Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots/Headscratchers


 * Okay, forgive me for going all gun nerdy, but early on in Metal Gear Solid 4, it's established that most firearms in the world have had ID locks added to them, and everyone has nanoes in them. The two work together to ensure that someone who doesn't have the proper ID will never be able to fire a gun that requires it. When Snake acquires his custom M4 Carbine from Drebin, he attempts to test fire it at a nearby wall, but then says that he can't bring himself to pull the trigger. Drebin gives him an injection of surpressor nanomachines that will allow him to use weapons stripped of their IDs. Okay, logical. The gun doesn't block the trigger mechanism or anything like that - it just refuses to allow the user's nanobots permission to fire if they don't have the right ID, and the user suddenly finds his trigger finger muscles won't contract. Effective. Then, later, on the Volga, Ocelot takes control of the AI that controls all ID locked weapons systems in the world. He can make helicopters crash by pointing at them, which, while I'm not sure how he did that, is quite awesome. But what makes no sense here is that when he locks out all the US soldiers' weapons, they are able to pull the trigger. They repeatedly pull the trigger, in fact, to no effect, just making clicky noises. So this means that the ID lock system is nothing but a trigger disconnector, not interacting with soldier's nanoes at all. This flies in the face of what we saw earlier. Not only that, but if it's just a trigger disconnector, any two-bit gunsmith in the world could have easily stripped it out and returned the gun to it's regular state of being usable by anyone. Was this just an oversight, or did someone assume that audiences just wouldn't understand that the soldiers can't fire their weapons unless we show them repeatedly pulling the trigger and making clicky noises?
 * Maybe the guns are old ID network models that haven't been phased out yet. Or something.
 * Actually, Snake cannot pull the trigger on the M4 Custom because he has first-generation nanomachines, which were injected into him by Naomi. Among other things, first-generation nanomachines influence muscle contractions and therefore cause him to involuntarily not be able to pull the trigger. Drebin then injects him with third-generation nanomachines, which allow Snake to use any gun without nanomachines in it, since the new nanomachines operate by stopping the gun itself, not the user. All of the major PMC's and government troops have third-generations nanomachines, too, which explains why they are not able to fire when Ocelot takes over the SOP system. Third generation nanomachines are also able to be implemented in inanimate objects, like a helicopter. When the "user check" fails, the helicopter is not able to function anymore, thus causing the helicopter to self-feather its rotors. Finally, nanomachines are tiny. It's very hard to launder them because of this fact.
 * Its rule of cool, but still, where the hell did Raidens lightning powers come from when he lacked any arms?
 * This troper assumes that it was a result of electricity flowing through the places where his arms should have been, with convenient timing to kill the FROGS...or maybe Raiden activated the electricity...or something. It certainly raises a lot of questions.
 * He's Volgin's Grandson.
 * By Raikov.
 * The simplest idea was that it was through something Otacon gave Raiden to use, similar to his automatic stealth camo device. Say, a far more powerful version of the MK. II's taser.
 * It could have been another Cyborg ability that Raiden had possessed the entire time. He just didn't use it until after he lost his arms because he didn't need to. Either he preferred sword fighting or it was less efficient.
 * What makes people so sure that Snake is going to destroy the Patriots in MGS4 or that the Snake is actually against the Patriots?
 * Given his recurring grudge against his superiors for manipulating him into doing their dirty work, it wouldn't exactly be out of character. Ghost Babel, which in many ways was a plot test-bed for MGS2, ends with Snake explicitly setting out a mission to fight the mysterious manipulative forces behind the US military on their home turf.
 * But Snake accepted a mission to assassinate Liquid Ocelot and Liquid wants to destroy the Patriots.
 * The setting in MGS4 is So I really don't think that The Patriots are going to be left off the hook at the end of MGS4.
 * True, but Liquid has sinister machinations which are just as bad. I imagine that Snake will, ultimately, be stuck in the middle of their battle and an ally of neither.
 * Didn't President Johnson in MGS2 state that the Patriots are possibly necessary for the world or at least the US to have something resembling peace?If true and Snake is aware of this than I can't see Snake possibly risking hundreds of lives being put in danger just because of a grudge he has.
 * It's possible that this is just one side of an argument we'll see develop further in MGS4. Maybe he's wrong.
 * Hell, knowing the Patriots, this is just one more step in their Gambit Roulette. As long as the MGS franchise proves profitable, there's no reason for that roulette to stop spinning any time soon.
 * MGS4 spoilers!
 * I hate to correct you, but
 * * Phew* Anyway, that's the Gambit Roulette in a nutshell.
 * You forgot the part where.
 * Knew there was something I forgot. Although I think it may have been Then again, there's no way to be sure of much in MGS.
 * In MGS4 Well,  but  Assuming Kojima didn't retcon anything,
 * 'Scuse me? You expect consistency? How many people have not returned from their graves, some way or another, just because it makes a good story? (occationally not) Big Boss,  Gray Fox, Sokolov, Liquid (twice in the same game.) Vamp (three times in Sons of Liberty) and  . It's not really suprising that   returns. Also, it could have been
 * No, that's not true. He's always been named Madnar in every one of his appearances in Metal Gear. And if the Database is canon, the Madnar who operated on Raiden is the same one fron the original two Metal Gears.
 * Yeah, Dr. Madnar has always been called Dr. Madnar in the Metal Gear series, except in the original versions of the first game, where he was just plain Dr. Pettrovich (the Madnar surname was given to him in Metal Gear 2). The only modification Subsistence did was giving him the full name of Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar, which is closer to how a full Russian name would be. In short, he went from Dr. Pettrovich in MG 1 to Pettrovich Madnar in MG 2 and eventually Drago Pettrovich Madnar in Subsistence. Either way, the above troper Did Not Do the Research.
