The Left 4 Dead community was confused and amused by the appearance of a fifth purple-colored protagonist on the wiki authored by the game’s fans.
“Purple Francis” was recently added to the encyclopedic fan resource in great detail. Although vandalism on wiki pages is common, the character was an unusually compromised creation, spread over dozens of pages on the site. It was enough for the subject to be quickly noticed and explode on Twitter:
Someone vandalized the Left 4 Dead wiki, apparently for no reason, with an * extensive * article about a meaningless non-existent character named Purple Francis, including cross-references from him on other wiki pages pic.twitter.com/XixF7VCSpq
-? I open my wallet and it is full of blood.? (@thinkiamsad) February 14, 2021
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Wiki entries detailed the fictional background story and the character’s development history – including Valve’s removal of retail copies of the game due to negative feedback, since Francis Roxo was “just a recolor of Francis” that he turned. .. purple.
Spoilsport wiki editors have now removed references to the creation, but not before Purple Francis generated some very real fans of his own.
Modify until broken: Left 4 Dead 2 and more!
There is now a stack of Purple Francis fanart, an official Discord server and a mod on Steam Workshop that claims to restore Purple Francis “cut content” to the game. It was quickly assembled over the weekend by Bobinsox, who worked on the official update to The Last Stand community – the game’s first major DLC in eight years, released last September.
1 fan whoever downloaded the mod said it made Francis “look like jelly”:
In conversation with Eurogamer, the creator of Purple Francis and author of the Left 4 Dead wiki, Lucy, told me that interest in the character took her by surprise – for some reasons.
The Purple Francis idea started as a personal joke between her and a friend, Evan, who then turned into wiki editions. Furthermore…
“Are we being honest? I don’t even have Left 4 Dead lmao,” Lucy told me. “I was trying to catch it, but I never had time for that.
“Evan (co-creator) plays a lot and I’ve seen him play a few times. I’m going to get a Steam card this weekend.”
Purple Francis would be proud.