Over three years after release, some players are discovering this Death Stranding Easter egg for the first time

pcgamer.com:

Hideo Kojima's games are loved by their devotees for, among other things, the amount of surprises his development teams manage to squeeze into unexpected places. There's a level of detail to the worlds they create that is unique and, while much of it is ready to be found, certain interactions or possibilities are always buried-away for the most dedicated and experimental of players. Now fans have begun to take widespread notice of a Death Stranding secret that has previously been discovered, but never seems to have made much of an impression before.

The secret is that during the game's climactic boss battle with Higgs, the comically evil antagonist, players can choose a pacifist route to frustrate the enemy. Do this long enough, blocking Higgs' blows but refusing to retaliate, and the boss will grab Sam and trigger an animated sequence, one in which Higgs punches Sam repeatedly before pulling him close and biting off a chunk of his ear.

There seem to be two things in the background here. First is the Metal Gear parallels, with the Sam/Higgs fight something of a throughline from the MGS4 battle between Old Snake and Ocelot, which also includes rare animated sequences the player can trigger.

Second however is that this seems to be a pretty straight reference to what happened in a 1997 heavyweight rematch between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield: frustrated by Holyfield's defence and a second round headbutt, Tyson proceeded to bite a huge chunk of Holyfield's upper ear off in a clinch. Incredibly enough, the fight would only be stopped after a second and much less serious bite, with Holyfield winning by DQ.

The reference seems unmistakeable, mostly because the image of the damage to Holyfield's ear was so gruesome and