Characters / Metal Gear Solid

aka: Metal Gear Solid FOXHOUND

Main Character Index | Metal Gear | Metal Gear 2 | Metal Gear Solid | Sons of Liberty | Snake Eater | Guns of the Patriots | Portable Ops | Peace Walker | Revengeance | Ground Zeroes/The Phantom Pain | Ac!d | Ac!d 2 | Ghost Babel | Snake's Revenge | Survive

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Remember, Solid Snake first appeared in Metal Gear and tropes should be applied in his own folder. Master Miller and Roy Campbell appeared in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. This page is for characters that debuted in Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation in 1998, not the entire series.

For other characters in the franchise, see the Metal Gear character index at Characters.Metal Gear.

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Characters that debuted in Metal Gear Solid:

FOXHOUND

A special forces group formed by Big Boss following the downfall of the original FOX unit. Both Solid Snake and Gray Fox were members of this unit. After Big Boss's Face–Heel Turn in the original Metal Gear, the unit's co-founder and executive officer Roy Campbell becomes the new commanding officer in Metal Gear 2. The most well-known incarnation of the team is featured in Metal Gear Solid, where FOXHOUND has turned renegade after Solid Snake and Campbell left the unit. This incarnation of the team is composed of Solid Snake's Evil Twin Liquid Snake, his Dragon Revolver Ocelot, Ax-Crazy Psycho Mantis, Defrosting Ice Queen Sniper Wolf, Magical Native American Vulcan Raven, and Replicant Snatcher (but not actual Snatcher) Decoy Octopus.

In General

• Animal Motifs: They are named after and have the abilities of the snake, the raven, the wolf, the fox, and the ocelot.
• Blood Knight: Most of the FOXHOUND members, or at least Vulcan Raven and Liquid Snake, qualify as such.
• Dysfunction Junction: Liquid's combination of well done son guyism and homicidal resentment towards his father, Wolf's tragic past and Stalker with a Crush tendencies towards people she intends to kill, Ocelot's torture fetish, and Mantis' violent misanthropy, Raven comes across as the most stable of the lot (at least of the members who get in-game character development), and he's an unapologetic Blood Knight.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Consists of an old Russian gunslinger, an asexual Russian psychic, a university-educated Native Alaskan shaman/heavy weapons enthusiast, an indestructible British-American cloned super warrior, a female Kurdish sniper, and Decoy Octopus.
• Five-Token Band: A British-American, a Russian-American, a Kurd, a Russian, an Inuit Shaman, and a Mexican, although it's implied that a lot of these guys had American citizenship to join.
• Oddly Small Organization: It's implied in a Codec conversation with Naomi regarding the Cyborg Ninja that FOXHOUND's size had significantly shrunk in personnel between Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake and Metal Gear Solid under Liquid's command.
• Mildly Military: An off-the-books black ops run by the US Armed Forces. It features custom uniforms, strange weapons, and other than the Colonel, no formal ranks are ever used.

Members

Liquid Snake

"There definitely is a resemblance, don't you think, little brother? Or should I say big brother? I'm not sure."

^{Click here} to see Eli in MGSV

Liquid Snake voiced by: Banjo Ginga (JP), Cam Clarke (EN)

Eli voiced by: Yutaro Honjo (JP), Piers Stubbs (EN)

AKA: Master Miller, Eli, White Mamba, A Youth who Curses his Fate

"With all the liars and hypocrites running the world, war isn't what it used to be. We're losing our place in a world that no longer needs us. A world that now spurns our very existence!"

The leader of FOXHOUND, Liquid is the second of the "Sons of Big Boss" introduced. He has a major complex about Solid Snake, and was told for his entire life that his inheritance of Big Boss' recessive genes made him the inferior clone, when in fact the reverse was true. Word of God says he isn't naturally blond. In his youth, he was a blonde-haired child soldier wearing a jackal-tooth necklace and an oversized vest with the words "Never Be Game Over" and "液体人" — "(Liquid Man/Person)" — printed on the back.

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• Ace Pilot: Manages to shoot down two F-16 fighter jets while flying a Hind D helicopter gunship, a highly improbable feat which shows his piloting skills to be world-class.
• Adaptational Badass: A minor example. In the original game, the Foxdie kills him almost instantly. In Twin Snakes, Liquid manages to gather enough strength through The Power of Hate to stand up and glare Snake in the eyes one last time before expiring. While he still dies, he resists a bit longer and goes out with more dignity.
• Arch-Enemy: Loathes his brother Solid Snake, whom he accuses of stealing his birthright by inheriting the superior versions of Big Boss's genes, and is obsessed with defeating Snake in order to prove himself worthy of succeeding Big Boss as Outer Heaven's leader and the world's greatest soldier. This makes him into his twin brother's most prominent foe throughout the original Metal Gear Solid games next to Revolver Ocelot.
• Anti-Villain: If Liquid Ocelot's words are anything to go by, he wanted to rid the world of the Patriots and their SOP system. But the means to do it was anything but noble.
• Arc Villain: If Mission 51 weren't cut, he would've been the Arc Villain of Metal Gear Solid V.
• Artistic License – Biology: He gets a lot of things wrong about genetics during his Motive Rant, though at least some of this might be because he just needs to explain it better. Also in Metal Gear Solid 2, it is revealed by Emma Emmerich that the Patriots have spread much false information throughout society, including on biology. Considering that Liquid's childhood was highly influenced by Cipher, he probably was outright lied to about biology. It should also be noted that this whole mess is never mentioned in any other games — every time LET is discussed, no mention is made of the Recessive/Dominant nonsense.
• Ascended Fanboy: Taking some inspiration from literature, Eli's "Kingdom of Flies" in the cut content would have been a remote island akin to that in Lord of the Flies, filled with Child Soldiers, booby traps, and vocal parasites to kill off intruding forces like Cipher. And Diamond Dogs.
• Badass Longcoat: Swaggers about in a cool-looking long trench coat, defying the freezing weather by wearing it open with nothing to protect his torso underneath. He stops wearing it starting from the Hind D bossfight.
• Backstab Backfire: Upon being brought to Mother Base, Eli snaps and tries to stab Venom Snake in the back with a knife. Snake easily deflects it, breaks his arm, and then gives him a lecture on drawing a weapon on a fellow soldier before snapping his arm back into place.
• Badass Normal: While having no explicit supernatural powers such as Psycho Mantis's telepathy nor technological aids like Vamp's nanomachines, he is a clone of the 20th century's most naturally gifted soldier, putting his physical abilities on the level of a Charles Atlas Superpower.
• Bad Boss: Downplayed: While posing as Master Miller, Liquid was shown complaining about how the other FOXHOUND members were not fighting effectively.
• Back from the Dead: In Sons of Liberty, he returns from the dead and briefly takes over Ocelot's body twice.
• Barbarian Longhair: Has an unkempt mullet to illustrate his wildness.
• Because Destiny Says So: Says that his goal of Outer Heaven's restoration and taking over Big Boss's legacy is based on what's written into his genes, and he intends to embrace this destiny rather than deny it as he accuses Solid Snake of doing.
• Berserk Button: Anything that has to do with fathers. When a child soldier fondly talks about his father, he rapidly snaps at him for it. His own hatred of them stems from viewing Big Boss as his Archnemesis Dad while Venom Snake has nothing but respect for him and tries to teach him humility. His hatred for Big Boss then redirects towards his own brother via Revenge by Proxy when the latter defeated him in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and still gives him shit for it.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Venom Snake offers him this in the cut Mission 51, as the Diamond Dogs evacuate Eli's occupied island, leaving a pistol with one bullet behind, so that Eli have a chance to take his own life, his only obvious alternatives being either dying from his parasite infection which is beginning to reach the outbreak stage or being burned by the napalm bombing that Ocelot has ordered to sterilize the island from any traces of the parasites. It is ultimately subverted, though; Eli briefly considers this option as he grabs the gun and presses to his temple, but Psycho Mantis swoops in and saves him, first by curing his infection by pulling the parasites out of his body and then levitating him to safety as the bombing begins.
• Big Bad: Of Metal Gear Solid. The leader of the rogue FOXHOUND Unit whose takeover of Shadow Moses island sets off the events of Metal Gear Solid, it's him and his Evil Plan which Solid Snake must defeat in order to save the world.
• Blood Knight: Happily accepts this unlike his twin brother Solid Snake.
• Bratty Half-Pint: Eli is a headstrong little brat, constantly stealing things, picking fights with not only other kids, but also grown men, and always seriously testing the patience of pretty much everyone around him. Ocelot's conversation with Big Boss showcases the British government has made no real effort whatsoever to find him again after Eli went missing after giving his handlers the slip in Central Africa in 1979, indicating that they are probably happy to have him out their hair and are in absolutely no hurry to get him back.
• Breakout Villain: Although he has a good run as the Big Bad of Metal Gear Solid and kicks the bucket at the end, he turned out to be such a memorable villain that he was brought back for Metal Gear Solid 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4 though it's later revealed that Ocelot simply channeled his personality through hypnosis as part of his own plans. In other words, his actual “return” was mostly an Aborted Arc.
• Break Them by Talking: During the final showdown between himself and Solid Snake, he tears Snake down verbally, declaring Snake to be a Blood Knight who only fights because of enjoying killing people. It hits close to the mark, to the extent that killing enough enemy soldiers in Metal Gear Solid 4 results in Liquid's below accusation ringing in his brother's mind to throw up in disgust at himself.
  Solid Snake: I don't want that kind of world!
  Liquid Snake: Ha! You lie! So why are you here, then? Why do you continue to follow your orders while your superiors betray you? Why did you come here? Well, I'll tell you, then. You enjoy all the killing! That's why!
  Solid Snake: What?!
  Liquid Snake: Are you denying it? Haven't you already killed most of my comrades?
  Solid Snake: That was-!
  Liquid Snake: [chuckling] I watched your face when you did it. It was filled with the joy of battle!
  Solid Snake: You're wrong...
  Liquid Snake: There's a killer inside you. You don't have to deny it; we were created to be that way.
• Bulletproof Vest: Venom Snake accidentally shoots him during the climax of the cut Mission 51 (due to his head injury making temporarily distinguish between white and red, making him see the red dressed Eli as one of the white dressed XOF operatives). A Diamond Dog medic then examines Eli, who was still knocked unconscious by the shot, revealing he was wearing a vest, which saved his life.
• But Not Too Foreign: Both his and Solid Snake's genetic donor was an unnamed Japanese woman.
• Cain and Abel: Liquid plays Cain to Solid Snake's Abel. He seems to be trying to invoke the trope; he is constantly playing up their fraternal link, and his hatred of Snake is unreasonably deep and personal, considering Snake wasn't even aware of his existence until the events of MGS.
• Call-Forward: References multiple elements of Liquid Snake in MGSV.
  • Wears a necklace of jackal teeth during his time in Afghanistan.
    Liquid: In the Middle East, we don't hunt foxes, we hunt jackals.
  • Has 液体人 — "Liquid Man" — printed on the back of his jacket.
  • Does his trademark fist-clenching gesture.
• Clones Are People, Too: Like Solid Snake and Solidus Snake, he's considered a person and Big Boss's son by those around him. In the Truth tapes in The Phantom Pain, Big Boss himself, despite making it clear that he doesn't see the Snake brothers as his sons, nonetheless orders Ocelot to treat Eli/Liquid like a human being should they encounter him.
• Clone Angst: The main reason for his behavior and resentment of Big Boss.
• Combat Pragmatist: He runs ahead of Venom Snake and attacks from around corners, and has no qualms about throwing things such as bottles, pipes and molotovs.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Hates Big Boss because he thinks Big Boss knowingly made him into the Les Enfants Terribles project's inferior one, and he implies that one of the main reasons for wanting to continue Big Boss's dream of a world of conflict is so he would eclipse his father's reputation: "Now I'll finish the work that father began. I will surpass him...I will destroy him!"
• Character Tics: Often tends to clench his right fist when making speeches or Motive Rants.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Despite ostensibly being a completely normal human being (clone notwithstanding), he takes an absurd amount of punishment and demonstrates amazing feats of acrobatics — not to mention being completely unfazed by the Alaskan cold while shirtless. Even as a 12 year old, he was insanely athletic and capable of kicking the asses of fully grown, highly trained soldiers, with only Snake and Ocelot being able to put him in his place.
• The Chessmaster: Of the Shadow Moses Incident, although later games would reveal him as The Pawn in the bigger schemes of Solidus and Ocelot.
• Child Soldier: The Phantom Pain reveals he was the commander of a group of child soldiers while he was in Africa in 1984.
• Cunning Linguist: He knows seven languages; a briefing tape reveals five of the languages to be English, Spanish, French, Malay, and Arabic. The Phantom Pain shows he knows Kikongo.
• Dead All Along: He seemingly comes back for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and later seemingly takes back the helm of Big Bad in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. But it's later revealed that Ocelot only acted under hypnotic suggestion and nanobots to pretend to be under Liquid’s control. So the real Liquid had indeed been completely killed off.
• Determinator: The only Metal Gear villain Solid Snake was unable to defeat, despite several temporary wins. He just will not die. If not for the FOXDIE hitting at the last second, he would've outright killed Snake at the end of Metal Gear Solid. In his youth, he also manages to take on Venom Snake despite having no special training. Then again, he's actually the iconic determinator of the series so it's to be expected. It takes a biological WMD to kill him.
  (Original and The Twin Snakes) "Not yet, Snake! It's not over yet!"
  (Digital Graphic Novel) "Snake! This isn't over! IT WILL NEVER BE OVER!"
• Didn't See That Coming: He considers Solid Snake the superior of the clones in terms of genes, but thinks that piloting Metal Gear REX and rigging the endgame of the Shadow Moses operation to his favor across the board should be more than enough to leap that gap between them. Not only was he actually the superior clone the whole time, but Snake ends up soundly defeating him twice over despite this, driving Liquid to a seething Villainous Breakdown where he'll do everything he possibly can to murder Snake.. only to get hit with FOXDIE right at the last possible second for a double-whammy of a blindside.
• Disney Villain Death: Averted. At one point, he fights Solid Snake on top of the ruined Metal Gear REX mech, a fall from which he claimed would kill even Snake. Despite taking that fall himself, he still manages to drag himself to a Jeep and pursue Snake all the way out of the base.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Upon being brought back to Mother Base, he snaps and tries to attack Venom Snake with a knife after Snake gave him a friendly pat on the back. He gets his arm broken for the trouble.
• Dramatic Irony: For all his anger towards Venom Snake for being created as a "copy", it turns out he never actually met his father but just met a body double.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Has combat experience from his time with the British Special Air Service and fought against Iraqi forces in the Gulf War.
• Engineered Public Confession: Subverted in Nastasha Romanenko's novel. He actually knew all along that Solid Snake was wearing a wire recording everything Snake said or heard, including Codec calls, but did not care.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In codec calls to Miller (Liquid) during the first boss battle, he mentions that Revolver Ocelot is too warped even for him, strongly hinting in a later call that he did not plan for Ocelot to place a bomb in Solid Snake's inventory because he still wanted Snake alive at the moment. So he has a legitimate reason to be upset with Ocelot for disobeying his orders. The fact that Ocelot was the only member of Diamond Dogs willing to discipline him when he was a bratty 12-year old staying with them may also have something to do with that.
  • He claims to be disgusted at Solid Snake for slaughtering the Genome Soldiers, saying he at least cares about their "brothers". Whether he's sincere or not is left unclear, seeing as he declares this very late in the game.
• Evil Brit: Liquid was given to the British government as an infant and was raised as a national.
• Evil Brunette Twin: Inverted. He is the evil twin, but he's blond, while his good twin has brown hair.
• Evil Counterpart: Although he's the game's obvious antagonist, he could be perceived either way. Liquid might be unstable, but he has a plan and knows what he fights for. Solid Snake goes into battle just because he likes killing, and Mantis insinuates that attempts to mask this desire with virtue make Snake as bad or worse than his brother.
• Evil Is Hammy: He spends two quarters of the final battle (and a non-trivial chunk of the deadly time limit he knows about) ranting to Solid Snake about their past.
• Evil Laugh: If Snake dies to him by running out of time during the final battle, Liquid will laugh maniacally at him in a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Evil Twin: Though Mantis implied that Solid Snake may actually be the true evil twin. Liquid is fighting for a cause: Outer Heaven's restoration. Snake is fighting because, on a subconscious level, needs war to feel alive. Although his brother later finds other reasons to keep on living.
• Exposed to the Elements: Shirtless, and completely unfazed by the Alaskan cold.
• Final Boss: Of Metal Gear Solid.
• Fisticuffs Boss: The second stage of his boss fight is all in CQB.
• Great White Hunter: Liquid, an Englishman through and though, enjoys fox hunting as a sport. When assigned to the Middle East (where no foxes or hounds were forthcoming), he substituted it with hunting jackals and using royal harriers.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: During the mission where Venom Snake captures him, Ocelot mentions that Eli lets his anger get the better of him and leaves himself open after an attack. Immediately after being taken to Mother Base, getting a friendly pat on the back from Snake is enough to get him to blow his stack and attack with a knife.
• The Heavy: The last quarter of Metal Gear Solid is one long battle between Solid Snake and Liquid. Even before that, he was in contact with Snake via the Codec for the entire game disguised as Master Miller.
• Hijacked by Ganon: At the end of MGSV, he mind-melds with Tretij Rebenok and activates Metal Gear before Skull-Face can (in the process critically injuring both Skull-Face and the Man on Fire before either actually ever fighting), for the sole purpose of killing Venom Snake and wrecking havoc. He's also the Big Bad and final boss of the game's cut "Mission 51".
• Implacable Man: It's insane what the guy can survive. He walks away from multiple vehicle crashes and can even pick himself back up from a drop that he claimed would kill Solid Snake.
• Improbable Piloting Skills: He was fully capable of piloting a Hind D in the middle of a blizzard as well as shooting down two F-16s arriving from the Galena Air Force Base, and also pilot it while operating the weapons operator seat.
• Incurable Cough of Death: The plot of the cut chapter "Kingdom of The Flies" would have dealt with Eli getting exposed to the English Strain of the Vocal Parasites, coming close to death because his accelerated ageing was starting to make his voice change; once it broke he was dead. After the battle, Rebenok extracts the parasites from his body before flying away with his ally.
• I Will Fight Some More Forever: You have to admire his determination. "Just because you've destroyed Metal Gear doesn't mean I'm done fighting."
• Karma Houdini: Thanks to Huey, he takes off in Sahelanthropus with the child soldiers holding one of the pilots hostage, never to be seen again. This is later subverted, as the end timeline mentions Eli establishing his Kingdom of the Flies; so despite not being featured, the cut Mission 51 is still considered canon to the series: Eli manages to establish his Kingdom of the Files, but ends up losing everything in a Mêlée à Trois between himself and his gang of child soldiers, Venom Snake and Diamond Dogs, and XOF. But he does also manage to escape death with help from Tretij Rebenok while angrily swearing that he shall have his revenge some day. That said he's doesn't get another battle with Snake nor the real Big Boss, and he both loses to Solid Snake and dies during the Shadow Moses Incident alongside Psycho Mantis.
• Killed Offscreen: Liquid really did come back to life in Metal Gear Solid 2, via his arm being on Revolver Ocelot's body. And his will proved to be so strong that Ocelot knew he had to get rid of the appendage before Liquid took him over completely. Meaning that as of 4, the brother of Solid Snake and Leader of FOXHOUND is gone for good.
• The Kid with the Leash: His feelings of hate towards Venom Snake usurp Skull Face's, and gains Rebenok's leash by the end of MGSV and beyond.
• Large Ham: His top ham moment is whenever he exclaims, "BROTHER!"
• Last Disrespects: Unlike Snake, Liquid will coldy condemn the fallen members of FOXHOUND as Miller should Snake contact him by codec after defeating each of them.
• The Leader: Types I, III and IV over FOXHOUND. Liquid is a devious Large Ham mastermind whose will is the sole thing keeping the team together.
• Light Is Not Good: Liquid referred to himself and Solid Snake as "the brother of light" and "the brother of dark" — while he never specifies who is who, Liquid is blond, well-spoken, fit-looking and clean-shaven — a clear contrast to his dark haired, growling brother usually wearing a dark sneaking suit.
• Luke, You Are My Father: Subverted. Ocelot (and the player) expect him to turn out to be one of the LET clones but a DNA test reveals that he and Venom Snake are not related. Which is because the Snake the player controls is not the guy who got cloned.
• Made of Iron: Holy crap. He survives being his helicopter exploding and crashing, several Stinger missiles launched into the cockpit of Metal Gear REX and REX's subsequent destruction, a fistfight with Solid Snake that results in a fall from the top of REX, being shot several times with a heavy machine gun and a jeep crash with nary a scratch. It's only FOXDIE that manages to finish him off.
• Master of Disguise: Strongly implied to be such, seeing how he effectively disguised himself as Miller after arranging for the latter's death.
• Meaningful Name: The very definition of "liquid" is "an unstable substance that has no constant shape or structure". When you compare Liquid's personality to that of his twin Solid Snake, this makes perfect sense. Compared to Solid Snake (who has his flaws but stays loyal to his friends and has a constant set of values), Liquid is a dangerously unstable figure without any permanent ideals or goals beyond wreaking havoc on a world that wronged him and finding his place in a world of unending war.
  • "Eli" is a modern equivalent of Eliab, the brother of David in the The Bible and, just like Eliab, Eli has a brother named David. Also, Eli is pronounced like L-I, as in L-I-Q-U-I-D
• Mighty Whitey: The only white kid in his unit, and their leader. He's explicitly stated to be stronger, faster, a better soldier, and a better hunter. Given he was designed for such activity, he's in his element within the war torn region. You could even say he was made for it.
• Military Brat: Was the clone of Big Boss as well as raised within the British Military, as implied in Peace Walker.
• Moral Myopia: To Snake near the end of the game.
  Liquid: You'd point a weapon at your own brother? (this is after attempting to kill him with an attack helicopter)
• Mr. Fanservice: He's a well-muscled Englishman with long, flowing blond hair walking around shirtless for nearly the entire game.
• My Hair Came Out Green: According to Yoji Shinkawa, Liquid was originally dark-haired, just like Solid Snake. However, it ended up bleached to blond as a consequence of his time as a POW, because of the sun's intense rays within the Iraqi desert. Interestingly, Snake was originally going to be a natural blond, too; hence his lighter hair color in the briefing videos.
• No Shirt, Long Jacket: He ditches the jacket halfway through the game, leaving him with just his pants.
• No Name Given: According to Campbell, Liquid's real name was highly classified to the extent that not even someone within the highest ranks of the military (such as himself) are allowed to know it. It's Eli.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Part of the reason he hates Solid Snake so much is because Snake killed Big Boss before Liquid could.
• The Pawn: He was used by Ocelot, Solidus and Big Boss for their own purposes.
• Pet the Dog: For some unfathomable reason, he deemed it necessary under his 'Master Miller' persona to outright help Snake out of a self-loathing rut and encourage him to keep his head in the game while he was spiraling over failing Meryl. Whatever merit there is in doing this is up to the player to decide, because there's fundamentally nothing gained out of him actively trying to help his enemy into a better mental state. Aside from a better fight, perhaps.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Assuming Ocelot's fake possession portrayal of Liquid is valid, Liquid seems to qualify under this.
• Psycho Prototype: Although it is heavily implied that Liquid was created first, and the superior genes were used from him to create Solid Snake, The Stinger subverts this by revealing that he had the superior genes all along.
• Rapid Aging: Being a clone from the LET project, he's been genetically engineered to be an elderly man around the age of 40. While he didn't live long enough to see this in action to the degree of Solid Snake and Solidus, this trait nearly bit him hard during the Kingdom of the Flies incident since he was infected by the English parasites. Normally he should be fine for a few more years...except that he was physically maturing to the phase where the parasites would destroy him. He was eventually left for dead by the Diamond Dogs believing that there was no hope left for him and he would be annihilated by a napalm storm to kill off the parasites. Luckily for him, Rebenok showed up to use his powers to shove the parasites out his system via his mouth and airlift him to safety before the fire got to them.
• Rasputinian Death: He survived having his Hind D shot down by Solid Snake, being hit with multiple Stinger missiles, being caught directly within the explosion of Metal Gear REX, a four-story fall from REX, getting riddled with bullets by a turreted machine gun, a Jeep crash, and he was still ticking up until he succumbed to FOXDIE. In the remake he lasts even longer, initially collapsing out of agony but then attempting to grab Snake twice before staring down and finally giving up the ghost over a minute beyond the point his heart had ostensibly failed. Only his father and Vamp surpassed him.
• Recurring Boss: Liquid is fought several times over Metal Gear Solid; once while piloting the Hind D, and then again in a series of fights after passing the game's Point of No Return by triggering his gambit and activating Metal Gear. He's also fought twice in The Phantom Pain, and would have also been that game's Final Boss if the final level hadn't been cut for time. If you count the Liquid and Liquid Ocelot sections of the final fight of Metal Gear Solid 4, he's the most often recurring boss in the series.
• Red Is Violent: Eli shows an affinity for dressing in red, probably symbolic of him wearing his anger on the outside.
• Screw Destiny: "Curses his fate."
• Self-Made Orphan: Kind of. Although he never actually killed Big Boss, nor was Big Boss actually dead to begin with, Liquid made it very clear in his Motive Rant that he certainly would have murdered Big Boss himself had Solid Snake not done so, and in fact hated Snake partially because Snake "stole that chance".
• Separated at Birth: With Solid Snake. They were born in Carlsbad, New Mexico but Snake spent his childhood in Oregon while Liquid was moved to England shortly after their birth and then Africa before encountering Diamond Dogs. They had similar upbringings though, both being raised in isolation and receiving extensive education and military training.
• Sequential Boss: The final fight with Liquid Snake at the end of Metal Gear Solid has several phases to it. After you trigger his gambit involving Snake activating Metal Gear by accident and crossing the Point of No Return, you fight Liquid controlling Metal Gear through two phases, before the machine is destroyed and the Snakes duel in a fist-fight. Lastly, after getting past two guard checkpoints on the way out of the base, Liquid will come barreling after you in a jeep. It's only after you survive this that he meets his end.
• Shadow Archetype: While they were both created for war, Liquid is everything Snake is not, being obsessed with his relation to Big Boss, while Snake is accepting, if troubled, by it, and possessing none of his brothers compassion or respect for life, leading him to endanger the world in an effort to surpass the father that Snake opposed and defeated.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: As the below entry in Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds demonstrates, he suffered immensely as a POW.
• Shout-Out: Eli seems to be a fan of Lord of the Flies; his room in Mission 23 has a severed pig's head on the table, and the ending timeline, along with a cut mission, explicitly declares his base to be the "Kingdom of the Flies".
• Sibling Seniority Squabble: Averted. When he first meets his twin brother face-to-face, he says that he's not sure whether to call him "big brother" or "little brother", before deciding that it doesn't matter anyway.
• Smug Snake: In addition to being a Large Ham, he comes across as arrogant and borderline insufferable to those not part of FOXHOUND. Even as a Child Soldier in The Phantom Pain as Eli, he's a sneering little brat.
• Social Darwinist: He believes that people's genes are all that matter in regards to fate or their future. Ironically, this actually has little to do with his actual plot (it was closer to a Warrior Heaven).
• Spanner in the Works: Eli tends to cause problems at Mother Base for the sheer hell of it.
• Straw Nihilist: Liquid figures that he might as well do what his genes tell him, since otherwise, he's nothing. Justified, in that there's little else he's known beyond war — he was purpose-built to fight.
• Super-Soldier: Well, that was the intent of the Les Enfants Terribles project at least. He certainly ended up as an amazing soldier, but how much of it was genetics and how much was upbringing is left unclear.
• Tragic Villain: He's got a tragic past, and has been manipulated his whole life — his actions aren't born out of pure malice so much as the desire to lash out at a world that's been relentlessly cruel to him.
• Twin Switch: Sons of Liberty sees him subjected to a posthumous one. Solid Snake and Otacon has his body stolen from government cold storage, and use it to fake Snake's death in the Tanker Incident.
• Tyke Bomb: As one of the products of the Les Enfants Terribles project, specifically one of the two modified clones, Eli is far more intelligent (sort of) and physically capable than someone his age should be.
• Unwitting Pawn: For Solidus Snake, A.K.A. George Sears.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Whenever posing as Master Miller and after passing the game's Point of No Return, Liquid will not be wearing a shirt and have his chest bare.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: A completely unintentional example on the part of the parental figure — Big Boss had no idea about him until after he was born, and even then never saw him as a son. Liquid's hate for Big Boss was born out of a mistaken belief that Big Boss chose for him to get the "inferior genes", whatever that means.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He thinks what he's doing is for the good of soldiers everywhere — his idea to bring back Outer Heaven will make them a "valued commodity" again.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He calls Solid Snake out for enjoying the killing (whether he's right or not is left ambiguous, though Snake is clearly disturbed at the accusation).
• Whole Costume Reference:
  • As a child Eli's clothes and hairstyle look eerily similar to what he would onee day wear as Liquid's in Metal Gear Solid.
  • He also resembles the Feral Kid.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Metal Gear Solid 4 novelization and the Official Missions Handbook expands a lot on Liquid's background: He basically was sent into Iraq before the advent of the Iraq War as a British sleeper agent to organize various insurgencies in Iraq, and also located several things thanks to connections he made with insurgents against Saddam Hussein's government. However, just as he was to act on destroying the SCUD missile launchers (at least 4 were destroyed by this time), he ended up captured by Iraqi paratroopers belonging to al-Amn al-'Amm secret police, with the strong implication that the SIS sold him out for a more valuable source of information from within Hussein's inner circle, leaving him to be tortured and brainwashed, which evidentially led to his Humans Are Bastards viewpoint in the first game. Just when he was getting his act together to lead FOXHOUND, Ocelot had to reveal to him that he was an LET clone, causing him to sink into rage and self-loathing and transform into the character we see from Metal Gear Solid onward. Honestly, who can blame him for the stuff he pulled after knowing that?
  • Broad Strokes may be applied as far as Metal Gear Solid V: He found out he is a LET clone, escaped Zero's care, and fled to Africa. Then he held an enormous grudge towards Venom Snake when he found out about his heritage, attempts and successfully caused a Child Soldier rebellion, and facing his big defeat once Snake destroys Sahelanthropus and accidentally shoots him. He then held on to this grudge for the remainder of his life until Shadow Moses.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: A large part of his Evil Plan was actually improvised by Psycho Mantis, since acquiring the PAL code from Baker and Anderson failed due to the latter dying under a supposedly botched torture session courtesy of Ocelot before he could divulge it.
• You Killed My Father: In this case, he wanted to kill him first.

