ITV Documentary Mistakes ArmA Game Footage for Real Life

We have to warn you that what you're about to see is very disturbing. It's a YouTube clip of a British documentary that recently aired on ITV, a popular station in the U.K. The documentary attempts to further expose Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddhafi's support of the IRA and how he helped arm the soldiers with some serious weaponry. In the embedded clip below, you see a British helicopter being shot down. Go ahead and view it, you're not witnessing any loss of life, or even minor injuries. There's another reason why it's disturbing.


In the clip, the narrator explains, "With Gaddhafi's heavy machine guns, it was possible to shoot down a helicopter as the terrorist's own footage of 1988 shows. This was what the security forces feared most. It may have been a lucky hit, but of the army and crew, once was enough. No one died in this attack, but there were many other deadly arms to fear."

The reason no one died in this particular attack is because the British TV network somehow confused footage from the videogame ArmA 2 with real life events. Seriously. Can't make this stuff up. The snafu was first posted on Bohemia Interactive's forum, where it came to light that, although the publisher receives requests to use ArmA 2 footage in documentaries from time to time, they've always been turned down. So what happened in this case?

"The confusion apparently happened because someone recreated the actual event in the game based off of an actual IRA video of the event, and uploaded it to YouTube here. A costly and embarrassing mix-up," a forum member explains.

Apparently no one at ITV plays videogames.