Fox News rips off BioShock Infinite logo, irony ensues

[n2doc]

By Sam Barsanti Jul 2, 2014 8:19 PM

It’s like rain on your wedding day. It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid. It’s a strongly conservative news network blatantly copying the logo of video game in which the villain is a strongly conservative evil mastermind who wants to destroy the world. Not only is one of those things actually ironic, but it also actually happened earlier this week.

First, the backstory: BioShock Infinite is a game that takes place in a flying city run by a religious zealot named Zachary Hale Comstock. He has populated his city with racist assholes who literally worship America’s Founding Fathers, and he uses American iconography to rile up his citizens in support of a war with all of the heathens of the world that aren’t a part of his flying city.

Meanwhile, in the world of cable news channels, there’s a network called Fox News that is known for leaning a bit conservative. At the risk of saying something overtly political, we’ll just let you make your own connections between the flying city using patriotism to push people into war and the TV network that paired footage of the U.S. bombing Iraq in 2003 with a waving American flag.

With that established, we can all appreciate the humor in Fox News appropriating BioShock Infinite’s logo for some kind of “Defending The Homeland” segment


The above picture comes from Ken Levine, the creator of BioShock (via Nerdist), who seemed more tickled by it than annoyed. “Glad to help, Fox. Glad to help,” he posted on Facebook. You can see the original Infinite logo below and compare them yourself, but the funny part here isn’t that Fox News copied it—which it totally did—it’s that it apparently copied it without recognizing what the logo represents: A violent video game about killing right-wing crazy people. It would’ve been weird for Fox News to take any game’s logo like this, but for it take the one with a message that specifically diverges so strongly from its own? That’s irony, Alanis.



http://www.avclub.com/article/fox-news-rips-bioshock-infinite-logo-irony-ensues-206519

[MADem]

1. That hilarious! They can't even have an original IDEA! nt

[L0oniX]

2. Can I hope that they get hauled into court for this?

[DonCoquixote]

3. OH yes

Ken Levine has more of a sense of Political satire in his ass than most have in their whole body. Do not forget, the orginal Bioshock lampooned Ayn Rand and showed the real consquiences of how a Galt's Gulch society would devolve. In this game, Ken took aim at the other side of the right wing, and, true to form, people corticized the game for daring to attack religion and take on race, and Ken's gaming company was closed down.

[DonCoquixote]

4. For those who played the game

Who do you think is more like Zachary hale Comstock? Glenn Beck. And rand Paul may just combine the worst of both Andrew Ryan and Comstock.

[MohRokTah]

5. True irony.

Unlike the quoted song.

[Spider Jerusalem]

6. Fitting, somehow

religious reverence for the "founding fathers", lots and lots of batshit crazy religious fanaticism, xenophobia and racism. (That's the game world of Bioshock Infinite, but I could be talking about Fox News.)

[Wait Wut]

7. The graphic artist that created this...

...needs a raise. There is no way this is an accident. He/She had to have known the significance.

Awesome game, this just drops the cherry on top!

[MisterP]

8. they really don't get it (though it's not like fear of the Potato-Eaters is restricted one party)

[sakabatou]

9. I'm sure Fox would be running the media for Comstock

and against Booker DeWitt, Vox Populi and others.

[NuclearDem]

10. The Columbia News Network.