 * So what? Snake beat the shit out of him with A ROCKET LAUNCHER and he then do a Face Heel Turn? Seriously, did Kojima that no one would bother to remember that the guy died in MG2, and that last time we saw, he was technically a villain?
 * But look at it this way. He was a villain then, yes, but why? Because he was working for Big Boss. Who sets Raiden up with Madnar in the first place, before MGS4?
 * I think we can safely assume Madnar getting 15 missiles to the back has been retconed. Snake would have just thrown him off his back and injured him.
 * If the word "Patriots" is converted into La Li Lu Le Lo for nanomachine users, how do they use that word in common conversation?
 * Maybe under the assumption that none of them are ever going to burst into Smurfsong in the middle of a conversation? It'd probably take some getting used to, but eventually they'd manage. ...unless they tried to talk to non-users about New England sports teams or Mel Gibson movies. I got nothing.
 * Nanomachine users don't know the word turns into La Li Lu Le Lo, so that's right out. This is probably a Japanese thing, since Hideo Kojima probably doesn't get how very American the word "Patriot" is. Considering the entire US military is full of said machines... yeesh.
 * Plus, it's probably got some kind of detector for if you mean the Patriots, as opposed to the New England football team, sort of like a lie detector.
 * How does it detect context then? I can accept the nanomachines being capable of replacing the word "Patriot", but actual mindreading and context-sensitive filtering? What's to stop the Patriots putting the soldiers into their own personal Matrix then?
 * It doesn't have to be mind reading, but rather the nanomachines might, in some fashion, recognize other physiological symptoms of someone referring to The Patriots. A lie detector doesn't work by reading your mind, but in detecting things like heart rate; it's not inconceivable the nanomachines could be set up to detect something to that end.
 * That doesn't make sense. What happens when a die-hard sports fan starts worrying about how the Patriots are going to do this season and begins to babble? What if there's political discussion among US soldiers about who and who are "true patriots", which can often be quite a heated discussion IRL? There aren't different kinds of tension, the physical reaction doesn't change for different types of worries. Besides which each person deals with pressure differently. That's not even considering how the nanomachines deal with other people talking about the Patriots. For example, how could the nanomachines know that Snake was specifically talking about the Patriots to Meryl in MGS4? Meryl doesn't know about the Patriots, so she wouldn't react any differently to hearing about them for the first time. CODEC is around, so it's not implausible that they can change the electrical signals that the ear transmits to the brain, but context-filtering like that would have too many Unfortunate Implications... then again... the nanomachines can make people share each other's senses... and JD monitors everything... so... damn. Unfortunate Implications. Wow. Time for some WMG.
 * I wonder if it isn't a double substitution. Maybe they aren't called the Patriots at all, but something else entirely. And when the game shows "Patriots" being converted into "La Li Lu Le Lo," what they really mean is that the word Patriots is being converted to "Patriots". I mean Patriots being converted to... oh, forget it.
 * The easy answer here is that there is no mind reading, and the nanomachines do substitute "La-li-lu-le-lo" every single time, but the word "Patriots" (and figure, it only works on the plural form of the word) isn't used so much that anyone ever does more than tell someone "WTF? Stop with the gibberish."
 * And if you give the human race credit for being smart enough to figure this out, there's a better explanation then that; the word isn't substituted when two nanomachine users are talking to each other. As the above bullet points out, Meryl doesn't know about the Patriots, so hearing the word "Patriots" wouldn't really do much. Logically, no one who's part of the system (or at least, this would be the idea, and is probably not totally perfect in practice) would have ever heard of any crazy-ass conspiracy controlling them, so there's no need to filter the word. The idea is to make it harder for someone to clue them in, so when someone who isn't part of the system says the word "Patriots," the word is then replaced. If Snake had tried to further explain it to Meryl, she'd keep hearing "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo" and wouldn't take him seriously. If Johnny said "Patriots" to her, it's a given that he'd be using the word for patriotism or, hell, the sports team, so it doesn't matter.
 * Maybe they'd call them the Pats?
 * It seems to this troper that if the Patriots simply replace the word "Patriots" with "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo," all it's really doing is making "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo" essentially a nickname for the Patriots, and does not really do anything to stop anyone from talking about them. So it seems rather pointless to censor the word in the first place.
 * Ocelot says "la-li-lu-le-lo" in MGS2, in front of the Marines in the tanker, but he says "the Patriots" later on and you figure that after a warship crashes into a major American city with the ex-president sword fighting someone and talking about the Patriots taking over, that someone might notice. I always just figured they said "la-li-lu-le-lo" so SOP wouldn't catch them saying "Patriots" and it got sent back to command where it would inevitably get back to the Patriots. Remember when Meryl says it's kind of creepy at first, being watched 24/7, but you get used to it? I figured that was a part of it. Like a codeword that the rank and file came up with. Also kind of comparable to how if you said certain things online or on your phone after the USA PATRIOT Act (haha, go figure) got put into play, you'd get a visit from your local law enforcement branch.
 * Watch that scene again; Ocelot never says "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo," he says "Patriots,' but Dolph, the Marine Commendant, hears "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." There isn't anyone near Solidus and Raiden during Solidus' monologue, either. Even if anyone down on the street heard anything, it would hardly be enough to blow the door open on the Patriots. Arsenal Gear crashing into Manhattan is, in truth, an incident of domestic terrorism; the Patriots turn it into their favor by allowing this part of it to be reported to the public, but all the other stuff is left out. With this as a backdrop, the Patriots pull American politics in a different direction, shifting the country to such hardline unilateralism that the PMCs become more and more important in the rest of the world where the United States is no longer projecting a military presense or force, thus giving birth to the war economy.