Revolver Ocelot

"We're going to play a game, Snake. And we'll find out what kind of man you really are."

"John? Plain name. But I won't forget it."

"Now go! Let the Legend come back to life!"

AKA: Major Ocelot, Shalashaska, Adamska, ADAM, Liquid Ocelot

Revolver Ocelot (Old) voiced by: Kōji Totani (JP), Patrick Zimmerman (EN)

Major Ocelot voiced by: Takumi Yamazaki (JP), Josh Keaton (EN)

Revolver Ocelot (Middle-aged) voiced by: Satoshi Mikami (JP), Troy Baker (EN)

"The world today has become too soft. We're living in an age where true feelings are suppressed. So we're going to shake things up a bit."

Ocelot is known for his distinctive style of shooting a Single Action Army pistol (which he loves to reload), love of cowboy movies, love of torture, and ridiculous hand gestures. He also apparently works for FOXHOUND, the Sons of Liberty, and the Patriots, but for all we know he actually has an entirely different agenda. Originally a straightforward bad guy, he becomes more sympathetic through his rapport with Big Boss in the prequels.

He is a major fixture of the series, the only character to physically appear in all the numbered Metal Gear Solid games (though, conversely, he's also one of the only major characters to not appear in the original two Metal Gear games). At Shadow Moses, he serves as Liquid's right-hand man, and seems to do the same at the Big Shell. In Metal Gear Solid 3, a young Ocelot appears as Volgin's minion. In Metal Gear Solid 4, Ocelot is a Dragon Ascendant, going now by the name Liquid Ocelot thanks to his replacement arm, stolen from Liquid, taking over his mind. Finally, he appears in Metal Gear Solid V, where he rescues Big Boss on horseback and joins his "Diamond Dogs" mercenary unit.

