- Alternative Character Interpretation: A wildly debated topic ever since the game's release was just how much Naked Snake figured out about Ocelot's real role. Between the strangely Friendly Rivalry that Snake himself can't even entirely explain, to the fact that he doesn't seem all that surprised whenever Ocelot helps him out, and finally culminating in the microfilm swap trick on EVA that Ocelot directly aided with in secret without anyone seemingly noticing. Some have even taken it to figure that Snake basically played a Batman Gambit on the entirety of the operation, if only to partly play up his badass legacy, and it adds a Rewatch Bonus to the whole game to see how Snake reacts to Ocelot on each encounter.
- Aluminum Christmas Trees:
- You know those tanks in Groznyj Grad's northwest section? Those tanks are actually real, as is the history and technical detail Sigint supplied about them. Also, Sigint's reference to the Soviets attempting to use dogs trained to blow up German tanks with explosives, as well as it backfiring, is not one of Kojima's usual insanity: That actually did happen. The WIG and the flying platforms were also completely real. Also, those screw-like devices on the Shagohod? They're real, and are called Augers, and they propel the Shagohod forward, just like real life screw-propelled vehicles.
- A lot of the flora and fauna are fictional (Golova and Baltic Hornets to name a few) and it does sound ridiculous to have a goat whose name means "snake eater". Markhors, however, are indeed real goats and their name does mean snake eater. The only thing inaccurate about it is their horns.
- The short range Davy Crockett nuclear artillery shells were, naturally, very real, and yes, that was their unofficial name (hence Volgin's quip "Remember the Alamo"). They also suffered from the slight issue of an effective radioactive fallout radius larger than the effective range of the weapon itself: firing the shell meant you were getting hit with potentially lethal amounts of radiation, and probably getting injured by the blast itself. Volgin firing the shell from a helicopter is the only way everyone involved could realistically survive.
- The single-man flying platforms are based on the American Hiller VZ1-Pawnee
design, which used a rotor instead of a jet engine and lacked armor, and the later Williams X-Jet, which did use a jet engine and had a pulpit-like enclosure. - The concept of a jungle in the Soviet Union is absolutely absurd, right? Well, there are actually temperate rainforests that experience hot and humid summers in parts of Tajikistan, which is implied to be where the game takes place.
- Anti-Climax Boss: A common complaint leveled at the Shagohod, due to the sheer excitement generated both by Sokolov's championing of the weapon's power and the high-energy chase scene that happens before the player gets to face it head on. It's possible to immobilize it by shooting out the augers (which the player's support team will tell them to do if they happen to call them during the fight), which makes it very easy to simply snipe Volgin.
- Anvilicious: Any conflict that bases itself around the idea of an eternal, absolute enemy is utterly pointless. The entire game is built around that message, and reminds you of it every chance it gets.
- Awesome Bosses: Though the members of the Cobra Unit don't add much to the story, the actual boss fights more than make up for it. The boss fights with The End, The Sorrow, and The Boss are considered to be some of the best in the series. The latter in particular really emphasizes the Central Theme of the game, and puts the finishing touches on the close mother/son relationship between The Boss and Snake, making it one of the most emotional boss fights ever created.
- Awesome Music: The titular song is the best Bond theme never to be in an actual Bond movie. Its presence is almost wholly responsible for the prestige of what is considered to be the greatest ladder-climbing sequence in any video game.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The Fury dies. Then he turns into a huge flaming skull which chases Snake around and explodes.
- Breather Boss:
- Much of the difficulty in the battles against The End and The Fear stems from their camouflage making it harder to spot them. However, they can easily be tracked by equipping thermal goggles and looking around. In addition, throwing rotten food at The Fear makes the fight against him ridiculously easy to win non-lethally; and The End can be sniped early or can die of old age if left long enough (though this comes at the cost of not getting his Mosin-Nagant and camo for both methods, and also having to face the Ocelot Unit again for the former method).
