorism.
M.W. Wolf Ltd.
