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

Hideo Kojima’s activity studio has issued a reaction soon after pretend posts circulated throughout social media and information outlets that misidentified Kojima as the assassin of previous Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. In a tweet, Kojima Productions claims it “strongly condemns the distribute of phony news and rumors that express untrue information” and “will consider having lawful motion in some instances.”

On Friday, a person shot and killed Abe during his speech at a political marketing campaign rally. Police captured the shooter at the scene who was later on determined as 41-year-aged Tetsuya Yamagami.

Shortly right after the incident, an world-wide-web troll on 4chan posted a racist graphic that back links Kojima’s facial area with that of the shooter (via PCGamer). A different consumer replied to the article with a few more images of Kojima that present the Metallic Gear and Dying Stranding designer in a Soviet cap, as perfectly as posing with visuals of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara.

French comedian Georges Jordito later reshared these images on Twitter as section of a now-deleted “satirical” submit that mentioned the perpetrator was Japanese soccer star Keisuke Honda. Having said that, Damien Rieu, a significantly-suitable French politician related with the country’s nationalist motion, took it critically and tweeted out photos of Kojima with text translated to: “The significantly-left kills.” As pointed out by Vice, the visuals had been then picked up by Greek and Iranian news retailers that mistakenly utilised the pics in their protection of the assassination.

Rieu has given that deleted his tweet and issued an apology to Kojima, noting “I naively took a joke for details.” The Greek outlet, which bundled an picture of Kojima in a broadcast, took its segment off of YouTube, while the Iranian newspaper has also corrected the graphic it used in its report.