- The Sorrow, ironically despite being the final member of the Cobra Unit (not counting The Boss). After dealing with annoying bullet bees and near-drowning with The Pain, life-draining arrows and booby traps with The Fear, a long, grueling, stamina-draining battle with The End, and constantly being set on fire by The Fury, you don't have to do much during The Sorrow battle other than walk forward and dodge ghosts. You don't have to attack him and his attacks are easy to dodge. Your only way of beating him is reaching the end of the river or dying. You even automatically get his camouflage if you complete the entire sequence.
- Camera Screw: The strongest criticism of the original release was directed at the fixed overhead camera, which was essentially unchanged from the first game and was felt to be rather archaic (and didn't really suit the sprawling outdoor environments, in comparison to the rigidly geometric settings of the first two games). This was fixed in Subsistence, which altered the system to use a mobile, player-controlled third person camera. It isn't uncommon today to hear players considering the original version unplayable because of the camera.
- Cargo Ship: Snake and his custom 1911 and the cardboard box.
- Catharsis Factor: Due to how difficult his Boss Fight normally is, it's immensely satisfying to be able to just unload the Patriot on Volgin during New Game Plus. He's completely powerless against it, and his shield shorts out if you just hold the fire button and don't let go. The best part? As long as you're willing to beat him non-lethally in his last fight later,note you are allowed to use the gun against him during a Pacifist Run, which by itself is somewhat liberating after having to limit yourself to the slow, non-lethal guns for most of the playthrough.
- Complete Monster: Yevgeny Borisovitch Volgin is a Psycho Electro Soviet colonel whose history is replete with awful violence. Within minutes of appearing, Volgin fires a Davy Crockett nuke at his countrymen just to give it "a test drive", knowing full well that he won't be blamed for it. A cruel sadist who gets off on the pain of others, Volgin abuses his "lover" Tatyana—actually EVA in disguise; arbitrarily suspecting one of his own men might be a spy, tortures him by beating him within a drum can, eventually killing him; and subjects Naked Snake to a vicious round of torture that ends with Naked Snake less one eye, intending to visit further cruelties on him later. Volgin, with the Philosophers' Legacy, intends to overthrow Khrushchev, take over Russia, and throw the entire world into a storm of violent uprisings and war with his mass-produced weapon, the Shagohod.
- Ending Fatigue: A lot of the action between Volgin's Boss Fight and EVA's injury doesn't contribute to the plot and drags a bit. To summarize, Volgin is seemingly beaten and the warehouse housing the Shagohod is blown up, and Snake and EVA begin their escape. Then it's revealed that both Volgin and Shagohod survived, meaning neither planting the bombs nor the boss actually mattered. After a series of lengthy Chase Sequence / Rail Shooting Segment hybrids, Volgin seems to fall into a ravine with his tank, only for the game to reveal he survived again. Then there's a boss fight against the Shagohod and then another Boss Fight against Volgin. Fortunately, he dies for good this time and the plot finally continues. It's probably intentional given how the game parodies the genre, but it still feels a bit too long for its own good.
- Even Better Sequel: Metal Gear Solid 2 showed a lot of potential that was only fully realized in this game. Add in a simpler, but still complex, and powerful character-driven story, and even those who didn't like MGS2, were won over by MGS3. But beyond that, MGS3 is generally held up as the gold standard of the franchise, even above the original Metal Gear Solid, and is widely considered to be one of the greatest games ever made along with the first two Solid games.
- Fan Nickname:
- The infamously long ladder climb after the fight with The End is jokingly referred to as the "Ladder Boss".
- The river you "fight" The Sorrow in is often called the "River of Sorrow" by fans, for obvious reasons.
- First Instalment Wins: Of all the Metal Gear prequels starring Naked Snake, this is both the original and the most beloved for its moving story and immersive gameplay.
- Game-Breaker:
- The game gives you a silenced handgun almost right off the bat. The tranquilizer gun is significantly harder to use this time around, due to no Laser Sight and the ridiculous size of its silencer, but the M1911A1 is practically a buffed SOCOM, since the gun now takes up less of the screen, making it easier to use in first-person. Again, ridiculous accuracy, making it capable of across-the-map headshots, common ammo, and on top of that it's CQC compatible. Abusing it means you should never be in Alert mode. Almost seems to be lampshaded with Snake's infamous Description Porn when EVA first gives it to him, and who goes on to give a three minute lecture to Sigint about how great a gun it is.
