The Awful Reason Hideo Kojima Is Trending

Gamers were likely excited to see Hideo Kojima was trending today. Perhaps the creator of the "Metal Gear" series and "Death Stranding" was announcing some new project or one of his games was getting a remake. Sadly, the reason Kojima is trending online today is because of an awful tragedy that just occurred in Japan.

The former prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, was shot while giving a speech in the city of Nara on Friday. It was later reported that he had died and his assassin was in custody. The country, which experiences very little gun violence in general and has not seen the assassination of a former or current prime minister in over eighty years, was shocked by the event. While no longer in office, Abe remained an influential political figure with a lasting legacy. How his tragic death put a game developer in the spotlight is the result of tasteless jokes and a misunderstanding at a Greek news station.

After the assassination, photos of the alleged shooter became available to the public. The internet being what it is, some decided to make jokes about the incident. Among the jokes were comments that the assassin looked like Hideo Kojima. Regrettably, these comments did not remain isolated to internet forums.

As Zack Zwiezen at Kotaku reported, right-wing French politician Damien Rieu picked up on the English tweets and retweeted pictures of Kojima with a caption that read "The extreme left kill." The pictures he tweeted include Kojima posing with a picture of Che Guevara and Kojima wearing an ushanka hat with a Soviet Union emblem on it. Rieu's purpose seems to have been to smear the other side of the political spectrum by tying the left to the assassination. At this time, Bloomberg and the New York Post are reporting that the assassin was not motivated by political beliefs and it is unclear if Rieu understood that the Kojima-assassin tweets were jokes. He has since deleted the tweet, though not before being mocked for it.

Unfortunately, these tweets seem to have confused a Greek news station, which reported on the assassination. In its report, the station displayed those same pictures of Kojima and, according to a translation provided to Kotaku, claimed that the assassin "was passionate about Che Guevara." This string of events currently has Kojima trending on Twitter and has journalists and responsible denizens of Twitter trying to correct the misinformation.

Kojima has not yet responded to these events or his being linked to them. It remains to be seen if he will choose to respond at all or how long it will take for this story to die down.