Trivia / Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

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• Ascended Meme: A few of them in the trophies for the game. Including "Hurt Me More!" for electrocuting someone with your stun knife.
• Character Outlives Actor: Kōji Totani, Revolver Ocelot's Japanese voice actor, died during the production of this game. As a result, the role was recast to Banjo Ginga, Liquid Snake's Japanese voice actor, with Liquid Snake's persona having (apparently) taken complete control of Ocelot's mind as a convenient excuse for the recast.
• Creator Backlash: David Hayter felt that Snake hesitating to commit suicide was out-of-character. Hayter believed that after all of the people Snake had killed, he wouldn't hesitate to kill himself if he felt that was the only way to save the world.
• Creator Cameo: Hideo Kojima appears in the intro Bomb Shelter Buffet TV segment, as well as in a hidden flashback during the confrontation with Psycho Mantis' ghost.
• Defictionalization: Sony released a Bluetooth headset styled after Snake's Solid Eye around the game's release, which was even compatible with the game itself and could be used to listen to Codec calls.
• Dummied Out: Otacon and Rosemary have Codec audio files for the Final Boss fight against Liquid which went unused, as the Codec cannot be activated during said battle.
• Dyeing for Your Art: David Hayter's voice for Old Snake featured age-based vocal decay, going from a gruff, smoking veteran type of voice to a Scratchy-Voiced Senior befitting his rapid physical aging. It apparently gave Hayter trouble doing Naked Snake's voice again in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.
• Executive Meddling: Snake's nanomachine injections were supposed to be something that the player themselves were going to have to take care of, with the syringe being an in-game item to administer at certain points to keep Snake active. Sony and various ratings boards objected to the very specific use of "performance-enhancing injections" as an item, so they were downgraded to just a plot device that's handled automatically in cutscenes.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The game has yet to see a standalone re-release. The only way to play it now is on the original hardware or streaming via PlayStation Now. Thankfully, physical copies are still relatively easy to obtain, usually going for around 30 dollars on eBay.
• Killer App: Often pointed to as the game that began the redemption of the PlayStation 3 after a very divisive launch, with it being followed up by LittleBigPlanet, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and God of War III in helping the PS3 becoming a must-have console like its two competitors. At least, until the 2011 PSN hacking sent Sony back to square one.
• Meme Acknowledgment: According to David Hayter, the voice director of the games brought in Metal Gear Awesome for the cast to watch together during the recording of this game. Following this, Hayter and Egoraptor met at Anime Expo. This was the result:
  Snake: Omigod, hotness. I wanna bang you.
  Snake: I wanna bang you too. Right back at ya.
• No Port For You: One of the more infamous examples, as Metal Gear Solid 4 made heavy use of the PS3's Cell architecture, and was the first game on that system to use a dual layer Blu-ray Disc. All of this resulted in Metal Gear Solid 4 being one of the hardest games to port, which is why it never showed up on the Xbox 360. While the Xbox One likely could support Metal Gear Solid 4 as a result of it utilizing Blu-ray discs, Kojima's firing from Konami in 2015 likely means that there isn't anyone to shepherd a potential port of 4 to modern platforms.
• Posthumous Credit: Koji Totani's voice is reused via archive audio from Revolver Ocelot's previous appearances. He died in 2007.
• Real-Life Relative: In the ending of the game, Solid Snake meets Big Boss once more. In the Japanese version, both characters are played by the father/son duo of Akio and Chikao Ohtsuka. As the story goes, both men had actually been estranged from each other prior to their casting, which was intentional on Kojima's part to see if reconciliation could be possible, and it did happen.
• Role Reprise: Via archive audio, the late Koji Totani briefly reprises his role as Revolver Ocelot.
• Science Marches On: Snake's rapid aging was inspired by a theory that Dolly the Sheep's premature death was a byproduct of the cloning process. This has since been discredited. That said they did put in the caveat that this was 100% intended In-Universe as a means to prevent futher replication, so they at least covered the possibility that it wouldn't have happened anyway.
• Torch the Franchise and Run: Kojima has always been open about the fact that he treated each installment after the original Metal Gear Solid as the last one in the series, hoping each time that it would bring the series to a conclusion, but this game is the most blatant about it, trying to portray basically everything in with a strong air of finality to it, giving an overall impression of the End of an Age. This is most notable with Snake himself, who due to his status as an unmodified human soldier is often referred to as being relic from a bygone era, and due to his accelerated aging, he doesn't have much time left to live any way. This can easily be seen Kojima's attempt at preventing any direct sequels with Snake returning as the main character from ever being made, and indeed, Metal Gear Solid 4 is the final installment of the series to feature Solid Snake as the protagonist.
• Two Voices, One Character: Though Banjo Ginga takes over as Revolver Ocelot's Japanese voice actor, some of his dialogue includes archive audio from the late Kōji Totani.
• Underage Casting: David Hayter's performance as Old Snake is a voice acting example. After spending years voicing a thirty-something Snake, his performance in Metal Gear Solid 4 makes Snake's accelerated aging very believable.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The game had a bigger emphasis on the factional warfare between the PMC and whatever rebellion is in the area, and the war aspect was more played up, with the war afflicting the environment - and thus, places to hide, such as tanks blowing out buildings or the vehicle you're hiding in being driven off to fight. Enemies didn't even sound an alert when spotting you - they shouted to inflict Psych Damage.
  • In an "MGO Eyes" video, it was revealed that Metal Gear Online had three additional maps that didn't make it into the game: the first being "Desert Duel," the second being a recreation of the Town stage from Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops that was never officially named, and the third is "Lethal Leviathan," which was actually the ship bow of Outer Haven. The first and third were eventually added to the game's arcade version, Metal Gear Arcade.
  • Not from the game itself, but there was originally going to be more novels besides the novelization for this game written by Project Itoh. Obviously, these plans were dropped as a result of Project Itoh's death from cancer. Novelizations for these games were eventually written by other authors.
  • Kojima originally wanted the Beauty and the Beast Unit to be naked during cutscenes. In addition, according to Yoji Shinkawa, the motion capture actors were asked to do the motion capture in the nude. This was scrapped because it would have affected the game's rating.
  • Concept art of the Beauty and the Beast Unit had them looking more like the Mastiff enemy in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. This in turn would have made their designs more closer to the Haven Troopers.
  • Concept art shows two male characters that were cut from the game known as Snake-Man and Adam.
  • Originally, Johnny's grandfather, also named Johnny, was going to appear at the wedding, confirming that he had survived the events of Metal Gear Solid 3. Unfortunately, this never made it past the concept art stage.
• Writer Revolt: Originally, Kojima wanted to end the game with Snake and Otacon turning themselves in to the authorities only to be executed as terrorists, which, given he wanted to end the series even at this point, could be seen as this in itself. However, his staff had their own revolt towards the idea and flat out refused to work on the game if it was to end that way.
• You Sound Familiar: Jennifer Hale voices both Naomi Hunter and Little John in this game, and previously played Emma Emmerich in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

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