HOAX: Rajinikanth did not get honoured with WhatsApp emoji

Kabali, the next release from south superstar Rajinikanth, seems to be the highlight for many. While the craze for the superstar is highly witnessed in south India, the craze seems to have spread outside the country in a different way. WhatsApp, the most used messaging app in India with 95 per cent of mobile users already on its platform. It seems that WhatsApp has 'reportedly' honoured Rajinikanth by featuring a few emojis based on his character from his next film Kabali. Well, this seems to be a rumour since the icon was always present and is not related to the superstar. Incidentally, the icon is based on the character Walt Jabsco.

According to Emojipedia, the emoji is a man wearing a suit, hovering above the ground with a shadow displayed beneath him. Generally shown wearing a fedora or similar style of hat. This character was originally introduced into the Windings font as an “exclamation mark in the style of the rude boy logo found on records by The Specials" according to Jen Sorenson, and quoted in this post. The levitating man is known as Walt Jabsco. The Man in Business Suit Levitating emoji was approved as part of Unicode 7.0 in 2014.

The emoji is not based on Rajinikanth, but on Walt Jabsco. Incidentally, the look of the icon resembles the superstar in a recent film and those using WhatsApp took the emoji to be him. Since the display is small on smartphones, it is difficult to realize that the emoji does not look like Rajinikanth.

The Rajinikanth mania will soon spread through WhatsApp—the emoji icons are featured in style, which looks similar to the superstar who is already well-known for this look. The emoji resembles his looks from the movie Baasha where he is seen wearing coolers and blazers with an upright vintage hair style. The icon can be seen under the Football icon list and is now reportedly trending among his fans.

Rajinikanth is well-known for creating history through his films, and now he seems to going ahead to break the online social platform too with this new emoji.