... and vanished. Fans, teammates, and random people on the internet mourned him. Team Fortress 2's developers even named a new ability after him. Years later, fans were still leaving comments under his old videos just to say how sad they were that he was dead. But don't worry, he got better!

-- Jesus, 33 CE

Wow, did he beat his illness?! Nope, because he never had it. As Sketchek confessed in a February 2019 video, he decided to fake his death because he'd grown bored of TF2 and gaming in general, and none of his other ideas for a final video were attention-grabbing enough. A "best of" montage simply doesn't have the same punch as making your fans admit they cried, you know?

He decided to un-kill himself after three and a half years because he'd started missing the game, and also to say sorry for the whole "making thousands of people feel shitty for absolutely no good reason" thing. Hey, we've all been there, buddy.

Fans took this turn of events ... disturbingly well. It's 2019. "My favorite YouTuber is no longer dead" is what passes for normal now.

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The only problem was that RizArt wasn't actually 12. For the first time in non-entrapment history, someone on the internet was pretending to be under 13 instead of the other way around.

RizArt/YouTubeThe automatic translation in his apology video doesn't make him sound too regretful.

It all started when other players mistook RizArt for a child, instead of the fresh-faced, high-voiced 16-year-old he was. RizArt didn't correct them, figuring it would be a good gimmick for his YouTube channel. But then the lie snowballed as he got more famous and became known as "the strongest grade schooler in Japan." RizArt says his teammates on his e-sports team, Crazy Raccoon, helped him decide to come clean. Which probably had something to do with the fact that they'll be at tournaments soon, and the inevitable Shazam!-type explanations probably aren't gonna fly.

In his apology video, RizArt promised to donate three months of his earnings to charity and pledged to shave his head. That last part runs the risk of making him look like an actual baby and just making the problem worse, but it's the thought that counts.

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Someone must have lit up the Incel Signal, because the short Twitter exchange which led to the correction was swiftly flooded with people upset that their precious digital camel toe had been CENSORED. How dare a woman point out a move that was at best weird, and at worst a mistake the devs would obviously want fixed?

Some of the complainers were dumb enough to admit that they didn't even play the game. They just heard about other people possibly getting outraged and thought, "Oh HELL no, not on my watch." Welcome to the internet, where irony is dead and nothing matters!

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Coincidence? No, impossible. Fans went down the rabbit hole to find more and more undeniable connections between this real-world scientist and MGSV. The game deals with the loss of limbs and phantom pain -- a subject Canavero has written about. Canavero did a TED talk at Limassol, Cyprus, and "TED Limassol" is an anagram for "Solid Metals" (or "Metal Solids"). Also, a logo shown during the talk resembles a scar on Solid Snake's head. Head scar. Head transplant. It all fits!

And then there's the time Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima tweeted the words "Heading off" with a picture of a helicopter. Clearly, the game is about Snake losing his head in a helicopter incident, and Dr. Canavero puts him back together. There's no other explanation.

Oh, except for the actual explanation.

Japan Talent Directory, via NeoGAF.com

The character was modeled after actor Ian Moore, who happens to look like Canavero from certain angles. Eventually, the rumor reached Dr. Canavero himself, who was like, "What the hell is a Metal Gear?" (We've been playing these games for 20 years, and we don't know.) He even floated the idea of suing Kojima. We're guessing he never got around to doing that head transplant because he learned there's way more money in game development.

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It also turned out that the group's spokesperson, a popular Twitch streamer, was spreading some misleading stats and had used abusive language herself a few months earlier. Then there's the small fact that the whole project was completely impractical. What about games where you can't join others mid-match? Do you help them beat someone else in the next match to make them feel better? How do you make sure the harassed parties aren't merely random jackasses trying to level up?

After the cringeworthy stream, sponsors began backing into the bushes Homer-Simpson-style, and the marketing agency behind everything pulled the plug. On the upside, toxic dudes who lose matches to all-girl teams now have one less excuse to tell themselves.

Christian Markle is a pretty cool dude. Hit him up on Facebook. Tiagosvn would love you to tell him all the reasons why he's a fake gamer on his Twitter.

For more, check out 6 Ways Gamers Have Taken The Fun Out Of Gaming - Destiny Parody:

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