General Discussion

engraved messages on bullet casings recovered at the crime scene, including an unfired shell that included the phrase "Hey, fascist! Catch! ↑ → ↓↓↓" — arrow symbols that match the input required to execute a stratagem in Helldivers 2. That stratagem, Eagle 500kg Bomb, lets players drop a 1,100-pound bomb that embeds itself in the ground before exploding. It's one of the more destructive special moves in the game.

Other shells had different messages engraved on them, including "Notices bulge / OWO what’s this?" a reference to a meme about furries and online role-play

Helldivers 2 was released on PlayStation 5 and Windows PC in February 2024. An Xbox Series X version was released in August. The sci-fi third-person cooperative shooter casts players as Helldivers who fight on behalf of Super Earth, ostensibly protecting humanity and spreading "managed democracy" to other worlds. Like its strongest inspiration, Starship Troopers, Helldivers 2 is styled as a satire on fascism — players act on behalf of a militaristic regime, acting as peacekeepers in a Galactic War against alien forces.

In the satirical video game Helldivers 2, players are not intended to fight fascists, but rather to kill alien and robotic enemies under a fictional, authoritarian "managed democracy" government called Super Earth. The game's narrative and mechanics are deliberately designed to be satirical, mimicking the tropes of aggressive, jingoistic patriotism found in real-world propaganda.

Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt has made statements suggesting Helldivers 2's satire on totalitarianism was an experiment to see if a community could be "brainwashed" into supporting a fascist state, which he described as a means to educate players about totalitarian regimes and their manipulation tactics through irony and satire.