#man am i already kinda starting to miss him in mkmiv

[sortanonymous]

Max Haltmann, soup can sports curses, and some of the weirdest foreshadowing in Kirby fanfic history (Meta Knightmare III)

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR META KNIGHTMARE III

In Chapter 12 of The Later Roller Coaster, among other things listed for what the Knights are doing post-RtDL, it's mentioned that Max got his face on the labels of ETHICALLY SOURCED cans of chunky chicken soup. Sound familiar? Because this does involve some real-life sports stuff, crazily enough.

So you know Chunky's Soup? And you know how athletes, especially NFL players, star in ads with them? Well there's a Madden cover-style curse, especially prevalent in the 2000s, where players in those ads would get injured afterwards. (If any 2000s Eagles fans happen to see this, then I am very sorry for triggering any bad memories.) So how does this all tie together to Max?

Well the curse got Max too, and quite badly. And by quite badly, I mean it killed him! No, it wasn't because of him flying out and getting trapped by Star Dream, or Star Dream going beserk and nearly killing Susie before he pushed her out of the way! It was that one soup can sponsership that sealed Max's doom! This is why you shouldn't sell out, kids! (For real, it's actually pretty ironic considering how much of a capitalist maniac post-Star Dream Max is, both in canon and in MKM.)

Yep! I seriously used a blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to a C-tier sports curse involving soup commercials in a Kirby fic to foreshadow the altered death of Max Haltmann (who btw becomes one of the Meta-Knights here alongside Susie after happily finding her years before Planet Robobot can happen). All I can say is that when I was first thinking up this insane saga in late 2019/early, pre-lockdown 2020, I wouldn't exactly have expected it would come to this (for one, the only sport I was even a bit interested in starting in 2020 was NASCAR, hence the retired racer-turned-ship salesman in MKMI). But hey, in case you haven't noticed yet this decade, at lot can change in four years!