Abandoned / Hideo Kojima Conspiracy

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About

The Abandoned / Hideo Kojima Conspiracy, also known as The Blue Box Conspiracy, refers to a theory that an upcoming indie-horror game called Abandoned is actually Hideo Kojima's infamously nixed Silent Hill game, once known as Silent Hills. Despite Abandoned developers Blue Box repeatedly insisting their game was disconnected from Silent Hill and Kojima, a number of circumstantial clues bolstered the theory that the game was secretly Kojima's Silent Hill.

Origin

On April 7th, 2021, PlayStation released a trailer for a first-person survival horror game called Abandoned, developed by Blue Box Studios. It shows woods in a first-person view while the narrator details waking up in a strange place with no memory or food and discovering they are prey to a religious cult. The trailer gained over 1 million views in less than three months (shown below).

On June 15th, 2021, Blue Box, perhaps inadvertently, started the Silent Hill conspiracy after it tweeted,^[1] "Guess the name: Abandoned = (First letter S, Last letter L). Reveal closing in… #PS5 #Exclusive" (shown below). The tweet was deleted after fans began thinking they were teasing Silent Hill. The same day, they apologized on Twitter for leading fans to think they were teasing Silent Hill and stated they had no relation to Konami or Kojima^[7] (shown below, right).

BLUE BOX Game Studios BLUE BOX Follow @BBGameStudios ME STUDIO Guess the name: Abandoned = (First letter S, Last letter L). Reveal closing in... #PS5 #Exclusive 12:56 PM - 15 Jun 2021

BLUE BOX Game Studios BLUE BOX @BBGameStudios AME STUDIO We wanted to set things straight. We have no relations with Konami. Silent Hill is owned by Konami. We do not have any relations with Hideo Kojima. It was never our intention to tease the name as Silent Hill. We sincerely apologize for this. 6:12 PM · Jun 15, 2021 · Twitter Web App

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After Blue Box's tweet, internet users began discovering coincidental connections between Abandoned, Blue Box, Hideo Kojima, and Silent Hill. Firstly, the idea of Kojima teasing a game under a fake name and studio is not without precedence: Kojima teased Metal Gear Solid V as "The Phantom Pain" developed by "Moby Dick Studios" and directed by "Joakim Mogren" ("Joakim" is an anagram for "Kojima").^[2]

Significant clues include:

At :49 in the Abandoned trailer, the letters "P" and "T" are obscured from a sign, which some interpreted as a possible reference to Kojima's demo for Silent Hills, P.T.^[3]
The director of Abandoned is named Hasan Kahraman, sharing the same initials as Hideo Kojima. Also, when you translate "Hideo" from Japanese to Turkish in Google Translate, you get Kahraman.^[4]
On June 9th, 2021, Kojima posted a tweet with "Silent" and "Hills" in it.^[5]
Kojima also posted a picture of himself holding a blue box in June.^[6]

On June 17th, 2021, the subreddit /r/BlueBoxConspiracy^[3] was founded, compiling all the clues and coincidences suggesting Abandoned could secretly be Kojima's Silent Hill. On June 18th, IGN^[8] posted an article compiling most of the significant evidence, with writer Jordan Olomon explaining he had conducted email interviews with Kahraman, though had been unable to see or speak to him on the phone. He confirmed that Blue Box is indeed a real studio in the Netherlands.

On June 21st, Blue Box tweeted a video featuring Hasan Kahraman revealing his face and assuring the public he is a real person.