- The shotgun in a straight fight. A single shell can and will knock over several mooks and it can even take The Boss off her feet. Many multiplayer servers actually banned it for this reason.
- The Photo Camo feature in Snake Eater 3D, the Nintendo 3DS version of the game, which generates in-game camouflages from photos taken with the 3DS' cameras, can make camouflages that make the Camo Index 100%, normally only available with the Stealth Camouflage item or the Moss Camo (obtained by holding up The End, and you only get a 100% camo with it in a few areas). And it's available at the very start of the game.
- Also in Snake Eater 3D is the ability to Crouch Walk, like in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots onwards. A mundane quality-of-life change to gameplay that finally lets you do something between standing movement and prone crawling unintentionally gives Snake too much capability of creeping around; his Camo Index doesn't take as much of a hit as standing does, he still has most of his speed, and he can still fire his weapons from this position while on the move. It became a common complaint that simply being able to Crouch Walk effectively breaks the game in half.
- Good Bad Bugs:
- If you heal your crossbow wounds during the fight with The Fear but neglect to remove the bolts themselves, eventually your health will regenerate to full anyway. By that point, you will no longer be able to remove the bolts, and you spend the rest of the game running around as a human pincushion.
- At the start of The Fear's boss fight, if you use the fake death pill, he will investigate your "corpse". Once he turns around, use the revival pill and throw a stun grenade near him. Once he is stunned, all damage to him becomes stamina damage, making for an easy non-lethal kill.
- The Infinite Puke Glitch.
- Once a sniper rifle of any kind is found, if the player zooms in, presses the R2 button to activate the weapon selection menu, releases the L1 button, selects either of the handguns, presses and holds the R1 button, then engages the fire button, and then releases both the fire button and the R2 button, it is possible to snipe people with a silenced handgun from across the entire map, with literally no margin of error. Granted, the maneuver is not exactly easy to pull off, but once it is mastered, it is literally impossible to miss. It's also possible to pull of this trick with the binoculars the player has from the beginning. In other words, there is no such thing as maximum effective range for any of the guns in this game. Or maybe Snake's just that good of a shot.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- The Boss' speech about how there is no such thing as a timeless enemy includes a moment where she admits she has faith that the U.S. and Russia will be on good terms again in the 21st century. In reality, relations have only deteriorated since the game's release.
- Because Big Boss lost the use of his right eye, and thus has to wear an eyepatch afterwards, any attempts at having him wear the Raikov Mask will show the mask constantly having its right "eye" permanently closed. Let's just say that Raiden will end up having a similar experience to both Big Boss and Solidus Snake where he ends up having his left eye removed thanks to a fight with Sam and using a bandana as a makeshift eyepatch in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.
- Sigint's nightmare may seem crass and funny at first until you notice that said walking turd monster is a huge tank with legs launching missiles at everything. What else is a walking tank on two legs that can launch missiles at everything? Metal Gear. Sigint, who later in his life becomes the DARPA Chief, would go on to assist in the development of Metal Gear REX, ironically letting his nightmare come true.
- In the Secret Theater film Basashi, Para-Medic and Snake argue over whether Snake should kill and eat The Boss's horse, with The Boss becoming incensed enough to run off in a cartoonish fashion and presumably send some GRU soldiers to kill them in retribution. This funny video becomes a lot less funny when Peace Walker has Big Boss being forced to shoot The Boss's horse to put it out of its misery after it ended up severely injured from attempting to scale and falling off the mountainous Nicaraguan/Costa Rican border in pursuit of Peace Walker.
- Heartwarming in Hindsight: At the end of the Secret Theater film Metal Gear Raiden: Snake Eraser, Rosemary says that maybe there will be an MGS5 for Raiden to be the main character of. While Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker ended up being the next Metal Gear game with Raiden taking no part in it, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is a direct sequel to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and not only is he the main character, he's a merciless badass of a main character.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In the Japanese version, Naked Snake is voiced by Akio Ōtsuka, who also provided the voice of Solid and Solidus Snake, while Zero is voiced by Banjo Ginga, who previously voiced Solid Snake's nemesis, Liquid Snake. While Snake and Zero were friends, their relationship began to resembled that of Solid and Liquid's to say the least, as we find out in Metal Gear Solid 4.
