Helldivers 2: Why Everyone's Talking About Karl (Explanation & Theories)

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The latest mystery revolves around the identity of a mysterious figure known only as Karl. Thanks to its developers' penchant for shadow dropping new content, then denying its existence on social media, is full of mysteries. It's all part of a massive roleplaying metagame: players pretend they're actually soldiers of Super Earth, and its developers their commanding officers, with the former eating up the propaganda the latter spreads.

Sometimes, lore drops or new faction teases for take the form of cryptic puzzles. It's not unheard of for official accounts to post strings of binary that must first go through several ciphers before it can be translated into a readable form. These transmissions are usually considered treasonous, and the decoding, difficult as it may be, is all part of the fun. The latest of these binary Tweets has caused quite a stir. It may be the shortest lore drop to date, but there's a hidden complexity in its simplicity.

A mysterious, now-deleted post on X (formerly Twitter) by the official account, since shared on Reddit by users like tansiboy04, contains a string of binary text that, when translated, references the identity of an unknown person named Karl. Thankfully, this one doesn't have to go through any ciphers — a simple binary-to-ASCII translation reveals that it simply says, "" (Yes, in all caps.)

The official account later followed up with a retraction, simply explaining the message away as a bit of meaningless static. But the damage was already done, and players in the replies already had a litany of questions about Karl.

Answers about Karl were not immediately forthcoming. No one could say who he was, why he was missing, or where he might have gone. A common fan theory emerged, however, suggesting that the use of Karl's name might be a reference to , another co-op shooter with many similarities to. Like, requires players to jet off to distant planets in search of rare resources. Once there, they fend off giant bugs, working