 * In the official MGS2 strategy guide, it's said that if someone else says "Patriots," anyone under their control hears "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." The idea that you can't say Patriots only came along in MGS4 when Drebin mentions that he can say "Patriots," making it something of a plot hole. It's a very Japanese reference that translates very badly into English; the idea is they're sounds Hiragana doesn't strictly speaking actually have (lack of an L / R distinction; the sounds are usually said as "Ra-Ri-Ru-Re-Ro"), so the Patriots censor their name to something that can't be said or written down.
 * Is it not possible that the Patriots have no need to censor their name among the common people? They usually seem to do a very good job of hiding their involvement. Short of the high ranking military and the other exceptional people in the MGS world, I wouldn't think the common populace would have the need for nano-machines. So a sports fan talking about his team would have no trouble saying it because he knows nothing of the Patriots, not to mention, would anyone even believe it if they were told? Only those who are important to the Patriots (at some point) know of them, and it's regularly seen that they have agents everywhere, so if someone were to suddenly learn (AND believe what they were being told) they'd likely be quickly taken care of. Though admittedly, I feel I may have missed something that could completely disprove this.
 * What's stopping Old Snake from getting some of those super-healer nanomachines to rejuvenate him? That would be a great way to bring him back for the sequel.
 * The age limiter built into him was causing his Nano-machines to break down also. It might have worked for a while but eventually they would start to malfunction, at which point anything could happen. Not to mention the only woman who ever managed to pull it off is dead, and I bet it had side effects (The one person she used it on turned out to be an utter nut remember).
 * Not exactly. Naomi said that, yes, nanomachines were based on a design she created, but someone else perfected it for use in  She never elaborates on who that someone was, though.
 * Not to mention that
 * Not to mention it is specified that it's a that is causing the aging.  Using that on Snake is never discussed.
 * Okay, they'll just implant Big Boss' genes in his genetically identical clone--wait, I think I see a flaw in the plan.
 * I know it's very dramatic and heart wrenching, but why did Snake
 * Why did Snake have to go? Simple:
 * There's a couple of problems with your theory. First, as mentioned above,
 * No, that's gone into. Snake's control of the Mk3 has limited range so Snake isn't producing a high-powered [and thus detectable] command signal. Otacon's control of the Mk3 is vastly more far-reaching. How do you think he can contact and control it from huge distances throughout the game?
 * Hnn, good point. Completely forgot about that.
 * Uh, am I the only one who remembers that Ocelot let them win? The Scarabs didn't mob Snake and the MkIII because Ocelot had them back off when it became obvious they could've ended it right there. This happens with the Missouri, too; there must be four or five production-model Metal Gear RAY units in the water. Do they ram it or carve it up with their waterguns? No, they just hop onto the deck, get blown off, and flap their mouths open like they're going to use the waterguns, but never do. Snake's line to Ocelot is something like "You mean...you could've beaten us?" And he could have, he just chose not to, but he kept the charade up until the very end.
 * Snake very first line after Liquid Ocelot statement that the war is over, is indeed "why, you could have stop us!". The first time this troper went through Act 5, many thing were bugging him. It seems like it was finally up to Liquid to hold the Idiot Ball by not anything anything remotely smart to stop the good guy. Why does Outer Haven, an ultra advanced warship whose armament, size, hull and pretty much everything leave the Missouri one hundred years behind, struggle so much during such a long time (half an hour of gameplay, if you're fast, not counting the cutscenes)? Why does it wait so much before unleashing the RAY? Why the one door to the ship's innard is left unlocked? Why the FROGS somehow decide to not shoot Snake while he is struggling when the shots supposedly don't work anymore? And finaly, why the Scarabs put a big show but are in fact fairly harmless in the server room? It's like Outer Haven and every soldiers on it somehow hold back 99% of their full firepower! And it only make sense once you realized that yes, Liquid was deliberatly holding back. What is more bugging, however, is that no one in the cast, with sole exception of Snake as said earlier, seems to realize that something is wrong, despite the previous stranges occurences that cause this troper to raise an eyebrow.
 * As a corollary, Snake was probably thinking, or more likely hoping, that he could last through the microwave corridor and make it out with enough left to provide the MkIII with cover. It may be more the nanomachine spasms that Naomi's shots are no longer helping with that are debilitating him; his Octocamo presumably provides him a measure of protection at the cost of sacrificing itself so he isn't cooked alive. Finally, a workable explanation along the same lines as the Scarabs seeing Snake as the bigger threat (which he isn't) is that, instead, they see him as the only threat. Being small but rather complex, they probably don't have the level of autonomy or even a connection to the system at a high-enough level to level to realize its being hacked into. They bounce around without going after the MkIII because once they lock on Snake, they assume there's nothing else in the room and stop looking for threats, thus, the MkIII goes unmolested.
 * To be fair with Snake, he was there, standing up, and firing a M4. It make sense that he was tagged as "dangerous" by the scarabs instead of the harmless looking MKIII.
 * Dear god this has gone on for a long time. My take on the matter; the MKIII was just too small to open the doors. If the doors in the microwave corridor only registered a human-sized object with their motion detectors then you would need someone to activate them so the Mk3 could get through. It would make a handy security measure since the scarabs prove you can make small robots, so it would be an effective defense against them.
 * In regards to the point that they probably could have found a way to turn off the hallway before Snake limped down it there is a simple answer to this one - the only way to deactivate this hallway is with SOP. The hallway detects the nanomachines of authorized technicians and turns itself off to allow access. Its exactly the same thing that locks the guns; but unlike the regular locking system there is no way for Drebin to get hold of these nanomachines because they are likely reserved solely for the crew of the Outer Haven.
 * Okay, I just can't figure out for the life of me why Naomi would commit suicide. Yeah, it's unnatural, but she's not like Vamp who uses it to survive battles. She just wants to live. How is that any different from simply taking medicine? Not to mention that she does this RIGHT in front of her love interest. That's just cruel. To top it off, this action makes her a complete hypocrite. At the end of MGS1, she told Snake to stop searching for a reason to live and "just live." What the hell happened?
