Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater/Headscratchers


 * Okay, according to MGS3 when members of the Cobra Unit are killed, the bomb inside them explodes to destroy all evidence that they existed. However, when you tranquilize them, they also explode. Wouldn't that mean that the Bomb in any Cobra would explode the moment they fall asleep? But this contradicts itself as well by the fact that The End was asleep the whole time until just before your sniper battle with him. So is the bomb just really touchy, or is it activated by a switch that the Cobra members carry? It's a point that I keep running through in my head but can't figure out.
 * I'm thinking they activate it themselves, somehow, to prevent themselves from being captured. Unless they specifically said the bomb is activated automatically. I don't remember the exact words of the radio conversation.
 * The bombs could also be set to explode at a sudden ceasing of consiousness, like what would happen if they were hit with a bullet, tranq or otherwise. Going to sleep naturally would be to gradual a slip into unconsiousness to activate the microbomb.
 * "Their missions were so top secret that not only were they forbidden to be taken prisoner, they couldn't even leave their corpse behind. Because of this, or so the legend goes, they carried a microbomb with them on their missions in case they needed to commit suicide." Sounds like they have to activate it themselves; otherwise they wouldn't technically be committing suicide.
 * While this is all well and good, it doesn't do anything to explain how The Fear's body was loaded with poison arrows or why The Fury suddenly turned into the hellfire version of Imhotep upon his death. I'm almost positive that the whole "bomb" explanation was just Snake's team attempting to be rational about the situation, while in actuality the members of the Cobra Unit were really spontaneously combusting in some mystic fashion upon their deaths.
 * The Fear is pretty easy, actually; he wants to try and take his killer with him. The Fury? His equipment went out of control and went flying around the room randomly, and the flames just happened to look like a face for a few seconds.
 * I loaned MGS3 to a friend of mine, and he had this to point out: How can Ocelot be a major at
 * The Philosophers know he's the
 * Also, something else I've started to wonder about Adamska: Did he know (or ever find out)
 * Its possible Big Boss may have told him, to secure his loyalty.
 * Big Boss didn't need to secure his loyalty...
 * Big Boss never found out. This troper believes The Boss knew, but Ocelot didn't.
 * Big Boss had all the information we did, I'm sure he could have put it together.
 * Considering how he couldn't even put two and two together when it came to Volgin and Raikov I doubt that. Though maybe he found out later once he started using his brain.
 * I think Ocelot knew; the Boss treated Ocelot like a stern mother through a lot of the game, and since they were both involved with the Philosophers...
 * The end of MGS3 was all dramatic and sad, but...well, it just bugs me that they mention that the Boss' horrible fate is for her to die, remembered in history as a traitor to her country and a war criminal. Which sad indeed, until you think...remembered as a traitor by all of a dozen people who know about her and her involvement in the incident. And come to think of it, at least three people know the whole truth.
 * Actually, no, far more than a dozen people knew about her existence. She was considered "the mother of special forces", so you have to figure anyone involved in special forces or higher levels of any military, government or intelligence community the world over would know who she was. In-game lore also says she went to inspire the SAS motto of "Who dares, wins", so that's, what? Three regiments worth of guys knowing who she is? That's far more than three right there, not to mention Russian and American special forces, and so on and so forth. One of the conversations Snake has with Zero when he begins Operation Snake Eater is that there's concern others will follow The Boss's example and defect, and a few had been put under house arrest, showing that her defection was fairly widely known. As for those three people, aside from Big Boss none of them would care about The Boss in the first place, which is where the tragedy is; she would only be a hero in Big Boss's memory.
 * Strangely enough, though, Solid Snake seems to know about the Boss somehow, since he's seen saluting her grave at the beginning of MGS4 (that's not a spoiler), and
 * In Metal Gear Solid 4 it's stated that most of Big Boss's career including Operation Snake Eater was declassified and was met with incredible interest in 2015 with many fictional books being written about his life, so it's possible that now an entire new generation can learn of The Boss's "betrayal"
 * Which is what
 * Actually, the grave
 * Which in itself is a ridiculous. Why the hell is Snake saluting Big Boss? As far as he knows at this point Big Boss is still the man who betrayed his unit and tried to kill him twice. It's true they declassified his file but if anything that should make him seem like even more of a terrorist - the guy threatened a nuclear strike twice. In my opinion it would make more sense if he was standing to attention at the grave of Gray Fox. A man who was his best friend, made the ultimate sacrifice to save Snake's life and who was more of a father figure to him than Big Boss ever was. I was still green and he showed me the ropes.
