Death Stranding: 9 Steps To Understanding Hideo Kojima's First Trailer

5. The Umbilical Cords

Did you catch the fact that it's not just Reedus and the baby who have umbilical cords? Instead, many of the larger aquatic creatures and all the whales especially, have the oily cords stretching down into the sea.

Again, you can draw a parallel with evolution, the idea of 'escaping' the water, yet not being ready for what's coming, and dying, because those cords weren't cut. It's a nice visualisation of 'Mother Nature' or a 'mother of the world' ideology, and levels the playing field between man and beast. Kojima appears to be saying that we're all stranded together, simply because all of us came from and were born of the same place.

An interview with IGN even has Kojima quoting a story about how two of the first tools mankind created were "sticks" and "ropes". The former was used to keep things away, whilst the latter draws us together and connects us all:

"The stick is the first tool that mankind created to put distance between himself and bad things - to protect himself. He states that the second tool mankind created is a rope. A rope is a tool used to secure things that are important to you.