Metal Gear Zero is a Metal Gear fanfiction and proposed video game series created by Toxicanvil243 and co-written by DANNYGROM.
It is centered around a private military company known as Dragon and focuses on its role in World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War. It is a tetralogy, the four installments being Metal Gear Zero, Metal Gear Zero 2: Patient Zero, Metal Gear Zero 3: Syndicate, and Metal Gear Zero: A New Millennium.
The series has a Rotating Protagonist, with a younger Major Zero starring in the first two games, the Boss starring in the third game, and Zero’s son, Christopher, starring in the last game.
The series exists in the form of fanfiction on Archive of Our Own as well as a video game idea on the Metal Gear Fanfiction Wiki.
It also spawned two spin-offs, Metal Gear Zero: Korean Chronicles, which focuses on Zero working for MI6 during the Korean War, and A True Patriot, which is an Alternate Timeline series detailing the Boss’s life.
This series contains examples of:
- Big Bad: Due to the rotating cast, naturally the Big Bads are different in each story.
- Metal Gear Zero: Lieutenant Hacket Wolff, a high-ranked Nazi soldier.
- Metal Gear Zero 2: Patient Zero: General Hiroto Hayashi, a high-ranked Imperial Japanese solider and biologist, who originally was part of a Big Bad Duumvirate with Wolff before the latter's incapacitation as a result of burn injuries.
- Metal Gear Zero 3: Syndicate: William Cromwell A.K.A. Silver Tiger, who was originally a Big Bad Wannabe in the first two games.
- Metal Gear Zero: A New Millenium: Arsenic Werewolf, Silver Tiger's Dragon from the third game, who forms a Big Bad Duumvirate with Dr. Clark.
- Bulungi: Zaganda from Metal Gear Zero, a small country in Africa that was originally part of Uganda.
- The Dragon:
- After William's defection, he briefly served as one to Wolff.
- Hayashi also has two henchwomen who serve as Co-Dragons to him.
- And of course, Arsenic Werewolf to William, who would eventually become an Ascended Dragon. Afterwards, she gets her own Dragon in the form of Salt Shark.
- Female Feline, Male Mutt: Inverted with Silver Tiger, whose Animal Motif is big cats, and Arsenic Werewolf, who can transform into a werewolf and becomes fully a wolf after death.
- Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Most of the good guys smoke cigars, including Joy and Zero. Meanwhile, the villainous William/Silver Tiger smokes cigarettes.
- Island Base: Dragon PMC is one, starting off as a rocky island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and later being relocated to a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean.
- Jungle Warfare: the series has a couple of jungle locations:
- Metal Gear Zero has the Central Africa map, which is set in a fictional country called Zaganda and has part of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.
- Most of Metal Gear Zero 3: Syndicate, which takes place in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, specifically in Burma, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
- Metal Gear Zero: A New Millenium has the Amazon Rainforest. While there is no war going on there, it does have drug cartels Christopher must fight, and is where the battle against Water Basilisk takes place.
- Private Military Contractors: Dragon PMC is the main one featured, and A New Millenium features the villainous PMC known as ArsenicTech.
