Online sources were quick to notice that Hideo Kojima may have secretly put a Silent Hill message in his latest OD game trailer.
Fans were taken aback at The Game Awards last week, especially when the Academy Award-winning Nope and Us director Jordan Peele, and Hideo Kojima walked out on stage together. They revealed their new collaborative Xbox game OD, along with a teaser trailer that showed the close-ups of the actors’ faces. Interestingly enough, online sources have been quick to spot some hidden easter eggs within the teaser. The most notable has been that there could have been a reference to Konami’s Silent Hill series.
Central Xbox and VGC spotted and verified the little secret message, cross-referencing the trailer on the official Kojima Productions YouTube channel. Specifically, if you took a look at the German actor Udo Kier’s close-up, there appears to have a secret message in his mouth. Very strange, but very on-brand for Kojima to leave some kind of hidden easter egg somewhere. The sources really delved into each frame revealing the faint letters in Kier’s mouth.
Apparently the faint letters can be easier to see if the video’s brightness is adjusted a bit higher. Both sources explained that the letters spelled out “Atami:, which is a Japanese city located in Shizuoka Prefecture. The kanji spelling of Shizuoka is 静岡, and when separated into individual kanji, 静 means ‘calm’, ‘quiet’ or ‘silent’ and 岡 means ‘hill’. This smart message has to be a clear message to Silent Hill; the purpose of the reference is not clear though.
Kojima’s last stint with the Silent Hill video game series was last seen with his collaborative project with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro back in 2021. THey were working on a game called Silent Hills, which was first revealed as the famous PT horror game demo on the PlayStation 4. The teaser at the end of the demo revealed that it was actually a Silent Hill game with Norman Reedus as its main character. Sadly, the project was cancelled soon after Kojima and Konami parted ways. Shortly after, Reedus still stuck with Kojima to create the award-winning game Death Stranding.
If the hidden letters in the OD teaser were real and meant something, it may be possible this could be a new Silent Hill game, perhaps. It is a bit of a stretch since Konami and Kojima have been torn on this series. It could just be a nod to Kojima referencing the game he did not get to make, and this was just a jab that he was making a horror game on his own.
OD does not have a release date yet but the general plot was explained that it will be an overdose on fear, and “blurring the lines of film and gaming.” The game will also star Sophia Lillis (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) and Hunter Schaffer (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), alongside Kier as the lead roles.