- The Boss and Ocelot don't get along very much, which is hilarious because she is his mother, though neither of them are aware of this. It gets even more hilarious when you realize that both deeply admire and respect Naked Snake.
- Naked Snake having nightmares relating to vampires gets hysterical after Hideo Kojima, the series creator, ends up involved in the creation of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.
- The radio conversation with Para-Medic where she speculates that attack dogs might be replaced with robotic duplicates becomes even more hysterical with the advent of BigDog a year later. Then Raiden got a robot attack dog in Metal Gear Rising.
- The pre-fight images for Boss Rush in Subsistence gets even funnier once Solid Snake is included in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which possesses a similar pre-fight screen.
- Mixed in with What Could Have Been: At one point, the developers considered making phase 2 of the Shagohod be a fusion between it and a WIG aircraft, with it then transforming and launching the gun, and assuming that Volgin joyriding it was still present, it would have likely resulted in Snake and Volgin fighting it out on the WIG. Apparently, Volgin had taken some notes from Johann Schmidt, and these notes would eventually be reviewed by Albert Wesker.
- Raiden being mistaken for Raikov by Volgin when the former ends up inadvertently trapping himself in a jail cell in a failed attempt to kill Naked Snake in Metal Gear Raiden: Snake Eraser becomes a bit more amusing when Portable Ops reveals that Raikov does end up in a jail cell, although at a completely different place, and was intended to be in there. Also, at the end of the clip, Raiden and Rose speculated that he'll be the star of Metal Gear Solid 5. He isn't that far off the mark, actually. He actually does appear in a bonus mission in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, and, like the video, travels back in time. To help Big Boss, though, not kill him.
- The Metal Gear Raiden: Snake Eraser video is amusing when you consider that Quinton Flynn became the official voice actor of Kid from the Future Silver the Hedgehog following Sonic Generations.
- The HD Edition added a trophy for interrogating soldiers called "Tell Me Where the Bomb Is". Now consider who Big Boss' voice actor is in Metal Gear Solid V...
- One of the segments of the Snake vs. Monkey minigame is called "Dawn of the Apes". Nearly a decade later...
- Volgin noting Ocelot's Villain Respect towards Naked Snake asking if Ocelot had "fallen for him". Word of God stated after MGSV that Ocelot was, indeed, in love with Big Boss.
- When discussing Dracula, Para-Medic asks if Snake has ever heard of Renfield. Snake asks if that's a movie before Para-Medic corrects him by saying it's the name of a character. In 2023, a movie about Renfield was released.
- It Was His Sled: Naked Snake is Big Boss. Knowing this twist beforehand isn't detrimental to the experience, as it makes the game's role as a prequel more explicit.
- Magnificent Bitch: "The Boss", the greatest soldier ever, known as "The Joy" to the Cobra Unit, is a tactical genius responsible for countless successful missions and tactical innovations. Inspiring nothing short of fanatical devotion and love from her subordinates, the Boss became the mentor to Jack, a.k.a. "Naked Snake." Upon her undercover mission with the depraved Colonel Yevgeny Volgin going terribly wrong, The Boss resolves to take the blame and die at Jack's hands, manipulating him with her brutal mentorship to guide him to best Volgin before engaging him in a final battle to the death to pass the title of "Boss" to him and pass into history, even if she will be reviled forever as a traitor to the country she has sacrificed everything for.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Dubbing the "Snake Eater" theme song over sequences of game characters (or in some cases, people in real life) climbing really long ladders, or really just any long, tedious sequence from any of the Metal Gear games. Additionally, fans tend to joke (or insist) that they use the "Snake Eater" theme when doing something difficult like climbing or traveling around long and hard obstacles.
