The 1982 Horror Visionary Who Became Hideo Kojima’s Biggest Creative Influence

Hideo Kojima has never treated games and movies like separate boxes on a shelf. To him, they speak the same language. His latest chat just underlined that again — and, bonus, it came with a great John Carpenter story that goes from influence to almost-lawsuit to mutual respect.

Kojima on WIRED: games, cinema, and the directors who raised him

On December 21, 2025, Kojima popped up on WIRED's Tech Support series, fielding questions about how he builds games and which filmmakers left the deepest dents in his brain. He said the early foundation came from the towering names — Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock — but it was the directors he discovered as a teenager who really stuck. One of the biggest: John Carpenter.

Why Carpenter hits so hard for Kojima

Carpenter's late 70s/early 80s run — think Escape from New York (1981) and The Thing (1982) — mashed up sci-fi, horror, western grit, and straight-up action without asking permission. That boundary-ignoring streak is exactly what Kojima gravitates toward, and he says it shaped how he builds worlds and tones inside his games. The Thing is the perfect case study: panned or misunderstood in 1982, now a cult classic defined by paranoia, isolation, and the 'trust no one' energy. Sound familiar?

• Metal Gear Solid 2 is basically a masterclass in identity games and misinformation.
• Death Stranding runs on loneliness and fragile connections — the emotional version of snowbound research stations and side-eyeing your crewmate.
• Kojima is not chasing tidy answers. He wants you off-balance, in that productive, unsettling space Carpenter loved.

The Snake that almost bit back

This influence isn’t just abstract. Solid Snake and Snake Plissken are cousins on purpose. Kojima has never been coy about it — he even slapped the alias 'Iroquois Plissken' on Snake in Metal Gear Solid 2. That homage came with some tension, though. In 2015, Carpenter said the rights holders behind Escape from New York wanted to sue Kojima and Konami over the similarities. Carpenter shut it down himself.

Carpenter told The Hollywood Reporter he passed on legal action because he knew Kojima and considered him 'a nice guy,' later calling him 'a very nice man.'

And here’s the part most people miss: years earlier, Kojima had actually written to Carpenter asking for his blessing to model the character after Plissken. Carpenter said yes. So yeah — this could have gotten messy, but it turned into a polite cross-generational handshake instead.

Quick anniversary tangent

On November 17, 2025, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater hit its 21st birthday, and a fan tweet made the rounds calling out a scene that still plays like a blueprint for story-driven games. Not exactly shocking if you’ve been paying attention to how cinematic Kojima’s work has always been.

Where Kojima’s head is now

Kojima says the movie obsession still fuels the day-to-day. He studies history and science every day, plays his own work from a player’s point of view, and tries to build worlds that feel lived in rather than just completed. In other words: don’t expect him to stop blurring mediums anytime soon.

Thoughts on Kojima and the Carpenter connection? Drop them below.