Prior to Marvel Rivals, casual superhero fans may have only been familiar with Moon Knight’s live-action 2022 Disney+ series starring Oscar Isaac. The Fist of Khonshu first appeared in comics 50 years ago when he went up against Marvel’s Werewolf by Night. However, some fans believe that Moon Knight has a grudge against Dracula because of a popular meme, and now even Marvel Rivals is getting in on the fun with some very amusing callbacks in the game.
The meme in question features artwork from one of Marvel’s comics, but the dialogue was reedited to make Moon Knight angry at the lord of the vampires over an unpaid debt. This never happened in Marvel’s comics, and Moon Knight hasn’t had a lot of interactions with Dracula in-continuity.
Marvel Rivals continuity isn’t bound by that technicality, and NetEase apparently added in a few Easter eggs for the meme in the new map, Empire of Eternal Night: Central Park, which debuted as part of mid-Season 1 update. Dracula is one of the main villains of Season 1, and Moon Knight was one of the first heroes in Marvel Rivals. They haven’t crossed paths on-screen yet, but Moon Knight mentions the debt Dracula owes him in the clips below.
So far, the two specific lines of dialogue that came up for Moon Knight in this map are “Dracula’s here? Good, that bloodsuckin’ nerd owes me big” and that it’s “time for Dracula to pay up.” There’s also another reference to it in Moon Knight’s in-game lore tab. In the text where Moon Knight is conversing with his patron deity, Khonshu, he says that “[vampires] suck” and “Dracula owes me money.”
This lighthearted touch is a welcome discovery after the news about NetEase laying off some of Marvel Rivals’ developers despite the game’s massive success. A recent report even suggested that NetEase considered replacing Marvel’s characters or canceling the game outright to avoid paying Disney for the rights to use them in the game. Regardless of whether either option was ever a viable choice, Marvel Rivals has already established itself as one of NetEase’s most popular titles in a very short time.