 * Guilt. Snake hasn't done half the things she has. FOXDIE, nanotech, her brother being dead, all that.
 * She also wanted to destroy all traces of the nanomachines used to make her and Vamp immortal.
 * But she was forgiven for all that, wasn't she? Snake forgave her for Foxdie (hell, it was the reason he survived MGS1), Nanotechnology in and of itself isn't bad, it just fell into the hands of the wrong people, and her brother...how is his dying her fault again? but even if it was guilt, she had way too much to live for and killing herself fight in front of her new found love was a very stupid and cruel move on her part, even if she had alot of guilt stored up inside.
 * She didn't forgive herself though. That was the point.
 * At that point, she was mainly keeping herself alive for two reasons: To help, and to stop Vamp, who she felt directly responsible for. After Vamp was dead, she finished herself off A. as penance for what she did, and B. so nobody could abuse the nanomachines inside of her to create someone else like Vamp.
 * Let's look at this practically. If she didn't commit suicide, what was she going to do? All the entrances to the room were blocked, and
 * A lot of people don't realize that anyway.  Also, it sounds cold, but I think
 * I also ended up thinking of another reason why she would kill herself; we all know Vamp had been kept alive by these nanomachines for X amount of years, and his body was looking in horrible shape. Who knows what Naomi's organs would have looked like. So even if, all she could look forward too was the inevitability of winding up like Vamp. Better to be a corpse then to go around stuck as a living zombie.
 * No matter what angle you use, her death makes little narrative sense. The plot would have (arguably) played out better if she stayed alive long enough to see the end of the AI's and the nanomachine network, and had one scene for a final goodbye with Sonny and Otacon. At that point in the game, it would be silly of her to think, "Oh, well, now that I killed Vamp, everything is going to be fine. Thanks, I'm out of here." There were several ways this angle could have been saved for the end of the game. There was a spare seat for her in Rex. Raiden could have carried her. Yet, she chose a stupid, illogical course of action that saw her saying goodbye to Otacon through a friggin' robot that resembles a toy. This is one plot twist that was poorly thought out and poorly executed.
 * Why is it that vamps powers came from nanomachines (at least his regeneration as for his ability to paralyze you by pinning your shadow with a knife or his walk on water idk) vamps immortality was the thing I liked best about him. I mean future seeing psychics okay, ghost mediums okay, invisible spider man okay, old man who regenerates by the power of the sun okay but vamps powers have to be from nanomachines WTF
 * According to the Metal Gear database that you can download off the Play Station Network as an addon to MGS4, Vamp already had preternatural healing abilities. The nanotech inside him just augmented what he already had. As for the pinning your shadow with knives thing, that's also mentioned in the MGDB; it's supposed to be an old ninja technique whose Japanese name translates to "shadow stitching", and depends partly on the victim's belief that the technique works.
 * Which makes sense. Consider that Naomi's wording was that nanomachines enhanced Vamp's healing abilities, an odd way to word it if they granted him the ability to heal. Also, consider the fact that in MGS2, he appears to require contact with water in order to regenerate, and only then from mortal wounds, whereas in MGS4 he clearly recovers far quicker than he did before, not to mention that regular wounds seem to trouble him less. Finally, there is the fact that the headwound from MGS2 left a permanant scar behind, but none of his wounds in MGS4 do so, lending further credence to the idea that his natural healing abilities are merely being enhanced.
 * This troper thinks the idea of having fits with the theme of the game, and its contrast with MGS3, in which everything is basically assumed to be either supernatural or ridiculous devotion to their fighting style, and never really explained. Times have changed. True skill has been replaced by  Or something like that...
 * Going by that logic, Vamp's abilities being inborn and derived from skill still fits the theme. Vamp is very much Old Guard by the time of MGS4, being more of a peer to Snocelot and Old Snake than to the B&B corp and the PMCs. He's from back, if just barely, when it was skill, not fancy gadgets, that decided ability. Same with Meryl and Johnny.
 * So Snake is doing fine Yeah, not really needed anyway, the GEKKO weren't not nearly as fast enough to catch up with . Then Raiden  Now, following the battle we all grown to love, Snake is left defenless and apathic,
 * Raiden has been established as a death seeker by this point. He wanted a way to go out protecting his hero.
 * Also,
 * The idea was to have a scene where the player is as in MGS1 and MGS2. It just wasn't very well thought out this time around...
 * Why would a be surprised that
 * I'm not sure what you mean. knew that, if that's what you meant. They didn't know that  So I'm not sure who you're talking about here...
 * Where exactly did Outer Haven come from, and why does it have GW's core in it? In MGS2 GW was inside Arsenal gear, and . The game never mentions anything about
 * I got the impression that Outer Haven was a refurbished Arsenal. He must have stolen it after it crashed into New York... somehow. As for remodelling it, as the head of all the top mercenary companies in the world he must be rolling in cash.
 * Outer Haven is almost certainly
 * Half the problem here is Campbell's ambiguity on the subject, he describes Haven as "a modified Arsenal Gear model stolen from the Patriots." Whether or not it's a different vessel really depends on how literally you want to interpret the word "model;" Campbell could mean it's a different ship that Liquid customized as his personal fortress, or the word could be distinguishing Liquid's modifications from how the original was designed.
 * Seeing as Outer Haven housed GW, as MGS2's Arsenal Gear did, I'd say it's unlikely that Ocelot/Liquid Ocelot would steal a second Arsenal Gear, remodel it, and also somehow transfer GW over from the first Arsenal Gear. If we assume he stole the one from MGS2, it all adds up.