For Liquid Ocelot, see Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

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• An Arm and a Leg: While dueling Snake in MGS1, Ocelot gets his right hand sliced off by Gray Fox, after which Ocelot keeps his right arm bandaged. Come MGS2, it is revealed that Ocelot had his entire right arm amputated to allow a transplant (see Artificial Limbs). Averted in The Phantom Pain: he's the only main character who hasn't lost any limbs or body parts before or during 1984.
• Anti-Villain: His ultimate goal really is to destroy the Patriots. The means he uses to get there, however, are more than a bit questionable.
• Artificial Limbs: He first replaces his lost right arm with a transplanted limb taken from Liquid's body, and then replaces that with an actual cybernetic limb.
• Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: He loves old gunslinger imagery, and fancies himself one. His outfits at Shadow Moses and Mother Base reflect this. He and his pack of the Ocelot Unit wear the red/maroon berets of the Spetznaz GRU, the black combat uniform of the Naval Infantry, the black telnyashka (striped shirt) of the Soviet Navy, and the knee-high black leather officer's boots (opposed to the trooper's boots used by KGB and GRU). It seems Major Ocelot has a lot of leeway with putting together his unit.
• Awesomeness by Analysis:
  • He learned Close Quarter Combat simply by observing Big Boss and other soldiers.
  • Sure, anyone can shoot a wall to get the bullet to richochet, but the fact that he regularly hits the target this way suggests he can calculate accurate trajectories in an instant.
• Badass Longcoat: His coat of choice is a brown duster, as seen in the first Metal Gear Solid and in The Phantom Pain.
• Badass Normal: He's a regular human who has major gunslinging skills in a world of cyborgs and giant robots.
• Big Bad: Of Metal Gear Solid 4. He may count as part of a Big Bad Ensemble considering that he has his own plans to bring down the Patriots.
• Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics: The "Master of Ricochet". Ocelot can somehow bounce his bullets off walls and other objects to go exactly where he wants. The trick to beating him is to not reveal your location; if he sees you duck and cover, it's all over. Also carries over to Metal Gear Online, where Ocelot can fire trickshots to hit enemies who are hiding behind cover.
• Body Horror: When Liquid possesses Ocelot in MGS2 and when he fully takes control in MGS4. Somewhat subverted, when it's revealed he orchestrated his own possession by "Liquid" as part of a larger gambit to defeat the Patriots. Though as stated below under Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane, it's believed he may have been legitimately possessed at some point when he had Liquid's arm attached to him, as he did have Liquid's voice during Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty while he did not during Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Also, MGS3 reveals his father was a medium and MGSV possibly implies that Liquid also possessed paranormal abilities.
• Book Ends: Ocelot is the first and last boss of the "Solid Snake Saga", discounting the first two Metal Gear titles.
  • Also the first and last boss chronologically (not counting "Rising").
• Breakout Villain: Very few people who finished the original Metal Gear Solid when it came out expected him to be anything more than Solidus's lackey in Metal Gear Solid 2.
• But Not Too Foreign: His father is Russian and his mom is American. Both are soldiers, and he was born while his mother stormed the beaches of Normandy (so technically, he is either German or French).
• Call-Back: In The Phantom Pain, he lectures a soldier shooting like a cowboy to not dampen the recoil whilst his gun is jammed and told him to use a revolver. He also tells him engravings provide no tactical advantage. The two lectures Naked Snake told him in Snake Eater.
• Cats Are Mean: This is more evident in Metal Gear Solid 3, where Young Ocelot imitates an ocelot's growl to summon his men. About the nicest thing you can say for Ocelot at this point in the timeline is that he believes in a fair fight, as jungle cats "prefer to hunt alone". Needless to say, this stands in contrast to Naked Snake's cheap tactics and fondness for dogs.
• Catchphrase: "You're pretty good!" Also his last words.
• Character Development: Done in a fun way in Snake Eater. Ocelot doesn't start the game with his characteristic love of revolvers, instead using a semi-automatic pistol. He switches to a set of decked out revolvers following some advice from Naked Snake, and then to a set of Single-Action army revolvers. During his boss fight, Ocelot discovers he loves using these guns, and slowly gets used to reloading, going faster and faster over time. There's some other small character tics to show he's getting used to using them, such as him accidentally holstering the revolver the wrong way early on.
• Characterization Marches On: He expressed a possible interest in both Sniper Wolf and Meryl in Metal Gear Solid (which takes a darker turn during the torture session, as he'll promise to have his way with Meryl before killing her if you submit), but soon jettisoned the Dirty Old Man part of his character makeup. In fact, he was outwardly repulsed in Metal Gear Solid 3 by EVA's ridiculous perfume and breast implants, and shows no interest in Quiet showering when all the other male soldiers are ogling her. In hindsight it's possible his behavior towards Wolf and Meryl may have been just to Troll them.
• Character Tics:
  • He has a tendency to twirl or juggle his guns.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 gives him Liquid's hand which causes him seizures. It would take him over in Metal Gear Solid 4.
• The Chessmaster: He's been manipulating everyone since Metal Gear Solid to the Patriots' destruction and Big Boss's revival.
• Child Soldier: He was exposed to combat at a very young age, and essentially grew up on the battlefield. In an optional Codec call in MGS3, Naked Snake muses that Ocelot can't be any older than 18^note He was actually 20 at the time.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He's the trope-namer via the webcomic The Last Days of FOXHOUND. Ocelot has been on a different team in nearly every game, often subverting them from within. Needless to say, if you aren't Big Boss, he'll probably betray you at some point.
  • Averted in Metal Gear Solid V. Out of all the main characters, he's the only one to have been and stayed on Venom Snake's side the entire game. Then again, due to the game's final twist, it turns out that while he didn't technically betray Snake, he did betray the player.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Ocelot seems to think of torture as a sport. He does elaborate in The Phantom Pain that "it's not a matter of art" and attempts to justify his interest by insisting that being good at torture is "the best way to keep both questioner and subject safe" and gets them quick results. Miller doesn't believe him for a second.
• Cool Old Guy: He retains his gunslinging skills from his youth, and even as an adult can use those same skills on horseback.
• Determinator: In Metal Gear Solid 3. No matter how many times Naked Snake beats/humiliates him, he gets back up and comes back again, pursuing Snake.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: "There's nothing like the feeling of slamming a long, silver bullet into a well greased chamber", indeed.
• The Dog Bites Back: He had backstabbing tendencies as early as Metal Gear Solid, but his technical first time at genuinely backstabbing someone (disobeying Volgin's command to gun down Naked Snake during the final battle) was closer to this given the abuse he had to endure under Volgin. Even if his serving Volgin was technically a ruse to begin with.
• Double Agent: In Metal Gear Solid, he's not actually working for Liquid, but the U.S. Government. It wasn't until Metal Gear Solid 2 that he became a...
• Double Reverse Quadruple Agent: Over the course of the series, he's worked for the NSA, CIA, KGB, GRU, Colonel Volgin, Diamond Dogs, FOXHOUND, rogue FOXHOUND, Colonel Gurlukovich, Solidus and the Patriots while not really working for any of them. Metal Gear Solid 4 reveals his true allegiance was to Big Boss ever since Metal Gear Solid 3.
• The Dragon: Serves as the right hand man to Liquid, Solidus and Volgin respectively over the first three Metal Gear Solid games. Also acted as the henchman for Venom Snake as arranged in a plan between Big Boss and Zero.
• Dragon Ascendant: He's the Big Bad in the fourth game, with Vamp as his Dragon. Everything that we see him do from the original Metal Gear Solid onward is his attempts to destroy the Patriots and fulfill Big Boss's wishes. It could be said that he's always been Big Boss's right hand man, and is more than willing to work with (and turn on) whoever gets in his way, including the sons of Big Boss to fulfill his goals.
• Dystopia Justifies the Means: He is said to have applauded Big Boss's vision of a strife-ridden world, likening it to his own favorite era: the Wild West. As stated in the original Metal Gear Solid, ^note The player has to survive the third torture round without submitting to learn it he believes that, in a world filled with war, people at least could express their true emotions and personality, especially when the current age prevents them from doing so.
• Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age: Somehow manages to take out six men with M60A rifles with only 6 rounds from a Colt Single Action revolver.
• Enigmatic Minion: As revealed in The Stinger for the first game. At first he just looks like a Card-Carrying Villain, but it's clear he has his own agenda. Doubly so in MGS2, where he's a spy for the Patriots.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He tells Naked Snake that he doesn't like killing his Russian comrades, pleads with Volgin not to nuke Sokolov's research lab and openly disapproves of Volgin's interrogation-execution of Granin. Although the post-credits dialogue reveals that all of this had been planned by his true superiors from the beginning, implying he was merely acting. Though his opinion of Volgin nuking the lab is debatable at least.
  • Also makes his disgust clear with Huey Emmerich. He even draws his sidearm and is on the verge of blowing the man's brains out before Venom Snake stops him. If you listen to the interrogation tapes back to back, you can even notice Ocelot getting progressively angrier at him. It starts off gradually and subtly, but by the final tape, he's absolutely seething with rage and contempt. It's worth noting that Ocelot and Miller rarely agree on anything, but by end, Ocelot is clearly just as ready as Miller to kill Huey.
  • Is also rather offended at Kaz's insinuation that he would use the same "interrogation" methods on children that he does on adults.
  • After Quiet has been defeated, he urges Venom Snake to not kill, in contrast to Kaz wanting Quiet dead the moment Snake beats the woman.
• Evil Hand: In MGS2, he has gotten an arm transplant, replacing the hand Gray Fox lopped off during MGS1 with that of Liquid. Liquid's spirit apparently lingered in the arm, possessing Ocelot, or trying to, whenever Snake was near. Or so players were led to believe; he actually engineered his own possession as part of a larger gambit to deceive and destroy the Patriots.
• Evil Mentor: An unusual case. He's Liquid's mentor because Kaz was so pissed off at Big Boss, intending to train Venom Snake and Solid Snake to kill Big Boss. Ocelot in return intends to train the other son to defeat Kaz with Liquid.
• Evil Old Folks: He's in his sixties at the time of Shadow Moses Island, and finally perishes at age 70.
• Evil Sounds Raspy: Particularly middle to older age in English dub. The English voice is fairly light as Major Ocelot which makes it jarring listening to the growly, world-weary and Russian accented old Ocelot.
• Exact Words: When The Phantom Pain starts properly, he tells Venom Snake "Let the Legend come back to life!". He never specified whose.
• Eye Scream: As revealed in MGS3, he, through a freak accident, was responsible for the lost of Big Boss's right eye.
• Fake Defector: Allegedly defected from the NSA to the Soviet Union Under the alias ADAM in Metal Gear Solid 3. He was actually working for the CIA the whole time.
• Final Boss: Of Metal Gear Solid 4.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Extremely skilled with his guns and one of the series' greatest foes who nearly plunges the world into complete chaos. Named after a positively adorable species of wildcat.
• Foreshadowing: So much. In the original: why would a Russian dress as a cowboy, use an American gun, and name himself after an American cat? Because he's working for the American government, and his mother was one of America's greatest war heroes. In Sons of Liberty: why is he being possessed by a transplanted arm? Snake Eater gives the reason that his father was a medium, but it's revealed in Guns of the Patriots that it's part of a long and complex plan to save the world from The Patriots.
• The Gunfighter Wannabe: Throughout Metal Gear Solid 3, he always tries a little bit too hard to impress people with tricks like spinning and juggling revolvers, and usually gets slapped down for it.
• The Gunslinger: A trope he embraces with gusto, he prefers to Quick Draw with a Colt Single Action Army despite frequently facing off against people with automatic rifles.
• Gun Twirling: It has practical applications too: Young Ocelot uses this skill to survive an onslaught of The Pain's hornets. That's right, he killed a bunch of hornets that were about to sting him to death by hitting them with his spinning guns.
• Hard Head: During the final fight with Solid Snake in MGS4, he suffers repeated punches to the face, having his head punched into the steel hull of a ship, and getting shoved face-first into a steel pillar (multiple times!) with apparently no ill effects.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: You wouldn't expect a man this flamboyant to be one of the franchise's most accomplished spies and master manipulators. The showmanship isn't an act either.
• Honor Before Reason: In MGS3, to the extent that he calls Naked Snake out if he uses such means as tossing grenades or shooting down hornet's nests while fighting Snake.
• Horseback Heroism: Pulls this off to escape with Venom Snake at the start of The Phantom Pain, successfully outracing The Man On Fire and the forest fire that it started in its wake.
• I Love the Smell of X in the Morning: Pretty much everything associated with revolvers gets him aroused. He comments on the smell of cordite ("Y'know, that sulfury smell?") during his duel in Metal Gear Solid.
• Improbable Age: Ocelot holding the rank of Major at only twenty years old is pretty hard to swallow even when taking into account him being backed by the Philosophers and being The Boss's secret son. For comparison, the normal minimum requirements for reaching the rank of Major in the U.S. Army is having at least a Bachelor's university degree and ten years of military service as an officer, which puts their average age around mid-thirties.
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: Ocelot continually zaps Solid Snake will just enough electricity so as not to kill Snake, testing to see if Snake'll beg for mercy. If you do press the surrender button, Ocelot will discontinue the torture, then announce that he's about to go kill Meryl. He wants to break Snake's spirit, not kill. Granted, there is a bit of Gameplay and Story Segregation here as failing to survive Ocelot's torture will actually result in a particularly brutal Game Over wherein you will have to reload your last saved game.
  Ocelot: There are no continues, my friend.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Ocelot's romantic admiration for Big Boss when he hears about Big Boss managing to kill people so easily.
• Ink-Suit Actor: In The Phantom Pain his facial features resemble his English voice actor Troy Baker.
• I Want Them Alive!: In The Phantom Pain, he insists that Venom Snake bring Quiet back to Mother Base alive for the sake of information gathering, whereas Miller jumps right to Murder Is the Best Solution.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Was fairly attractive during his youth in Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metal Gear Solid V. To be fair, he doesn't really look too terrible in the present either.
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: In Snake Eater, he insists on fighting honorably, and is annoyed with Naked Snake should the player choose to use such means as grenades or shooting down beehives against him. Later, when Volgin finds himself losing against Snake, Ocelot refuses to shoot Snake on the Colonel's orders.
  Ocelot: Fight like a man, Volgin!
• The Man Behind the Man: He is the primary orchestrator of the entire story, for better or worse.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It is stated that Ocelot began his "Liquid Ocelot" ruse as far back as when he had Liquid's actual arm attached but he replaces it for a synthetic arm because the initial transplant was unstable and affected his psyche. The implications of this and the apparent cause of instability are left vague, but given that The Sorrow (a medium) is his father, and (according to MGSV) Liquid himself may or may not have possessed paranormal abilities, it's more than possible that Liquid really was possessing Ocelot for a time. Ultimately though it doesn't matter since whether it was real or not, since Ocelot only needed to make the Patriots think it was Liquid long enough to bring the A.I.s down, which he accomplished.
• Meaningful Titles: Ocelot uses Revolver, Major or Liquid before his codename. In the case of "Major", it is actually his rank.
• Mission Control: Shares this duty with Miller in The Phantom Pain
• Money to Throw Away: An early hint that Ocelot isn't in this for your revolution, Princess. Though he acts excited about the payout during conversations with Liquid, Ocelot is just playing it up for Solid Snake. During the torture sequence, he reacts with scorn to Snake's implication that he wants money. Ocelot's an ex-spy and mercenary: He doesn't need any more money.
• More Dakka: Every time Naked Snake defeats him during the events of MGS3, his response is to get another revolver. Starting with a simple handgun that jams on him, he eventually ends up with three revolvers, one on his belt, one on his bandolier and one strapped to his back. He probably would have gone up to four if The Boss hadn't dismantled one of the three as a disciplinary action.
• Multiple-Choice Past:
  • Naomi mentioned that, according to his official case file, after the fall of the Soviet Union, he briefly worked as a member of the Russian Tax Police, OMOR, and the successor unit to the KGB, but left due to not liking the rigid rules. However, the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database indicates that the case file was actually falsified to cover up his allegiance to the Patriots.
  • Also, in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, EVA explains in a radio conversation of being told that Volgin apparently raised Ocelot within GRU ever since the Philosophers kidnapped him during the Battle of Normandy after his birth. However, seeing how his codename was ADAM, and thus worked with the NSA in the past before "defecting" to the Soviet Union, and was also implied to be an agent of the CIA as well, it's unlikely that Volgin's account is true at all, unless Volgin meant it figuratively. Or the CIA "defector" story could be the cover.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Like Naomi and EVA/Big Mama, he went through all sorts of shit to revive Big Boss, and died before he ever got to see Big Boss again.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Based on Spaghetti Western actor Lee Van Cleef.
• Noble Demon: In Metal Gear Solid 3. And Metal Gear Solid 4... probably. It's on full display in Metal Gear Solid V. He willingly alters his memories to serve Venom Snake at the behest of Big Boss and Zero.
• The Nose Knows: In Metal Gear Solid 3, he deduces that EVA is the spy in their midst by the smell of motorcycle gasoline on EVA.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: True, he's half-American, but also born and raised in Russia, and yet he speaks with a flawless American accent.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: While he was never presented as totally harmless, Ocelot is much younger in Snake Eater than in previous installments, develops an unhealthy obsession with Naked Snake and gets defeated multiple times. Therefore, he appears to still be inexperienced and not all that threatening... right until The Stinger hits, revealing that Ocelot was, in fact, the mastermind behind all the events and has been manipulating everyone involved.
• Nothing Personal: What he considers his "enhanced interrogations" to be, at least according to Metal Gear Solid V''; he uses these techniques to keep the questioning short and sweet.
  Miller: Ocelot. You get too many kicks from your "art of interrogation".
  Ocelot: It's not a matter of art. It's about quick, minimal strokes of psychological warfare. That's what gets the answers. And it's the best way to keep both questioner and subject safe.
• Old Soldier: He was in his 60s by the time of the first two Metal Gear Solid games, and is still an excellent gunslinger and more than a match for Solid Snake in a fight. Come Metal Gear Solid 4, he's 70, and a monster in hand-to-hand combat.
• Only Sane Man: Of all characters, tends to come across as this during The Phantom Pain, often advocating for non-lethal methods, as opposed to Kaz's Revenge Before Reason approach.
• Otaku: Of spaghetti westerns.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Displays a rather more laid back, less theatrical personality in Metal Gear Solid V. It can be taken as a further hint towards the game's Twist Ending.
• Pet the Dog: Most of his character in Metal Gear Solid V. Quite literally at times, as he is the one who looks after DD when the dog isn't out with Venom Snake. He's also one of the few people apart from his boss who defend Quiet from all the hatred she gets from the Mother Base personnel.
• Pinball Projectile: Is quite fond of ricocheting his revolver bullets around corners.
• The Plan: He is gradually revealed as the driving force behind every single event in the series, with his final goal eventually turning out to be the destruction of The Patriots' AIs.
• Polyglot: The Phantom Pain reveals that he is fluent in Russian, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portugese and French (which he dislikes since it reminds him of the Decadent Court of the Czars).
  • Though subverted when Venom Snake requests he serve as his translator. Ocelot somewhat sheepishly admits that while he understands all those languages, juggling multiple languages in one head is actually pretty hard and he doesn't really have the knack for translating one languages words to another on the fly fast enough for him to be able to serve as a translator.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Displays tendencies of this in the second half of MGS4, making Finger Guns at Meryl's army in Eastern Europe ("Bang! Bang!") and childishly taunting Snake as he escapes on Outer Haven.
• Red Herring: His transplanted hand. When it's revealed in MGS 3 that he was the son of the Boss and the Sorrow, fans immediately figured that he had inherited some of the Sorrow's psychic sensitivity, and that's how Liquid Snake was able to possess Ocelot through the hand. Ocelot was never possessed, he had false memories implanted as a part of the ruse to be able to destroy the Patriots AI. MGS V even revealed it wasn't even the first time he had his memories altered, as he had it done to be able to support Venom Snake as if he had been the real Big Boss.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to Kaz's red in Metal Gear Solid V.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: As he learns from Big Boss, who studied him during his first fight and saw how badly he was handling his basic pistol, so Big Boss suggested he should get a revolver since it fits his actions better.
• Running Gag: No matter who the Big Bad is, Ocelot will betray them. Even himself.
• Russian Roulette:
  • He plays an interesting variant with Sokolov which involves three guns juggled around and Ocelot has no idea which one has a solitary bullet or when it'll be fired. All he knows is that two are empty and he'll fire all three of them indivdually to find out which one. This causes Sokolov to wet himself in the tension and no one gets shot in the end.
  • Near the end of the game, he plays a two gun version with Naked Snake. After juggling them both, he puts them on the ground and lets Snake pick one first. After firing at each other, turns out Ocelot intentionally loaded a blank (or a real one if Snake shoots away from Ocelot) into one of them. He then jumps out of the plane so Snake and EVA can escape.
• Sadist: Thoroughly enjoys torturing people (believing it to be "the ultimate form of expression") and said tendency even explains in part his taste for revolvers. Since revolvers fire slugs at much slower velocities than semi-automatic firearms do, they hurt more when you're shot with one.
• Signature Headgear: One visual hallmark of his Major Ocelot years is the red beret he wore to signify his membership in the Ocelot Unit. He apparently liked it so much to the point that during his gun duel with Naked Snake, he will rush over to it and put it back on if Snake shoots it off, leaving him open to attacks.
• Significant Birth Date: He was born during the Invasion of Normandy. And in the Invasion of Normandy.
• Single-Target Sexuality: To Big Boss.
  Ocelot: He's good.
  Volgin: Fallen for him, have you?
• Situational Hand Switch: After losing his right hand, he is forced to switch to firing left handed. Even when he's given Liquid's arm, he still uses his left hand for shooting, noting that he never trusts a Frenchman in reference to the French surgeon who did the transplant. Snake Eater establishes that he was ambidextrous all along and sometime prior to Guns of the Patriots, he replaces Liquid's arm with a robotic prosthetic and switches back to being right handed.
• Smug Super: While insufferably vain and flamboyant, his inflated ego is more than backed up by seemingly superhuman reflexes and marksmanship abilities which enable him to take down countless soldiers en masse with nothing but a Single Action Army revolver. He is also revealed to a highly skilled practitioner of CQC.
• Sole Survivor: The only one of the six FOXHOUND members in Metal Gear Solid to survive the game.
• Stalker with a Crush: His obsessive pursuit of Naked Snake in Snake Eater and his further pursuit throughout the series makes him seem somewhat yandere.
• Start of Darkness: Word of God states that Naked Snake's enduring of Volgin's torture is the reason why Ocelot became a torture fanatic, since beforehand, he held distaste for torture.
• Straight Gay: He's in love with Big Boss and it drives much of his actions past MGS3, but he doesn't show much in the way of stereotypical traits.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: His status as a former Spetsnaz interrogator with a taste for guns and torture makes him extremely similar to Shotmaker from the original Metal Gear.
• "Take That!" Kiss: Does this to Old Snake in MGS4. Twice.
• Torture Technician: Particularly evident in The Phantom Pain.
• Undying Loyalty: Even with his Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, he is forever loyal to Big Boss. A major example in The Phantom Pain which shows that the only person who he gives a damn about is Big Boss is when his old employer Zero gives him a call. Ocelot is guarded and much more hostile than he usually is in person and only gets on board Zero's plan when the man convinces him that it is in Big Boss's interests.
• Use Your Head: In MGS4, he deflects a punch from Old Snake by headbutting Snake's fist.
• Vanity License Plate: His Snake Eater motorcycle has a plate which reads CAT in Russian.
• Villain Respect: He obviously admires Big Boss to the point of adoration and he has some measure of respect towards Solid Snake, if only for his combat skills.
  You're pretty good
• Villainous Widow's Peak: As an old geezer.
• Waistcoat of Style: He wears quite a dapper one under his coat in the first Metal Gear Solid.
• We Will Meet Again: Tells Solid Snake this in MGS1 after the Cyborg Ninja interrupts their inaugural battle by slicing off his right hand. During his second meeting with Naked Snake in MGS3 half a century earlier, he informs him and EVA that "This isn't over yet!" after they humiliate him and give him a lesson on counting bullets.
• Wild Card: It is nearly impossible to tell on which side he is at any given time. A slight subversion in that he was loyal to Big Boss through the entire series, but then again, by the time Ocelot met Big Boss he had already been double-crossing world superpowers for a while.
• Worthy Opponent: Constantly seeks a warrior as great as Big Boss to test his skills. If his last words are any indication, he found it in Solid Snake.
• Xanatos Gambit: His ultimate goal, as revealed in MGS4, is to revive Big Boss and destroy the Patriots' AIs one way or another. To accomplish this, he steals REX's railgun with the intent of shooting down the satellite housing JD, thus defaulting main control to GW, which he controls. This means that if he were to kill Old Snake and succeed on his plan, he would gain full control of The System and free Big Boss. If he fails, Snake would destroy the Patriots' AIs anyways using Sunny's version of Emma's worm from MGS2, thus accomplishing both of his goals anyways. One way or another, he engineers a situation in which no matter what happens in the end, he, as well as Big Boss, EVA and Naomi achieve what they wanted to all along.
• You Bastard!: The "Otacon" outcome of the torture sequence. Basically, Ocelot crows that he's going to rape/torture/murder Meryl, and it's all your fault. "I hope you can still look at yourself in the mirror."