- Young Ocelot's "You're pretty good", coupled with his cowboy hand gesture, is a common way for fans of the game to express satisfaction towards something. The latter in particular is so iconic even characters in the game poke fun at it.
- "Wearing black face paint, huh?"Explanation
- Moral Event Horizon: Volgin crosses this right after he's introduced, launching a portable nuclear warhead at a rival research facility just to "give it a test drive." The whole time, Ocelot is clinging to his arm, begging him not to. When one of the greatest Magnificent Bastards in history disapproves of you betraying your countrymen like that, you know you've crossed the line big time.
- Narm: See here.
- Narm Charm: In the ending, after Snake shoots The Boss, her scar proceeds to turn into an actual snake and crawl away. Even more inexplicably, the white grass lilies covering the area all turn red.
- Nausea Fuel: Early on, Snake mentions taking a dump in the woods and Zero tells him not to do that because it could draw suspicion from the Soviets, telling him to "bag it and take it with you!" Yes, he's correct, but the idea of one having to carry their own poop to avoid sparking an international incident around certainly makes some players reach for the nearest hurl bag.
- One-Scene Wonder: Granin, Raikov, Johnny, and all the Cobras (except The Boss and The Sorrow) have distinctive personalities that make them memorable, but they don't get much screentime outside their boss battles.
- Player Punch: The death of The Boss is generally considered one of the biggest, if not the biggest, player punch in the entire series. Only made worse by the fact that the player has to pull the trigger.
- Polished Port: The HD Edition runs at 60fps (twice the original PlayStation 2 framerate), and in 720p HD. The only problem is that the controls are changed on Xbox 360, due to the controller not having analog buttons; as well as the cuts of the Snake vs. Monkey mode (for copyright reasons), the multiplayer mode (due to servers having long since been shut down), and the Secret Theater (for unknown reasons). Also of note is that it makes The End much easier to see, though whether this is good or bad depends on whether or not you enjoyed the fight.
- Porting Disaster: Metal Gear Solid 3D, the Nintendo 3DS version of the game, is a strange case as a surprisingly faithful port of the entire game to handheld hardware, even containing additional quality-of-life features like crouch walking and an over-the-shoulder aiming camera for weapons. But there's two major problems: one, trying to play the game without a Circle Pad Pro (or a New Nintendo 3DS equivalent nub) can be a real pain on the fingers if you want proper camera control without having to delegate to the touch screen too much. And two, the performance, both in cutscenes and gameplay, can be downright awful, to the point of actually hindering gameplay even in small indoor corridor environments and producing a sluggish feeling across the entire experience. Patches and overclocking for New 3DS hardware or via emulation can bypass this issue enough to turn it into a Polished Port, but the average consumer is stuck with a rather poor-playing title.
- Sacred Cow: Metal Gear Solid 3 holds a very particular status of being considered to be one of the greatest video games of all time, let alone being the best within the Metal Gear series as a whole. As such, you do not speak negatively about this game among Metal Gear fans. Even speaking negatively about it among non-fans is generally considered trolling by its very nature. In fact, one of the big reasons for the outrage over Konami's Metal Gear pachislot machine was that it wasn't just any Metal Gear pachislot machine, but a Metal Gear Solid 3 pachislot machine.
- Scrappy Mechanic:
- It can get a little irritating having to pause the game and flick through the various menus every time Snake is injured, particularly with bosses like Volgin who injure you almost every time they hit you. Ditto for the camouflage system, which is a pretty cool idea, it's just time-consuming to constantly readjust your uniform. This is probably why the camouflage system in Metal Gear Solid 4 was changed to an automatic system and why health restoration went back to the old "eat ration, gain back life" mechanic. Supposedly justified by the game taking place during the Cold War, so advanced methods of camouflage and healing (the latter due to nanomachines) hadn't been invented yet.
- The bag is very annoying. Snake can only a carry a limited amount of objects to change freely. Whenever you need something else you need pause the menu. To make matters worse, carrying too many items at once causes his stamina to drain more quickly.
- The CQC. Try not killing a soldier accidentally during an interrogation. The difference between holding a man in your grasp and slitting his throat is simply a few ounces of pressure on the circle button.
