Elle Stranding? Death Fanning? Actress Elle Fanning to appear in Kojima Productions project

close up of actress Elle Fanning's face in red cast with text "Who am I?" overlaid.

(Image credit: Kojima Productions)

After a sequence of classically Kojima Twitter teasers, the developer has revealed that actress Elle Fanning (The Neon Demon, Galveston) will be making an appearance in… something being made by Kojima Productions.

During the Tokyo Game Show, the developer unveiled a website and a cryptic tweet, both featuring an image of a silhouetted woman and text reading "WHO am I?" On October 5, Kojima tweeted that "The answer to 'WHO' at TGS will be in the next 'WHERE.'" The "WHERE" in question seems to have been PAX East, where content creator @n4sa found a Kojima Productions advertisement with a QR code linking to a reveal of the mystery woman as Fanning. Additionally, early on October 7, Kojima tweeted out a confirmation that "WHO" is Fanning.

TGS→"WHO"→ ELLEPAX→"WHERE"→??????→"???"→??? pic.twitter.com/bbeTBsUtLeOctober 7, 2022

But the fun doesn't stop there. A day earlier, on October 6, the developer asked "WHO is WHERE?" over another silhouetted woman, while I would like to know WHERE is my ASPIRIN. One sharp-eyed fan in the comments, @MichaelPayneV, argues this second woman is actress Shioli Kutsuma, perhaps most famous for her role in Deadpool 2, and honestly that seems as good a guess as any.

Now WHAT could this all be for? It doesn't feel like Death Stranding to me, but there's a reason Kojima is the beloved auteur and I am only left to puzzle out his cryptic leavings. My money's on this being a teaser for Kojima's aforementioned collaboration with Microsoft rather than anything in the Death Stranding Continuum. Then again… are those strands I see on the Elle Fanning poster? Only Kojima knows for sure.

Kojima's text accompanying the Elle Fanning Tweet, "TGS→'WHO'→ ELLE / PAX→'WHERE'→??? / ???→'???'→???" indicates that there will be yet one more of the five Ws accompanied by a silhouetted actor in the coming weeks, perhaps with a reveal at The Game Awards 2022 in November. I'm going to stake a claim on it being "'WHY'→BELOVED CHARACTER ACTOR PAUL WALTER HAUSER, MOST FAMOUS FOR HIS ROLES IN RICHARD JEWELL AND I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE.

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.