For nearly two decades, Erik, Baleog and Olaf, known best as The Lost Vikings, played the role of suburban superheroes for the college town of Irvine, California. The middle-aged trio of Norsemen spent their days volunteering at soup kitchens, crosswalks and geriatric centers. The three, once video game superstars, were hiding in plain sight; their celebrity, to those around them, unknown.

“The blond one sure knew his hard candies,” Eric Albrecht, an 85 year-old member of the Shady Oak Retirement Home and friend of the Vikings said over a box of peppermints. He points to the door where a stuffed house cat stands guard. “Heh, there he is now. Grm.”

So it came as a shock for those close to the Vikings, when three bloated bodies were found lifeless outside the local Derby Top Pub. Beside the corpses, cups with traces of Kool-Aid and barium.

The Vikings, stars of two average though ultimately forgettable Super Nintendo video games, retained a modicum of relevancy thanks to video gamers unquenchable thirst for nostalgia. But the group refused interviews, avoiding press and the limelight that comes with it.

According to a report on the incident by the Irvine Police Dept., none of the three had a history of depression or psychosis except Erik’s brief stint on Lexapro during the late 1990s.

“Wanna know why they did it? Those Vikings were dirt poor.” says Albrecht, unwrapping a hard candy. “Blizzard had left’em with nothing. Not a dime. One day I caught the fat one pillaging my sock drawer.”

The deaths, while tragic, benefit the general public’s long-held belief that celebrities die in 3.