Psycho Mantis

"You're a very methodical man. The kind who always kicks his tires before he leaves."

^{Click here} to see Tretij Rebenok in MGSV

Voiced By: Kazuyuki Sogabe (JP), Doug Stone (EN)

AKA: Tretij Rebenok/Third Child

"I never agreed with the Boss's revolution. His dreams of world conquest do not interest me. I just wanted an excuse to kill as many people as I could."

FOXHOUND's psychic member Psycho Mantis was driven insane when he went too deep into a psychopath's mind. Famous for reading the player's memory card and commenting on the games saved on it.

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• Animal Motifs: His gas mask is evocative of the head and face of a praying mantis. As Tretij Rebenok, the imagery is enhanced by his jacket's oversized sleeves, which resemble a mantis's raptorial forelimbs.
• Ax-Crazy: Of all the members of Liquid's FOXHOUND unit, Mantis was shown to be the most insane and depraved.
• Badass Longcoat: He wears one in the first game. He loses it in the fourth.
• Beware the Mind Reader: Has various psychic powers and mind reading powers, which has made him a complete psychopath.
• Big Damn Heroes: He gets to be this for Eli at the end of the cut Mission 51. By this point Eli has lost everything; he has emerged as the ultimate loser in the Mêlée à Trois between him and his gang, Venom Snake and Diamond Dogs, and XOF, resulting in his Kingdom of the Files and his men having been taken from him, and to add insult to injury, his parasite infection is starting to reach the outbreak state which is going to kill him very, very soon, and if not, the napalm bombing of his island that Diamond Dogs is about to begin to sterilize any traces of the parasites is sure to do the trick. Venom has only done him one small, last gesture of dignity, by leaving a gun with one bullet behind, so that he may take his own life rather than be killed by the parasites or the bombing. Eli briefly considers that it might actuality be Better to Die than Be Killed, but then Rebenok arrives and uses his powers to cure Eli's parasite infection by pulling said parasites out of his body, before levitating Eli and himself to safety as the bombing begins.
• Big "NO!": Mantis doesn't react well to you changing the PlayStation controllers on him.
• Compelling Voice: It is implied that this is how Mantis applies his psychic abilities to place people under mind control (as his theme "Mantis' Hymn" often plays in the background of Meryl Silverburgh being brainwashed by Mantis, with Naomi Hunter also referring to it as his "mind control music").
• Creepy Child: As Tretij Rebenok in The Phantom Pain.
• Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: His actual model lacks orange gasmask lenses seen, showing his eyes. These reveal they're completely sunken in blackness.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Inverted. Some official artworks as well as a certain attack of his have him in a pose similar to that of Jesus's crucifixion, and he's a villain.
• Dark Is Evil: Let's see. As Rebenok, jet-black gas mask, jet-black straitjacket, jet-black leggings, and dark circles around his eyes. Also, not exactly evil, just a living outlet for evil/hateful people.
• Death Equals Redemption: It's subtle, but his last words are very effective at conveying how different Mantis might have turned out. Twin Snakes brings it closer to the original line, yet still carries the same weight. ^note The "nostalgic feeling" he refers to is by word of Kojima, the memories of the last positive emotions his mother felt when she died giving birth to him.
  PS1 Dub: "This is the first time I've ever used my power to help someone. It's strange... It feels... Kind of... Nice."
  Twin Snakes Dub: "This is the first time I've ever used my power to help someone. Strange... Such a nostalgic feeling..."
• Defector from Decadence: He moved from Russia to the US after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
• Don't Look At Me: He hates looking at his face so much that it's his secondary weakness; seeing his face looking back at him via the statues in his boss room disrupts his psychic powers in case your second controller port isn't working.
• Dying as Yourself: His mind-reading is involuntary; part of the reason he wears the mask is to keep other people's thoughts out. Thus, after Snake takes off his mask as he approaches death, he asks him to put it back on.
• Empathic Shapeshifter: Whoever Rebenok is "leashed" to will cause minor changes to his appearance.
  • When leashed to Venom Snake, Third Child has a horn on his head similar to Venom Snake's shrapnel injury.
  • When leashed to the Man on Fire, the sleeves of Third Child's trench coat will be on fire.
  • When leashed to Skull Face, the Third Child dons his domino mask.
  • When leashed to Shabani, Third Child will wear a lion necklace identical to the one Shabani wears.
  • When leashed to Eli, Third Child will wear a red beret tucked in his left shoulder, identical to Eli's.
• Evil Redhead: The most glaring thing about Rebenok (besides the mask) is his messy red hair. He also works for Skull Face, but eventually abandons him in favor of Eli.
• Facial Horror: His usually hidden facial features are horribly disfigured and scarred as a result of being caught in a fire he started when he burned his village to the ground. When Snake unmasks him upon his death, Meryl is completely grossed out.
• Fission Mailed: Using his "blackout" technique, Mantis will change the player's screen to a black screen reading "HIDEO" in the top corner, as to replicate most standard television sets' (at the time) VIDEO setting.
• For the Evulz: He reveals that he joined Liquid's little coup just to kill as many people as possible during his death speech, caring nothing for his boss's dreams of world conquest.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Breaks the fourth wall more frequently and blatantly than any other character.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: One of the most famous examples in video games. Psycho Mantis pulls a few tricks on you, the player, to psyche you out, such as turning the television to VIDEO (Really just changing how the game itself looks), moving your controller with his mind (Really just vibrating it with the rumble feature) and, of course, telling you about the video games you have played in the past.^Explanation To be specific, in the original release he checks for four specific games, then says you like role-playing games if you have two role-playing games that he can check, and saying that you like Konami games if you have three games that he can check. Interestingly, he has a check for one game that he doesn't call out specifically, that being Vandal Hearts. As it turns out, he can read your mind through your controller, but he can't read it if it's in controller port 2, putting him on the recieving end of this trope's inversion. Oh, and he knows if you save often.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Twice. The first as a boy, when he read his father's mind and found that he hated him, possibly enough to want to kill him, leading Mantis to psychically destroy his village. The second was during his stint in the FBI, when he went too deep into the mind of a serial killer, causing Mantis to adopt said killer's personality.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Has a huge scar running around his cranium and across the top of it, as well as a jagged Glasgow Grin.
• Hell Is That Noise: Just like the Man on Fire's mechanical groaning, once you hear steady breathing coming from the other side of a respirator, you better run.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Snake's first person view is replaced by Mantis' line of sight during their battle. If you failed to pick up the thermal goggles, you can easily discern his position by using this.
• House of Broken Mirrors: The office where Mantis is lurking has a smashed mirror, plus numerous marble busts with duct tape covering their faces (mirroring Mantis's own). In The Twin Snakes, he uses his mental powers to distort even the wall photos.
• The Kid with the Leash: In an interesting twist. His abilities can be harnessed by anyone with overwhelming negative emotion, especially feelings of hate and revenge, but the "leash" changes hands various times as a result. In the beginning, it's Ahab who initially awakens his power, and the leash switches between the Man on Fire and Ahab, with Ahab sometimes subconsciously making the Man on Fire attack XOF soldiers and choppers (and even calls a giant flaming whale at one point), and the Man on Fire sometimes attacking Snake personally. Later on, Skull Face gets the leash and uses Rebenok's powers to control Sahelanthropus without a pilot or an AI, and also has control over the Man on Fire. In the end, Eli gets the leash via overwhelming feelings of revenge and uses it to attack Snake with Sahelanthropus, culminating in the Final Boss fight. Eli stays melded with Rebenok after Snake defeats Sahelanthropus, and eventually harnesses his power to escape from Mother Base with Sahelanthropus. In the cut Mission 51, Rebenok helps Eli once again by curing him of the English strain of parasites by literally pulling said parasites out of his body with his powers
• Laughing Mad: Most times, his laughter reeks of this.
• Large Ham: During his fight, and especially while analyzing Snake's (read: the player's) play style before their bout. During his dying moments, he kicks it down quite a few notches, though.
• Leitmotif: Mantis' Hymn
• Malevolent Masked Men: Doesn't hesitate to unleash destruction against enemies and bystanders. Always masked.
• Meaningful Name: The "Psycho" part of his codename has two meanings: One is in reference to his psychic abilities. The other is also short for "psychopath" or "psychotic", referring to Mantis's evident insanity.
  • The only mantis-like thing about him is his lean build, which makes him resemble said insect physically, if not mentally or otherwise.
  • On a subtler note, "Mantis" is derived from "Mantodea", the Greek and Latin word for "Prophet" which emphasizes his psychic abilities further still.
  • His Tretij Rebenok name is "Third Child" in Russian. Given the role he and Eli play at the end — that is, activating a giant mech via mind meld — this might be a thinly veiled Neon Genesis Evangelion reference.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: One of Mantis' many problems.
• Mind over Matter: His projectiles aren't a big threat. The worst obstacles are the office decorations he flings at you: somersaulting chairs, marble statues buzzing around Mantis' body, and even flying deer antlers.
• More Despicable Minion: While Liquid took command of Shadow Moses hoping to recreate Outer Heaven to prove that he is superior to his "father," Big Boss, Psyhco Mantis only joined to kill as many people as possible.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Speaks with a thick Russian accent when unmasked in the original game. Despite being voiced by the same actor in The Twin Snakes, this is not so evident.
• Power Floats: Psycho Mantis is a powerful psychic that floats throughout Snake's entire encounter with him.
• The Power of Hate: Tretij Rebenok's only "loyal" to whoever feels the most hate at any given moment.
• Power Floats: He prefers levitation to walking.
• Psychic Powers: Including pyrokinesis, levitation and telekinesis.
• Psychic Static: He wears the gas mask to keep it out.
• Psycho for Hire: By his own admission, he doesn't care about Liquid's cause and is only working for him so he can have an opportunity to kill people.
• Required Secondary Powers: His infamous fourth wall-breaking tricks requires the player to have a memory card inserted in the console with save data of certain games on it as well as a vibrating controller like the DualShock3. If these aren't present, the worst he can do is hurt Snake in-universe with flying furniture and the "HIDEO" trick. In Guns Of The Patriots, he's shocked to find out that the memory card has long since been obsolete. He's still happy if you happen to be using a vibrating controller.
• Satellite Character: Rebenok has no personality of his own. He just does whatever his current "master" wants.
• Silent Antagonist: Rebenok never speaks at any point.
• The Silent Bob: In The Phantom Pain
• Spotting the Thread: In the Digital Graphic Novel, Mantis subjects Solid Snake to a hallucination in order to make him give up the PAL keys. In it, Mantis is killed by Miller, who arrives out of nowhere to lead Solid Snake to REX's hangar. There, Miller demands Solid Snake enter the codes, but they are soon confronted by Liquid and Revolver Ocelot, who have Meryl hostage. Solid Snake snaps out by shooting "Miller" and points out the various inconsistencies within the illusion; most tellingly, Ocelot had both of his arms despite having lost one thanks to Gray Fox.
• Stronger with Age: Inverted. Everything he does as a boy makes him seem hundreds of times more powerful than he was during the Shadow Moses incident as an adult. Of course, that power came with a total lack of self-determination.
• Vader Breath: Naturally, Mantis's wearing a gas mask, so this would apply.
• Virtual Ghost: He is able to possess Screaming Mantis's armor after her defeat, and show off the fact that he knows jack about the PlayStation 3's controller or save system.
• Weaksauce Weakness: He can read your mind thanks to your controller. However, it only works if the controller is in the Player 1 port; changing it to another port renders his powers dulled down to his telekinesis and his "HIDEO" trick. In The Twin Snakes, this weakness is revised; he can sense your thoughts through all ports, he just has to manually switch the port he's sensing through. As such, you have to change the port again every time he realizes what's happened.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: For once, perhaps, this was (or at least is implied to have been) an accident; realizing his father hated him for his mother's death in childbirth must have caused a lot of trauma for the young Mantis, and he mentions waking up to a fire in progress. Exactly how it happened is never highlighted (presumably because Mantis doesn't know) but it's not unbelievable that his powers exploded in reaction to his father's malice and set the village alight...
• Wild Card: Rebenok has no real loyalty to anyone; only sticks with whoever has the most hate around him which ultimately sets up his leaving Skull Face for Eli.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds:
  • He saw little point in the "selfish desire of passing their genes on". The (questionably canon) Official Missions Handbook seems to heighten his stance, where it claims that he actually wants to end up dying because a parasite (a byproduct of those with genuine psychic powers) was making him do bad things despite his best efforts to control it, because when he is dying, it will be gone, and then he'll at least briefly experience a peace in mind.
  • The Phantom Pain ramps this up even further as revealed through cassette tapes, despite appearing as a malignant puppet master as a child, it's the other way around. The boy is almost completely incapable of controlling anything he does, as his volatile psychic powers are almost entirely controlled/influenced by those around him, particularly the incredibly evil and hateful Man on Fire, Skull Face, and Eli. In fact, the only time the boy's ego leaks out is when he mercy-kills a suffering child. The tapes reveal the only emotion the boy's extremely repressed true personality can muster anymore is bitterness, as he's lived his entire childhood pecked on by emotionless scientists, treated as nothing more than a tool of war. He also unintentionally caused a plane crash, probably killing dozens. Made even MORE sympathetic as an adult when he found out his father secretly hated him, accidentally murdered dozens of people including his friends and family in a village fire, and when he finally grew some independence, tried to use his powers for good by helping the FBI...only to get practically possessed by a psychotic serial killer until his painful death. Geez.

