All the ways the UnitedHealthcare CEO killer doesn’t have anything to do with video games

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Luigi opening door and looking nervous — No, not that Luigi (Nintendo)

People have spotted a number of strange ties between CEO killer Luigi Mangione and video games, but they’re tenuous at best.

Chances are you’re already familiar with Luigi Mangione, the man arrested and charged with murdering Brian Thompson, the CEO of American health insurance company UnitedHealthcare.

Naturally, with his name and face being made public, internet sleuths have been keen to learn more about him, resulting in plenty of info widely circulating online.

Mangione has been connected to several prominent video games, but most of these are awfully slim ties and mostly just a strange series of coincidences.

The first connection is, unsurprisingly, his name. People were quick to crack jokes about Luigi from Nintendo’s Super Mario games, as well as reference Nintendo’s infamous Year of Luigi, an anniversary event meant to celebrate the character’s 20th anniversary but which coincided with a poor financial year for the company.

Word also quickly spread that Mangione’s name directly translates to ‘mansion’ in Italitan, meaning he shares a name with the Luigi’s Mansion series of games. A cursory glance at Google Translate, however, shows that’s not accurate, with ‘mangione’ said to be Italian for ‘glutton’ or ‘big eater.’

One popular conspiracy theory claims Mangione cryptically hinted at his crime using the header image on his X account, which includes a picture of the Pokémon Breloom.

People believe the choice of Breloom has a deeper meaning, focusing on it being officially listed as the 286th Pokémon. In the Bible, Proverbs 2:86 reads: ‘Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.’

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It’s suggested this is tied to Mangione’s potential motive for committing murder… or maybe he just likes the Pokémon? Even one as fairly forgettable as Breloom is going to have its fans.

NBC did report that Mangione once belonged to a group who routinely played a certain video game where you play the role of an ‘assassin’, which sounds insidious until you realise they’re talking about Among Us.

The social deduction game has been around since 2018 and, thanks to a surge in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic, has become extremely popular among players of all ages.

The only real connection Mangione has to video games is that he did briefly work at Civilization developer Firaxis, but only as an intern for roughly a year where he did bug testing on Civilization 6.

Firaxis has confirmed to Polygon that it employed Mangione, but otherwise declined to comment further. A bug tester is as low-level a job as you can get in gaming and doesn’t imply any technical or design skills.

Ultimately, while the internet continues to be amused by its Luigi and ‘there’s a killer among us’ jokes, Mangione’s gaming ties are minor and have nothing to do with his alleged crimes.