In the Spring of 2010, 28-year-old mother Sunday Blombergh went missing. Her family quickly made up posters using a photo of her smiling with her hazel eyes lighting up the picture, describing her “red star outlined in black” wrist tattoo. Her body was later found in the Georgia woods. Three years later,Life is Strangereleased, and it depicts a fictional woman called Rachel Amber on a similar wanted poster, describing a wrist tattoo of a star.
As reported byKotaku, the fictional missing poster’s likeness to that of Blombergh’s appears intentional. Blombergh’s daughter Isabella, who was seven years old when her mother was murdered, likewise believes that Life is Strange ripped its design from the real world.
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“So yeah, found this out a while back,” Isabella captioned aTikTokclip showing the posters side-by-side. “Uh, everything about Rachel even down tothe way she diesis similar.”
Life is Strange’s Rachel Amber went missing on April 22, the same day as Blombergh, and they even share similarities in their appearance; they were both 5'5"; they each had hazel eyes, and Blombergh not only had a wrist tattoo, but a calf tattoo “of a design”, while Rachel had one in the same place “of a dragon”.
Rachel was said to be a drug addict who loves art, which Blombergh’s nephew Skylur told Kotaku was “Sunday nearly to a T” - she stopped using drugs long before her death, however. Even the phone number on Life is Strange’s missing poster is similar. (555) 388-6020 is the same number that the county sheriff directed people to when asking for information, only in Life is Strange, it has a different area code.
While undoubtedly similar, Isabella revealed in another TikTok that her family was never contacted for permission to use Blombergh’s likeness in Don’t Nod’s game. “I’m confused, too,” Isabella said. “Like, I understand stealing the template of the missing poster, but stealing the description of my mother is kind of weird. I’m conflicted. I love the game though.”
The rest of the family were distraught to see the poster brought to life in the game; “My grandfather, Reign Blombergh, broke down when he first found out about it,” Skylur said tot Kotaku. “He felt as if people wouldn’t just leave it alone. That seemed to have been the general consensus among the family. The developers… should have reached out”.
However, Skylur has a different outlook. “I don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing that [Don’t Nod] took inspiration from Sunday. I find something about it nice, almost like Sunday was immortalised by Life is Strange.”