{"id":49513,"date":"2025-06-27T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/?p=49513"},"modified":"2025-06-27T17:01:15","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T08:01:15","slug":"death-stranding-2s-kojima-related-easter-eggs-were-all-self-inserted-because-his-team-refused-to-humor-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/death-stranding-2s-kojima-related-easter-eggs-were-all-self-inserted-because-his-team-refused-to-humor-him\/","title":{"rendered":"Death Stranding 2&#8217;s Kojima-related Easter Eggs were all self-inserted, because his team refused to humor him\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Contrasting its tight storytelling and heavy themes of grief and human connection, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is scattered with a good deal of absurd silliness. From Kojima\u2019s favorite VTuber Usada Pekora making a big cameo as a Prepper, to Ghost in The Shell director Mamoru Oshii flinging around raw pizza dough in a martial arts sequence \u2013 it is undeniably self-indulgent. Naturally, Death Stranding 2 also includes some references to Kojima himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1242\" height=\"694\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1242px) 100vw, 1242px\" src=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/20250627-49513-001.jpg\" alt=\"Death Stranding 2: On the Beach\" class=\"wp-image-49519\" srcset=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/20250627-49513-001.jpg 1242w, https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/20250627-49513-001-380x212.jpg 380w, https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/20250627-49513-001-768x429.jpg 768w\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In a recent joint interview reported on by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gamespark.jp\/article\/2025\/06\/26\/154443.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Game*Spark<\/a>, Kojima was asked whether the Easter Eggs related to him were his own doing or something his development team snuck in. Kojima says that \u201cAll of that stuff was added by me.&#8221; Not only that, but when he would ask his staff to add such self-referential humor to the game, they would often go \u201cHuh?\u201d and pretend they didn\u2019t hear anything \u2013 which is equal parts heartbreaking and hilarious.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While Kojima is no doubt exaggerating in jest, he says that some of the stuff he\u2019s hidden inside Death Stranding 2 \u201cmight cause certain people to cringe hard\u201d so it\u2019s easy to imagine his staff being less-than-enthusiastic about implementing it .&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In particular, Kojima mentions an Easter Egg that you can discover when you visit a hot spring, look up at the sky and zoom into the stars. \u201cTry it out for yourselves,\u201d he says.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1342\" height=\"761\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1342px) 100vw, 1342px\" src=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/20250627-49513-002.jpg\" alt=\"Death Stranding 2: On the Beach\" class=\"wp-image-49518\" srcset=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/20250627-49513-002.jpg 1342w, https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/20250627-49513-002-380x215.jpg 380w, https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/20250627-49513-002-768x436.jpg 768w\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kojimaproductions.jp\/en\/death-stranding-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Death Stranding 2: On the Beach<\/a> is out now on PS5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hideo Kojima says he was heartlessly ignored by his staff when it came to putting self-inserty Easter Eggs into Death Stranding 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":49520,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-49513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-japan-related-news"],"blocksy_meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Death Stranding 2&#039;s Kojima-related Easter Eggs were all self-inserted, because his team refused to humor him\u00a0 - AUTOMATON WEST<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hideo Kojima says he was heartlessly ignored by his staff when it came to putting self-inserty Easter Eggs into Death Stranding 2.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/death-stranding-2s-kojima-related-easter-eggs-were-all-self-inserted-because-his-team-refused-to-humor-him\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Death Stranding 2&#039;s Kojima-related Easter Eggs were all self-inserted, because his team refused to humor him\u00a0 - AUTOMATON WEST\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hideo Kojima says he was heartlessly ignored by his staff when it came to putting self-inserty Easter Eggs into Death Stranding 2.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/news\/death-stranding-2s-kojima-related-easter-eggs-were-all-self-inserted-because-his-team-refused-to-humor-him\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"AUTOMATON WEST\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-06-27T13:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image_2025-06-27_170022750.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1244\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"696\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Amber V\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@AUTOMATON_ENG\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@AUTOMATON_ENG\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Amber V\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Death Stranding 2's Kojima-related Easter Eggs were all self-inserted, because his team refused to humor him\u00a0 - 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Currently devoted to growing Automaton West to the size of its Japanese sister-site, while making sure to keep news concise and developer stories deep and stimulating.","url":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/author\/amber-vjestica\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49513"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49521,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49513\/revisions\/49521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}