 * Some minor points here: it's insinuated that Liquid, as head of Outer Heaven and it's five PMCs, is subserviant to the Patriots and can do nothing but fight their proxy wars for them, because he has no way around SOP. This would suggest that the Patriots set up the five major PMCs and the Outer Heaven parent company in order to make the War Economy function as they intend, placing pre-Liquid-controlled Ocelot in charge. This would suggest that the Patriots refurbished Arsenal Gear to be the headquarters for the Outer Heaven parent company; when Campbell says Liquid "stole" it, he means he took control of it along with the PMCs themselves when he took over Ocelot. This makes it more believable, I think, because the Patriots would have no reason to build a new one when one is already sitting right there, perfectly usable in a new role other than originally intended.
 * The Database describes Outer Haven as an "Arsenal Gear class warship" implying that sometime in the intervening five years, the US Navy ordered the construction of several similar machines. Note also Haven's technological advancements such as not needing the massive hangar to store the RA Ys, which instead kept folded up on the side for quick deployment. It makes sense to think of Arsenal as a prototype and Haven as one of the final products, which Liquid Ocelot hijacked.
 * But how come that is called an "Arsenal Gear Class warship"? It does look nothing like the actual Arsenal gear, which was a gigantic electronic fortress armed with the most advanced weapon systems in the US arsenal, while Outer Haven nothing more than a masive (but way smaller than Arsenal Gear)convertible sub with a weird Mr.Rushmore-like bridge.
 * "The Patriots refurbished Arsenal Gear and gave Ocelot the five PMCs" is actually a pretty good theory. I'd never thought of it before. It would explain why reference was made to Liquid hijacking Arsenal at the end of MGS2 if it didn't happen that way. The idea that Ocelot was supposed to be in charge of Arsenal and the PMCs is an interesting one, and it would explain how he came to have that position. There are still holes, though. When was Ocelot put in charge? Before or after MGS2? And is Ocelot really a military commander sort of person the Patriots would put in charge of such a thing? If so, he may have planned for it all along, which I wouldn't put past him. But personally, I still like to think Ocelot/Liquid stole Arsenal Gear right after MGS2, and that he had manipulated Solidus and played along with the S3 Plan throughout MGS2 just for an opportunity to do so. In the end, some aspects of the storyline and its Gambit Roulettes are just too nebulous to say much for sure.
 * The Patriots putting Ocelot in charge of the five PMCs isn't a theory, it's outright said in the game, but it's blink and you'll miss it.
 * Did I miss something, but in 4, why didn't Naomi tell Snake It seems like a pretty cruel thing to not say.
 * Because Naomi and Snake have bad blood. It's certainly muddied and not necessarily even rational by that point, all things considered, but it's safe to say that it's not something she's just spontaneously let go of. Neither has Snake; he clearly doesn't want her being on the Nomad earlier in the game, and for an extra helping of Ho Yay, just look at his face every time she hits on Otacon.
 * Naomi I used to wonder about it, myself. I even posted a question on this very page that looks remarkably like that one...Oh wait, I'm the one who made that post in the first place! And now I've answered my own question.
 * The thing that has bugged me since I played MGS4 (that is, apart from why Snake had to go through the microwave oven corridor) is whether the opening line of "The war has changed" is a Shout Out to the Fallout's "War never changes"?.. I know that MGS is full of that trope, but Fallout? It just seems not a very likely candidate.
 * Considering the line is the exact opposite of what Ron Perlman says in Fallout, it's either a Take That or, more likely, it wasn't done with Fallout in mind at all. To delve deeper into it; in context, both statements are true anyway. In Fallout armed conflict is still little more than people with weapons using them against each other to settle disputes and gain resources. The nuances of warfare have changed in the Metal Gear timeline by the time Guns of the Patriots takes place; OILIX all but ensures no resource wars are fought, and the War Economy turns armed conflict into a direct for-profit business.
 * It seems more like a reference to 1984's unending resource consumption war, actually.
 * It's supposed to be a bit of a take that to the game industry and the MGS series itself which started off as stealth action with a bit of puzzle elements to this stealth action game with explosives and multiplayer.
 * See this comic.
 * Okay, so GEKKOs aren't Metal Gears because they don't carry nuclear weapons. So what's RAY, then?
 * An anti-Metal Gear. Otacon mentioned that RAY was still considered a "Metal Gear" in terms of nuclear strategy. RAY was designed as a REX killer, so having one meant removing the enemy's nuclear launch capability.
 * I came into the series after number 4 was released, and was spoiled for a few things (like the existence of Raiden). So Naked Snake being Big Boss was originally supposed to be a twist, right? Who did everybody think he was for the whole game? Did they think Solid was time travelling or something?
 * That was never much of a twist, most people figured that out after the first trailers. But they never did state it outright, so it could've passed some people by.
 * The whole idea of "The War Economy" is just stupid. I know, I know,  but the problem is those invested in the War Economy do not know that. The basic problem with "the War Economy" is that 1). War is not a "commodity," no matter how much Snake/Kojima insists it is and 2). killing people and breaking things doesn't actually produce wealth unless you kill people and break things in a specific territory to harvest its resources and create manufacturing. Also 3). armies and mercenaries don't produce money; they consume it, and at best, prevent (more) money from being lost (for instance, by protecting one's investments from foreign invaders/pirates/whatever).
