The answer to that question is yes - yes he is.
But a more accurate question would be, "is he trolling us on purpose or are we simply over analysing Death Stranding?"
The gaming world was taken by a fairly impactful storm last year when the Playstation Network was subtly advertising a free playable teaser for an untitled game, simply named 'P.T.'
P.T.'s arrival to our PSN was one of the strangest and most enigmatic debuts for an exclusive demo - with a fake development company posing underneath its title, '7780s Studios.'
Even the poster, or cover, was incessantly deceiving on PSN, with its tranquil green woodlands in its background and its synopsis being as vague as they come - a misleading damn hoodwink.
At first glance, one might suspect it to be a Playstation theme to download, or a Japanese RPG demo.
This was all a clever ruse...
For those who shamelessly don't know, P.T. turned out to be one of the most frightening little gaming experiences in recent memory that was created by the main metal gear man himself, Hideo Kojima.
Not only was it a truly terrifying 30 minute play through, or walk through rather, (personally it took my friends and I four trepidatious hours into the night to get to the final puzzle), it was discovered that it was one hell of an abstract way of revealing to us that the Silent Hill franchise was officially returning.
Silent Hills was literally in disguise as another game entirely.
In fact, it was such a huge hit that it quickly became a record breaker at the time for the number of PSN downloads (successively broken by Resident Evil 7: Beginning Hour demo).
The simplicity and originality of the demo was clearly a factor into its success but in true Kojima fashion, there was a little more to it.
At least, until it was announced that it was sadly cancelled.
The apparent troubles behind the curtain of Konami Studios resulted in the departure between Kojima and the long time loyal studio. With this news, and also the announcement that P.T. was unfortunately cancelled, it caused major disgust among fans.
Dramatically, Konami became a name of disgrace among us and the whole debacle caused production to buckle and eventually stop.
Oscar nominee, Guillermo Del Toro, and The Walking Dead star, Norman Reedus were famously slated to be inherently involved with Silent Hills. But the train stopped rolling and Hideo Kojima moved onto another gaming project with a fresh partnership with Sony and his newly found studio, Kojima Productions.
According to Kojima, his new project is "completely unrelated to P.T."
This project was revealed by a teaser trailer, close to a year later, by the name of 'Death Stranding' which stars Norman Reedus presumably in the titular role of the eerie game.
From here on in, hardcore online goers have meticulously theorized just how Death Stranding and Silent Hills are directly, or even indirectly, linked in this much mooted and stoically hidden Hideo Kojima assignment.
One could hope that Death Stranding and Silent Hills will form into some sort of amalgamation of one game.
'Silent Hills: Death Stranding' as the title perhaps?
Before delving into the nitty-gritty of why the idea of Silent Hills' cancellation being a hoax holds some merit, this hour-long video by PythonSelkanHD is undoubtedly an interesting breakdown:
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It highlights uncanny similarities between P.T. and Death Stranding and obscure messages that make it difficult to resist feeling anything but skepticism.
The Swedish radio message from P.T.
Accepting the notion that the translation from Swedish to English is trustworthy, the demonic voice that 90% of players will ignore, or at least anyone who isn't a Swedish speaker, tells us a few things.
The message essentially tells us various different suggestions, or orders even. It implores us not to believe the news.
"Don't trust the news. Don't trust the police. They are already controlled by them."
Subsequently followed by:
"As the radio drama from 75 years ago was the truth."
This is quite a clear reference to Orson Welles' celebrated War of The Worlds radio broadcast that had everyone in 1938 in cahoots, thinking an alien invasion was afoot.
Right, you may ask, "What the hell are you doing rambling about aliens? This isn't the history channel."
Well, as PythonSelkanHD also allures to in his video is the fact that extraterrestrials have actually been a brief, but recurrent, theme in the Silent Hill franchise.
Silent Hill 2's UFO ending being one of the two "joke endings" along with the dog ending as a friendly reminder.
Don't trust the news? Could this be referring to the news of Silent Hills' thudding cancellation? Much like the War of The Worlds panic 7 decades ago, Kojima likes to open new doors and experiment with audiences.
It's an understatement to conclude that this is all pretty cryptic but this is Kojima's world here.
"Very soon the gates to a new dimension will open." This ties into the second major point; The Death Stranding Teaser.
There are a number a symbols that are analogize to the terrifying demo and the predicament between Kojima and Konami.
First, let's examine the signs and symptoms of the Silent Hill reference(s).
We see hand imprints in real-time shaping the sand on this dreary beach. As soon as the invisible hand prints clamp down, the sand pockets fill with a black oil of some sort.
