The 5 most unnerving, scariest Fortnite skins

As I mentioned in my last article, the 8 Funniest, Silliest Fortnite skins, one of the biggest factors in Fortnite’s lasting success is the vast array of skins to choose from; at this point there’s one for every occasion and mood, ranging from silly to weird to holiday themed to the downright frightening – or in this case, just in time for Halloween (and Fortnitemares), both holiday-themed and frightening.

So grab your Pumpkin Launchers, Beast Boys and Ghoul Troopers and behold the scariest skins in Fortnite.

Nitehare

“Hopping straight out of your nightmares.”

One of the most memorable story beats from the 2001 film Donnie Darko is when the titular main character, Donnie, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, comes across what appears to be a phantasmagoric man in a demonic bunny suit.

Donnie first sees the demon bunny, who we later come to learn is named Frank, on the sidewalk during a sleepwalking episode and then later in the Aero movie theater, where Frank materializes a row behind Donnie and his sleeping girlfriend.

“Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit?” Donnie asks him.

“Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?” Frank replies in enigmatic fashion.

It’s a haunting scene and a cryptic conversation made all the more bizarre by the dark ambiance of the movie theater, the eerie operatic music, the fact that at this point in the movie you still have no idea what the hell is going on and of course, perhaps most importantly, the emotionless appearance of costumed Frank, the figure in a “stupid” but undeniably ghastly-looking demonic bunny suit.

The first time I came across Nitehare in Fortnite, all those memories I had seeing Frank for the first time in Donnie Darko came flooding back.

And it cost me my life.

Sure, Nitehare didn’t exactly resemble demon bunny Frank – he moreso looks like a zombiefied, bipedal version of one of the bedraggled-looking bunnies from Watership Down (an animated source of nightmare fuel from my childhood) but seeing him had the exact same, petrified-stupor-inducing effect.

And all Nitehare was doing was standing in the corner, long, pierced bunny ears dangling, wearing his strange pseudo-Cenobite fisherman outfit with the fishhooks on the front, looting a chest while I sat there glaring at him, too nervous to move, wondering if I’d entered some highly unstable, tangent universe where the manipulated dead were surreptitiously beguiling me towards some underlying purpose.

“Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit?” I wanted to nervously ask.

But it was too late. Nitehare had already turned around, one-pumped me in the face with a shotgun and then proceeded to Griddy over my dead carcass. It was at that moment that I decided that not only was Nitehare one of the scariest Fortnite skins in the game, but also one of my most abhorred.

Sinister Glare

“He holds your fate in his hand.”

Sinister Glare leans more towards a creepy-cool Fortnite skin rather than one of the scariest Fortnite skins in the game, but it’s too macabre not to include on this list.

Sinister Glare was added to Fortnite as winner of March’s Concept Royale contest in 2022 (alongside Kitsu’s Undying Sorrow concept skin). The skin is a slender humanoid wearing tri-colored teal, black and purple robes with a giant blue hand in place of a head and a malevolent red eye in the middle of its palm.

Sinister Glare gives me the overwhelming impression of an evil warlock who conjured dark magic or devilry far above his pay grade and as a result things got ahem, out of hand. Notwithstanding, Sinister Glare doesn’t seem all that debilitated without a regular human head, assuming he no longer has to eat food to sustain himself.

So how does Sinister Glare derive nourishment now that he doesn’t have a mouth? That might just be the most disturbing detail of Sinister Glare to consider and we all know he’s not saying a word about it.

… Unless it’s using sign language. Sinister Glare is a reactive skin, which means it reacts to certain situations in-game; in its case, when eliminating an opponent, the hand for a head snaps its fingers and makes an L-shape to signify that its defeated opponent is a loser.

What other examples of sign language might Sinister Glare know? The commonly known one which uses a single finger as an obscene insult? Probably. And if Sinister Glare is using the shape of an L after eliminating an opponent, we can only imagine what it’d use the middle finger for.

Michael Myers

To the uninitiated, Michael Myers might just look like a guy wearing janitorial coveralls and a cast of William Shatner’s face painted white for a mask.

What does that make him one of the scariest Fortnite skins in the game, you ask?

Those of us who have seen the Halloween movies know better. In other words, looks can be deceiving. Imagine now, this seemingly simple-attired individual stalking you all across the Fortnite battle royale island is a serial killer with a foot-long chef’s knife for a pickaxe.

And that he never makes a sound. Even though he’s preternaturally strong.

And that conventional weaponry, even assault rifles and shotguns can’t seem to put him down for good.

And the mask has that same, pale, blank-faced, emotionless look on it even as he slaughters victim after victim after victim. There’s never a look of fear or effort or remorse – just a blank, stoic facsimile of a face, silent and determined and relentless. Never stopping. Incessantly, silently stalking.

And there seems to be no discernible motive to his madness. He’s just Michael Myers, The Shape: an enigmatic, inscrutable force of nature. Or perhaps evil itself personified.

And this theme song is playing the entire time as you’re inevitably hunted down and butchered.

All of that is what makes Michael Myers one of the scariest Fortnite skins in the game.

Hay Man

As a big stan of Scarecrow from the Batman rogues gallery, Hay Man immediately stood out as an homage to the Gotham supervillain with a Fortnite twist. And although Hay Man’s design, with his burlap mask, stitched-grin mouth, patchworked overcoat, hay-stuffed hat and glowing orange eyes is frighteningly cool and reminiscent of Dr. Jonathan Crane’s character from Batman… that’s not what makes the skin so frightening.

My fear of Hay Man stems from a little story called Harold the Scarecrow from Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. And not just the story itself, which is an unsettling tale of a scarecrow coming to life to defend itself against two cruel farmers but the illustration from the original editions which accompanied it.

Now you can see why the idea of a scarecrow coming to life is such a pants-wetting one after seeing that Stephen Gammell illustration. And why when we see Hay Man in Fortnite we just start chanting, “Scarecrow” like a brain-scrambled Falcone from Batman Begins.

“… Scarecrow. Scarecrow.”

Mincemeat

Of all the unnerving, scariest Fortnite skins on this list, Mincemeat might actually be the most unnerving.

I mean just look at it.

Mincemeat is just plain sickening. He’s both a rotting corpse and a meat pie, but upright, and with a Jack Skellington rictus grin etched on his pie vents.

He’s a cursed, nightmare-inducing, shambling-looking, pastry-crusted bogeyman with flies circling all around its fetid, putrescent, sour-spoiled meat, vivisected looking body.

And I love it.

Oh, and in case you have a short memory, here’s an image of Mincemeat holding a Jonesey pie just in case you thought you weren’t going to have any nightmares for the next few consecutive months. Happy Halloween!

Picture credit: @sfm_dr

What did you think of our list of the 5 most unnerving, scariest Fortnite skins? Did we leave any frightening Fortnite skins off this list that you think we should include? Let us know in the comments.