Easter Eggs You Missed In Death Stranding
It's no secret that Hideo Kojima enjoys littering his works with Easter eggs. Whether he's making references to other games he's created, hinting at what's to come, or simply inserting a host of his friends into random scenes, he's the king of video game winks and nods. And while the various cameos from celebrities in the game are a fun surprise for players, there are several other Easter eggs you likely missed in Death Stranding.
Some of these Easter eggs were uncovered by players logging into the game on a certain day. Others required a score of online sleuths to solve. And even though some of these secrets can seem a bit over-the-top with just how convoluted they are, it's what we've come to expect from the great Hideo Kojima.
The birthday Easter egg
When Sam leaves one of his safe houses in game, there will sometimes be a cutscene between Mads Mikkelsen's character, Cliff, and Sam's BB, Lou. But there is one very special cutscene that many players don't even know about yet.
Before you begin playing Death Stranding, the game asks players to input their birthday. This is so that, if you happen to play the game on your birthday, you'll be given a special gift in the form of Mads Mikkelsen delivering you flowers and wishing you a happy birthday. On top of that, Sam will wake to find a birthday cake in his private room. Every time you carry out an activity, more and more slices of your cake go missing, as if Sam has been snacking on it all day. Players will even receive an email from the dev team with birthday wishes in it.
It's not a huge thing, but the gesture is sweet and makes you feel important on your special day.
Amelie Strand's necklace
Kojima enjoys hiding clues, references, and even obscure ties to his work anywhere that he possibly can. So when the character poster for Amelie Strand was released, it didn't take long for fans to notice that she was wearing an interesting necklace. The deliberate chain work on Amelie's gold necklace seemed like it couldn't be random, so the fanbase took to the internet to figure out what the pattern meant.
Thanks to a Russian Twitter user, it was revealed that the specific chains and beads in Amelie's necklace are actually musical notes. When lined up with a music box grid, it plays the melody to a song called "Give Me An Answer" by the band Low Roar. And while this may seem incredibly random, the band is a favorite of Kojima's, and one he used music from for two of Death Stranding's trailers. The music video for "Give Me An Answer" is actually a tribute to Death Stranding, as video director Dylan Marko attempted to give players a way to physically enter the game prior to its release. His music video is his interpretation of what that would look like in the real world.
Observing Sam in his private room
Sam Bridges has so many idle animations and spontaneous interactions that it would be almost impossible to catalog all of them in the course of a single playthrough of Death Stranding. But in Sam's private room, players are able to trigger many of these animations if they angle the camera correctly.
Nodding the camera up and down, for example, will cause Sam to imitate you and nod his head as well. Focusing the camera on the shower will make Sam smell himself and wonder if he needs a shower. And repeatedly zooming in on Sam's frontal region, to put it delicately, causes Sam to punch the camera in annoyance.
But one of the animations triggered in Sam's private room has a bit more to it.
If the player focuses the camera on Sam's feet, he'll tap them. But if you do this a few times, a black tar-like figure will appear beneath him, grab his ankles, and try to pull him down into a black abyss. The tar-covered figure wears glasses, and the internet has been debating over who it could be. It seems that there are two camps that theorists fall into. The figure is either Guillermo Del Toro's character Deadman, or Hideo Kojima himself. Either way, the easter egg is jarring if you aren't expecting it. Even Sam is thrown off balance by the vision of the tar man grabbing his ankles.