Well, you know, people have been using video game character creators to make real-world folks for a while now. And as these character creators get better, they’re getting pretty darn close to creating exact copies of celebrities, characters from other games, and even themselves. Pretty cool, right? But now, players of NBA 2K26 have taken it to a whole new level by recreating Charlie Kirk, the right-wing commentator who got killed at Utah Valley University not too long ago. And get this, they’re using the game’s tattoo options to add a little extra detail to the whole thing.
So, if you didn’t know, Kirk got shot in the neck when he got assassinated. And yeah, there’s footage of the whole thing floating around on social media. Some folks are making jokes about it, you know, from where the bullet hit to the irony of his last words being about gun violence. It’s pretty wild, really. There are even these AI mockups of gunpla models showing Kirk at the moment he got shot, and people are sharing them online like crazy. Bandai Namco had to step in and say something about it. And now, enter NBA 2K26 with its neck tattoo options that look like blood drips and splatters when you color them red. Players are slapping those tattoos on their Kirk recreations and taking them out into the online world. Some of them are showing support for Kirk, while others are definitely not. It’s all just part of the game, I guess, when character creators are this good and people are using them to bring real humans into the mix.
Kirk’s death has been a big topic in popular culture since September 10. It’s sparking all sorts of debates, like the old one about video games causing real-world violence. And then you’ve got Jimmy Kimmel saying something about the right trying to capitalize on the killing, which got his show taken off the air for a bit thanks to the FCC. And now President Donald Trump is talking about suing ABC over it. It’s a whole big mess, really. But hey, that’s just how things go when you mix video games, real-life events, and a bit of controversy, right? Not really sure why this matters, but there you have it. Life is full of surprises, I suppose.
