Invincible VS devs would add Scorpion, if he fits the world

The Invincible VS team is flirting with a Mortal Kombat crossover, and the “if” matters. At Evo 2026, Game Director Dave Hall and Lead Combat Designer Bau Bautista said they would welcome guest characters from other properties, but the characters have to “reasonably fit within Invincible's world.” And when the conversation landed on Scorpion, both devs reacted positively, with Bautista explicitly saying he would take the chance if it’s available. Hall also put the boundary on things with a memorable example: he wouldn’t want to drop “Mario or Luigi” into Invincible, because it would feel off-brand for the tone and violence of the universe.

That “fit the world” requirement is the real story. This is not a generic, PR-friendly openness to any crossover under the sun. It’s a product rule that connects creative licensing to gameplay and narrative coherence, and it has knock-on effects for how fighting games think about guest characters today. Bautista framed Invincible’s existing history as evidence they can do this without breaking immersion, noting that Invincible has “a ton of guests and crossovers throughout the comics.” Their stance suggests they are treating IP crossovers less like random spice and more like something that needs internal logic, even when the source material is totally in the “we will happily rip heads off” category.

Why is that a big deal now? Because fighting games are in the middle of an “everything crossover” moment, and the Invincible VS team is reading the same signals the rest of the genre is reading. The source highlights a broader trend: Tekken 8 adding Yujiro Hanma for Season Three; Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves bringing in Kenshiro this summer; and Street Fighter 6 getting Final Fantasy VII’s Tifa Lockhart in early 2027. Mortal Kombat itself is positioned as the archetype for guest chaos, bringing in Alien’s Xenomorph, The Boys’ Homelander, and even Omni-Man itself. In other words, what’s happening in Invincible VS isn’t happening in a vacuum. It is lining up with how players increasingly expect roster surprises and recognizable cross-IP moments.

But Invincible VS is not just talking guests. The devs also used Evo 2026 to explain how they’re managing future content, especially where mechanics and single-player modes fit into a tight development reality. Hall and Bautista said they’re not done publishing more single-player content, and they reiterated a commitment to “get more single-player experience.” They also admitted limits: Hall couldn’t offer “any reassurances” about continuing the cinematic story mode that ended on a cliffhanger. That distinction matters. It tells you they see single-player as important, but cinematic continuation has a different bar, likely tied to scope and the costs of building out narrative set pieces.

They also discussed Immortal’s revive technique and how that thinking used to touch other characters, specifically Atom Eve. Bautista said they initially intended for Atom Eve to have a revive mechanic, but ran into problems early on with “too much to work through.” He explained that they didn’t know if they could deliver it “to the level and the quality that we needed to in time,” so they chose to focus on making her “solid as heck” and revisit later. Bautista was open to adding revive in future updates “especially once our meta starts to get more established,” and he pointed to the post-ship phase as the moment to push. The game’s meta needs to settle, then the team can start experimenting with new mechanics without destabilizing balance.

Finally, this briefing is also about how the team listens and ships. Hall said they are “constantly on top of every board,” and that feedback is coming from multiple channels, including their official Discord, social media, and even direct messages. He described a real-time development posture: if something is wrong, the team will “fix it as soon as we can,” using hot patches or similar. Hall and Bautista also tied this to their strategy: right now, the focus is “giving more to the players,” meaning pushing more characters, more modes, and building out the tournament scene. That connects directly back to the guest-character conversation. If guests like Scorpion are on the table, they likely need to be scheduled around balance, meta stability, content throughput, and community expectations.

One more constraint sits under everything they said: team size. The source notes they are a “tiny team” of 50 people, which directly impacts how much they can do, even if they’re moving fast. That makes their crossovers, single-player plans, and mechanics additions a portfolio of tradeoffs, not a wish list. The strategic stakes for other operators and studios are clear: guest-IP decisions are becoming a competitive differentiator in fighting games, but execution requires world fit, timing, and disciplined iteration. In the Invincible VS case, the devs are basically saying, “Yes, we can do guests like Scorpion. No, we won’t do guests that break the rules of the universe or blow up the foundation first.”

And for players, the practical implication is equally sharp: the team is actively scanning community feedback and is willing to respond quickly with patches, but larger feature bets like revive mechanics or story continuation depend on the meta stabilizing and the team’s bandwidth. That combination of responsiveness and restraint is probably what keeps the hype honest.