Sniper Wolf

"It's hard to miss when you're this close."

Voiced By: Naoko Nakamura (JP), Tasia Valenza (EN)

"I told you. I never quit the hunt. Now you're mine."

FOXHOUND's Kurd sniper, notable for her ability to stay locked onto a target for as long as it takes until it comes time to pull the trigger. Normally a cold-hearted woman, she nonetheless was kind to the wolfdogs on Shadow Moses and her hostage Hal Emmerich, resulting in Hal's infatuation. Wolf is another disciple of Big Boss, who rescued her from the Middle East as a young girl.

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• Abnormal Ammo: According to her Konami bio, her sniper rifle's bullets use mercury-laced tips: designed to fatally poison a target if the initial shot doesn't kill them first.
• Achilles' Heel: Since both the game's sniper duels against Wolf take place in sub-zero environments, her warm breath in the cold air is a consistent visible indicator of where she's about to attack from, and allows you to accordingly place your own shots.
• Anti-Villain: Type II.
• Badass Normal: She's this compared to the other superpowered snipers such as The End and Quiet that would come to inhabit the Metal Gear franchise. She puts up as much of a challenge with just a gun and diazepam.
• Broken Bird: As she tells Snake her life story moments before dying. She was a little orphan kid in a country ravaged by war, who had to endure the loss of her friends and loved ones every night. Eventually "Saladin" rescued her from it, but if we go by her Heel Realization speech, by that point she was already dead in the inside.
• *Click* Hello: Following their initial shootout, Snake walks up to the as-of-yet unseen Wolf's sniper nest and immediately gets held up.
• Cold Sniper: This lady won't move. Days, weeks, it doesn't matter.
• Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are: Wolf's one of the very few Metal Gear opponents who manages to hijack the radio, the others being Fox (whose status as an opponent is debatable by the end of the game), Liquid (who was using Miller's alias and frequency), and the Patriots themselves.
• Companion Cube: Wolf considers her PSG-1 to be a bodily organ, stopping just short of I Call It "Vera". She requests to hold it to her chest as she dies, commenting, "Everyone's here now."
• Dark Action Girl: The only female member of FOXHOUND and the only female enemy combatant in Metal Gear Solid.
• Death Seeker: Her tactics when fighting Snake really aren't the best. Snake flat-out tells her it's stupid to announce her location.
  (resignedly) "I finally understand. I wasn't waiting to kill people... I was waiting for someone to kill me."
• Disc-One Final Boss: Not narratively, but her second and final boss fight takes place at the end of disc one.
• Even Evil Has Standards: She doesn't like to kill women and children, and even though she shoots Meryl quite a few times, she only does so with the intent to incapacitate, not kill.
• Exposed to the Elements: This lady goes around exposing her cleavage in the middle of the Arctic.
• Femme Fatale: A less subtle one than Naomi.
• Femme Fatalons: Wolf seems to anticipate Snake eventually getting free from Ocelot's captivity, as she swipes at Snake's cheek to leave her "mark." This serves as notice, according to her, that she'll put a bullet in Snake more soon than late.
• Friend to All Living Things: The wolfdogs are trained to recognize Sniper Wolf by scent. Wearing her handkerchief causes them to wag their tails happily, even around Snake.
• Functional Addict: She's addicted to diazapam, the same pills Snake ingests to reduce hand tremors while aiming. Creepy. This is a side-effect of Wolf's refusal to switch shifts with a backup sniper. On the upside, her constant intake of tranquilizers seemed to suppress FOXDIE, if not outright neutralize it.
• Genocide Survivor: She is a Kurdish woman who survived the Iraqi government's attempts to commit genocide against her people after the second Iraqi-Kurdish war.
• Heel Realization:
  "I joined this group of revolutionaries... to take my revenge on the world. But... I have shamed myself and my people. I am no longer the wolf I was born to be... In the name of vengeance, I sold my body and my soul... Now I'm nothing more than a dog"
• In Love with the Mark: A rather twisted version, as Wolf becomes so obsessed with her targets that they are literally all she thinks about, to the point where she's said to fall in love with them right before she puts a bullet through them anyway.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: Kind of. She explains during her death speech that her lullabies were gunfire, sirens, and screaming; although the context it was given since she was actually born and raised during a time where her people, the Kurds, were being exterminated in Iraq, indicates that she was most likely meaning this literally.
• Mercy Kill: After her second boss battle, she mentions that she's been shot in the lung and cannot be saved. Snake opts to quickly kill her to spare her the pain of bleeding out.
• Ms. Fanservice: She's a beautiful young woman who wears tight, revealing outfits and has a rather sensual demeanor.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: She wears a military jacket with a neckline that plunges to her stomach. In a sub-zero setting, no less. Rule of Sexy is definitely in effect here. This gets Subverted in her second battle, where she wears more appropriate attire for the open snowfield.
• Pet the Dog: Literally. And then there was the matter with Otacon.
• Recurring Boss: Snake has to duel Wolf in sniping matches twice as the game proceeds.
• Reincarnation: Otacon seems to think Wolf is still haunting Shadow Moses. In Metal Gear Solid 4, Crying Wolf is killed/knocked out in the same spot where Sniper Wolf died. A wolf scoops up her body and disappears into the woods; the game implies this is the spirit of Sniper Wolf.
• Shout-Out: According to Kojima, the scene where Sniper Wolf riddles Meryl with rounds from a sniper rifle was based on Full Metal Jacket. Similarly, one of her lines ("Well I'm going to send you a love letter, my dear.") was a direct lift from Blue Velvet.
• Statuesque Stunner: Like Meryl, she's 5'9 and absolutely beautiful.
• Straw Feminist: Wolf holds a few sexist views, claiming that women made better soldiers than men. She taunts Snake for being an example of men who "can never finish what [they] start," as well as boasting that two-thirds of the world's greatest assassins are women. She also hates hurting women despite being a woman herself.
• You Remind Me of X: Big Boss, whom Wolf knew as "Saladin", recruited her as a war orphan and likely saved her life. In her delirium, Wolf refers to Snake as Saladin before he caps her.

Vulcan Raven

"Rejoice, Snake! Ours will be a glorious battle!"

Voiced By: Yukitoshi Hori (JP), Peter Lurie (EN)

"Yes. The raven on my head, it thirsts for his blood."

FOXHOUND's shaman. He first fights Solid Snake in a tank, then in cold storage with a gatling gun.

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• Actually Pretty Funny: Snake quips that the tank he used in their first fight "must have been a tight fit for a big boy like you." Rather than getting angry, Raven has a good laugh about it before shrugging it off. He also takes Snake's "muktuk-eating contest" comment in stride.
• Adaptation Expansion: His character is heavily expanded on in the Metal Gear Solid comic, with him being the one who informs Liquid of the deaths of Mantis and Wolf, and giving away the secret of FOXDIE, along with some scope of Liquid's plot during his confrontation against Snake, as opposed to his simple hint in the game.
• Ammunition Backpack: Raven wears a massive ammo tank for his minigun on his back.
• Badass Native: There's really no other way to describe an Inuit shaman who wields a Gatling gun and can bear the deep freeze of Alaska bare-chested.
• Bald of Evil: Save for his Raven tattoo, he's a bare headed co-conspirator in Liquid's uprising.
• The Beastmaster: It is implied that his shamanic powers grant him control over the flock of ravens who appear with him in cold storage. For his part, Raven seems quite fond of them.
• Berserk Button: Killing any of his ravens will piss him off.
• Big Eater: When Raven brings up the Alaskan Olympics, Snake quips that he must put up quite a showing in the Muktuk-eating contest. Raven proudly answers in the affirmative.
• BFG: His eponymous 20mm M61-A1 Vulcan. In the GC version, it's said he ripped it off one of the F-16's Liquid shot down.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: He has no stated and no obvious reason to take part in Liquid's plans, but there he is. He also has an unusual philosophy about his totem animal, being that:
  "Ravens aren't scavengers like most people think. They're simply returning to the natural world that which is no longer needed. Sometimes they even attack wounded foxes."
• Blood Knight: Sincerely enjoys his battles with Snake, and the challenge he offers him.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Raven's main power is "being really, really big." This apparently allows him to use a ~600 pound-plus-ammo M61 Vulcan cannon. And in The Twin Snakes, he casually grabs one of those big-ass metal storage crates and chucks it at Snake like it was a beanbag. It is implied in the game that Raven, being a shaman, has mystical powers as well as physical strength.
• Clever Crows: He's a pretty intelligent guy, despite what his intimidating physique and choice of weapon would suggest.
• Creepy Crows: His ravens follow him wherever he goes, and often give away his position.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Has slightly more health than the other Foxhound members, and takes a lot less damage from Snake's attacks.
• Devoured by the Horde: After he is defeated, Raven allowed himself to be devoured by his ravens.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite working with Liquid, he admits to Snake as he dies that he finds the fact that they were made for endless violence unnatural and terrible.
  Raven: You are a Snake which was not created by Nature. You and the Boss... you are from another world... a world that I do not wish to know...
  Raven: [as the ravens begin to eat him alive] Snake, in the natural world, there's no such thing as boundless slaughter; there's always an end to it. But you're different.
  Snake: [walking away] What are you trying to say?
  Raven: The path you walk on has no end. Each step you take is paved with the corpses of your enemies. Their souls will haunt you forever. You shall have no peace. Hear me, Snake; my spirit will be watching you.
• Exposed to the Elements: He goes around shirtless in both the freezing Alaskan weather and a cold storage room.
• Expy: of Machinegun Kid from the original Metal Gear, particularly in how their battles are handled.
• Face Death with Dignity: Rather than be killed by Snake like Wolf, bleed out like Mantis or die as a result of FOXDIE like Octopus, Raven chooses to let himself be consumed by his flock of ravens, fitting his philosophy that rather than being simple scavangers, ravens simply return to the natural world that which is no longer needed. He claims his spirit will return to Mother Nature through this method. He even gives Snake a keycard and wishes him well in his coming battle against Liquid, and also a hint about the true identity of the DARPA Chief.
• Gatling Good: He wields a giant Gatling gun which is his main method of attack.
• Genius Bruiser: He's a giant who is more than capable of lifting and using a M61 Vulcan cannon, yet was also educated at the University of Alaska, and shown to be a capable strategist.
• Made of Iron: He carries a Vulcan cannon, and ammo, shirtless. In the Alaskan permafrost.
• Mighty Glacier: He can dish out quite a bit of damage, but Snake can outrun him pretty easily.
• Only Sane Man: Unlike all the other members of FOXHOUND, he has no major psychological issues or hidden agenda. He just wants a good fight with Snake.
• Recurring Boss: Raven is fought twice in the game; first in a field where he's inside a tank with two Genome Soldiers operating the tank, and then again on foot with a giant vulcan gun.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Or at least fluent Corvid. He seems to chat with his ravens in his spare time, and speaks on their behalf in his limited screentime.
• Tank Goodness: Raven uses a tank during his first boss fight.
• The Unfought: He was actually part of Big Boss's Outer Heaven, but didn't meet Snake during the uprising.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Vulcan Raven NEVER wears a shirt at any point during the game, showing off his muscles in both the cold Alaskan weather and in the cold room where Snake fights him for the second and last time.
• Worthy Opponent: He regards Snake as such and tells him to rejoice for what he promises will be an awesome battle. He compares their standoff to an Alaskan Olympic event called the Ear-Pull, a test of spiritual and physical strength in which two opponents pull each other's ears while braving the Winter cold.
• Villain Respect: See's Snake as such a Worthy Opponent he volunteers key pieces of information upon his defeat, and promises Snake that, despite abhorring his and Liquids, unnatural origin, his spirit will be watching him.

Decoy Octopus

^{Click here} to see his disguise as Donald Anderson

As Donald Anderson: Masaharu Sato (JP), Greg Eagles (EN)

"He drained the Chief's blood and took it into himself. But he wasn't able to deceive the Angel of Death."

FOXHOUND's impersonation expert. Solid Snake never actually sees what he looks like in-game, though a brief flashback shows the pulling off of his mask. Instead Snake sees him when impersonating Donald Anderson, and he dies shortly after.

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• Badass Longcoat: In his artwork.
• The Bad Guy Wins: While he died due to the unexpected deployment of FOXDIE, Decoy Octopus managed to fulfill his objective swimmingly as Solid Snake took his lies hook, line and sinker, making him only second to Ocelot who managed to also fulfill his own objectives and survive the operation. It just happens to be a Meaningless Villain Victory because this is Solid Snake he's dealing with, who ultimately disassembles the results of Liquid's plans even after being duped.
• Blackface: While normally fair-skinned, the only time he's seen in-game is when he disguises himself as Donald Anderson, a Black man.
• The Blank: He intentionally mutilated himself to remove any distinguishing facial features, in particular cutting off his nose and ears, making it easier to pull off his various disguises.
• Dead All Along: In a way. He does die onscreen and in the presence of Snake but by the time you even learn of the existence of the man, it's far too late to matter since he died way back there.
• The Faceless: While there is concept art of him present, we never see what Octopus really looks (or sounds) like in the game proper due to only appearing disguised as Anderson before dying.
• Foreshadowing: There are hints that it's really him and not Anderson that Snake is talking to. He tells Snake some things Anderson shouldn't know, and acts cagey when Snake asks him about things Anderson should know but Octopus doesn't. He's also just a little too eager to find out if the White House is going to give in to FOXHOUND's demands. In addition, when Johnny as the guard comes over to tell "Anderson" to shut up he frantically waves Johnny off, who nods in understanding and backs off. Odd behavior from a prisoner to guard, unless Johnny knew it was Octopus who was signalling him that the plan was working and not to mess it up.
• Kubrick Stare: His artwork has him doing this.
• Lost in Character: Octopus originally worked in Hollywood as an actor and SFX artist. Afterwards, he was recruited by the CIA for his exceptional skills in mimicry. He goes so far in mimicking another person that he requires deprogramming after a mission to leave his assumed identity.
• Master of Disguise: When impersonating someone, he will even go so far as to substitute his blood for their own. However, this is likely due to the fact most of his high-value targets carry nanomachines. Using the DARPA Chief's blood, Octopus was able to appear on Snake's Soliton Radar.
• Polyglot: Octopus was fluent in a dozen languages.
• Red Right Hand: Octopus can't alter the size of his skull, but did elect to have his ears surgically removed. He also had his hairline, cheekbones, jaw, and nasal bones shaved down, to make disguising himself easier, and has a voice synthesizer implanted in his throat.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Despite the fact that he's the first on-screen story death thanks to FOXDIE, Decoy Octopus manages to affect the plot significantly: by convincing Snake that the keycards were the means to shutting down an already-active REX, Snake plays straight into Liquid's Batman Gambit of going through all the trouble of activating REX for them. Not bad for a man with only one overall scene, albeit a long one.
• The Unfought: The only member of FOXHOUND that never actually fights Snake.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: He's only there until after you meet the DARPA chief.

Others

Support Unit

Snake's support in Shadow Moses.

Dr. Hal "Otacon" Emmerich

"The private sector's not so bad, is it? Privacy guaranteed."

Voiced by: Hideyuki Tanaka (JP), Christopher Randolph (EN)

"Three generations of Emmerich men. We must have the curse of nuclear weapons written into our DNA."

Computer engineer and part-time hackivist (and full-time Woobie) whom Snake befriends in Alaska. Ashamed of his family's involvement in the Manhattan Project, he chose to pursue his boyhood passion for making robots, only to discover (to his horror) that REX had been outfitted for launching nuclear warheads without his knowledge. He promptly allied himself with Snake in hopes of abolishing Metal Gear. The duo have been presumed dead (several times) by the U.S. government, which freed them up to pursue more clandestine modes of warfare, including Anonymous-style activism and sabotage.

