Hideo Kojima’s studio says it will consider ‘legal action’ after fake assassin posts circulate

Hideo Kojima’s sport studio has issued a response after faux posts circulated across social media and news shops that misidentified Kojima as the assassin of former Japanese Key Minister Shinzo Abe. In a tweet, Kojima Productions says it “strongly condemns the distribute of faux information and rumors that express fake information” and “will look at using lawful motion in some circumstances.”

On Friday, a person shot and killed Abe for the duration of his speech at a political marketing campaign rally. Police captured the shooter at the scene who was afterwards discovered as 41-12 months-outdated Tetsuya Yamagami.

Soon right after the incident, an online troll on 4chan posted a racist impression that backlinks Kojima’s deal with with that of the shooter (by way of PCGamer). A further person replied to the write-up with three further pics of Kojima that demonstrate the Steel Gear and Dying Stranding designer in a Soviet cap, as nicely as posing with visuals of Argentine groundbreaking Che Guevara.

French comic Georges Jordito later reshared these illustrations or photos on Twitter as portion of a now-deleted “satirical” submit that mentioned the offender was Japanese soccer star Keisuke Honda. On the other hand, Damien Rieu, a significantly-proper French politician affiliated with the country’s nationalist motion, took it significantly and tweeted out photos of Kojima with textual content translated to: “The significantly-left kills.” As pointed out by Vice, the illustrations or photos were then picked up by Greek and Iranian news outlets that mistakenly applied the pictures in their protection of the assassination.

Rieu has due to the fact deleted his tweet and issued an apology to Kojima, noting “I naively took a joke for information and facts.” The Greek outlet, which provided an impression of Kojima in a broadcast, took its segment off of YouTube, although the Iranian newspaper has also corrected the impression it made use of in its report.