Hideo Kojima Character Names

About

Hideo Kojima Character Names refers to a series of memes parodying the character naming conventions in video games designed by Japanese game designer Hideo Kojima. Inspired by character names such as "Hot Coldman" and "Die-Hardman," the trend achieved virality after the names of several characters in Death Stranding were revealed in May 2019.

Origin

In video games designed by Japanese game designer Hideo Kojima, multiple characters have American-sounding yet unconventional names. Two of the best-known examples of this naming convention are Hot Coldman in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker and Die-Hardman in Death Stranding.

The earliest known meme parodying the way some characters are named in Hideo Kojima's video games was circulated in 2015. On June 7th, 2015, Redditor Chucctastic posted an image of Hot Coldman captioned with several dozen names following the same structure, such as "Alive Deadman," "Sick Healthyman" and "War Peaceman." The post (shown below) garnered over 370 upvotes in the /r/metalgearsolid^[1] subreddit and was later shared on other platforms.

The parody trend did not achieve widespread popularity until late May 2019 when name cards for several Death Stranding characters, including Die-Hardman, Heartman, Fragine and Mama were revealed. On May 29th, 2019, X^[2] user @NikkoGuy made a post about the characters that garnered over 640 reposts and 2,000 likes in five years (shown below).

Spread

More memes parodying the naming convention were posted in late May 2019. For example, X^[3] / Twitter user @Jonny_wags posted made a post referencing the Mr. Cool Ice meme (shown below, left). Also that day, X^[4] user @althisguy posted a meme that garnered over 950 reposts and 3,300 likes in five years (shown below, right).

More parody memes appeared in 2019 and the following years. For example, on November 11th, 2022, X^[5] user @GravelordNeato made a joke about Sam Bankman-Fried's name that received over 2,500 reposts and 12,000 likes in one year (shown below, left). On December July 21st, 2023, X^[6] user @pissvortex suggested introducing characters in Oppenheimer the way they are introduced in Hideo Kojima's games, with the post receiving over 5,000 reposts and 53,000 likes in six months (shown below, right)

On November 11th, 2019, the website Kojima Name Generator^[7] was launched.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References