- A holdover from Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. When getting up from prone, Snake will get on his knees. In order to stand up, the player must press X again. Many a time, simply trying to walk too soon will result in Snake going back into the prone position again. This is why later games lets you crouch-walk and Snake Eater 3D includes this feature.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: The player is required to kill only one person: The Boss. If the player avoids killing, the fight with The Sorrow will be much shorter, although the bosses will still explode when they are defeated non-lethally. However, if the player kills people indirectly by drowning them or throwing them off cliffs, they won't get a kill penalty. Bosses who won't/can't actually die in-story, such as Ocelot and Volgin can also be "killed", i.e. have their health bar drained to zero without giving a kill penalty.
- Sequel Difficulty Spike: Or Prequel Difficulty Spike. This game is more realistic than its predecessors, takes place in more than just the enemy base, and lacks the conveniences of past games too (I.E the soliton radar). You're more often than not going to get caught a lot if you're not as good at this game or inexperienced.
- Signature Scene:
- The long ladder sequence with "Snake Eater" being played in the background is remembered for being an extra strange, yet also weirdly mundane scene in a game already having its fair share of strange scenes.
- The boss fights against The Sorrow and The Boss. The former for making the player feel terrible for all the enemies they have killed throughout the game, and the latter for being one of the biggest Player Punches in video game history.
- Squick:
- In one conversation, Major Zero scoffs at Snake's method of "burying his business" and orders Snake to bag up his feces and bring it home to avoid leaving any trace behind, which makes you wonder if Snake has been carrying a bag full of his own poop the entire game.
- The way that The End bulges out his eyeballs. He does that trick in all but one cutscene he is in.
- Raikov's underwear. In case anyone really doesn't know, he's wearing a thong.
- Knocking out EVA near the end of the game will cause her to moan in her sleep. Each of the three moans is "Mmm...Oh, (someone), that feels so good." The first is Snake, the second is The Boss, and the third is "Fido."Explanation
- If you read EVA's medical history, you will learn that she has Proctitis.note
- Take That, Scrappy!: Not only is the Raiden substitute portrayed as an absolutely terrible human being and the sadomasochistic colonel Volgin's homosexual love interest (even his name is a Japanese double entendre: "Raidenovitch" can be read in Japanese as "Raiden no bitch", which itself translates to "Thunderbolt's bitch", hinting at his and Volgin's relationship), the mission demands he be at very least beaten up and hidden in a locker in only his embarrassing underwear. Subsistence's Secret Theater deals this to the real Raiden as well.
- That One Boss:
- The Fear isn't so much difficult as time-consuming and a pain in the ass. He hops across the tree branches, making it difficult to line up a shot before he moves. When he does stop, it's often to shoot at you, so that can screw up your aiming as well, since it exits first person mode when you're hit. And when you are lucky enough to hit him before he starts shooting at you, it only allows a couple hits before he starts hopping again. And the pace of his movements only gets faster as the fight continues. Worse, at certain points during the fight, he will regain some of his stamina by shooting and eating flora and fauna in the environment. This is supposed to be when it's easiest to hit him, but thanks to the dense tree area that you fight in, he's often hiding behind a tree so that when you come across him, he's already on the move again. Finally, it's extremely easy to run out of ammo when trying to hit this moving target so you have to be extremely deliberate with your shots. Otherwise, you're down to the tranquilizer gun and that takes forever to whittle down his stamina bar. As a mercy for the player, when The Fear moves to replenish his stamina, he'll go straight for any food items you toss out, whether they're safe to eat or not.
- The Fury is a pretty stressful boss to deal with, as his battle involves having to navigate a small, maze-like area full of narrow lanes while he uses a flamethrower attack that greatly damages you, inflicts serious burns, and takes up a whole lane. Combined with being a Blackout Basement level, it's pretty difficult to tell where the hell you're even going. He can also be be pretty unpredictable at times giving you the constant fear of him showing up in front of you or blasting you with fire out of nowhere, which makes it downright anxiety-inducing for those with a dislike of jump scares. He can also fly, making him able to hide anywhere in the arena forcing you to search for him.