 * Snake is saluting Big Boss's grave because
 * It's not ridiculous. Snake hated Big Boss after Metal Gear 1 and 2 because he considered him a no-good traitor. After being continuously fucked by his superiors in the government in MGS and MGS 2, however, Snake began to realize the reason for Big Boss' defection and why he was trying to create a nation of nothing but soldiers. Couple this with the above mentioned declassification of Big Boss' earlier missions and this leads to Snake fully understanding Big Boss' true goals. This is the retcon given to why Snake knows CQC in MGS4, but not in any of the previous games even though it existed since the 60's: After Metal Gear 1 and 2, he didn't respect Big Boss enough to want to use the fighting style he had created. By 4 he had learned about all the details, so he started training in it.
 * But that can't be right, he's surprised to learn from EVA in MGS4 about Big Boss's then-codename of "Naked Snake" and the whole story behind what happened.
 * This is the perfect reason why the original two Metal Gear games need to be remade, so as to expand why Snake, in turn, would feel that way, just like everyone else always eventually did, about his father, despite the combat he engaged in against him.
 * To be sure Snake can sympathize with Big Boss's dream of creating a world where soldiers are respected instead of abused and thrown away by their superiors since he has had it happen to him, but the existence of the Patriots more than anything else should put things into perspective why Big Boss did what he did. Snake should know by the beginning of MGS4 that Big Boss having worked with just about every facet of the US military and government had knowledge of the Patriots and their schemes and that his Outer Heaven ideal was a response against them. The majority of the Metal Gear fandom had determined this after MGS3, and especially after MPO, long before MGS4 ever came out given all the evidence available, Snake should be just as perceptive.
 * And if we mention that, it's either more or less sad that it seems that the death of the Boss was actually unnecessary; maybe a couple of dozen people actually know that she exists, and it's not like her body was ever recovered (or, presumably, needed for proof), since the Migs napalmed it into oblivion. Speaking of which, I need to go edit the Wild Mass Guessing for MGS.
 * One wonders where the grave and headstone came from, then.
 * It's not like they need the body for a grave. Big Boss has a grave, and the possession of his remains is a big plot point in 4.
 * What's up with what happens when you try to just shoot the Boss? It's not just an automatic force-field, since it only activates when she's aware of it (my last blow of the battle being a sniper shot right in her heart). Is it there just for Rule of Cool, n which case it's definitely an Acceptable Break From Reality (to make that last battle -awesome-), or was an explanation attempted (which I'm sure would almost certainly fall prey to Voodoo Shark, in fact, maybe I should delete this question now...nah)?
 * She shoots down the bullets with her own weapon. Somehow. In her defense the Patriot is an awesome gun, and there are far more extreme talents in the MGS universe.
 * Actually, the Patriot is just freaking gargantuan enough that it blocks the bullets, which Snake is firing at just the right height to hit. And the Boss has no trouble hanging onto it despite this. If you take a Sniper Rifle, it's actually possible to hit her directly in the head if you aim carefully enough, but this is pretty difficult because she's shooting at you the whole time. And will steal your gun if she grabs hold of you. Far easier to just wait for a moment when she doesn't see you, in which case her gun isn't raised to block.
 * She stared down the bullets with sheer badassery, and they deflected out of fear of facing her directly.
 * She just did the same thing Dante does against Nero in DMC4, shooting the bullet in mid-air. Making it easier is the fact that the Patriot has Bottomless Magazines, an insane rate of fire, and it's a world where the character can get matrix-level bullet dodging naturally. See Frank Jaeger, he was able to do that before the Ninja exoskelleton.
 * One thing that probably aids the Boss in shooting down bullets is that the Patriot seems to fire bullets side-on instead of point- on (watch when she destroys Naked Snake's disposable plane). True, in real life that would give the gun awful penetration but considering we are talking about a gun that has infinite ammo purely because because it has an ouroboros shaped magazine and realistically should have enough recoil to break your arm, we can hand wave this as just enough magical function of the Patriot.
