A Batman video game showed a real image of a murdered Russian ambassador

Plenty of video games feature plenty of dead folks, but most of the dead "people" were never alive on the other side of the screen.
 By 
Colin Daileda
 on 
A Batman video game showed a real image of a murdered Russian ambassador
Credit: AP/REX/Shutterstock

Plenty of video games feature plenty of dead folks, but I think we can all agree that most of the dead "people" we see on video games were never alive on the other side of the screen.

Not so with Telltale's Batman: The Enemy Within.

The video game vlogging channel Bro Team Pill was reportedly the first to notice that the image of a dead security guard in the game was strikingly similar to the infamous image of Andrei Karlov, moments after the former Russian ambassador to Turkey was assassinated at an art gallery in Ankara on Dec. 19, 2016.

The assassin, killed in an exchange of gunfire following the murder, was a 22-year-old off-duty policeman. He reportedly shouted "Don't forget Aleppo, don't forget Syria" after he opened fire.

News of an assassinated ambassador would have made headlines around the world anyway, but it spread even more rapidly in part due to the imagery. Karlov was assassinated as cameras rolled, and photographers captured images of the slain ambassador as his killer stood over him with a gun.

After the image was identified, Telltale sent a statement to Gamasutra, saying an update to the game erased it "across all platforms."

"We regret this incident occurred," they said, according to the statement. "We are taking appropriate action internally to ensure that we continue to maintain our high standards in production and quality assurance."

Telltale didn't provide any information about how the image of Karlov got into the game to begin with. We've asked, and we'll let you know if they get back to us.

Topics Gaming

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Colin Daileda

Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.

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