About

The Thing That Killed Shinzo Abe refers to the homemade weapon that on July 8th, 2022, was used by a Japanese man to assassinate the former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe. Due to the elaborate and extravagant design of the weapon, it has become a subject of memes and references online, and has been humorously described as The Contraption, Thingamajig and other similar terms.

Origin

On July 8th, 2022, a 41-year-old Japanese man assassinated the former prime minster of Japan Shinzo Abe during public speech with a homemade shotgun. On the same day, photograph of the home-crafted gun appeared in multiple news report about the assassination (shown below, left). On August 15, 2022, Japanese news website The Mainichi^[1] posted an infographic describing the homemade gun (shown below, right).

Spread

In the days following the news of the assassination, earliest memes about the gun were posted online: for example, on July 9th, 2022, X^[2] account @TF2Emporium posted a Steam Workshop submission that closely resembled the weapon in the assassination. The post (shown below, left) received over 3,900 reblogs and 29,000 likes in two years (shown below, left). Prior to October 18th, 2022, an unknown user posted an edit of the infographic in which the labels were replaced with the names of female reproductive organs (shown below, right). On October 18th, 2022, iFunny^[3] user dirtypussyface reposted the image to iFunny.^[3]

On November 9th, 2022, X^[4] user @nyetalia captioned a photograph of a homemade vape, "They killed Shinzo Abe with this." The post received over 770 reposts and 4,900 likes prior to being removed (shown below).

More memes with a similar caption, posts which referred to the weapons as "the contraption," "doohickey," "thingamajig" or in similar terms, and edits of the infographic saw viral spread online.

For example, on January 23rd, 2023, X^[5]user @krus_chiki posted a Saddam Hussein's hiding place meme that received over 450 reposts and 6,100 likes in one year (shown below, left). On May 24th, X^[6] user @gaysexfan123 posted the infographic, writing, "just built this in tears of the kingdom." The post (shown below, right) received over 2,700 reposts and 26,000 likes in seven months.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References