Yep. Epic and Apple argued, in court, about whether a banana can be naked.

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Fortnite Peely Skin
Fortnite Peely Skin (Image credit: Epic Games)

What you need to know

  • The Epic Games v Apple lawsuit continues.
  • The pair managed to spend actual time in court talking about a banana and its clothes.

Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction and yes, it turns out that both Epic Games and Apple managed to argue about whether an animated banana should have to wear clothes or not. That's the point we're at in what could be the lawsuit that shakes the App Store up in a big way.

As the trial meanders its way into its second week we saw testimony from Matthew Weissinger, Epic's VP of marketing. That's the point at which one of Apple's many attorneys decided they wanted to raise the subject of Peely, an in-game character that's essentially a banana with arms and legs. But Apple had an important question – should it wear clothes?

An interaction, according to The Verge:

Apple attorney: We have in front of us a new set of images, and what is this screen showing?Weissinger: This is your matchmaking lobby.Attorney: And we have a large yellow banana here, don't we? In a tuxedo?Weissinger: Yes. That is Peely.Attorney: And that's Peely, did you say?Weissinger: Yeah.Attorney: And in fact, in the tuxedo, he's known as Agent Peely, correct?Weissinger: That's correct.Attorney: We thought it better to go with the suit than the naked banana, since we are in federal court this morning.

Apple seemed keen to point out, for some reason, that Fortnite has a naked banana in it because that's obviously going to corrupt the children and lead to anarchy the world over. Or something – I'm not really sure, honestly. Either way, it's a point that Epic's attorney wasn't letting slide – revisiting bananagate a couple of hours later. Because there's nothing better to talk about during these trials.

Epic attorney: A little bit of a digression. We talked about Peely? Our banana? Remember that?Weissinger: I do.Attorney: And there might have been an implication that to show Peely without a suit would have been inappropriate. Do you recall that?Weissinger: Yes.Attorney: Is there anything inappropriate about Peely without a suit?Weissinger: No, there is not.Attorney: If we could just put on the screen a picture of Peely — is there anything inappropriate about Peely without clothes?Weissinger: It's just a banana, ma'am.

If there's one thing this trial winds up being remembered for, please let it be "it's just a banana, ma'am."

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to work out how much these attorneys are being paid and then cry in a corner

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.