 * Why is Ocelot called a major in the third game when the insignia on his shoulders indicates that he's a captain? Normally, this could be attributed to Did Not Do the Research, except Major Raikov has the correct insignia.
 * It's possible that he was just recently promoted and hadn't gotten a new uniform yet.
 * It doesn't take a new uniform, just new insignias. Maybe consider the fact he's basically part of a fringe group in the Soviet military. If they're operating secretly and Volgin promoted him, the higher up brass might not know about Ocelot's promotion and not sent the proper insignia. Plus Russians might have a different style of insignia.
 * Snakes are VENOMOUS. If they were poisonous, then Naked Snake wouldn't be able to eat them, would he? I am willing to forgive all the other characters for this, but YOU should know better, Para-Medic!
 * Because the poison is kept in specific parts of the body and it's completely possible to eat a snake without eating the venomous parts.
 * And most of the snakes in the game were constrictors, anyway.
 * In short, you fail zoology forever.
 * It bugs me when The Boss says in MGS3, specifically during the Virtuous Mission IIRC, how Naked Snake is still a child. I realize that there always minor retcons in this series, but according to MGS2 when Ocelot takes over REX and says how Big Boss was in his late 50s during the Les Enfants Terribles project, Naked Snake should be in his early 40s by this point in his career. Hardly a child. If anyone was a child by then it was Ocelot.
 * Man, why do people keep taking things like this 100% literally? Is the concept of speaking figuratively and exaggeration so difficult to grasp?
 * Not to mention she obviously meant in comparison to the Cobras. Which makes a lot more sense when you compare his age to the rest of the Cobras, he's definitely about half The End's age.
 * MGS4 retcons Big Boss's age, making him younger than before. According to, he is now supposed to be born in the 1930s, so he is no older than 34 in MGS3.
 * If I'm not mistaken, Galvez says he's 39 during the events of Peace Walker. That would put his MGS3 age somewhere around 29.
 * Guys. His actual age is irrelevant to why the Boss calls him a child. She calls him a child because he's naive about political warfare, and he believes that politicians do what's best for their country. Child, in this case, is a metaphor for innocence.
 * The Patriot. No, the gun. Snake leaves it on The Boss' grave. A loaded automatic weapon with infinite ammo. In public. Even if he removed the firing pin--which, I believe, could be replaced by anyone who knows how to machine an AR-15 pin--someone could still look at the mechanism of the drum and make their own infinite ammo weapon. Even if they don't, they've still got a clip mag that doesn't exist for another 20 years or so.
 * You're worried about a gun manufacuturer happening by the Patriot on the gravestone and reverse engineering it? I'd be more concerned about some little kid visiting their grandpa's grave at the cemetary finding it and shooting someone. One would seriously hope that Naked Snake didn't actually leave it there permanently.
 * He doesn't leave it there. We find this out in Metal Gear Solid 4, when
 * So, at the end of MGS3 we find out that . So how do we explain his constantly trying to (and nearly succeeding in) killing Snake throughout the game? It's the only piece of the puzzle that I can't figure out. Saying he knew that his gun would jam, or that Snake would dodge, or whatever, seems even too far-fetched for MGS.
 * Cause Ocelot is
 * The password is for Snake's benefit. Presumably there aren't 2 people unaffiliated with the Russian troops running around messing with things.
 * Naked Snake begins the Virtuous Mission, in which he is told time and time and time again by Major Zero that he needs to avoid leaving any trace of his presence or anything that could link him to the US, by discarding a helmet that has US ARMY written on it in big bold letters. It just bugs me...
 * Or the fact his backpack has the initials US on every single pouch attached to it - and the fact the MK 22 Hush Puppy is an official American sidearm. True, he is unlikely to drop his supply belt and his gun but it still destroys the whole ghostly effect Zero is going for doesn't it?
