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5 Amazing References in the Heavy Is the Crown Music Video
With another League of Legends World Championship comes another banger song and music video with tons of references. Here are some of our favorites!
This year’s official song for the League of Legends World Championship (Worlds) has been revealed as Heavy is the Crown which features the legendary Linkin Park. As always, the introduction of the song came with a music video to hype fans up for the start of Worlds.
Aside from the epic tale it tells throughout its 3:45 runtime of Faker and the rest of T1 looking to defend their crown, Riot Games has made sure to include a ton of easter eggs and references like always for fans to find and enjoy. Luckily we won’t have to spend too much time digging through and finding all of these references as Shakarez has once again graced us with a list of the references found in the music video.
With so many to go through, let’s highlight and take a look at 5 of our favorites.
Flyquest Massu as Varus
LoL Worlds - Heavy is the Crown
© Riot Games
Despite some criticism from fans of certain characters in the video looking like Deft, Riot’s depiction of Flyquest’s young star ADC Massu shows what they’re capable of. While it’s something fairly small, the inclusion of his necklace is the perfect type of small detail that really sets characters apart especially when they don’t have a champion that’s as immediately iconic to them like Bin with Jax is.
Aside from the nice little detail Riot made sure to include for Massu, it’s nice to see a potential future face of North America get some attention so early into his career. It’ll be exciting to see where his career goes from here but for now it’s already clear: Massu is a star.
Bot Gap
Brance shown as Zeri
© Riot Games
Of course, we need to show some love to the minor regions, specifically with the music video’s shout out to the Brazillian ADC, Brance. Shown as Zeri in the video, there’s a moment where the lighting from his weapon can be seen clearly spelling out “bot gap,” a call back to his legendary moment from Worlds 2022.
While Brance and his current team, RED Canids, aren’t the region’s representatives for this year’s World Championship, the creative liberty of having him represent the region in the music video makes sense as his bot gap moment may be one of the greatest moments produced by the region on the international stage in recent memory. Hopefully, the representatives this year in paiN Gaming can create some more amazing memories for the region and the rest of the world to remember fondly.
A Hug of Triumph
Now it’s time to shift gears to focus on the stars of the music video in last year’s champions in T1. The first reference is to the hug shared by the bot lane duo of Gumayushi and Keria after winning the title last year.
To say T1’s 2023 season was rough would be an understatement. From Faker’s injury and the team’s general struggles through most of the Summer Split, their eventual victory at Worlds that year was an amazing display of the team’s tenacity and spirit with the hug shared by the two being the perfect moment to show just how much they went through to reach the top of the League of Legends mountain at long last. While it’ll remain to be seen if the team is able to defend their throne this year, we’re glad this moment is immortalized in the music video.
The winning moment
Zeus' winning moment
© Riot Games
Sticking with T1’s victory over Weibo Gaming to be crowned, another amazing reference was to Zeus’ 1v4 against Weibo that would end up being the winning moment of the series.
Despite being incredibly ahead on Aatrox, the painting really showed off how big of a moment it was as death seemed all but a guarantee in that moment. Instead Zeus was able to stay alive and turn things around as the rest of T1 joined the fight. While there’s a ton of amazing moments from T1’s 2023 run, this play was one that definitely deserved to be in the spotlight and highlighted in the music video.
This list wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t mention the reference to the legendary “All roads lead to me” quote from Faker which was shown in Korean in the music video.
There’s not much that can be said about the quote that hasn’t been said already. Given Faker’s legendary status within the game and esports as a whole and what happened following the quote, it should be no surprise that it had to be referenced in some way. Although Faker has been immortalized in League of Legends in a ton of different ways, for our money, this may be one of the better ones.
