When celebrities, actors, and filmmakers visit Japan, there’s a chance they’ll receive a summons from Hideo Kojima, game director and creator of Metal Solid, to come to his studio and have their likenesses digitized and added to his collection. Kojima is never above using his fame in the non-gaming world to meet famous people and post about it, but I’ve always wondered what this process was like from the scanner’s perspective.
Now we know, thanks to SS Rajamouli, the Indian director best known for Baahubali and the mighty Rrr , Polygon’s favorite movie of 2022. Rajamouli is one of many filmmakers, actors, game creators, musicians, and other notable people who make appearances in Kojima’s latest game, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach . Rajamouli, a Polygon collaborator, appears as a character called an adventurer, who needs to be rescued from a snowy mountain.
“When we were in Japan for Rrr Promotions, I visited Kojima-san’s office. He scanned me there, and honestly, I had no idea how or where he would use me,” Rajamouli said in a statement provided exclusively to Polgon. “I just felt something magical brewing. To now see myself featured in Death Stranding 2 is a true honor. Kojima-san is a visionary, and I am humbled to be a small part of his extraordinary world.”
Kojima seems to like to preserve a sense of mystery, even with his famous collaborators. But Rajamouli, for one, wasn’t worried—like many in the film world, he holds video games’ most famous auteur in high regard.
Rajamouli is currently working on his next film, working title SSMB29 . It’s a globe-trotting, James Bond-meets-Indiana Jones-style action-adventure starring Indian megastars Mahesh Babu and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and according to Rajamouli’s representatives, it has the largest budget in Indian cinema history—a record previously held by Rrr .