 * The fact that Khrushchev makes no mention of having ever found a helmet with a "US ARMY" label on it obviously means that it was never found which can be explained by a number of things: 1) Snake infiltrated Russia through a route that was not being patrolled by the KGB. 2) Snake probably hid it somewhere off screen. 3) Seeing as this was a stealth mission Snake never intended to be found by the enemy and therefore they would never even know that they had to look for evidence of the presence of an infiltrator. 4) Even if they knew about Snake's presence in the area finding evidence of his presence there was unnecessary as the Russians had Zero's gunship on their radar meaning that FOX's leader was the one who screwed up the secrecy of their mission not Snake.
 * Minor side note, the MK 22 Hush Puppy was in the process of being adopted by the US military so the US ARMY labeled helmet was the only incriminating evidence to speak of as the gun that Snake was using would have been unknown to the Russians at that time.
 * I haven't eaten in so long... *KOs guard* *checks body* *finds ration*. What?
 * With the supply house destroyed, they have to ration their supplies. He was probably saving that for dinner you heartless monster!
 * But if you leave it (say, you have an inventory full of non-perishable stuff alreddy and just wanted MK 22 suppressors/ammo), then let them wake up, they run over to it and excitedly eat it.
 * They are not going to risk their food with you around!
 * Why do the guards go after you post-Shagohod? Any incentive they have to go after you is gone (Volgin can nither pay them insane money out of the legacy or lead them to take over the world).
 * They're not Bond henchmen. They're Russian soldiers trying to kill a spy. They may be stationed under Volgin but they don't owe him any loyalty beyond him outranking them. He isn't a Load-Bearing Boss, soldiers aren't going to throw down their guns and go "good game everyone!" just because their colonel is dead; they still have national security and duty to fall back on.
 * In 3, what did Snake do to the Boss in the Rock Paper Scissors joke video? Transport her to the astral plane?
 * It's a joke video, don't think about it too hard... But if you must then it was most likely just a symbolic representation of The Boss's thoughts.
 * So Snake cheated at RPS? That is a dirty trick. No wonder she was so shook up; she expected more from him.
 * MGS3: Snake saves the US from nuclear annihilation by spending days in a jungle ill-equipped and without any chance of support, fights off a team of supernatural commandos, destroys the plans and prototype for a weapon that could also destroy the US and shoots all the frogs at the cost of lasting physical injury and gets awarded with... the third highest medal the US can give? What? Is there something in the more technical descriptions for the Distinguished Service Cross or Mo H that makes him ineligible?
 * You have the ranking of U.S Military medals mixed up my friend. The Silver Star is the third highest medal behind the Distinguished Service Cross which is the second highest, and of course the highest being the Medal of Honor. Anyway Snake got the Distinguished Service Cross because the criteria requires that you perform extreme feats of gallantry and heroism under direct orders. Snake may have accomplished some incredible things but his mission still went by the perimeters of what the CIA, Pentagon and White House wanted out of him. The Medal of Honor is given out to people that perform incredible feats based on their own free will, above and beyond the call of duty or orders from a superior military officer. If it is any consolation Big Boss after the events of Portable Ops is finally given a Medal of Honor for choosing to stop the FOX Unit when he had ample opportunity to leave the base but chose to stay anyway. Last time during MGS3 the Military told him in very clear terms if he didn't do what they wanted he would be placed before a firing squad for treason so he didn't have much choice but to follow their orders. The case for Big Boss's Medal of Honor is also helped by the fact that he prevented Metal Gear from wiping out the Pentagon and the CIA when it was extremely close to succeeding in its launch, there wouldn't be a U.S Military left to award him a medal if he hadn't succeeded.
 * It is explicitly stated that the Cobra unit not only fought at D-Day but were actually instrumental in winning the war. Question: how? The Boss was a badass who could shoot bullets out of the air and the Sorrow could command the armies of the dead so fair enough. My problem is with the other four: the Fear most likely didn't have stealth camo at the time and I fail to see how his famous crossbows would be any use against a machine gun nest, the Fury would have incredibly limited use and once again would be unlikely to have his rocket fuel flamethrower, the Pain wouldn't have been able to transport his buttload of bees into battle so he wouldn't have been much use and finally we have the End; despite his already advanced age his sniping skills would have been useful on D-Day no doubt, but a vast amount of his abilities come from his photosynthetic powers - not much use for that on the rainy beaches of Western Europe. Remember also that even under literally ideal conditions (the Fear and the End in a forest with plenty of cover, the Pain and the Fury fully equipped) Naked Snake killed them without hassle... the Nazi's shouldn't have been defeated by these guys.
