The weekend has been pretty wild for Japan, but uniquely crazy for game director Hideo Kojima. After news broke out that former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated, a French politician accidentally shared a meme accusing Kojima of pulling off the hit. This lead to multiple other sources falsely accusing Kojima of being Abe’s killer.
According to Video Game Chronicle, Kojima Productions is considering legal action in light of all the false news that has been spreading online of Kojima assassinating Abe. They write:
“Kojima Productions strongly condemns the spread of fake news and rumors that convey false information… We do not tolerate such libel and will consider taking legal action in some cases.”
This whole controversy started when French politician Damien Rieu shared a meme on Twitter:
While the tweet has been deleted, multiple news outlets have started sharing images of Kojima linking him to the attack, from a broadcast in Greece to another on in Iran. Kojima went trending after the spread of the meme with sources saying he was misidentified as Abe’s suspected shooter.
We don’t really know how negatively this is going to impact Kojima, but if you follow him on Twitter, you’ll know that he’s always been a source of humor and memes for people online—especially ‘shitposting’ groups that like to make fun of gamers and the game community in general.
For now, I suspect Kojima will just brush this thing off as a funny incident. After all, I don’t see anyone reacting too violently to him being misidentified.