This black oily substance is a pretty viable hint at the Silent Hill franchise, as the black oil only appears on something or someone that's tainted in some way in the town of Silent Hill.
Silent Hill Downpour is a decent example of one title that was quite visibly drowning in the stuff. Though, it could also be blood.
But if you inspect in watching the Silent Hills concept movie again and examine the walls in the dimly lit hall, you'll notice that it's scattered with the exact same hand prints that are almost tattooed on Reedus's body.
One of the most obvious ones would be the discovery that Norman Reedus is featured in the game. I won't spoon feed you that one.
The baby is another clear clue in the trailer as the comparison to the crying fetus in the sink is very P.T.esque to be very fair here.
The crossed scar on Reedus's stomach is quite derivative of Lisa from P.T. having her 'abortion' from the deranged father, as the story goes.
But probably the most interesting find from the trailer is the dog tag like necklace that Norman Reedus is wearing.
Before I pretend to know the intricacies of science and quantum mechanics, let me say this; When Hideo Kojima was asked about these at his Sony conference, he simply replied, "I was hoping you'd notice those."
There is a zoomed in high def image of the dog tags and it displays a few mathematical equations quite vividly.
One is in relation to Einstein's theory of relativity and the other is referring to the equation that equates anti-matter.
I won't pretend that I found all of this golden research myself, I simply gathered it the best I could. But if you watch this video below in its entirety, it can be explained in microscopic detail by Ragnarrox, especially from 13:25 to 17:30.
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It's all a bit confusing...
This is as much of an assumption as this whole article but to our understanding, it ultimately nods to the involvement of multiple dimensions. Which, this is fundamentally what the Silent Hill series is built around.
Just in accordance with what the malignant devilish voice uttered on that static radio in P.T. - "Very soon the gates to a new dimension will open."
Apologies for ranting off a list within a list there, but what Silent Hill fans come to gather is that these coincidental symbols and similarities indefinitely aren't coincidental.
The symbolism that eerily coincides with Hideo Kojima himself is also outrageous.
We see Norman Reedus wearing a steel pair of shackles on his left wrist but one shackle is empty. PythonSelkanHD touched on it in his analysis but could this be Hideo Kojima's cryptic way of telling us that he isn't bound or stuck with Konami anymore?
And then we see him pick up the infant only to have it quickly disappear from his hands, could this be Konami stealing 'his baby' (i.e his pet project, Silent Hills).
And the last monologue with the black screen at the final stage of P.T. plays:
"Dad was such a drag. Every day he'd eat the same kind of food, dress the same, sit in front of the same kind of games... Yeah, he was just that kind of guy. But then one day, he goes and kills us all! He couldn't even be original about the way he did it. I'm not complaining... I was dying of boredom anyway. But guess what? I will be coming back, and I'm bringing my new toys with me."
Hideo...? Is this you speaking? Is this Kojima talking about Konami Studios?!
Konami was such a drag? One day they go and fire us all? Same kind of games?! You were dying of boredom? You'll be coming back and you're bringing new toys?
Surely this is too good to be true.
When Hideo Kojima returned to the stage at Sony while revealing the Death Stranding teaser, he used the words, "I'm back!" Of course it was accompanied with his gleeful grin and a loud and relieved shriek from the crowd.
The idea of some sort of return is quite evident and present in different areas of his work. The name of the Low Roar track being played in the Death Stranding teaser is, "I Keep Coming."
P.T. elliptically told us that "he will be coming back."
Another local occurrence within a Konami game, Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes, not so tenuously had Snake saying, "Kept you waiting, huh?" Along with Hideo Kojima's gaming version of himself in the prelude game also adding, "What took you so long?"
These are taken from various different areas of Kojima's titles and Easter eggs, but this continuous trope of Kojima 'returning' is such a commonality among himself and his fans - when he's gone, it leaves a huge hungry void for more. This only aids the prospect of Silent Hills coming back with a vengeance.
But this well and truly scratches the surface of all of the speculation. Twitter patterns to his mysterious tweets over the past few months have also fueled to the conspiracy.
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What do you believe? Of course, much like all of us theorizing and breaking tiny aspects of this fiasco down, it is 100% suspicion and speculation. There is no real hard documentation here, it is all hanging one's own faith and conviction. But much of this 'loose proof' established here poses a hefty possibility that it might all be coincidental.
But this is Hideo Kojima, this is a different kettle of fish. Kojima's whole vice is goading his audience and this is precisely what he's achieved in this past year... Even if all of this evidence becomes humiliatingly debunked if Kojima releases a gameplay teaser of Death Stranding (the completely new IP) tomorrow morning.
Maybe Silent Hills is just the greatest game never made... Or maybe not.