 * The only problem I have with the Cobras in regard to World War II is the idea that they as a single unit somehow "Led us to victory during that war.", in President Johnson's own words. You mean to tell me that a single unit composed of 5 special ops guys and a woman who led them (In World War II? As if.) single-handily won D-Day and led the Allies to victory? Were all the millions of Allied soldiers who died on the Western and Eastern fronts chopped liver or something, that is absurd! Now that we have that out of the way since the Cobras were a special operations unit they more than likely would have been para-troopers, in fact Sigint mentions to Snake if you take The End's sniper rifle that it was modified with a stock that could be folded to the side which is what most para-troopers did to their rifles. Their stated mission during D-Day was to take out V-2 rocket installations which would help the troops invading the beaches, most missions that support the frontal invasion force are not done from the front but rather from the back, which on D-Day required a lot of our troops to be parachuted behind enemy lines and the Cobra Unit would have been no different. Also on an individual basis: The Pain stores his insects in his body and could have easily brought them with him on D-Day plus he would have had a gun to shoot the enemy while his insects distract them, The Fear was clearly very acrobatic and mobile and would have been using a gun when not in a forest environment, The End gets his energy from plant foliage and sunlight which he can store in his body for later use plus his sniping skills are legendary so the Nazis wouldn't have seen that coming, and The Fury would have had a regular old flamethrower which he could have used to burn out installations like machine gun nest and trenches. The Cobra Unit would have been effective on D-Day, they just wouldn't have won it by themselves.
 * My guess is that the "won it by themselves" bit is largely propaganda and hero-worship rather than literal truth. Having said that, it does seem odd to, by extension, downplay the sacrifice of all the regular soldiers in the war.
 * You guys are taking that way too literally. "They led us to victory" didn't mean they literally did all the fighting and it was them alone that won the war; you could say the same sentence about George Washington, or any other big general in history. Probably, the Cobras did very important special ops missions--taking out a key unit here or there, getting valuable intelligence so the bulk of the troops went to the right spots, that sort of thing. In the actual World War II, there really was one guy whose spying efforts pretty much ensured that the Germans were looking in the wrong place on D-Day, which was instrumental in the successful invasion. The Cobras probably did similar things, only on a more epic badass scale.
 * Even if they couldn't bring all their special abilities to the war, the Cobras still had superhuman levels of health and stamina to the point they could effortlessly shrug off bullets, rockets, blades, CQC and tranquilizer darts. Also the Fury probably didn't use a flamethrower yet; his backstory is that he aquired his insane lust for fire after being horribly burnt during a disaster in space - he probably used a Thompson similar to the Pain.
 * One last point; Snake was an already excellent soldier who had received the best of the best training and mentoring by someone who is considered to be one of the best soldiers who ever lived, and at the time was more or less at his physical prime (which the Cobras had passed a good decade before). Saying that he didn't have "much of a hassle" (which I disagree with, he did obviously have plenty of trouble fighting them) defeating them is only testament to how efficient Snake is as a soldier, less the ineptitude of The Cobras.
 * How is it that Zero is still a Major as of MGS3? You would think that a man who worked with the SAS in their early formation during World War II and who was appointed by the US Military to one day be the commander of FOX if Snake succeeded in his mission and proved the effectiveness of the organization would at least be a Colonel. Also it is weird that Big Boss still refers to him as a Major in MPO when you would think that the success of Operation Snake Eater would have elevated him to the rank of Colonel or maybe a General of some sort.
 * Haven't got an answer for the first part, but maybe Big Boss refers to him as Major simply because he's more familiar with referring to him as 'Major'. Not dissimilar to how Solid Snake refers to Campbell as 'Colonel' in Metal Gear Solid 1, 2 and 4, despite the fact that Campbell retired long before that.
 * Was it ever explicitly stated that he was a major? From what I recall, his codename was Major Tom, then Major Zero. I don't remember it ever being stated that he held the rank of major. I might be wrong, but I'm sure he wasn't just a major in MGS3.
