Metal Gear Solid/Headscratchers

Remember: Metal Gear Solid is not name of the series. This page is for Headscratchers concerning Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation and Nintendo GameCube. Put Headscratchers for the entire series on the Metal Gear Headscratchers page, or, if your Headscratcher is about something that only happened in one game, try one of the following pages:


 * Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty
 * Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater
 * Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops
 * Metal Gear Solid 4 Guns of the Patriots
 * Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker
 * Metal Gear Acid


 * Where and when exactly did Gray Fox get hold of the arm mounted laser cannon he uses to destroy Rex's radome? Firstly at no point was this weapon even alluded to until he comes to Snake's aid - Otacon or Natasha certainly won't mention it if you call them. Secondly he blatantly doesn't own the thing during your boss fight with him meaning he must have aquired it afterward from... the armoury? Alongside the Nikita in the nuclear storage building? both places have been explored completely before you fight him. Nowhere else on this base apparently stores small arms so keeping this gun anywhere else would be stupid in itself.
 * Gray Fox is a sci fi futuristic cyborg ninja. Just because he didn't use the laser cannon in his fight against Snake doesn't mean he didn't have access to it at that point. He wanted to fight Snake fairly. Hand to hand. He spells this out during the fight. The reason he busts it out against Rex is because Rex is a different opponent, that he's not going to be able to fight hand to hand, or with a sword.
 * What was Solidus' motivation for shadow moses I mean at the end of MGS1 it is stated that Ocelot and Solidus are behind everything I mean what was going on in MGS1 what was the point.
 * There's no specific source that really attacks this issue, but based on information from MGS4  Mind you, this is just one fan's speculation, so the point is highly debatable.
 * Solidus loves his daddy. Why wouldn't he want a Metal Gear unit ready and waiting for him just a faked death away? In addition, though the Shadow Moses incident destroyed his presidency (before the faked death part), it also ended the career of his Secretary of Defense. Secretary Houseman witnessed the births of the Les Enfants Terible and was, and he was working in Sears' own office. When Solidus says he resented the Patriot's control over him, he very well might have been talking about this man, specifically.
 * Why does everyone, in MGS1 at least, call Solid Snake "Snake" and Liquid Snake "Liquid"?
 * Snake was the original holder of the codename. Liquid got it later. Solid is the one everybody thinks of when they hear the word "snake" in soldier context.
 * Liquid Snake's plan in MGS1
 * Could they have at least
 * Or just kill Snake and take his PAL key?
 * Actually, that won't work. There was a specific way on getting using the PAL key (memory shape alloy) and only the chief knows how to open it. The bad guys figured that Snake will somehow know this, and he did, thanks to Otacon hacking the account of the chief and discovering how it can open.
 * Welcome to Metal Gear Solid. Actually, maybe the
 * MGS4 actually makes more sense, since Liquid had a In MGS1,
 * Remember that Ocelot is a torture fanatic, as stated in MGS3 he feels a man only shows his true self when subjected to pain and fear of death. Forcing Snake to half kill himself to get to the objective is perfectly in character for him.
 * Okay, so the genome soldiers are supposedly all super soldiers enhanced with Big Boss' genes, yet they can't see past 6 feet in front of them, can easily be distracted ("whose footprints are these?!"), fall asleep while on duty, don't seem to be much tougher than a normal human and are in fact very weak compared to other characters in those games and apparently can't even stop a nerdy guy like Otacon, who has no fighting or sneaking skills (sorry but the camo combination doesn't explain everything. Knowing him, he must bump into loads of noisy crap or even into soldiers, which would blow his cover) from freely roaming through their base. What sense does it make?! Real life Soldiers are a bigger threat than these supposedly "enhanced" ones!
 * Gameplay and Story Segregation. If you were up against enemies who were on par with what normal people could see, hear, and do, the game would have been impossible because they would have spotted Snake in his black sneaking suit against the white snow, and filled him full of lead right when he got off the elevator.
 * Not only that, but there were more limitations on AI back on the PS 1 on 1998 due to hardware and software. But yeah, in-story, they are supposed to be better than real soldiers, even if it doesn't seem like it in gameplay.
 * There is also the possibility that Snake is just that good. The Genome soldiers are the fastest, smartest, toughest soldiers ever... it just doesn't seem that way from our perspective because we're controlling the most legendary mercenary alive. Kind of like how Krillin is one of the strongest guys in the universe until you stand him alongside Super Saiyan 3 Goku.
 * As for Otacon, he is pretty smart, even if he does get scared easily. Combined with his camo and a little luck, it isn't unreasonable that he was able to plan and execute his way around guards and so on for a few hours.
 * Of course, since, they might have been doing it deliberately.
 * So...what happens if you use autofire during the torture scene in MGS1 anyway?
 * Nothing special. Ocelot won't know it.
 * I've heard conflicting accounts. Some say he is bluffing and the game can't tell if you are using autofire, others say if the game detects an unlikely high amount of button presses in a short time, and others say that if you use a controller which is older than the game it can tell if you are using autofire but that's not the case for controllers made after the game. If he CAN tell, you are supposed to get a game over. I have no idea what is true for what version, though.
 * In MGS1 they said that a railgun-launched nuke would be impossible to track, because there would be no exhaust. I'm pretty sure that the air resistance from firing a shell into orbit would generate at least as much heat as just using a rocket.
 * Most of the mass of a missile holds the fuel, while the railgun whould just fire the warheads. So it's possible the warhead couldn't be tracked due its small size, though you're right about air resistance.
 * If Psycho Mantis is so disgusted by sex, why does he dress in bondage gear?
 * Strictly speaking, he's disgusted by the fact that sex is what everyone thinks about all the time. (Incidentally, artbooks reveal that he is... pierced.)
 * I always though Psycho Mantis was wearing a prototype version of the FOXHOUND Skull Suit. Not only is he in the correct organization but Raiden's version also has a mask.
 * On behalf of one of my friends who just played MGS1 for the first time: Just a minor quibble, but does Meryl know who Liquid is (and his relationship to Snake) at the start of MGS1?
 * She does seem to know who Liquid is (she notes that Snake looks almost identical to him...), but she doesn't know his relationship to Snake (...but she says it in a way that implies she doesn't know Liquid has any relatives or BBBBBROOOTHER's)
 * On the back of the box for "The Twin Snakes", it says, "Two of the greatest games of all time, Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty are fused together to form the Nintendo Game Cube classic Metal Gear Solid The Twin Snakes". Obviously, this is not the case. Why does it say this when there's only one game?
 * It is making reference to the gameplay of Metal Gear Solid 2 being infused with Metal Gear Solid, they both have the same general controls now. It is NOT saying that Twin Snakes has both Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 on a single disc.
 * On the back of the box for "The Twin Snakes", it says, "Two of the greatest games of all time, Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty are fused together to form the Nintendo Game Cube classic Metal Gear Solid The Twin Snakes". Obviously, this is not the case. Why does it say this when there's only one game?
 * It is making reference to the gameplay of Metal Gear Solid 2 being infused with Metal Gear Solid, they both have the same general controls now. It is NOT saying that Twin Snakes has both Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2 on a single disc.