Kojima’s cryptic t-shirt from the Game Awards 2014 spurs rampant Internet speculation

Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima’s wardrobe choice during the Game Awards 2014 include a t-shirt with cryptic Swedish text that has led the Internet down two paths of speculation.

The Internet detectives at reddit reasoned that the t-shirt (seen above, though pretty severely cut off) contains the words “tjugoandra den sjätte,” which translates to “twenty-second and sixty.” Naturally, the Internet’s first instinct was to assume this meant June 22 would be Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain’s release date (it does, oddly enough, fall on a Tuesday).

But! There’s another theory. An even crazier one, and thus the more likely of the two. As you may recall, the fake studio Kojima concocted when he first unveiled the game during the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards was called Moby Dick Studio. Based on this association, someone on the Metal Gear subreddit ran off and checked into Herman Melville and Moby Dick. Turns out Moby Dick is Melville’s sixth novel. And the 22nd chapter of Moby Dick is titled “Merry Christmas.”

So an alternative to the equally plausible release date theory is that Kojima was simply telling his fans “happy holiday.”

My rule, when dealing with Kojima shenanigans, is to err on the side of the insane-iest.

Kojima’s cryptic t-shirt from the Game Awards 2014 spurs rampant Internet speculation