By Wesley Yin-Poole, Eurogamer
Earlier this month we had Mean Girls and Freaky Friday star Lindsay Lohan suing Rockstar over allegedly using her likeness in Grand Theft Auto 5. Now, we have an ex-dictator suing Activision over allegedly using his likeness in Call of Duty.
Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is suing Activision over the use of his likeness in Treyarch’s first-person shooter Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
In the game Alex Mason and Frank Woods track Noriega, codenamed False Profit by the CIA, to the outskirts of Panama City. You can see the scene in which they find him in the video, below, taken from the level Suffer With Me.
Now, 80-year-old Noriega, who lives in Panama, is suing Activision for the “blatant misuse, unlawful exploitation and misappropriation for economic gain” of his image in Black Ops 2, which came out in 2012.
In the lawsuit, filed in the Los Angeles County Superior Court and reported on by the Courthouse News Service, Noriega’s lawyers claim: “In an effort to increase the popularity and revenue generated by Black Ops 2, defendants used, without authorisation or consent, the image and likeness of plaintiff in Black Ops 2.”
