Dark Souls and Elden Ring director Hidetaka Miyazaki has addressed the rumors that he’s got a foot fetish, and he seemed pretty baffled by the whole thing.
Miyazaki’s games are beloved for their brutal gameplay, grimdark settings, and tortured characters. Of these characters, several of the female bosses, NPCs, and helpers share a common trait: They aren’t wearing any shoes.
The Maiden in Black from Demons’ Souls, Sister Friede, Gwunevere, and Priscilla from the Dark Souls games, and even Malenia in Elden Ring all boast bare feet. (Yes, we know Malenia’s legs were destroyed by the Scarlet Rot, but her brother created prosthetics for her that included highly-detailed feet with individual toes. That still counts!)
Over the years, this has sparked an inside joke within the Soulslike community, who lightheartedly figured that Miyazaki must be a foot guy. It was never a serious thing — but he brought it up, totally unprompted, during an interview with The Guardian in September 2026.
Miyazaki was responding to a question about recurring imagery of hands that crops up across most of his games, including his most recent offering, The Duskbloods.
“It’s not necessarily something I’m consistently aware of – maybe it’s something subconscious coming through,” he answered. “Take a look online and there’s a rumor that I have a bit of a thing for feet, but I’m not honestly sure where this comes from. I feel like I’m trying to depict some side of human nature or the human existence that is difficult to describe.”
Hey, we’re not gonna yuck anyone’s yum, but it sounds like this wasn’t even a thought in Miyazaki’s mind when he made these character designs. Instead, he was trying to depict some kind of overarching symbolism about humanity within those characters’ appearances, which includes themes like “ruin and rebirth.”
“[Ruin and rebirth] is an ongoing theme in a lot of my games, I realise,” he added in his interview with The Guardian. “That theme on a cosmological scale applies to The Duskbloods as an interesting philosophical area to explore.
“If we have two ideas of a brighter or dark future, I would tend to sway towards the darker one,” Miyazaki says. “[But] if you explore the ruin and the decay in those worlds, it also lets you explore some chance of rebirth, and I think having that tiny pinprick of light or hope can be something beautiful, something fleeting,” he continued.
Speaking of The Duskbloods, IGN’s Michael Higham described the upcoming title as “FromSoftware’s most complex and interesting game yet” in his hands-on preview. In the lead-up to its launch, he also got the chance to chat with Miyazaki about the game, who told us a bit more about its development process and assured us that yes, Fromsoft is still interested in making single-player games.
Virginia (she/her) is IGN’s News Editor. With ten years of experience reporting on games and entertainment, she’s got a storied background in the fighting game community, influencer news, and viral online trends. Find her on Twitter at @TheeMissGlaze.