After spending an entire career working on the Death Stranding, Kojima included very few easter eggs to his original brain-child, save for one possible example at the game’s very beginning.
There are scores of other video-gamey references that players can find hidden in the nooks and crannies of Death Stranding, but very few of them are blatant Metal Gear references. Outside of Mama and Sam’s initial encounter, Metal Gear fans are also sure to recognize the codec’s sound return in Death Stranding. They also might get a giggle from another line, this time delivered by Die-Hardman, who says “If you were a spy on a mission, you would have failed,” when Sam fails to sneak past a group of enemy MULEs.
After finishing the game’s opening sequence and as Sam completes his first delivery to Mama in Central Knot City, Mama greets Sam with a thinly veiled Metal Gear reference: “What took you so long?” The line is directly ripped from a mission in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes where Snake must save a captured ally soldier from an enemy base. When Snake finally gets the soldier safely into his helicopter, it is revealed that the soldier is played by none other than Kojima himself, who coyly asks Snake the same question Mama poses to Sam.
Other Kojima References in Death Stranding
Aside from these few references, however, Death Stranding actually has very little in the way of love for Metal Gear. There are other things, like Fragile’s reference to a “Clingy woman in a cave,” which may or may not be a reference one of the original Metal Gear Solid bosses, Sniper Wolf, or perhaps Eva from Metal Gear Solid 3. On top of that, Death Stranding’s delivery-bots bear a striking resemblance to some of the robots in Metal Gear Solid 4, namely the dwarf geckos. There are plenty of other references in Death Stranding, but most of them are either obvious references to something else, or are so general that it’s hard to say that they’re strictly callbacks to Metal Gear.
One of the deeper references in the game does actually refer back to another Kojima project outside of the Metal Gear series. Hidden in the layout of Capital Knot City is a certain street with a layout shockingly similar to the one shown in the 2014 teaser trailer for the original ill-fated collaboration between Hideo Kojima, Norman Reedus, and Guillermo Del Toro, Silent Hills. Without the constant rain and dark atmosphere in the trailer it’s hard to tell, but if they look closely and players will be able to recognize a few key features.
Aside from these easter eggs, Kojima invested most of his references in nods to other games like movie director Jordan Voght-Roberts. There’s plenty for players to find if they have the time and patience to analyze the details in Death Stranding’s world, but if they’re looking for any more Metal Gear Solid callbacks, they may be sorely disappointed.