Netizen Claims Honkai: Star Rail NPC Is a Messi Hong Kong Diss, Gets Called Out for Not Even Knowing Which Game — Commenters: 'Does the Writers' Room Have a Time Machine?'

Can a single NPC name somehow be connected to Lionel Messi? That's what one NGA user tried to claim — that miHoYo's Honkai: Star Rail planted a sneaky reference to the Messi Hong Kong drama in its latest dialogue. The post quickly went viral, but the comment section swiftly pivoted from 'spilling tea' to 'calling BS.'

Here's the context: In February 2024, Inter Miami played a friendly match in Hong Kong. The team's biggest star, Lionel Messi, didn't play a single minute, refused to accept any awards, and skipped his speech. Fans who traveled from all over the world for this one match were furious, and the controversy exploded across Chinese social media. The owner of Inter Miami? None other than David Beckham.

The OP claimed that a certain NPC name in the game corresponded to 'Beckham,' which supposedly proved that Star Rail's writers were throwing shade at the Messi incident. Screenshots from another platform were attached as 'evidence.'

But the post had an instant self-destruct button — the title literally said 'Genshin Impact' while the screenshots were clearly from Honkai: Star Rail. A top-voted comment didn't hold back: 'Title says Genshin, screenshots show Star Rail — y'all really know how to troll (帆船, a slang for baiting/trolling by pretending to be from a different fandom).'

The OP then scrambled to fix the title and sheepishly admitted: 'Sorry, I don't play either game. I just copied what the original poster wrote.' — which only made the comment section even more chaotic.

The real hammer blow came from a commenter who spotted the fatal logic flaw: 'You actually think this dialogue was written AFTER the Messi thing? Honestly I'm worried I'm getting baited here — the salt content on this hook is off the charts.' The point was devastating: game scripts take months to write and localize, and the Messi controversy was literally days old. The timeline simply doesn't work.

Another user put it bluntly: 'This is total BS unless the devs have a time machine — it's only been a few days.' Others dragged out an internal miHoYo meme: 'Searching for Menggan's (a miHoYo exec) famous quote — result: they're just a meme reseller,' mocking the absurdly forced connection.

Things got even spicier when commenters dug into the OP's post history and found they were a player of Arknights (明日方舟), implying the post might be a deliberate bait designed to stir drama between fandoms. One commenter snarked: 'Do you guys have some kind of quota? There was just a post claiming Star Rail's new story calls Japan trash, and now you're dragging Messi into this — are you really that desperate to recruit new players?'

A veteran NGA user offered the OP some procedural advice: 'Nobody expects you to fact-check everything before cross-posting, but at least credit the source in the title and include a full-page screenshot. All you did just now was hand ammunition to the haters.' The OP acknowledged this and added the missing source information.

To sum up this spectacular self-own: wrong game title, doesn't play either game, timeline completely impossible, no source attribution — a textbook 'collecting every L possible' speedrun. Star Rail's writing team might indeed be the kings of meme references, but 'time-traveling scriptwriters' is one accusation they're definitely not guilty of.