An anime fanboy (so much so that his codename is based off an anime convention), Otacon could not be more unlike his partner. He serves as the 'brain' of the Solid Snake Trilogy.

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• Action Duo: With Snake. Although Hal tends to focus more on the non-action side while Snake deals with the physical blood and guts stuff.
• Action Survivor: In Metal Gear Solid. Unlike most of the other characters, Otacon isn't a soldier and has little to no military training beyond what's necessary to work in a top-secret lab. His lack of physical courage saves him from being cut down by the Cyborg Ninja or crushed by the rampaging prototype.
• Ambiguously Bi: Has shown some rather evident attraction to women like Sniper Wolf and Naomi, but he also has some Homoerotic Subtext with Snake.
• Ambiguously Jewish: The Official Mission Handbook identifies the Emmerich family as Jewish, his German physicist grandfather ended up on the Manhattan Project in the first place because he fled the Nazis, and Otacon displays some knowledge of Yiddish in Metal Gear Solid 4. However, Otacon's certainly not devout and his personal status as Jew-or-not depends on whether you apply the rule of matrilineal descent as there's no indication his mother Strangelove was Jewish.
• Ascended Fanboy:
  • This is why he wanted to help build Metal Gear REX. Being the mecha-anime fan he is, he wanted to make a real-life one. Pity that he unintentionally helped contribute to a "walking deathmobile" instead. Funnily enough, he gets front-row seats to his lifelong dream via Metal Gear Mk. III, which helped power up a damaged decade-old REX and Snake pilots it which ends up fighting Liquid Ocelot and Metal Gear RAY, much like one of his Japanese animes.
  • Lampshaded in Guns of the Patriots, revealing that he added what amounts to Street Fighter code into Metal Gear REX.
• Badass Pacifist: He refuses to fight, choosing instead to give you info and support. He can be brought into the field thanks to his mobile camera robot, but it mostly performs support tasks and stunning enemies and scouting areas ahead.
• Bait-and-Switch: Given that two people have mysteriously died of a heart attack after being in close proximity to Snake during Shadow Moses, he and the player are expecting that this'll happen to Otacon. Nothing happens at all.
• Bring My Brown Pants: He pees his pants in terror during his introduction scene, when a heavily armed Gray Fox pushes him into a corner. The stain is still there a decade later.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Particularly in his first appearance. He's a brilliant engineer who developed advanced optical camouflage as a side project but also a consummate fanboy who gets his weapons design ideas from mecha anime. There's an implication that he was recruited not only because he was one of the very few people who could make Metal Gear REX a reality...but also because Otacon was one of the even fewer nutty and naive enough to actually try. In later games he's considerably more savvy without losing many of his eccentricities.
• But Not Too Foreign: Is half-British, thanks to Strangelove.
• Cartwright Curse: This man is not lucky in love. So far, those close to him who have died include his stepsister, Sniper Wolf, Naomi, etc. In Revengeance, Raiden and Sunny mention that he's become more popular with the ladies, but is still non-commital out of fear of hurting anyone else.
• Cowardly Lion: Prefers to stay behind the scenes but will get in the action if the chips are down, as in Metal Gear Solid 2 when he pilots the hostages to safety in a helicopter despite his fear of heights.
• Cute Glasses Boy: He's a kind, dorky, and very intelligent engineer. He's also had two love interests throughout the series, though they sadly don't go anywhere for him.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Canonically, Snake saved Meryl and escaped with her from the base, but he made sure that Campbell would get Otacon out as well.
• Dating Catwoman: Got to know Sniper Wolf through helping her care for the wolf-dogs, and tries to persuade her and Snake not to fight each other like the rest of FOXHOUND. It doesn't end well.
• Disappeared Dad: In Sons of Liberty, it's revealed that Huey committed suicide in the family pool (and nearly took Emma with him) after discovering his second wife was sexually abusing his teenage son.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: After sneaking around Shadow Moses with some stealth technology, he decides to go give Snake some, only to find out that his remaining four prototypes have disappeared. He then calls Snake about this, which leads to a conversation about the freight elevator's weight limit warning going off which eventually leads to both of them realising that there's four invisible Genome Soldiers with Snake.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Their relationship began with Snake choking the ever-loving crap out of him due to the former infuriated at him for (albeit unintentionally) creating a Doomsday Device. They end up saving each other's bacon a couple times, and have numerous off-screen adventures all over the world.
• Foil:
  • His gentle, chatty, slightly bumbling Lovable Nerd persona contrasts with Snake's gruff hyper-competence. And while both of them hate violence to an extent, Hal never gives up being a pacifist, while Snake is implied to still be a Blood Knight deep down, even if he hates himself for it.
  • To his own father, as The Phantom Pain reveals. Huey eventually went off the deep end and becomes a selfish, hypocritical, and murderous jerk who sacrfices his family and friends for his own ends. Meanwhile Hal is able to remain a kind and loving man whose actions are all for the greater good of the world and his loved ones. And unlike Huey who betrays his Snake, Hal and Solid Snake remain close to the very end.
• Generation Xerox:
  • Played straight in Peace Walker. Otacon's father Huey was similarly nerdy and shy, his role as tech guru for Big Boss paralleled Otacon's relationship with Snake, and they both wound up unwittingly designing walking nuclear death tanks.
  • Subverted in Phantom Pain. Unlike his father, Otacon doesn't develop Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and lose sight of everything he stands for, instead retaining his integrity to the bitter end. Contrasting with Huey's callous and self-centered parenting, Otacon is also a good father to Sunny, whom he genuinely loves and nurtures from infancy to young adulthood.
• The Ghost: He's alive and well during the events of Rising, having raised Sunny to the point where she designs space rockets at Solis and Voigt is interested in meeting him, yet he doesn't physically appear.
• Good Parents: Unlike his own neglectful father, Otacon treats Sunny like his own daughter and she has no problem showing that she adores him. In Rising, it's clear that he's done a really good job of raising her, as she's mature enough to be living on her own and working in engineering like he is.
• Guilt Complex: He blames himself for a LOT of failings, some personal (like his naive acceptance of the Metal Gear REX project and his intel lapse in the Tanker Incident) and some collective (like his family's long and troubled history with nuclear weapons development). The opposite of his father in this respect, Otacon DOESN'T blame some other people he really should like calling his stepmother's sexual abuse "an affair" as if they bore equal responsibility.
• The Heart: He and Mei Ling are the only characters who have never betrayed Snake or altered their loyalties. The Phantom Pain shines a completely different light on him as his mother Strangelove considered him the product of her genes and The Boss' memes. Since his main goal has been to make the world a better place by stopping an arms race and preventing information control, he's one of the only people in the whole series who tries to achieve The Boss' dream through peaceful means.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In Metal Gear Solid, if Meryl's alive, he offers to stay behind at Shadow Moses so she and Snake can get out before the base gets fried by nukes by holding the doors open. This becomes Subverted when Roy Campbell manages to call off the strikes and promise Snake to send a rescue team to get Otacon out.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Snake. Neither has much luck with the ladies and they travel the world together, raising Sunny as joint foster parents and bickering Like an Old Married Couple.
• Hikikomori: His shabby, unshaven appearance on Shadow Moses Island is likely a nod to the stereotypical shut-in lifestyle. Justified, as at that point Otacon spent most of his time locked in a basement laboratory.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Kind of: He wasn't actually portrayed by series creator Hideo Kojima, but his overall design, as well as some of his mannerisms, were based directly on him.
• Irony: How the Grand Finale of how his and his father's stories end: In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Huey's ending was the complete opposite on how Hal's was. To elaborate: Huey was basically his son, but in a wheelchair. However, the atrocities he's committed puts him to shame, thereby ending his 9 year friendship with Big Boss/Venom Snake, and bitterly ended in a suicide. Hal never lost sight of everything he's done, holding his 9 year friendship with Solid Snake.
• Last of His Kind: By Guns of the Patriots, he's the last known biological member of the Emmerich family. It's confirmed through The Phantom Pain that he's also the last living "son" of The Boss and thus the last inheritor to her will.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: The Phantom Pain makes it evident that he took much more after Strangelove than after Huey. It doesn't help that Huey almost killed Hal through his experiments.
• Likes Older Women: Inverted, as the incident in question did not involve meaningful consent and ripped his family apart. He was sexually abused by his stepmother and his father caught him in the act and committed suicide by drowning himself in the pool. Unfortunately, he dragged Emma along with him, causing her hydrophobia.
• Line-of-Sight Name: As a civilian, he doesn't actually require a codename, but he insisted that Snake refer to him as Otacon as short for 'Otaku Convention'. His passion for anime is reflected in the posters on the office walls.
• Lovable Nerd: And an effective foil against Snake's gruff hypercompetence.
• Love Hurts: Someone dear to him dies in every game he appears. The only person who he loves that survives is Sunny.
• Missing Mom: It's revealed in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain that his mother Strangelove sent him away to prevent his father Huey from using him as a child pilot for Sahelanthropus. In retaliation, Huey locked her in one of her own AI pods to suffocate to death.
• Mission Control: Hal's the man behind the scenes who makes sure everything's running smoothly and ensures that Snake has all the information or tech he needs to survive a mission.
• Nerd Glasses: Otacon wears circular frame glasses in the first game. In later appearances, he has more modern rectangular frames.
• Nerds Are Sexy: Especially in the fourth game where several characters remark his attractiveness.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands Despite his professed fear of heights, Otacon becomes skillful at piloting helicopters. He claims to have learned how to fly from VR simulators.
• Nice Guy: Perhaps moreso than anyone else in the series. Otacon wants peace above all else, treats everyone he encounters (at first) with a friendly smile, attempts to keep Snake from drifting too far to the dark side, and adopts an orphaned Sunny, whom he raises like his own daughter.
• Non-Action Guy: Otacon rarely gets involved in the physical side of missions, instead preferring to provide intel and tech support from behind the scenes and via Metal Gear Mk 2 and 3. He's so vital in that role that Snake encourages him to stay out of the field.
• Not What I Signed on For: He helped develop REX thinking it was a purely defensive anti-ICBM system, and out of a desire to turn his favorite mecha anime into reality. The guys who hired him conveniently left out the fact that he'd be helping to build a nuclear launch platform.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Snake won't let him forget about his establishing character moment: hiding in a storage locker and wetting his pants, much to Otacon's annoyance.
• Otaku: It's the reason he has the nickname/codename "Otacon". His creations were originally inspired by mecha anime.
  "It's like one of my Japanese Animes!!"
• Parental Substitute: To Sunny Emmerich, the biological daughter of Olga Gurlukovich. After her mother's death, Otacon and Snake take over raising Sunny, with the former even legally adopting her.
• Playful Hacker:
  • Before the Shadow Moses project, he spent a brief stint at the FBI, but was promptly fired for hacking the agency's mainframe.
  • Otacon had a habit of sneaking prank code into REX against his employer's express instructions. In addition to REX's weakpoint (a "character flaw" to give it personality), Otacon also implemented a program to make REX fight like a boxer, using its own body as a weapon. The suits didn't approve of risking Metal Gear's delicate sensors, but the program is still in there, as Snake discovers and makes use of in Metal Gear Solid 4.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain reveals that he was almost on the receiving end of this trope as his father intended to use him as a pilot for Sahelanthropus. Only his mother's intervention saved Otacon from such a fate.
• Prone to Tears: The poor guy's cried at least once every game after watching someone he loves die. 4 even has a flashback lampshading how much death and tragedy he's witnessed through the series.
• Rape as Backstory: His stepmother sexually abused him in his mid teens, and discovering this drove his father to suicide. Otacon refers to this as an "affair", which seems to be another manifestation of his Guilt Complex.
• Robot Buddy: In Guns of the Patriots, he takes a proactive role in the field via piloting a small robot called Metal Gear Mk 2. (later replaced with Mk 3 after Mk 2 presumably gets destroyed.)
• Say My Name: "Snake? Snake?! SNAAAAAKKKKEEEE!!!!"
• Spanner in the Works: He's revealed to be this to the Patriots over the course of the series. Fulfilling Strangelove's hopes for him in The Phantom Pain by pursuing the Boss' goals through peaceful means.
• Tender Tears: In a world filled with warriors, he is the only character in the franchise to shed these.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: During Guns of the Patriots, he reacts with sheer disbelief if Snake calls him about not being able to move due to the player switching controller numbers while fighting Screaming Mantis under the assumption that all the tactics from the fight against Psycho Mantis will work. None of them will.

Naomi Hunter

"I'm just surprised you're willing to sacrifice yourself. You've got the genes of a soldier, not a savior."

Voiced by: Hiromi Tsuru (JP), Jennifer Hale (EN)

"I never knew who my parents were or even what they looked like. I guess I got into genetics because I wanted to figure out why I'm the way I am."

A geneticist with a past even she's not completely sure of, Naomi was chosen to support Solid Snake during the Shadow Moses Incident to provide feedback on the Genome Soldiers. She had her own agendas, which included injecting Snake with the biological weapon FOXDIE to kill the FOXHOUND members, which would then kill Snake himself later. It turns out she did it because she was Gray Fox's adopted sister and she wanted revenge (although Liquid also mentions that the Pentagon ordering her to do so had something to do with it).

Naomi returns and redeems herself in the fourth game where she helps Old Snake deal with Liquid Ocelot and forms a close relationship with Hal and Sunny.

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• Action Dress Rip: Does it in Metal Gear Solid 4 when Snake, Drebin and she are being chased by Gekkos.
• Ambiguously Brown: Lampshaded in Metal Gear Solid. She claims she became interested in genetics because she grew up knowing nothing about her own ancestry. Naomi's Konami bio for MGS1 also describes her as a "brown-skinned beauty" and in game, Naomi believes that she received her skin tone from the Indian laborers in Rhodesia. Yet in Integral/VR Missions, Naomi could be mistaken as white in her polygon model that can be viewed, being lighter skinned than both Snake and Mei Ling's models. In Metal Gear Solid 4, however, Naomi's new design does give her a bit of a tan but still looks like a light-skinned woman of ambiguous ethnicity.
• Critical Existence Failure: Gets hit with a plot-driven version of this. As soon the nanomachines that holds back her cancer stops working, she immediately starts to succumb to said cancer, and dies in the span of about, well, two minutes, even though she was acting and appearing perfectly healthy prior to this.
• Driven to Suicide: After explaining her actions to Snake and Otacon, she injects herself with what is essentially the kill switch for her nanomachines, allowing the cancer she has to kill her.
• Face–Heel Revolving Door: During MGS4, she goes from helping Liquid, to helping Snake, to helping Liquid again, and then finally helping Snake again.
• Flawed Prototype: She designed the regenerating nanomachines, but they were not sufficient enough at healing outside of slowing the effects of her Cancer. Vamp was her successor.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Sunny in Metal Gear Solid 4. She helps Sunny grow out of her shell, and finally learn to cook eggs right.
• Inconsistent Dub: In the original English version of Metal Gear Solid, Naomi was given a vaguely British sounding accent. When the dialogue was redubbed for the GameCube remake, Naomi was given a more neutral accent which was also used for Metal Gear Solid 4. The original British accent made sense since she's originally from Rhodesia/Zimbabwe.^note  which was originally a British colony before they declared independence during the Cold War.
• Ironic Hell: She was ordered to inject Snake with a FOXDIE strain that would kill him at the end of the mission, but instead configured the virus to trigger at a random time as revenge for her brother's death at Snake's hands. The Patriots also took note of this and had her imprisoned.
• Just Following Orders: The other reason for injecting Snake with FOXDIE was because the Pentagon ordered her to, as they wanted a way to both get rid of the Sons of Big Boss, and at the same time retrieve REX and the Genome bodies without risk of them being damaged. Of course, her listing Snake as one of the targets of the virus, or at the very least modifying the virus to activate as a wildcard value in Snake's case, was certainly not done under their orders or even the Patriots' orders.
• Living on Borrowed Time: She injected herself with nanomachines to suppress her cancer, but they're failing to fully stop it from spreading. She later disables them herself and dies shortly after.
• Mugged for Disguise / Kill and Replace: Subverted: This is initially suspected when Master Miller looks into Naomi's background and finds out that the real Naomi disappeared while abroad. It later turns out that this Naomi simply bought her paperwork apparently oblivious to the fact that she now has the identity of a presumably-killed woman.
• My God, What Have I Done?: A subtle version; she injects Snake with FOXDIE and modifies it so it'll kill him as well, but later has second thoughts after she realizes that Snake was far from the savage killer she thought of him as, especially after she discovers that Snake still considered Gray Fox a friend.
• Navel-Deep Neckline: In Metal Gear Solid 4, her labcoat has a plunging neckline.
• Only Known By Her Nickname: It is strongly implied that she is not actually named "Naomi Hunter" (Miller/Liquid mentioned that she stole the identity papers of the "real Naomi Hunter" once). Likewise, even she doesn't know her real name.
• Purple Prose: More often then not she goes on and on about the "shackles of fate". It gets to the point in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots that you're not even sure what the heck she's talking about anymore. For example, she tells Snake that "If you don't want to be a prisoner of fate, then go fulfil your destiny." "Fate" and "Destiny" are synonyms for one another. Heck, "Destiny" is literally the FIRST synonym for "Fate" in the thesaurus!
• Retcon: Exchanged her British accent for an American one in the Twin Snakes remake of Metal Gear Solid which was then confirmed canon in Guns of the Patriots. This makes a bit more sense, since Naomi lived in America since her childhood.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After Snake nearly kills both Big Boss and Gray Fox, her benefactor and foster brother respectively, she swears revenge and injects him with FOXDIE.
• TV Genius: She's a geneticist, but she still knows a lot about computers and hacking if the fourth game is to be believed...
• What the Hell, Hero?: She calls out Snake for his role in Gray Fox's situation, which also acted as one of the reasons for injecting Snake with FOXDIE.

