A cartoon featured in Atomic Heart save rooms briefly features a racist caricature. In it, a wolf is chasing a hare through a museum and accidentally hits a statue which presumably is meant to depict an African tribesman. Although the scene is brief, it’s shocking that it somehow made it into a game in 2023.
Note: We’ve posted the image of caricature below for informational purposes. PSLS doesn’t condone or support any racist material.
Atomic Heart features Soviet cartoon with racist imagery
The racist imagery in Atomic Heart comes from the cartoon Nu, Pogodi! (Well, Just You Wait!). It’s a Soviet riff on Tom and Jerry, with the central premise being the Wolf chasing the Hare, and all 22 episodes can be viewed in-game. The episode in question is number 12, “Museum,” and first aired on April 8, 1978, and the statue is shown at the 5:50 mark.
Each episode of Nu, Pogodi! is about ten minutes long, which puts the runtime of the entire series at around 3.6 hours. Given that the statue is only on screen for approximately five seconds (or 0.037% of the total runtime), it’s possible that it was mistakenly included. It may also not have been censored since the game takes place in an alternate 1955, a time in which imagery like this wasn’t so severely looked down upon.
The studio hasn’t released a statement concerning the cartoon; as of writing, it’s still in rotation. However, unless you sit and wait for the scene in question to pop up, there’s a slim chance you’ll see it. Removing it will likely be a low priority for Mundfish since the studio is also facing criticism for its Russian ties and the similarity of a character in the game to a former prime minister of Ukraine.
