In 2026, the most revealing image from Death Stranding 2: On the Beach may still be a bandana tied around a doomed man's forehead. When Kojima Productions debuted a 10-minute trailer at SXSW in March 2025, ahead of the game's launch, the footage introduced Luca Marinelli as Neil. Marinelli was not simply a new face in the Death Stranding universe. He looked, moved, and was framed like Hideo Kojima's new Solid Snake.

Marinelli is an Italian actor who provides the voice and likeness of Neil. English-speaking audiences may know him best as the immortal mercenary Nicky in Netflix's 'The Old Guard', while his film work has largely been in Italian-language productions, including 'Martin Eden'. In the trailer, Neil first appears in an interrogation room, accused of unknown crimes by a suited man. Neil insists he was only doing the 'dirty work' and seems to be trying to end the arrangement. The suited man angrily replies that Neil has no choice but to keep working for him.

The scene then shifts to Neil speaking with a Bridges employee named Lucy, played by Marinelli's real-life wife, Alissa Jung. Their conversation hints at a romantic relationship and reveals the nature of Neil's job: he is smuggling cargo, specifically brain-dead pregnant women. That detail ties directly into the grim science of the first Death Stranding. The original game's most iconic image remains Norman Reedus's Sam Porter Bridges with a glowing orange flask containing a baby strapped to his chest. That infant is a Bridge Baby, or BB, a seven-month fetus removed via caesarean section from a brain-dead mother. The procedure creates a limbo state between life and death, allowing BBs to communicate with the world of the dead and helping adult carriers detect Beached Things, or BTs, malevolent souls trapped among the living that can cause Voidouts.

Before the events of the first game, the US government experimented with BBs to explain Voidouts, destructive events caused by BTs that can level cities like a nuclear bomb. The study was supposedly discontinued after a BB experiment created a Voidout in Manhattan, destroying the city and killing the US President. The experiments continued in secret. Neil's smuggling of brain-dead pregnant women is presumably carried out for the United States government so that illegal research can continue.

A Bandana and a Ghost

The trailer ends with Marinelli's Neil tying a bandana around his forehead. In that moment, the resemblance to Solid Snake, the beloved protagonist of Kojima's Metal Gear Solid series, is impossible to miss. The visual similarity is not accidental. In 2020, Kojima posted an excerpt from an interview on his official Instagram. Asked which creators and actors had his attention, Kojima said that Marinelli had caught his eye after 'The Old Guard' and 'Martin Eden'. Kojima added that if Marinelli donned a bandana, he would be a spitting image of Solid Snake.

At SXSW, that image became real. Neil is not Solid Snake, and the Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding universes remain separate. The reference, however, is undeniable. Kojima is invoking his most famous creation while building a new chapter for Death Stranding.

The homage goes beyond a bandana. The trailer makes clear that Neil becomes Beached at some point, his soul stranded in the living world much like Cliff Unger, played by Mads Mikkelsen, in the first game. Neil's Beached form takes on the guise of a soldier accompanied by a platoon of undead warriors. During that reveal, a narrator discusses the re-emergence of the United States' gun culture on the 'new continent'. The moment echoes one of the biggest themes Kojima explored across Metal Gear: the proliferation of weapons, especially nuclear missiles, and the way arms destabilize humanity. Almost every Metal Gear game was about stopping nuclear weapon proliferation. The irony is that Snake sometimes had to use weapons to stop nuclear war, and even that was shown to have a corrosive effect on his soul and on Big Boss's. The anti-armaments stance helps explain why several Metal Gear games allowed non-lethal playthroughs.

Metal Gear Echoes Are Everywhere

The trailer's Metal Gear references are not limited to Neil. Heartman appears to combine the ship DHV Magellan with a colossal BT to form a humanoid bio-robotic giant, not unlike Sahalanthropus from Metal Gear Solid 5. The Metal Gear machines of the MGS series were often designed to launch nuclear weapons. The Magellan, in its own way, may also house a nuclear-scale threat if the BT it combines with can cause Voidouts.

The last time Kojima released a trailer as cinematic and as long as the newest Death Stranding 2 preview was the 10-minute Red Band trailer for Metal Gear Solid 5. Both are epic in scope, present characters like movie stars, and blend gameplay with cutscenes into a heroic showcase. By now it is clear that another Metal Gear Solid game from Kojima will never happen. He left the franchise behind after departing Konami, and any future MGS project, including the remake of Metal Gear Solid 3, will be produced without him. Yet the imagery and themes of the series remain burned into Kojima's imagination.

With Death Stranding 2, Kojima may not be making a game called Metal Gear Solid, but he is clearly drawing on his own history to create a new chapter for Death Stranding. The sequel's trailer points to bigger ambitions than the first game, with more diverse environments such as rainforests and oceans, and a seemingly greater emphasis on combat. Combined with its visuals, themes, and new gameplay, Death Stranding 2 looks closer than ever to a new Metal Gear Solid game, even if it does not share the name. The bandana is only the most visible sign. The deeper signal is that Kojima's past is still haunting his future. 🎮