Veteran game developer Hideo Kojima has been misidentified as former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassin. Earlier today, the world was rocked by the news of the ex premier’s shooting at a campaign event, where he was addressing a rally. At around 11:30 am, a man with a mask on moved towards Abe and fired his gun, which sadly claimed his life. For some reason, a number of politicians and media sites started sharing photos of Hideo Kojima as the murderer.

International media and politicians misidentified Hideo Kojima as Shinzo Abe assassin

Credit: Christopher Jue / Stringer / Getty Images

ResetEra user PerrierChaud first shared screenshots of French politician Damien Rieu circulating photos of Kojima as a “far left” killer. In one of the photos, Kojima is posing with a portrait of Che Guevara. Other users chimed in, showing the same images being floated in Arab media as well as one Greek news channel. The images have since spread like wildfire on the internet, with Kojima being labeled as a leftwing extremist.

It’s unclear where this misunderstanding stemmed from but Kojima certainly has grounds to take legal action here. Whether he will or not is a separate matter. One theory being shared on social media is that this all started as a tasteless joke on 4chan, where someone claimed that the killer resembled Kojima, but I haven’t found the 4chan post in question and can’t substantiate this claim.

Nevertheless, it’s becoming far too common to see photos of innocent people and bystanders being used by media houses and politicians immediately in the aftermath of a tragedy in order to further a narrative. In this case, it looks like Kojima posing with a portrait of Che Guevara is what some of the politicians and social media users jumped at.

Here’s hoping common sense prevails someday.

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