In all gaming lore, there is no as whimsical anecdote as Gandhi’s nuclear story, the story that tells of how an anomaly in programming has transformed the notoriously nonviolent Indian leader into an aggressive war advocate with a penchant for nuclear weapons. While there have been attempts to expose the story over the years, Sid Meier finally comes out and says that the nuclear Gandhi is, in fact, a figment of our collective imagination.

The Original storyFor those unfamiliar, he claims that in indigenous civilization, Gandhi received the lowest possible rating of aggression, as well as befitting a character who reputedly. But the mistake occurred when the player adopted democracy, which would automatically reduce aggression by two. With Gandhi already in one aggressive rating and the program unable to handle negative numbers, it will again give the Indian captain an Aggression rating of 255, the highest rating in the game. From there, Gandhi would become a terrifying monster once he had nuclear weapons.

The story claims that in subsequent games, the coders gave Gandhi a higher aggression as an Easter egg, and they reverted to the original story. The only problem – none of this is true.

Sid Meier wrote in his diary, as Citing Bloomberg, That there was no such mistake in the original civilization, and that the story itself is based on a false premise – even though he enjoys the joke. “It’s one of those mysteries that it’s almost fun to keep,” Meyer said.

This attitude was reflected in a letter he sent to Chris Pratt, the journalist who investigated the legend Nuclear Gandhi to people make games last year. “In some respects, it might be better not to know,” Meyer’s letter to Pratt said. He said, “Given the limited technology at the time, the original Civ was a game that mainly occurred in the player’s imagination … I would be hesitant to restrict what this player could imagine by offering a lot of my ideas.”

Now, the cat is out of the bag in the original story – but if you’d rather believe that nuclear Gandhi really did happen, I’m sure Sid Meier wouldn’t mind.