Among the messages found on bullet casings left behind by conservative leader Charlie Kirk‘s alleged killer — Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old Utah native — were “Hey fascist! Catch!,” “Notices bulge, OwO what’s this?,” and “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao.”
The first “speaks for itself,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox told reporters at a Friday press conference announcing Robinson’s arrest. What the governor may not have known is that the directional arrows next to it are thought to refer to video game input codes — specifically for the Eagle 500kb Bomb in Helldivers 2.
The other inscriptions further suggest Robinson was a gamer and deeply into online culture. “Notices bulge, OwO what’s this?” is an online meme that began as a mockery of “furry” culture — people who wear animal costumes for sexual gratification — but has evolved into a shorthand for “cringe-y” behavior.
As for “Bella Ciao,” that’s a phrase familiar to a much wider segment of the general population. It refers to a 19th-century protest song by Italian workers that was reborn as an anti-fascist anthem sung by the Nazi resistance during World War 2.
In the 80 years since, it has been adopted more broadly as an anti-fascist rallying song. The tune was rowdily chanted at the European parliament last year in response to a visit from Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, leading the house speaker to shout, “This is not Eurovision!”
But the song is also quite catchy and has surfaced repeatedly in popular culture, employed everywhere from video games to sporting matches.
Most notably, “Bella Ciao” sprung up several times in Netflix’s Money Heist, the Spanish crime series that became a worldwide hit when it debuted in 2017.
The song first appears in the series when characters the Professor (Sergio Marquina) and Berlin (Pedro Alonso) sing it quietly to each other, framing their planned crime as not merely a theft of hundreds of millions of Euros but an act of resistance against a system that has held them down.
It then reappeared several times over the course of the series as a rallying cry for the show’s merry band of thieves. The song’s newfound popularity resulted in it hitting no. 1 on European music charts in 2018.
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