Hideo Kojima is threatening to sue over social media posts depicting him as the killer of the former Japanese prime minister.

The legendary video game developer - who made games such as ‘Metal Gear’ - reacted to hoax posts on the forum 4chan that implied he was “the left wing extremist” who shot dead the ex leader of Japan and were shared by international media outlets in Greece and Japan and by a French politician, Damien Rieu.

The lawmaker - who has links to the nation’s nationalist movement - has since deleted the tweet sharing the image while claiming he “naively took a joke for information” and “was wrong not to check before sharing”.

Their English-language Twitter account, Kojima Productions posted: “#KojimaProductions strongly condemns the spread of fake news and rumours that convey false information. We do not tolerate such libel and will consider taking legal action in some cases.”

The doctored image showed Hideo sporting a Ushanka - a fur hat often donned by communist soldiers in the USSR - and standing next to the left wing revolutionary Che Guevara.

The suspect in the killing of Shinzo Abe has been named as Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, who has since admitted to assassinating him with a homemade firearm.

Shinzo was shot dead while delivering a speech in the city of Nara on Friday (08.07.22), where the suspect was taken into custody at the scene.

Tetsuya is reported to have told authorities that he had a problems with a “specific organisation”.

The nation’s current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called the incident “barbaric and malicious” while stressing “it cannot be tolerated”.

He labelled it as "an act of brutality that happened during the elections - the very foundation of our democracy - and is absolutely unforgivable."