KFC’s Colonel Sanders Joins FFXIV — And He’s a Black Mage

These crossovers are getting pretty wild. There’s Xenomorphs in Dead by Daylight and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Street Fighter, but this might be one of the strangest yet. Colonel Sanders — yes, the one of KFC fame — is heading to Final Fantasy XIV, presumably with a mission to batter and deep fry every Chocobo in sight.

The news came via a very brief video posted on KFC Japan’s X (formerly Twitter) page, alongside the message (via machine translation) that “Colonel Sanders is steadily preparing for a new adventure in another world…” It shows the iconic creator of the fast-food chain standing by the seashore, ending with him casting the Triplecast spell, which very strongly implies he will be a Black Mage.

The video says only that he’s coming soon to the game, so whether it’s just as a costume, a questline, or something more is yet to be confirmed.

カーネル・サンダース、異世界での新たな冒険に向けて、着々と準備中・・・❗️❓#KFC新コラボ #KFC pic.twitter.com/e4KMu2bbF8

— ケンタッキーフライドチキン🍗 (@KFC_jp) September 19, 2023

However, this isn’t the first collaboration between FFXIV and KFC. Back in 2019, the companies ran a special promotion in China where players could earn a code to unlock a Fat Black Chocobo mount. To get it, though, you had to order a family of four meal deal that consisted of a veritable mountain of food. Some initial reports suggested that players also had to eat the entire meal before the code would be provided, but that was later debunked.

In addition to Colonel Sanders making his way to FFXIV, it was also recently revealed that the game will finally make its way to Xbox platforms in 2024, almost 15 years after it first launched and more than a decade since the A Realm Reborn update that completely overhauled the initial version. Next year will also see the launch of the newest expansion, called Dawntrail, which you can find out all about here.