Modern Warfare 4 Kills You For Shooting Supreme Leader Portrait During North Korea Mission

Published Oct 21, 2026, 6:05 AM EDT James Lucas is an Executive Editor at TheGamer who has worked in professional journalism since 2018. A Newcastle University graduate with a degree in Journalism, Media, and Culture, they have written hundreds of guides, news stories, and original reports, with bylines in IGN, NME, GaymingMag, and VG247, sourcing interviews with studio heads, legendary industry figures, prominent actors, and more. An expert on FPS games, Soulslikes, RPGs, and survival horror, James has intimate knowledge of a wide variety of titles, providing in-depth coverage and exclusive profiles. Some of the games they have extensively covered include: Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Elden Ring, and Fallout. They pride themselves on their consistently thorough research, leveraging nearly a decade of industry experience. You can reach them at James.t@thegamer.com Sign in to your TheGamer account Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's third mission sends you on a door-to-door raid in North Korea to pilfer through homes in search of a defector. It's a bleak insight into the surveillance state of the DRPK, where even the wrong music can get you sent to a detention camp. A reality you're constantly reminded of by the ominous portraits of the Supreme Leader peering down from the walls of every single home. So, what happens if you put a bullet in his face? When dropped into one of the most hostile and oppressive regimes in the modern world, players did exactly that. The reaction of your fellow soldiers is, unsurprisingly, to bash you in the skull and then shoot you dead while you're disoriented. And instead of the usual flavor text that pops up when you die, the game tells you that "you dishonored your country by damaging a portrait of the Supreme Leader." What Would Happen If You Actually Shot A Portrait Of The Supreme Leader? These portraits hang in every single home, school, and office throughout the country. One defector who fled North Korea in 2011 described it as almost like "having the cross or the statues of Jesus at churches," and so there are incredibly strict regulations about how they're maintained. Images of the leader must hang from a wall with no other decorations, in a central position. They must be high up, so that nobody can stand higher than the leader. And citizens are obligated to clean the portraits every few days, with regular inspections. Failure to do so leads to fines. If a portrait so much as falls off the wall accidentally, you can get in "big trouble." So, shooting one intentionally is a surefire way to invoke the wrath of the DPRK. In a tense raid searching for a defector, it's hard to predict exactly how other soldiers would react, but defacing the regime's leaders is treated as an act of treason and subjects you to either prison camps or execution, so being gunned down isn't exactly farfetched. Look no further than 21-year-old Otto Warmbier, who stood accused of stealing a framed political propaganda sign during his guided tour of the country. He was arrested, forced into a public confession, and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor, only to suffer unexplained brain damage while in custody and be returned to the United States where he died shortly after. The Supreme Leader in Modern Warfare 4 might be fictitious, but this little easter egg is nonetheless a disturbingly realistic detail in what is already one of Modern Warfare 4's most unnerving missions.