yours truly

the first 40 minutes or so pass with many a delighted exclamation. stan lee was credited & i’m told blade was a marvel property, which is news to me. i’m thoroughly enjoying myself. the cop familiar gets the shit beat out of him & tells blade to check the fridge. the wind roars as the scene transition fades to black.

in fades a helicopter. a man with long dark hair on crutches emerges from it. i do not immediately recognize the man, but from the crutches & the hair i immediately go “morbius??”

they assure me he isn’t morbius. i accept that they don’t want to admit he’s morbius for some reason (maybe they just don’t want me to think blade is in the mcu?) as the entirety of michael morbius’s backstory plays out on screen.

i repeatedly ask “okay but this is literally morbius right” and “why are you doing this” as it becomes increasingly clear that we are now, somehow, watching Morbius (2022). everyone continues to insist it’s Blade (1999) until finally i ask “how long were you planning this” and logan says “you wanna know how long” and gives me a screenshot

- OP is reddit user sadfutago. (futago is japanese for "twins")

- in May they started posting in the NierAutomata subreddit, asking how their friend can access the church area in the Copied City. Since no one knew what they meant, they then a month later posted a screenshot of the unknown area, both in the Nier Automata subreddit and the Nier subreddit.

- people were absolutely confused and asked if they could provide a video. They then later provided a short video, showing a secret door.

- people still absolutely confused, because no one has ever seen this before, asked them for a longer video. On the 25th July they provided a new video, showing a tunnel that let to the church they mentioned in the first post.

- obviously people began asking more and more, because still no one has ever seen anything like this before, so another video was posted on the 26th July, showing the actual church, with a cutscene and voicelines playing. A black glitch blob is seen, which they claimed wasn't there before (as seen as in the first screenshots they shared), as well as a young figure with a flower on their chest lying on an altar. Devola and Popola's staffs are seen left and right beside the altar, as well as a chest only available for 9S, contents unknown as for now.

- Lance, the person who found YOKO TARO's last Nier Automata secret, broke this whole story down in his twitter thread. Since then it gained a lot of attention. He also points out that the arrows for the item pickup are missing and no one has figured out to remove them, ever.

- so much attention in fact, both Yosuke Saito and YOKO TARO himself tweeted about it. Yosuke Saito made three tweets x x x, saying that only YOKO TARO could pull something like this off, and that we should preorder Nier Automata on the Switch. YOKO TARO made a tweet x that we should refer to his twitter bio, which states that he cannot say anything and that we should ask the publisher. In a follow up tweet x he says that he isn't who we think he is. (Probably refering to people saying sadfutago is YOKO TARO.)

- people are in shambles, because no one can explain anything. Even the modding community said that this kind of modding is impossible to do for them as of right now. They did break down sadfutago's posts with them and found out they are playing on a canadian-french ps4 version, never updated, so version 1.00.

- since then people are trying to replicate, just anything, about this. Nothing yet.

- people were speculating that this is: a very well done mod, a marketing strategy for the Switch version, an ARG, cut easter egg content someone finally randomly found, a hoax overall.

- sadfutago's writing style seems to imply they are young and/or not fluent in english. Someone also pointed out that their posting times rather fit into the japanese timezone than to a NA one.

- sadfutago's latest comments seem also to imply they don't really understand english that well and simply repeat what they have been told. x x x x x Saying in this own thread that it could be a mod, cut content, a marketing strategy, that we could reverse engenier it. ... These comments don't make sense at all, if they're the person who found it in the first place.

- in the early hours of the 28th July (or late 27th, depending on your timezone), sadfutago posted that they are entering the Church with 9S. The same cutscene plays as they entered it with A2. They open the locked chest with 9S, receiving the data log of Yonah, which you also receive later in the game. The black blob then attacks 9S. Unfortunately sadfutago loses here.

- an hour later, they posted a second video where they defeated the black blob. It seems to be the same enemy as you fight later in the game as 9S. Nothing really happens after sadfutago defeats it, so they go back and interact with the birdbath on the side of the entrance of the Church. The japanese prompt from the birdbath in Nier Replicant appears, but sadfutago selects the wrong answers several times and gets ported back to the beginning of the tunnel

- sadfutago doesn't seem to understand japanese, as they say those are "random letters or korean". The community tells them in which order to press the answers. Stay tuned.

- meanwhile a lot of things have happened behind the scenes. Between memes, debunking researches from modders, people trying to find it on their own, people claiming it's played on a dev kit, etc etc. I try to focus on the important things here :D