 * I think the point is that since the United States goes hardcore unilateral post-Sons of Liberty, much of the world relies on the PMCs for military protection; in the first three acts, the PMCs have all been hired to put down revolutions, and the revolutionaries themselves are hiring smaller, local PMCs to fill out their own ranks. The idea seems to be that the PMCs have become an inextricable part of society. Imagine, for example, that [McDonalds] goes out of business. Many would cheer that a large corporation often seen as putting profit and effective marketing over morality gets taken down, but there would be consequences; the producers who provide the product have no one to sell their massive stocks to. The delivery companies who ship it have no one to deliver to. The hundreds of thousands of workers don't even have the option of just finding new customers and are simply no longer making an income; they no longer have money to spend at Wal Mart or Insert Commonly Shopped At Store Of Choice, so even other companies seemingly unaffected notice a profit loss, maybe to the point of laying people off. It's the same with the Big Five PMCs which, remember, are larger than the entire US military as a whole; if fighting stops, their only source of income stops with it. You've got literally millions of grunts who are suddenly out of a job with no useful skills they can use to find a new one (and, indeed, they may not even be mentally stable enough for work once they lose SOP) and even if they could, there wouldn't be enough jobs to go around for them all. They're not spending the money they used to be earning on other parts of the economy, and it goes beyond the soldiers; Eva insinuates that joining a PMC is the only employment option many have at all, so you've suddenly got poorer families entirely stripped of their income when their husbands and sons don't have a paycheck to send home anymore. You've got weapons and equipment suppliers who have no one to sell to, because their customers don't need weapons and equipment anymore. You've got investors who have seen how lucrative the PMC business has gotten investing in it left and right suddenly seeing the stock drop like a rock. It's simply a very simplified metaphor for the economy as a whole; whether or not it's either believable or even an acceptable Hand Wave / Justification is up to you, but this seems to be the intent, at least.
 * So, in the end...why was the massive Gambit Roulette in MGS 4 really needed in the first place? Why didn't  Granted   In the end, to this troper, quit a bit of MGS4's plot seems to fall into the we could have avoided all this category.
 * Because Snake and Otacon needed the help of the Patriots to get the job done. Drebin was working for the Patriots, as was Rat Patrol, and pretty much all the support they got came from them. Snake and company thought they were keeping Ocelot from destroying the Patriots. They didn't want to help the Patriots, but they felt it was a better option than letting Ocelot take them down.
 * Because Naomi and Snake have bad blood. It's certainly muddied and not necessarily even rational by that point, all things considered, but it's safe to say that it's not something she's just spontaneously let go of. Neither has Snake; he clearly doesn't want her being on the Nomad earlier in the game, and for an extra helping of Ho Yay, just look at his face every time she hits on Otacon.
 * Naomi I used to wonder about it, myself. I even posted a question on this very page that looks remarkably like that one...Oh wait, I'm the one who made that post in the first place! And now I've answered my own question.
 * The thing that has bugged me since I played MGS4 (that is, apart from why Snake had to go through the microwave oven corridor) is whether the opening line of "The war has changed" is a Shout Out to the Fallout's "War never changes"?.. I know that MGS is full of that trope, but Fallout? It just seems not a very likely candidate.
 * Considering the line is the exact opposite of what Ron Perlman says in Fallout, it's either a Take That or, more likely, it wasn't done with Fallout in mind at all. To delve deeper into it; in context, both statements are true anyway. In Fallout armed conflict is still little more than people with weapons using them against each other to settle disputes and gain resources. The nuances of warfare have changed in the Metal Gear timeline by the time Guns of the Patriots takes place; OILIX all but ensures no resource wars are fought, and the War Economy turns armed conflict into a direct for-profit business.
 * It seems more like a reference to 1984's unending resource consumption war, actually.
 * It's supposed to be a bit of a take that to the game industry and the MGS series itself which started off as stealth action with a bit of puzzle elements to this stealth action game with explosives and multiplayer.
 * See this comic.
 * Okay, so GEKKOs aren't Metal Gears because they don't carry nuclear weapons. So what's RAY, then?
 * An anti-Metal Gear. Otacon mentioned that RAY was still considered a "Metal Gear" in terms of nuclear strategy. RAY was designed as a REX killer, so having one meant removing the enemy's nuclear launch capability.
 * I came into the series after number 4 was released, and was spoiled for a few things (like the existence of Raiden). So Naked Snake being Big Boss was originally supposed to be a twist, right? Who did everybody think he was for the whole game? Did they think Solid was time travelling or something?
 * That was never much of a twist, most people figured that out after the first trailers. But they never did state it outright, so it could've passed some people by.
 * The whole idea of "The War Economy" is just stupid. I know, I know,  but the problem is those invested in the War Economy do not know that. The basic problem with "the War Economy" is that 1). War is not a "commodity," no matter how much Snake/Kojima insists it is and 2). killing people and breaking things doesn't actually produce wealth unless you kill people and break things in a specific territory to harvest its resources and create manufacturing. Also 3). armies and mercenaries don't produce money; they consume it, and at best, prevent (more) money from being lost (for instance, by protecting one's investments from foreign invaders/pirates/whatever).
 * I think the point is that since the United States goes hardcore unilateral post-Sons of Liberty, much of the world relies on the PMCs for military protection; in the first three acts, the PMCs have all been hired to put down revolutions, and the revolutionaries themselves are hiring smaller, local PMCs to fill out their own ranks. The idea seems to be that the PMCs have become an inextricable part of society. Imagine, for example, that [McDonalds] goes out of business. Many would cheer that a large corporation often seen as putting profit and effective marketing over morality gets taken down, but there would be consequences; the producers who provide the product have no one to sell their massive stocks to. The delivery companies who ship it have no one to deliver to. The hundreds of thousands of workers don't even have the option of just finding new customers and are simply no longer making an income; they no longer have money to spend at Wal Mart or Insert Commonly Shopped At Store Of Choice, so even other companies seemingly unaffected notice a profit loss, maybe to the point of laying people off. It's the same with the Big Five PMCs which, remember, are larger than the entire US military as a whole; if fighting stops, their only source of income stops with it. You've got literally millions of grunts who are suddenly out of a job with no useful skills they can use to find a new one (and, indeed, they may not even be mentally stable enough for work once they lose SOP) and even if they could, there wouldn't be enough jobs to go around for them all. They're not spending the money they used to be earning on other parts of the economy, and it goes beyond the soldiers; Eva insinuates that joining a PMC is the only employment option many have at all, so you've suddenly got poorer families entirely stripped of their income when their husbands and sons don't have a paycheck to send home anymore. You've got weapons and equipment suppliers who have no one to sell to, because their customers don't need weapons and equipment anymore. You've got investors who have seen how lucrative the PMC business has gotten investing in it left and right suddenly seeing the stock drop like a rock. It's simply a very simplified metaphor for the economy as a whole; whether or not it's either believable or even an acceptable Hand Wave / Justification is up to you, but this seems to be the intent, at least.