 * In Snake Eater you are supposed to sneak into the enemy fortress in order to rescue a scientist and stop the Soviet superweapon. Throughout the game you are expected to creep through enemy lines without alerting them to your presence. So why would your support staff recommend taking control of the antiaircraft batteries to eliminate enemy aircraft in a not-at-all-stealthy manner?
 * Note how Washington gave Snake orders not to be caught during the Virtuous Mission. Major Zero explicitly says during the beginning of Operation Snake Eater that doing so isn't as important and that some evidence of a conflict between Snake and Volgin's forces has to be left behind for the Russian government to understand that the American government is cooperating with their demands about killing Volgin and The Boss. This isn't to say that they are telling Snake to go out of his way to shoot at every enemy that comes his way but that if he needs to he can shoot his way out of the situation to ensure his survival. Besides by the time you get to the mountains overseeing Groznyj Grad you most likely have already killed or tranquilized a ton of enemy guards and have killed 3 Cobra Unit members with only The Fury and The Boss left, the enemy already knows that Snake is trailing behind their fortress and have flamethrower troops especially prepared to cook him alive as revenge for all he has done to halt their plans. Also shooting those anti-aircraft guns is entirely optional, you can sneak by entirely unnoticed and nothing really changes.
 * Is the threat of being put before a firing squad really that powerful a motivation? I mean is it really realistic for the American Government to send out a team of black ops to find Snake behind enemy lines (and not only is Tselinoyarsk Russian territory but it is also extremely big and would make a search difficult) and bring him back just to execute him? Isn't that a wasted allocation of resources for just one man?
 * Snake and Zero being patriotic (no pun intended) characters who would want to "do the right thing" aside, I always just assumed the government had a way of knowing whether or not Snake had succeeded and had means of bringing him back for execution if he hadn't. Even if they didn't, the feds would probably shit themselves if someone who knew this much suddenly got off the leash and disappeared; I doubt any expenses would be spared to track Snake down. Unrealistic perhaps, but if I can believe that they had the technology to build Peace Walker in the 70s, I can believe that. Also, keep in mind that if Snake were to run off, one of the first consclusions the government would jump to was that he had defected to join his beloved mentor, the Boss, who was believed to be an ally of Volgin who had fired a nuclear warhead on Russian soil; that should be more than enough to hit their panic button. Even besides all that, Snake's life isn't the only one on the line; there's also Zero, maybe even Paramedic and Sigint if the feds decide to be real assholes. If the fear of his own death isn't enough to keep Snake in line, the deaths of his comrades certainly will be.
 * Snake is a highly trained soldier who thrives off war and enjoys it, he has no fear of his own death as he faces it routinely in his career as a soldier. Snake would however want to do the right thing as he was patriotic towards the United States of America, he would rather the country he was born and raised in not get involved in a full scale war with the Soviet Union. Not to mention the fate of his comrades who he cares about: Zero will be executed at worst or have his Military Career ruined at least, Para-Medic will have her Medical License revoked and her career ruined, and SIGNIT without Zero's support will almost certainly get fired from his position in the CIA. Snake has the weight of so many lives on his shoulders, and he is not the kind of guy who would take that lightly by abandoning the mission. Besides America probably had a protocol in effect similar to Apocalypse Now where an air strike would total the area he was in if the mission were to fail, Captain Willaird was supposed to call in an air strike if he failed to assassinate Colonel Kurtz in that movie.
 * Snake is a highly trained soldier who thrives off war and enjoys it, he has no fear of his own death as he faces it routinely in his career as a soldier. Snake would however want to do the right thing as he was patriotic towards the United States of America, he would rather the country he was born and raised in not get involved in a full scale war with the Soviet Union. Not to mention the fate of his comrades who he cares about: Zero will be executed at worst or have his Military Career ruined at least, Para-Medic will have her Medical License revoked and her career ruined, and SIGNIT without Zero's support will almost certainly get fired from his position in the CIA. Snake has the weight of so many lives on his shoulders, and he is not the kind of guy who would take that lightly by abandoning the mission. Besides America probably had a protocol in effect similar to Apocalypse Now where an air strike would total the area he was in if the mission were to fail, Captain Willaird was supposed to call in an air strike if he failed to assassinate Colonel Kurtz in that movie.