The scene in The Drifting Classroom where the protagonist has his…

“...my dad couldn't answer. He just kept looking at me through convulsions. His eyes looked like they were trying to tell me something...”

“In other words, I'm trying to create a game that will have a small but positive affect on players' actual lives. I know it sounds a little dramatic, but that's what I've been thinking about for a long time now.”

“We didn't use an actual cardboard box. We made one out of poles.”

“I know that no one would ever wear a box in war, but I want to change the mood, relieve the stress and tension and control a little bit the feelings of the player by letting them calm down and relax for a second and then continue through the mission.”

After returning to Japan following the freight-elevator incident, Kojima bought the DVD of Elevator to the Gallows and watched it for the first time in about forty years. The film proved different from his childhood impressions: he felt sympathy for Jeanne Moreau and realized it was not film noir to him but a hymn to love. He concluded that he had been trapped inside that movie for decades and that the real elevator accident had set in motion again the elevator that had long stood still in his heart.