Rockstar Games is playing whack-a-mole with GTA Online missions in which players must assassinate a Charlie Kirk stand-in. These player-made levels started popping up shortly after a December update that allowed fans to create their own in-game content, and the problem continues even after the company banned the name.
Videos of multiple missions like this remain online.
We are Charlie Kirk
On Dec. 11, 2025, one day after Rockstar's fateful update, a video appeared on YouTube showing a GTA Online mission titled "We are Charlie Kirk." The player starts out on top of a building on a college campus next to a sniper rifle.
It's a pretty easy mission. The player in the video heads right over to the edge of the roof with a full view of a fruit stand harboring a man and his bodyguard. A few other NPCs watch him from behind crowd barricades. Instructions appear at the bottom of the screen.
"Take out the actor."
The gamer shoots the target dead, and an NPC cries, "ah, crap, Tyler got shot!" Mission passed.
According to Kotaku, after Rockstar deleted this mission, more popped up under names like "Charlie Pink" and other variations. The publisher continues to smack these levels down, but there are far more GTA Online players and trolls than Rockstar workers.
The X account @GTASixInfo reported on Monday that Rockstar banned the term "Charlie Kirk" via their profanity filter. Kotaku confirmed that an error appeared when they tried to search for the name, though searching for "Charlie" or "Kirk" separately brought up several deleted missions.
Charlie Kirk famously and publicly died on Sept. 10 after a gunman shot him from a distance during one of his many Turning Point USA college tour stops. Police soon arrested a suspect, and Kirk became something of a martyr figure among many conservatives.
The left, however, felt differently about the incident.
"I thought y’all were down for violence"
While online conservatives, centrists, and some liberals found the jokes about Kirk's death insensitive or worse, many leftists felt that the professional provocateur got what he deserved. Related jokes spread across social media, both among the political and simple trolls peddling terms like "lowkirkenuinely."
As news of the GTA Online maps spread, the jokes found new life. Multiple X users simply posted gifs of people trying not to laugh.
Others started pointing out hypocrisy again.
"I don’t understand, yesterday y’all were cheering about the possibility of killing queer people attending a pride parade in GTA 6, but today y’all are crying about a Charlie Kirk mission?" wrote @TheZodiacHeir over the dead SpongeBob meme.
"I thought y’all were down for violence."
"'Dark humor' enjoyers when the joke is about Charlie Kirk and not minorities or women," said @Keplertweets.
On Bluesky, Grand Theft Auto fans recalled the old Rockstar Games.
"Old-school Rockstar would have made a Charlie Kirk assassination mission themselves," claimed @enbylocks.com.
"GTA V has a story mission where you assassinate a tech CEO with a bomb," @angrytaco2.bsky.social pointed out.
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