A rumor circulated online in December 2024 claiming that a purported screenshot showed a post from the official Nintendo of America account (@NintendoAmerica) on X, reading, "Free him." The post displayed an image of Luigi — the companion of the company's character Mario — trapped in a cage.
Users discussed this image beginning on Dec. 9, 2024, not long after news broke that police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, arrested a man at a McDonald's restaurant suspected in the assassination of UnitedHealthcare's CEO, Brian Thompson, in New York City (NYPD). NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch identified the suspect as 26-year-old Luigi Nicholas Mangione — a man with the same first name as the video game character. Mangione has been charged with various crimes, including murder, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a forged instrument.
Spencer Althouse, the deputy editorial director at BuzzFeed, posted (archived) the image of the supposed screenshot on X on Dec. 9, adding, "Nintendo has spoken." The post received millions of views.
A reverse-image search for the same image located a Reddit post (archived) displaying over 55,000 upvotes, a Threads post (archived) showing more than 6,300 likes and another post (archived) on X with around 300,000 views.
However, the purported Nintendo post screenshot was fake. We located no record of the company's official account creating any such posts. Althouse told Snopes in a direct message on X, "I created/photoshopped the image myself."
Aside from the message from Althouse, we also noted the post displayed the message, "This tweet has been deleted," a subtle sign the post wasn't real. Following tech entrepreneur Elon Musk's takeover of the social media platform in 2022, he changed the name Twitter to X and also officially switched the terminology of "tweet" to "post." As of late 2024, a deleted post on X resulted in the message, "Sorry, that post has been deleted."
We previously reported about a similar rumor claiming Burger King's official X account alluded to Mangione's arrest in a post reading, "We don't snitch," purportedly as a response to news of a McDonald's customer alerting an employee to Mangione's presence. That employee then dialed 911 — the call leading to Mangione's arrest.