As news surrounding Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn’s arrest on suspicion of having understated his income dominated social media in Japan, a curious phenomenon was emerging on Twitter: Mr. Bean, the goofball lead character played by Rowan Atkinson in the namesake British sitcom, was trending on the social network.
Why? Because of the embattled auto executive’s apparent resemblance to the character.
Japanese-language Twitter seemed to be in on the joke, with the hashtag #Mrビーン (#MrBīn) exploding into the social network’s top trending hashtags, having been mentioned more than 33,000 times as of 9:45 p.m., just hours after news of the impending arrest had emerged.
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