- Volgin can downright obnoxious in your first battle with him. Like The Pain, he can make himself invulnerable to attacks, but unlike The Pain who gives you plenty of time to shoot him while unprotected, Volgin gives you less than a second to shoot before starting up his protective electric shield again. You can shoot him in the back, but that's also difficult as he has the tendency to turn around to constantly face Snake. You also can't keep your weapons equipped as they will cause his electric attacks to home in on you and never miss. He also has the ability to sky punch you if you go near him which makes you throw up and lose stamina and his gun will always causes bullet wounds. On top of all that, you only have five minutes to beat him. Yes, this boss has a time limit unlike the previous bosses, and a short one at that. You absolutely can't waste any time at all on this boss. And this is only the first phase.
- That One Level:
- Escaping Groznyj Grad after escaping the torture room, as you have no form of camouflage on you nor any silent weapons and tranquilizers other than a short-ranged cigar spray (which you receive after talking with Johnny), making the entire level a matter of timing enemy movements, which can be very tedious on normal runs and downright game-ending on European Extreme runs. Your only source of hiding is under vehicles and behind crates. Because you're also half-naked, you also drain stamina faster, have a higher risk of catching colds, are much more visible to enemies resulting in a no-alert run being significantly harder, and are more vulnerable to attacks. In addition, you have to deal with shielded enemies and guard dogs, which are pretty annoying on their own.
- Escorting a wounded EVA through the woods can be hair-pullingly excruciating. She loses stamina fast and constantly has to eat to keep it up. Knocking her out or tranquilizing her doesn't help either because she moans in her sleep, alerting enemy soldiers who might be nearby.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: When Konami announced on June 1, 2016 that a pachislot adaptation of Metal Gear Solid 3 was in development, so much so that the official trailers for the game have a lot more dislikes than likes. Not helping matters is that many fans have noted that the graphics and cutscenes featured in the trailers are gorgeous.
- Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Granin has a very detailed face that's stuck in one expression, in contrast to the game's otherwise excellent facial animations.
- Win Back the Crowd: Metal Gear Solid 2 had very much divided the fanbase as to its virtues, with many disliking the postmodernist plot and large amounts of backtracking (as well as Raiden). MGS3 has a much more straightforward plot, minimal backtracking, you play as Solid Snake's father, and was duly greeted with cries that all was forgiven. As such, this is easily one of the most beloved games in the series.
- The Woobie:
- Snake reluctantly participates in a mission that he knows full well will result in his mentor's death since it was either that or be falsely branded an accomplice to his mentor's supposed treason and then executed, and his woobieness increases after he learns that The Boss never even committed treason at all, that it was a Fake Defection gone wrong.
- The Boss had almost everything taken away from her, including her father,note her son,note any chances of her having another child,note her lover,note and eventually even her own life,note and legacy.note
- Raikov, retroactively, seemed to be of a Jerkass Woobie: His later appearance in Portable Ops did not highlight his abusive nature outside the reference to his past abuse when recruiting him, and he was also shown to hide in a bathroom when his men are confronting an enemy in Metal Gear Solid 3. These facts as well as some evidence from Portable Ops seemed to imply that his abuse of the soldiers isn't simply due to sadism for sadism's sake, but because he thinks that's how he should gain Volgin's favor.
- Sokolov. All the man wanted to do was make rockets for space exploration. Then he gets roped into developing weapons for the Soviets. He escapes over the Berlin Wall in an operation that saw him traveling 600 miles to be reunited with his wife and daughter, at the end of which he was so exhausted he had to go to the hospital. He leaves the hospital only to find he's going back to end the Cuban Missile Crisis and is dragged off begging for help. When the next rescue attempt ends in him getting abducted again, he finds himself working for Volgin on a weapon of mass destruction. The events of the game see him being humiliated by Ocelot, manipulated by EVA and shot in the knees, tortured and (it's heavily implied) murdered by Volgin. He shows up alive in Portable Ops, but the canon status of that entry is disputed.
Snake! You can't do that! The future will be changed! You'll create a time paradox!
