‘Call of Duty’ sparks outrage for using real Itaewon disaster footage in fictional war scenes

Policemen stand guard at the scene where a stampede during Halloween festivities killed and injured many people at the popular Itaewon district in Seoul October 30, 2022. — Yonhap pic via Reuters

By Malay Mail

First Published: Thursday, 29 Oct 2026 10:26 AM MYT

SEOUL, Oct 29 — A few seconds of real-life tragedy have landed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 in controversy, after players discovered footage from South Korea’s deadly 2022 Itaewon crowd crush embedded in a cinematic sequence depicting a fictional North Korean invasion.

The footage, showing a rescuer performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on a victim of the disaster, has sparked outrage among bereaved families and civic groups, who are demanding that publisher Activision remove it from the blockbuster first-person shooter.

The controversy comes as South Korea marks the fourth anniversary today of the October 29, 2022, disaster, which claimed 159 lives during Halloween festivities in Seoul’s Itaewon nightlife district.

According to The Korea Times, the game initially attracted attention in South Korea for its realistic depiction of the country under attack by North Korean forces.

But that attention quickly turned to criticism when players recognised footage of the real disaster in a sequence portraying civilian casualties from the game’s fictional conflict.

The clip, lasting about three seconds, appears in the game’s opening cinematic, which uses news-style footage to establish the scale of the imagined invasion.

For families who lost loved ones in Itaewon, the use of actual rescue scenes as material for a fictional war was deeply distressing.

In a joint statement issued yesterday, the council representing bereaved families and a coalition of supporting civic groups condemned the footage and called for its immediate removal.

“We cannot help but be appalled that the chaotic and desperate scenes of citizens performing CPR to save one another, with victims lying on the cold streets, were used unchanged to create a scene in a game,” the groups said.

Activision, responding to the criticism, acknowledged that real news footage had been incorporated into the game’s opening sequence.

The company told Yonhap News Agency that the footage was intended to help convey the game’s fictional narrative, rather than reference or trivialise the Itaewon disaster or any other real-life tragedy.

However, the publisher did not say whether it would remove the controversial footage, leaving the families’ demands unresolved.