Among Us Explained: The Party Game Played by the Alleged CEO Killer and Millions More

Luigi Nicholas Mangione, the alleged shooter of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, evaded police law enforcement following the shooting on Dec. 4. As there are many questions surrounding Mangione, one thing that has come up in his social media posts and talk with friends is that he played his share of games, including Among Us, the popular social deduction game that became a sensation during the pandemic, according to a report from NBC News on Tuesday. 

There is some attempt to connect the alleged assassination with the game that involved players killing each other, however, that connection is a bit silly. Among Us, a cartoon-styled social deduction party game, became popular with streamers and was played by millions worldwide during the COVID lockdown.

A fellow student at the University of Pennsylvania told NBC News that Mangione was part of a group that played games together, and one of the games they played was Among Us. The individual found it “ironic” that Mangione was the suspect in the shooting of Brian Thompson considering the content of the game. 

“I just found it extremely ironic that, you know, we were in this game and there could actually be a true killer among us,” Alejandro Romero told NBC News.

The official Among Us X account posted on Tuesday what seemed to be a response to the report that simply said, “Um…”

Among Us is a social deduction game where players have to identify imposters before they kill their crewmates on a virtual spaceship. The game supports four to 10 people, with players taking the role of crew members while one or two players play as a parasitic shape-shifting alien that needs to kill and sabotage the actions of the crew. 

Social deduction games are not new, with some tabletop versions going back to the 1980s. Among Us came out in 2018 with minimal fanfare, but it was around September 2020 when the game garnered a huge following after prominent Twitch streamers began playing the game. 

On Oct. 20, 2020, US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Ilhan Omar, Democrats from New York and Minnesota, respectively, played the game on stream with prominent Twitch celebs racking up 439,000 concurrent viewers, which was the third-highest single stream of all time for the streaming platform. A month later, a report said the game had more than half a billion users. 

As people dig through Mangione’s past to uncover his possible motivations for the alleged shooting, there have been more glimpses of his gaming habits. In the yearbook for Gilman School, where Mangione was valedictorian, he was named as being the “Best at Pick-up Lines” and mentioned that he played Smash Bros., the Nintendo mascot fighting game, although which version was not specified. He also mentioned the fighting game Tekken and hero shooter Overwatch in another rant, as reported by the Daily Mail.  It appears the 26-year-old man simply did the typical activities that most young people did while growing up. 

Mangione is currently in custody in Pennsylvania after being apprehended by law enforcement on Monday after receiving a tip from a customer at a McDonald’s. Has been denied bail by a judge and is waiting to see if he will be extradited to New York where he will face charges for the crime.

In his first public words since a five-day search ended with his arrest at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania, Mangione emerged from a patrol car shouting about an “insult to the intelligence of the American people” while deputies pushed him inside a courthouse.