 * So, in the end...why was the massive Gambit Roulette in MGS 4 really needed in the first place? Why didn't  Granted   In the end, to this troper, quit a bit of MGS4's plot seems to fall into the we could have avoided all this category.
 * Because Snake and Otacon needed the help of the Patriots to get the job done. Drebin was working for the Patriots, as was Rat Patrol, and pretty much all the support they got came from them. Snake and company thought they were keeping Ocelot from destroying the Patriots. They didn't want to help the Patriots, but they felt it was a better option than letting Ocelot take them down.

So, Ocelot couldn't have asked Snake, because then the Patriots wouldn't have given him all the support he needed to get the job done.
 * But the only reason Snake needed all that support was * because* he was fighting Ocelot in the first place. If Ocelot and Naomi had managed to somehow bring Snake and Otacon in on their plan, most of that fighting would have been unnecisary. And everyone assumed that Ocelot was the biggest threat because neither he or Naomi ever revealed the full extent of their plan and how they were going to accomplish it.
 * This is the troper who posted the original post above; after thinking about it for a while, he realized that the actions of Ocelot/Liquid and Naomi make sense if we assume that  At least thats what makes the most sense to this troper, a lot more sense than the idea that  . Now the only question is
 * One thing thats bothered this troper; why exactly was the  even necessary in the first place? It is easy to understand why it was necessary from the perspective of what the player knew from MGS2;   But that explanation doesn;t work in terms of the actual story. The only in game explanation we get is that
 * But dialogue in MGS 4 seems to imply that  So how was Liquid any less of a threat in the secrets department?
 * Note that the Big Five PMCs were set up by the Patriots so they could control all sides of the War Economy; the entire thing is their design. By being their best, loyal operative, Ocelot ensured that he would be set up as the man in charge of it, which puts him in the position of being able to set everything in motion for "Liquid" to take over in the first place. As long as Ocelot is still loyal, the Patriots won't try to get rid of him, despite Liquid. It just gets way more out of hand than they were expecting; they thought their failsafes would mean that Liquid wouldn't have any real power and would have to keep things going the way they wanted it (other characters actually discuss this early on, when the goal is simply for Snake to kill Liquid and let the Patriots off the hook simply because their control is the lesser of two evils, and no one yet knew it was possible to remove them without removing civilization.) They were wrong.
 * Simple cause and affect.
 * How do The (New England) Patriots work under such a censorship system?
 * New England La-li-lu-le-los?
 * Best explanation; the system only filters the word out when someone who isn't relegated by the system says it to someone who is. Two people who are both enthralled by the system should, in theory, have no knowledge of the actual truth behind it. So, it's a safe bet that if two random PMC grunts are talking and say "patriots," they aren't talking about the La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo. Notice that this is the only circumstance in which we see it happen; Ocelot says "Patriots," and Dolph, who should have them being an important military officer, hears the replacement. Later, Snake says it and Meryl hears the replacement. There are holes, of course; President Johnson is able to tell Raiden about the Patriots, but it's not a hard sell that it's simply not perfect.
 * Can someone please explain just what the hell was happening throughout MGS4? Was Snake fighting the Patriots? Was he defending them? What was Ocelot's plan? Was he trying to fight the Patriots? Or exploit the SOP system? Whose side were the B&B basket-cases on? I remember the sequence of events that occurred during the game just fine (I think), but I cannot for the life of me understand what the point of any of it was.
 * Well, Ocelot's real plan was to have Snake eliminate the Patriots. His apparent plan, conceived in order to manipulate Snake into doing so, was to hack the SOP system to gain control of all weapons and nanomachines everywhere and, basically, rule the world. Snake was, very grudgingly, working for the Patriots because he felt at least their control was preferable to Liquid/Ocelot's. Ergo, Snake spends the whole game trying to kill Liquid and stop his plans, without realizing his actions are really serving to get rid of the Patriots and work toward Ocelot's real goal. The B&B's were Ocelot's shock troops.
 * Thanks, that definitely helped clear it up.
 * Who, exactly, is flying the Nomad? None of the characters we see seem to be on that duty.
 * You're talking about a series where walking nuclear death tanks are the norm. Auto-Pilot isn't very farfetched.
 * You can see pilots in some scenes. They're most likely people who agreed with their goals and helped out pro bono.
 * Philanthropy is funded on the hush-hush by Campbell slipping then United Nations cash; if they can afford the Nomad in the first place, it shouldn't be too hard to pay the pilots, assuming the pilots aren't UN employees themselves.
 * Why are the FROGS all female? they're not faster, stronger, more agile or smarter than men; the Cyborg Ninja and the Arsenal Tengu have pretty much the same capabilities. The only logical reason I can ever think of is full of Unfortunate Implications - namely that Liquid Ocelot has some kind of fetish and is deliberately hiring a squad of elite women soldiers to be at his beckoned call day and night. We have no idea what the recruitment policy for the FROGS is... what if they're all mind controlled by SOP? after all, it does look as if they all have pretty reasonable bodies underneath all that armour.
 * The Unfortunate Implications are probably the most logical thing to fall back on, Liquid being a Complete Monster and all.
 * Maybe Ocelot feels they will be more loyal? Sort of a sorority effect, perhaps? That, or maybe he is countering Snake's tried and true tactic of pornographic magazines by using an all-women force.