Mei Ling

"I can't believe I'm being hit on by the famous Solid Snake."

Voiced by: Houko Kuwashima (JP), Kim Mai Guest (EN)

"Snake, remember what De Gaulle said: 'The graveyards are full of indispensable men.'"

A girl on Snake's Mission Control, she is a teenage prodigy and tech wiz who developed the Soliton Radar and Codec. She frequently quotes proverbs to lift Snake's spirits up. She later becomes a Naval officer in the fourth game.

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• Action Survivor: She survived Liquid's insurrection even when her comrades fell victim to his secret weapon.
• Anime Chinese Girl: In the original English versions of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, Mei Ling is a cute teenage prodigy who had an exaggerated Chinese accent, including lisping and a problematic relationship with the letter "r." She speaks with an American accent in the Twin Snakes remake and other sequels.
• The Captain: In the fourth game. She takes command of the obsolete USS Missouri and wins a fight with it against the massive and technologically-superior Outer Haven.
• Call-Forward: In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, there's inexplicably a poster of her Naked Snake can find in the back of a truck.
• Demoted to Extra: She's relegated to a single optional Codec call in Metal Gear Solid 2.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: During Shadow Moses, she suddenly calls Snake and urges him to save his progress after getting a weird but scary premonition. This is directly before Snake gets captured and subjected to torture by Revolver Ocelot, which can result in Snake's death and forces the player to restart from when they last saved. Mei Ling's premonition was a coincidence, but a convenient one should the player have heeded her advice.
• Gadgeteer Genius: In the original Metal Gear Solid. However, the Codec conversations in Metal Gear Solid 2 imply she's been pirating technology from the Pentagon. Snake gruffly warns Mei Ling to cut it out before she gets caught.
• Hurricane of Aphorisms: She often quotes Chinese proverbs.
• Male Gaze: In Metal Gear Solid 4’s briefing for the “Outer Haven” mission, the camera spends quite a lot of time focusing on her butt.
• Mission Control: During Snake's adventures in Shadow Moses, she handles saving progress.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Although she does have a legitimate, if not slightly exaggerated Chinese accent, it's at odds with the fact that she was actually born and raised in America. Like Naomi, Mei Ling drops the accent altogether in The Twin Snakes; this became canon in Metal Gear Solid 4.
• Proverbial Wisdom: An erudite and a teenage prodigy with a penchant for quoting Chinese and Western proverbs.
• Retcon: Like Naomi, she lost her Chinese accent for an American one in The Twin Snakes before Guns of the Patriots later confirmed this canon. Also like Naomi, this makes more sense since Mei Ling was born in America.
• Shipper on Deck: Judging by her reaction (tears of joy and inelegant blubbering), Mei Ling very much approves of Meryl and Johnny's wedding.
• Shout-Out: Mei Ling is also a name for a dagger-throwing boss in Konami's earlier Beat 'em Up game, Yie Ar Kung-Fu II. No one acknowledges this although Konami likes to make references to past games.
• Sleeping Their Way to the Top: A couple of comments in Metal Gear Solid 4 from Otacon and Campbell hint that this is how she became a navy captain at such a young age.

Nastasha Romanenko

Voiced by: Eiko Yamada (JP), Renee Raudman (EN)

Ukrainian weapons expert, hired by Campbell and Ames to assist Snake via the Codec. Later on, she recounts the Shadow Moses incident in a tell-all book entitled In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth (which can be read in Metal Gear Solid 2).

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• Back for the Finale: Averted. She is one of exactly two characters on this page who survives the first game but doesn't make a reappearance in Metal Gear Solid 4, the Grand Finale of the series. She is name-dropped as someone who provided information to Otacon regarding rumors of the deployment of Dwarf Gekko, but when there's a literal Ascended Extra who shows up instead of her — not to mention the survival of both Meryl and Otacon despite the game's Road Cones setting them up as Mutually Exclusive Party Members — it's still pretty stark.
• Flavor Text: She basically serves as a walking book of facts when it comes to weapons and items whenever you call her.
• Hypocritical Humor: If Snake calls Nastasha while smoking, she will warn you about the health risks of smoking. All while she has a cigarette in her mouth.
• I Should Write a Book About This: She eventually writes a book on the Shadow Moses Incident, the proceeds from which she donates to Snake and Otacon to help their work on Philanthropy.
• Oral Fixation: Her portrait in her codec calls always shows her smoking a cigarette.
• Optional Party Member: While you're required to talk to every character on Snake's support team at least once, she is the only character where talking to her is purely optional. You can easily wind up completing the game without talking to her at all.
• Put on a Bus: After Metal Gear Solid. She gets a brief mentioning in Metal Gear Solid 2, where she is the in-universe writer on the summarization of Metal Gear Solid's plot and one the main donors for Snake and Otacon's anti-Metal Gear organization Philanthropy.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After the events of the Shadow Moses Incident, she went into hiding in fear that everything she learned, and her own involvement assisting Snake, might potentially put her life in danger.
• Soapbox Sadie: She often rants about the dangers of nuclear weapons. Justified, as a Codec call will reveal that she was born in Pripyat, near the Chernobyl power plant and lost her parents (who helped decontaminate the plant and/or build the containment sarcophagus) following the explosion.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After Metal Gear Solid, we barely hear from her again. All we know is that she wrote a book on the Shadow Moses Incident, and Richard Ames is her husband.

Meryl Silverburgh

"You're a real bastard, just like my uncle said."

Voiced by: Kyoko Terase (JP), Debi Mae West (EN, MGS1, MGSTTS & MGS4), Vanessa Marshall (MGS2^note Reused sound clips of Olga Gurlukovich.)

"I was a fan of FOXHOUND way back. When guys like you and my uncle were in it. None of that gene therapy like there is today. You guys were real heroes."

The niece of Roy Campbell (later revealed to actually be his daughter), Meryl always dreamt of being in the military and living up to her heroes in FOXHOUND, but proves to be less than competent.

She later makes a comeback in Metal Gear Solid 4 and is a lot more competent and tougher.

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• Accidental Truth: She accuses Snake of killing the Darpa Chief when they first meet (She had assumed that he was actually Liquid before realizing her error.) What neither of them realize is that Snake had inadvertantly killed the Darpa Chief with his FOXDIE virus.
• Action Girl: She fights besides Snake at Shadow Moses despite having very little skill at doing so and even takes command of Rat Patrol 1 later. In the canon ending of 1 she even drives her and Snake out of Shadow Moses as they are pursued by Liquid.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Played with. She and Snake got together after the first game but broke up before the second game. By the fourth game they both have a mutually cold attitude toward each other. However it seems they still care for one another, and she still apears to be pining for him.
• Amicable Exes: Upon crossing paths with Snake again in the Middle East during 4, she still shows a lot of respect for him, referring to him as a "legendary hero" and praising his performance against the FROGs who attack them after. She only argues with him when she learns of Campbell's involvement in the mission and when they disagree on the effectiveness of the SOP nanomachines, though it does nothing to stop them from working well together.
• Amazonian Beauty: Meryl is a lot sturdier looking by Metal Gear Solid 4, compared to her appearance in Metal Gear Solid. When you see her in her wedding dress, her arms and back muscles are very noticeable, especially when she arm wrestles one of her teammates.
• Ascended Fanboy: She admits to Snake in 1 that she was a huge admirer of the FOXHOUND unit, of which both Snake and Campbell were part of. Not only she got to fight alongside her idol, she even got to be in a relationship with him- though it didn't last. 9 years later, in 4, she still looks up to Snake as a "legendary hero" and is eager to work alongside him again.
• Ambiguously Jewish: Her legal last name "Silverburgh" sounds Ashkenazi Jewish, but the revelation that her uncle is her real biological father raises doubts about her heritage.
• Berserk Button: Campbell becames a major one for her in 4 after their soured relationship. The mere mention of his name and the knowledge that he is behind Snake's mission with the Rat Patrol causes Meryl to throw a fit, trashing a nearby chair. They reconcile at the end.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Canonically, Snake saved her from Shadow Moses, meaning that he didn't submit to Ocelot's torture which would've led to her death.
• Daddy's Girl: Averted, her legal father died while she was very young, and she never actually knew that her birth father was actually her uncle until after the events of Metal Gear Solid. Even after that, Meryl ends up having an estranged, non-talking relationship with her father both because he married a woman (Rosemary) who was young enough to be his daughter by the time of Metal Gear Solid 4 (not knowing that the marriage was actually a sham to protect Rose and her son from the Patriots, as they won't use them as leverage for Raiden) and from the fact that she was conceived by her uncle in an extra-marital affair with her mom that she learned from Roy Campbell. It wasn't until the ending where Meryl marries Johnny Sasaki/Akiba that she and Campbell even start having a decent conversation.
• Does Not Like Men: During the first game she revealed to Snake that she underwent psychotherapy as an Army recruit to render her uninterested in men (presumably to prevent fraternisation), though this didn't stop her from having feelings for Snake. By the fourth game she had become a full blown misandarist after discovering that her uncle was her biological father and that he apparently married a woman much younger than him, leading her to hate him with a passion for being a "womanising piece of shit" and denouncing men in general as "selfish, egotistical pigs", and even treating Snake with mean spiritedness. Though later in the game she mellows out and eventually forgives her father and marries Johnny (after apologising for how she treated him earlier). Her personality becoming less harsh and bitter after the SOP was disabled makes it ambiguous whether or not it had at least partially influenced her extreme anger at men, since it's purpose was to optimise each soldier's emotions and personality traits (theoretically making her aggressive anger more powerful than her hesitation to kill).
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After getting sniped by Sniper Wolf, nearly drowns and almost getting killed by an army of FROGs, she marries Johnny in the end.
• Expy: Of both Gustava Heffner and Hollie White from the previous game. She's the female contact you have to find and follow her to the women's restroom. Unlike Gustava, she canonically survives (Snake alluded to her after having witnessed her dying in front of him). For Hollie White, her fauxness ended up getting her captured by the enemy who Snake has to save.
• Faux Action Girl: A deconstruction of it in the first game. She badly wants to be an Action Girl, but she's completely inexperienced and in over her head, and has has her illusions destroyed when she learns that War Is Hell. She actually starts out with an impressive debut, busting herself out of prison and mowing down several enemies in a shootout while allied with Solid Snake. But that's the extent of her glory, as she spends almost the entire remainder of the game wounded and captured, doing nothing else productive except serving as Snake's Jeep driver in the game's final scene.
• Flanderization: Both her appearance and her personality were intensified in 4.
  • In 1 her messy hairstyle seemed to be a combination of naturally wavy "hat hair" (presumably from wearing a helmet as she's in the Army) with the hair on the sides and rear of her head appearing to be extending laterally because of the blocky graphics. Whereas in 4 she has straight hair with the hair at the rear pointing outwards in long spikes that appear to have been cut and gelled that way as part of an elaborate hairstyle.
  • In 1 she had an athletic build and was strong enough to overpower Johnny (who whilst a grown man, was not exactly the strongest of Liquid's henchmen). In 4 she has a much more muscular body, and won an arm wrestling contest with Jonathan who is nearly seven feet tall with a powerlifter's build.
  • In 1 Meryl mentioned to Snake that she lacks interest in men because of psychotherapy given to her by the military (presumably to prevent fraternisation), but didn't express any disdain towards the opposite sex, and her conditioning self evidently didn't stop her from having feelings for Snake, or expressing admiration for her male military heroes (namely, Snake, her uncle, and her late father). By 4 she has become much more of a Straw Feminist, as best exhibited by her having an intense tantrum and condemning the entire male sex as a bunch of "selfish egotistical pigs" after Snake brought up her uncle (who turned out to be her real biological father).
  • In 1 she beat up Johnny when he was one of Liquid Snake's henchmen to escape from the Shadow Moses holding cells but had no further interactions with him (or any personal grudge). In 4 she became something of a bully and started to beat up Johnny on a routine basis as a running gag after he joined her unit, as a form of punishment for inadequate performance.
• Fighting Irish: if her biological father's surname "Campbell" and her red hair is any indication, she is likely of either Northern Irish or Scottish descent.
• Hand Cannon: Desert Eagle handguns. Though she has used other firearms, such as a bullpup rifle, she switches to an Eagle and it becomes her main weapon. In 4, she comes with two: a "standard" model and a modified one with a scope and an extended barrel. Apparently she's trained with them since childhood.
  Snake: Isn't that gun a bit big for a girl?
  Meryl: Listen, I've used guns like this since I was eight years old. I'm more comfortable with it than I am with a bra.
• Heroic Bastard: Meryl was conceived in an extramarital affair between her uncle, Roy Campbell, and her mother. It's also hinted that this is one of the reasons for her sore relations with her father in Metal Gear Solid 4.
• Humanizing Tears: In the ending of Act 1 in 4, after Ocelot's attempt at shutting down/hijacking the SOP system failed due to his using the wrong DNA (It Makes Sense in Context), Meryl is seen breaking down into tears due to her suppressed emotions being unexpectedly released from the lockdown, strongly suggesting that, although she is certainly not a rookie anymore, she certainly hasn't gotten over her sorrow and reluctance to fire a weapon at living targets.
• The Real Heroes: She praises the old guard of Foxhound (which included her uncle and Snake) as real heroes in 1, because they were an elite unit without the use of gene therapy.
• The Lancer: Serves as one to Solid Snake during the events of the first game, being a less-experienced soldier and the only character to actually fight alongside the player, albeit briefly.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: The masculine girl to Johnny's feminine boy.
• Military Brat: In her own words she's more comfortable with a desert eagle than she is with a bra, and had a lifelong wish to join the military to feel closer with her deceased father unaware her biological father was her "uncle" Roy Campbell.
• Ms. Fanservice: In Metal Gear Solid. In addition to her being rather cute, a lot of emphasis is put on her rump (which actually becomes a plot point in the game when you have to identify her distinct hip-shaking walk when she's in disguise) and she even gets a couple scenes in her underwear.
• Statuesque Stunner: She's Ms. Fanservice and 5'9.
• Supermodel Strut: She moves with a distinctive feminine hip-swaying strut, which actually becomes a plot point, as it allows Snake to identify her when she's disguised as one of the many male Mooks. Discussed by Snake and Otacon at one point.
  Otacon: She has a cute way of walking. Kind of wiggles her behind.
  Snake: You were really looking, weren't you?
  Otacon: Well... she has a very cute behind!
• Tomboy: Invoked, as she wants to be taken seriously as soldier, requiring her to put on a tough persona. In 4, she even partakes in arm-wrestling with her male allies- and wins! Snake even calls her one as a reason he broke up with her, saying he is "tired of tomboys. Though she does look very elegant in a wedding dress at the end of 4.
• Took a Level in Badass: In nine years, she went from a Faux Action Girl to a dangerously competent Special Ops Commander. Even when her SOP nanomachines are permanently disabled halfway through the game, she's still able to fight off waves of FROGs with only Johnny backing her up.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: She's pretty hard on Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4. She deliberately and venomously calls him "Old Snake" just to put him down, and it appears that she has no sympathy to either him or Johnny. However, this is not the case. When Snake and Meryl first meet in the Middle East, she's concerned and sympathetic to his aging problem. And of course, when Johnny reveals that he has no nanomachines, she's clearly sorry that she treated him like crap.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Kept a key card there.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: When she finds out that it was Colonel Campbell that sent Snake, she says a variation of this phrase and throws a brief tantrum, flipping a chair and punching a wall.

Others

Johnny "Akiba" Sasaki

"Achoo! That witch! She took my clothes!"

^{Click here} to see him unmasked in MGS4

Voiced by: Naoki Imamura (JP, 1st voice), Jun Fukuyama (JP, 2nd voice), Dean Scofield (EN, 1st voice), Beng Spies (EN, 2nd voice)

Johnny first appears in Metal Gear Solid as a guard with stomach problems whom Meryl strips and uses his clothes for her escape. His grandfather also served as a guard during the Cold War.

In Metal Gear Solid 4, he becomes a member of Meryl's Rat Patrol Team 01. He loved Meryl ever since she stripped him in Shadow Moses, and ends up marrying her after admitting his love for her.

