Did a Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Easter Egg Reveal Kojima’s Konami Feud?

The saga regarding if and when Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima is leaving Konami, seemingly against his will, has been rumbling on since March this year, but an Easter egg discovered in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, released on 18th March, 2014, a year before the ensuing drama became public knowledge, may have been pointing to Kojima’s exit and pre-emptive erasure for Metal Gear Solid’s history all along.

The Déjà Vu Mission, an extra op exclusive to the PlayStation release of the game, puts the player in control of a polygonal rendering of Metal Gear Solid’s Solid Snake and tasks them with recreating iconic moments from the first game. A submission within Déjà Vu involves finding logos related to games from the history of the Metal Gear series.

Logos that pertain to Metal Gear games created by Kojima are erased – eerily reminiscent of Konami’s efforts to scrub Kojima’s name and production company credits from the Metal Gear Solid games – while those not produced by Kojima, such as Metal Gear Acid 2, are dismissed. “Looks like that’s nothing special,” says Snake’s associate Kaz when pointing to the aforementioned title’s logo.

Most tellingly, though, is a line that Kaz delivers later on, which seems to predict what would happen a year after the game’s release: “You might be able to erase the marking, but the memories will never disappear,” he says. There’s very little ambiguity about that.

The second part of the fifth and final instalment in the Metal Gear Solid franchise, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, is set for release on 1^st September on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One, with the PC port expected a fortnight later.

Thank you GameSpot for providing us with this information.