Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah native, was identified by federal law enforcement as a suspect in the murder of Charlie Kirk on Friday . During a press conference Friday, officials said several bullet casings recovered from a shotgun found near the crime scene had bullet marks on them.
During the press conference, officials appeared to take the captions literally, to the extent that they attributed any meaning to them at all. But four messages, apparently written by the alleged shooter, appear to reference various memes and video game references.
One of the shells was said to be engraved with the phrase “Hey Fascist! Catch it!” followed by an up arrow, a right arrow, and three down arrows. This sequence is an obvious reference to the “Eagle 500kg bomb” in the popular third-person shooter game Helldivers 2. The bomb has become a meme in the Helldivers community for being comically excessive.
Arrowhead Game Studios, the developers of Helldivers 2, did not immediately respond to Wired’s request for comment. The game, which launches in 2024, has a Star Wars -like plot. The cooperative shooter lets up to four players, known as “Helldivers,” spread “freedom” across a fictional universe—battling robots and squid-like aliens rather than other humans. The form of democracy they govern is “basically fascism,” says Harry Batchelor, an independent extremism researcher who works with the Extremism and Games Research Network.
Helldivers 2 is a satire, and the vast majority of players are into it. Does [the game take] the whole “pretending to be a democracy while actually having a fascist government” thing so seriously, it’s clearly a joke,” says Batchelor. The community around the game has generally maintained a positive reputation even as it worked together to combat “review bombardment” — coordinated negative reviews that were intended to hurt the game’s chances of success.
The arrows that activate the Eagle’s 500kg bomb have been used in other memes to show that the user is “about to commit a major, violent act,” Don Caldwell, editor-in-chief of Know Your Meme, tells Wired. “It’s probably a cheeky way to put it on the cover.”
Shortly after Friday’s press conference about Kirk’s fatal shooting, moderators locked down the R/Helldivers Subreddit. “Due to recent events and the high volume of posts on this topic, we will be temporarily locking the subreddit,” the About subreddit post reads. “We are aware of what happened, and our ModTeam does not tolerate this.”
Helldiants may not be the only reference to the game’s skins. Another skin may have been engraved with the lyrics to a famous Italian folk song called “Bella Ciao,” which literally translates to “Goodbye Beautiful.” The song, which has associations with post-war anti-fascist movements in Italy, has seen a resurgence on social media in recent years. Namely, “Bella Ciao” is a reference to rebel forces during a mission in the Far Cry 6 video game, which is set on a fictional Caribbean island ruled by a dictator. The USB stick with the song is a collectible item called “Bella Ciao de Libertad,” a reference to the rebel group; the game’s description states that the song has been “inspiring partisans and partisans for over a century.”