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• Ascended Extra: In the first two Solid games he was a comedic relief character and was briefly mentioned in the third by his grandfather, until Metal Gear Solid 4, where he evolves into a Badass Normal and becomes Meryl's love interest.
• Action Survivor: Manages to land in the middle of not one, but three ultra deadly covert standoffs that decide the fate of the planet. At first, his survival is seemingly due to dumb luck (which he has plenty of), then in Metal Gear Solid 4 his hero worship of Snake and Meryl drives him to risk his life against some of the deadliest soldiers on the planet with no nanomachines and gut issues.
• Afraid of Needles: The explanation Johnny gives when revealing why he doesn't have any nanomachines in his body. This was foreshadowed in Act 1 of the fourth game where his squadmates and Snake were suffering from withdrawals.
• Amazon Chaser: Meryl's action girl status certainly seems to be a plus for Johnny.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: With Meryl in Metal Gear Solid 4.
• Badass Normal: In the fourth game, he was able to fight without having nanomachines in his body. This ends up making him more effective than many who do have them, since he can’t be as easily shut down or suffer from withdrawl symptoms. It also means that he never underwent gene therapy on Shadow Moses. All of the skills he demonstrates all come from natural prowess rather than enhancement.
• Battle Couple: With Meryl in the fourth game.
• Beautiful All Along: Once he takes off his balaclava and sunglasses.
• Been There, Shaped History: Johnny's gimmick. By sheer coincidence, he manages to get involved in all of Snake's missions. ^note  He's a Genome Soldier in the first game, a Gurlukovich mercenary in the second, and a member of Rat Patrol Team 01 in the fourth. His grandfather (also named Johnny) even met Big Boss during Operation Snake Eater.
• Big Damn Heroes: Verbatim. When Meryl was out of ammo and surrounded by FROGs in Outer Haven, Johnny charges to the rescue guns blazing. Together the two manage to hold out until Snake crashes the Patriot's AI.
  • To a lesser extent, he helps Snake to his feet after the latter's been affected by Liquid hacking of SOP,
• Bring My Brown Pants: If he doesn't actually shit his pants in his appearances, he comes pretty damn close to it.
• But Not Too Foreign: His surname is Sasaki, but he is apparently Russian-American and his features are clearly Caucasian.
• Butt-Monkey: Besides suffering from occasional bouts of diarrhea, Johnny was stripped by Meryl on an Alaska island (resulting in him catching a cold), launched over a ship (and missing it, causing him to land in the ocean), and many more that resulted in him getting his ass kicked.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He may be a clumsy oaf who crapped his pants in the middle of battle but he managed to help Snake ruin Liquid's ultimate plan and has killed a number of FROGs.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Canonically, Snake didn't kill him at Shadow Moses. His grandfather doesn't die either despite his future father being born already and the death of Johnny's grandfather wouldn't have had any impact on his existence at the time.
• Delicate and Sickly: His perpetual diarrhoea.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After being pitched against Snake several times, got beat up by Meryl for his uniform and his frequent stomach problems, he manages to survive the whole ordeal and marries Meryl at the end.
• Generation Xerox: Naked Snake meets a guard who is Johnny's grandpa during Metal Gear Solid 3. He is also named Johnny and shares the same intestinal problems and incompetence at his job.
• Handicapped Badass: Mixed in with Johnnys' Badass Normal status is that due to not having underwent gene therapy on Shadow Moses, or having any Nanomachines in his body: his chronic stomach problems can quickly take him out of a fight.
• Happily Ever After: Marries Meryl at the end.
• Heel–Face Turn: Not particularly bad or villainous to start with, but after being opposed to Snake for so long, he eventually joins the side of the good guys in MGS4.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: He or his ancestors are usually on the side you're against, but all of them are genuinely nice people and not all that threatening.
• It Runs in the Family: All of the male first-born in his family are named Johnny. Also, his grandfather was a prison guard like him and they both had a form of a stomach issue.
• Love at First Punch: He apparently falls in love with Meryl ever since the day he knocked him out at Shadow Moses.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: The feminine boy to Meryl's Masculine girl.
• Mask Power: He disregards using it in the fourth game, though this is a subversion. Johnny only becomes any kind of badass once this happens.
• Meet Cute: He met his future wife when she stripped him in order to get a disguise in which to escape. That's certainly an interesting first meeting.
• Military Brat: He comes from a long-line of soldiers also named Johnny. His grandfather even shows up as a guard in Metal Gear Solid 3.
• Mooks: His job as a guard at Shadow Moses and later the Big Shell.
• Naked People Are Funny: See the above image. His first encounter with his future wife had him beaten up and stripped of his uniform by her.
• Nice Guy: Despite his inability as a soldier at first, he's pretty upbeat and friendly when he's not being tormented by bowel problems. His abrasiveness towards Snake in the first game is understandable, being his prison guard and all.
• No-Sell: He's immune to Screaming Mantis' powers in MGS4, since he doesn't have nanomachines inside him.
• Notice This: The "J" on his balaclava is ridiculously out of place among legions of Faceless Goons.
• Opinion Flip Flop: After his embarrassing encounter with Meryl at Shadow Moses, he becomes very resentful of her. He later joins her Rat Patrol 01 in hopes of getting close to her to the point where they agree to get married.
• Pose of Supplication: Whenever Johnny is knocked unconscious, he slumps forward in a humiliating pose where he's bent over on his knees, with his butt protruding upward.
• Potty Emergency: Suffers them quite a bit.
• Running Gag: His stomach problems. The fact that he still has this in Guns of the Patriots despite the nanomachines in his body supposedly suppressing his issues becomes a plot point later on where he doesn't suffer from losing their benefits due to not having them in the first place.
• Super-Soldier: Yes, really. He's such a hapless dork that it's easy to forget, but he was a Genome Soldier just like all the other guards on Shadow Moses. Actually not. Turns out he skipped out on all the shots due to his fear of needles, so he doesn't have any of the enhancements like the other Genome's.
• Took a Level in Badass: In the fourth game.

Kenneth Baker

Voiced By: Yuzuru Fujimoto (JP), Allan Lurie (EN)

"Maybe they're like us in the arms industry. Always looking forward to the next good war."

Former president of ArmsTech, the developer of Metal Gear REX. Solid Snake tries to rescue Baker after he is taken hostage in Shadow Moses, but Baker is killed by the FOXDIE virus before he can divulge any information about REX.

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• Asshole Victim: Probably: The ability to have the stealth nuke on a rail gun on REX to basically break retaliation theory is strongly implied to have been Baker's idea, and if the alluded to rumors of Boorda's true cause of death and the timing of the death and REX's development is anything to go by, he may have also had Boorda killed specifically because he wasn't able to get into the Pentagon's black budget before Boorda.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Though he's no more corrupt than any of the other arms dealers bribing Congress. He's really just trying to save his company, which is in danger of going bankrupt.
• Fat Bastard: He's rather obese and comes off as an unpleasant person who has no qualms against making a profit off of war.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He's not even on-screen for half an hour before he dies, and overall in the series no one really bothers to remember him at all. But it's his rescue and the aftermath prior to his death that helps set up Snake with a proper objective to progress in the Shadow Moses operation (find Meryl, get the means to shut down REX), it's his words that set into motion the heroes realizing they're dealing with a Metal Gear threat, and it's his funding and profiteering ways that helped start the entire REX project. Which is one major reason why the world goes to shit in the future.
• The Stool Pigeon: Lacerated Larry Type: He divulged his half of the PAL code from having his arm broken by Ocelot, as he wasn't trained in resisting physical interrogation. He was the only one to divulge his code, as Anderson died before he could divulge the other half thanks to Ocelot.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His development of REX led to the data being used in the creation of RAY, which in turn led to the perfection of mass produced, commercially available Metal Gears, including the enormous EXCELSUS by the time of Rising.
• War for Fun and Profit: The military-industrial complex is embodied in this sardonic, wizened war profiteer.
  "Maybe they're like us in the arms industry. Always looking for to the next good war."
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Baker dies from the FOXDIE virus just after you save his ass from the first boss of the game, Ocelot, and only after meeting Snake once.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He developed REX as a means to keep his company from going under as a result of SDI, and his loss of the Generation X fighter plane to another stealth manufacturing company.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The implied reason for why he was targeted for FOXDIE despite not being affiliated with the Terrorists.

Jim Houseman

The Secretary of Defense, he's mentioned in a throwaway comment by Baker and becomes more important at the very end of the game. He plans to nuke Shadow Moses to keep its secret buried.

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• All There in the Manual: In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth reveals that Houseman was an agent of the Patriots, and that they were not happy with his decision to order a bombing run of Shadow Moses.
• Driven to Suicide: The Patriots disguise his death as this to cover up their retribution for his failure.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Considered the DARPA chief his friend, even being on a first name basis with him. When Snake points out that a nuclear strike would kill innocents, he casually states the DARPA chief is already dead, implying he'd only hold back if he were still alive.
• Greater-Scope Villain: In many ways he's the real villain of Metal Gear Solid 1's overarching plot, though in the grander scheme he's just a pawn in the grand chess game between Ocelot/Big Boss and the Patriots.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After getting Colonel Campbell arrested and taunts Snake for this as well as planning to get him killed in a nuclear strike, he later gets arrested himself by Campbell's intervention.
• Smug Snake: Happily rubs the fact that Colonel Campbell has been arrested and the fact that Shadow Moses is about to be nuked in Snake's face, never losing the shit-eating grin he greets you with.
• You Have Failed Me: Receives this from the Patriots and Solidus Snake after they learn of his plan to nuke Shadow Moses in an attempt to cover up the entire incident.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Tells Snake as much once Metal Gear REX has been destroyed. He actually says he'll spare Snake's life if can bring the REX test data back with him, but Snake admits that Ocelot took it from him when he was captured. Ironically, he himself ends up on the receiving of the trope by the hands of his own superiors, the Patriots.

Next-Generation Special Forces

Commonly known as the Genome Soldiers, they are soldiers enhanced genetically that rebelled and joined up with FOXHOUND. They come in four main variants: arctic warfare, light infantry, NBC warfare and Heavily Armed Troops.

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• Brainwashed and Crazy: Several of the Genome Soldiers were brainwashed into participating by Mantis, although Liquid's specific words imply that he more or less gave them a morale boost.
• Elite Mook: The Heavily Armed Troops unit, which explicitly established to be former Outer Heaven mercenaries.
• Faceless Goons: Naturally.
• Flawed Prototype: Every single one of the soldiers ended up undergoing an illness thanks to their having asymmetry theory. That's also not going into the Gulf War, where the Gulf War Syndrome and the Gulf War Babies that resulted in it were apparently side-effects of the procedure.
• Gas Mask Mook: The NBC Warfare soldiers.
• Genius Bruiser: According to Naomi and Campbell, the Genome Soldiers, in addition to being skilled warriors, also have an IQ of 180. They don't display these attributes in gameplay.
• The Goomba: The Arctic Warfare variants are the first to appear, but the Light Infantry soldiers are actually much more common and weaker.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: Despite being intelligent soldiers, they apparently fail in spotting Snake even when he's only a few yards away from their line of vision. Probably justified regarding the outdoor soldiers, at least, since there was a blizzard at the time of the mission, which would cause a poor amount of visibility on their end. May also be a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation; Snake himself can't "see" much further than they can (assuming the screen area represents his range of vision) without going into first-person mode, or relying on the radar. There's also a theory that they deliberately avoided spotting Snake in order to trick him into activating REX.
• Mascot Mook: The Arctic Warfare soldiers reappear more often in later games than the other enemy types in the original MGS, such as in the VR Missions expansion, Portable Ops Plus and in the Deja Vu mission in Ground Zeroes.
• Mildly Military: The Colonel states that the unit is made up biochem units, technical escort teams and the Nuclear Emergency Search Team. Then he adds, more troublingly, ex-members of Outer Heaven. The unit's strength and organization is not revealed.
• Super-Soldier: They were genetically enhanced with Big Boss's soldier genes.
• Thicker Than Water: Naomi theorizes that due to them all receiving genes from the same person, they have formed a degree of family loyalty towards each other.

Metal Gear Codename: REX

Intact

Damaged

A new Metal Gear under development as a missile defense platform. It's a large bipedal tank like its predecessors, but equipped with a railgun. Said railgun grants it the ability to launch missiles from anywhere in the world with the launch being nigh-undetectable.

In reality, Metal Gear Rex was anything but a deterrent. Its main purpose was to be used as a weapon, with the Shadow Moses facility built as a cover-up for its creation. Its railgun is actually meant to fire nuclear weapons from across the globe, launching them as projectiles rather than ballistic missiles (rendering them virtually impossible to detect by early warning systems), and was going to be used as a weapon from the United States.

It is eventually hijacked by Liquid Snake and the renegade members of FOXHOUND, and is used as a "loaded gun" to bargain with the Administration.

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• Animal Mecha: A little. It roars occasionally, its cockpit looks vaguely like the head of a dragon, and it has a distinctly beast-like stance.
• Broken Armor Boss Battle: In the fight against it, you have to destroy REX's radome in order for the vulnerable interior to be exposed.
• The Bus Came Back: Appears towards the end of Metal Gear Solid 4, when Solid Snake finds it in the ruins of Shadow Moses and pilots it to escape the re-destruction of the facility and to battle Liquid Ocelot's Metal Gear RAY.
• Crippling Overspecialization: During development, the dev team realized that despite the absurd amount of ranged weaponry given to REX, what would happen if it had to fight at close-range? The answer was to use itself as a battering ram which due to the heavy armor, would make it very effective. Despite the excellent results from the simulations, however, the idea was scrapped over fears that doing this could damage REX's delicate internal systems. Otacon secretly left the program in as a laugh after being told to wipe it. Turns out that the program was what Snake needed to beat Liquid Ocelot and Metal Gear RAY.
• Energy Weapon: It has a free-electron laser that it can use to quickly tear through conventional forces.
• Gatling Good: It's other short-range weapon alongside the laser. Two 30mm Vuclans, in this case.
• Heroic RRoD: Straight after defeating Liquid Ocelot and Metal Gear RAY, REX's aging systems and structure finally gave up and collapsed.
• Humongous Mecha: It's quite large, easily reaching three stories.
• Loophole Abuse: Its railgun exploits a specific loophole that existed in anti-nuke treaties, since projectiles fired from a rail gun were not technically ICBMs, so the START treaties imposing limitations on ballistic missiles did not apply.
• MacGuffin: In the fourth game. Liquid Ocelot seeks its railgun to launch a nuclear attack on the Patriots' core AI; as it had been developed prior to the System's introduction and had laid untouched since the Shadow Moses Incident, REX is the only weapon capable of making such a strike.
• Macross Missile Massacre: It can fire enormous amounts of AT Missiles, especially evident when Snake uses it to take down RAY.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: The only way Snake could hope to beat it was by destroying the radome that lets the cockpit see, so that Liquid would expose himself with opening the cockpit — an intentional weakness Otacon put in as a character trait. And even that took a Heroic Sacrifice on Gray Fox's part to be rid of it proper. Without this weakness, neither Gray Fox nor Snake would've been able to hope to defeat this thing, and when all is said and done, only the cockpit was damaged to disable it. And it still gets up without too much issue well over a decade later thanks to Otacon's updated tech bypassing said cockpit damage, without any external wear whatsoever.
• Not Drawn to Scale: The REX in Twin Snakes is notably scaled down compared to the original size for both the PSX version and Guns of the Patriots. As a result, this Metal Gear looks slightly smaller, with the REX's legs looking thinner, this resulted in Snake's body looking like an action figure instead of a toy soldier.
• Nuke 'em: Its railgun allowed it to fire ICBMs without any of the traces that would normally trip early warning systems, giving it the ability to launch stealth nukes anywhere in the world.
• Put on a Bus: After being destroyed at Shadow Moses, it was left forgotten within its ruins and no one was able to recreate it using what data was gathered from its test after Ocelot ran off with the disk albeit with shoddy knockoffs running rampant due to some other data being leaked online thanks to the Patriots, forcing the hand of the US government to pus forward the development of Metal Gear RAY, which fitted into their plans for Arsenal Gear, unlike REX.
• Sequential Boss: Rex makes up the first two stages of the final battle with Liquid Snake after the Point of No Return is crossed, as Liquid is piloting it.
• Spanner in the Works: It's existence alone throws a wrench in the Patriots' plans as it gives Liquid a shot against them, in addition to divert resources from Metal Gear RAY, one of the components they need for the S3 plan.
• Super Prototype: It is implied that none of the derivative designs based of its blueprints and test data were built to the same standards. And with Otacon's supercomputer working in parallel with its on-board attitude control AI to significantly reduce its response time to control input, it is capable of fighting toe-to-toe with the allegedly technologically superior RAY (designed to fight the knockoffs based off its exercise data) in a severely damaged state from the outset. In fact, aside from the missing radome and railgun, REX appears to have suffered minimal actual damage from being disabled by Solid during the original Shadow Moses incident.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: The ultimate fan wanted showdown of Metal Gear REX vs Metal Gear RAY.
  • REX being the prototype and RAY being the upgrade. REX suffered heavy damage years ago in the Shadow Moses Incident, has had its primary weapon (its railgun) removed, had laid in the ruins of Shadow Moses untended for years and the pilot has to have the cockpit open at all times to even see, thus rendering them vulnerable; but it has been repaired to functionality by Otacon, has been granted far more processing power via cloud connection, and has a secret combat subroutine activated this time around.
  • Meanwhile, RAY was made to destroy other Metal Gears and is fairly fresh off the factory floor, but the Metal Gears it was designed to fight were cheap knockoffs and far weaker than the real deal. End result: REX manages to defeat and destroy RAY mere moments before its own aging systems finally failed. Had REX been at 100% capacity during the fight, it would have likely wiped the floor with RAY much quicker.
• Use Your Head: If REX is instructed to attack RAY close-range against a wall, it plows its head into RAY.
• What a Piece of Junk: By the time Snake pilots it, REX had been left untouched and heavily damaged over the years without any physical repair, the radome's damage meant that the pilot has to leave the cockpit open which leaves them vulnerable, yet after a little reprogramming by Otacon, it still works and hold its own against RAY, built as an anti-Metal Gear machine from the start. Until ZEKE and Sahelanthropus, REX was bar none the toughest Metal Gear in the series.

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