 * More Metal Gear Solid 4 shenanigans. After Raging Raven, when Snake and Eva meet Ocelot. Snake, I know that it would only cause bleeding, but honestly, you've had far worse; why don't you take out the fucking stun knife instead of letting Liquid turn it on twice while it's still in your shoulder? Infact, he seems to outright ignore it through the ensuing event when he's given multiple chances to remove it, only caring when Drebin arrives and yanks it out.
 * It would actually do more damage coming out than going in. He still seems able to use the arms, so it's theoretically best just to wait for a medic.
 * And even if he removed the kinfe during the fight, that just means he's lost his good arm holding the knife, and is now bleeing out and getting his ass kicked.
 * When Ocelot shuts down the SOP system at the end of Third Sun, Akiba doesn't have nanomachines. Which means he must have a laundered gun. Which means he should still be able to shoot. He could just choke up on his nausea and fire, or try and toss his gun(s) to someone else.
 * He was sick, hence why he was still on his hands and knees at the start of the scene.
 * What bugs me about that scene is why the US soldiers didn't immediately fire upon Liquid the moment they saw him, if they had done that before he had activated his system override then he would have died. Story over.
 * Because they're there to take him into custody. Meryl orders him to surrender and gives him the opportunity to do so. If she actually knew what Liquid was going to do, she may very well have ordered the Marines to open fire immediately, but she didn't. In fact, much of the friction between her and Snake at this point comes from Snake trying to warn her off, because Snake knows Liquid has something up his sleeve, but he doesn't know what exactly, and Meryl thinks he's just being a curmudgeon. Meryl also has an implicit trust in the system and believes Liquid is simply crazy; she doesn't believe breaches in the system beyond what Drebin does are possible.
 * Something that always bothered me about the Mosin Nagant is that it can't be reconfigured back into a lethal sniper rifle, Metal Gear Solid 4 allowed you to switch between lethal and non-lethal (or less than lethal if you want) with the shotguns so why can't it too? The gun can clearly be modified, so I don't see why they don't allow us to modify back and forth as we choose.
 * With the shotgun you're not modifying the gun itself,you're simply changing the type of ammo you use (either normal shotgun shells or rubber-bullet ones). The shotguns themselves are the exact same, it's just what shells you load into them. Meanwhile the Mosin Nagant has been modified to fire darts, and thus is not compatiable with normal bullets.
 * Notice that I never said that the shotgun was modified to take in its non-lethal ammo, I understand that you don't have to modify a shotgun to allow it to fire different kinds of ammo. The Mosin Nagant has had its internal firing mechanisms modified so that it can fire tranquilizer darts but what I was suggesting that similar to how you can add/remove attachments to other guns the Mosin Nagant should have the parts that require it to fire regular bullets and darts to be changed out with the click of a button.
 * The other in-game modifications are external modifications. You can take on and off any of those accessories on the field, because those modifications are made for that. Modifying the Mosin Nagant was something that probably involves taking the gun's firing action apart completely, and is something you'd need to go to a trained gunsmith with the right tools and parts--not something that Snake could conceivably do in the field.
 * Why wasn't Johnny ever punished for his legion of crimes? In Metal Gear Solid Johnny was a member of the Genome army when they captured Shadow Moses island; that made him directly or indirectly responsible for terrorism, kidnap of two high ranking officials, death of two high ranking officials (one of which was a Patriot!), destruction of two F1-17's, theft of a top secret weapon, threatening a nuclear strike and treason against the United States. I can guarantee you could make at least one of these crimes stick against him. But that's not all because after somehow escaping all punishment for these crimes he aligns himself with the Gurlukovich mercenaries making him once again directly or indirectly responsible for terrorism (again), kidnap and death of the President of the USA, kidnap of high ranking VIP's, death of a Patriot spy, theft of Metal Gear Ray, theft of Arsenal Gear, threatening a nuclear strike (again) and illegally entering the United States (remember that he MUST have been on Arsenal Gear dressed as a Tengu when it collided with New York because there is no other way he could have escaped the Big Shell). Even if you don't believe he is guilty of any of this, both the Shadow Moses and Big Shell terrorist acts occurred post 9/11 which, like the Taliban, probably would have got him a comfy cell at Guantanamo. At the very least you would think the NYPD would want to skin him alive considering he had just crashed into their city.
 * You have to consider that the Patriots don't care about the grunts in these terrorist operations, guys like Liquid and Solidus would be their real targets. A guy like Johnny? A footnote, a screw-up, a no-body, he wouldn't even be on their radar. By the way Johnny having a fear of shots would have simply been a regular guard on Shadow Moses and not a Genome Soldier, and since he didn't have Big Boss's genes in him he most likely wouldn't have had any sympathy for Liquid's aims and got caught up in the terrorism in a kill or be killed sort of situation. That also means that Johnny had no genetic value to be kept in captivity like the Genome Soldiers. The Gurlukovich Mercenaries put Johnny on patrol and had a very low opinion of him, they only gave him the job out of sympathy for him having once worked with Liquid, and therefore wouldn't have had any significant role in their plans. Also given the top secret nature of these terrorist incidents the NYPD most likely wouldn't have any knowledge of the people who were directly involved in these acts of terrorism.
 * The Patriots aren't stupid enough to not take the small time and effort to feed out the remaining handful of individuals that are still walking around with all the national secrets. Johnny WOULD be on the Patriots ****list, but as it happens, he doesn't have nanomachines, which is how the Patriots gather their intel. As through actual regular channels, as was said for Shadow Moses, the DEA was imprisoned, the DARPA chief died and Solidus and the Colonel disappeared leaving nobody with proper clearance in charge of the black op. Johnny like Rex slippe through the paper work. With the Big Shell Incident it was the same story, President dead, Colonel Ames dead, the AI destroyed, Ocelot'body was hijacked by Liquid for a while, New York was destroyed, Johnny and the other Gurlukivich mercenares that survived probably just took off.
 * In Metal Gear Solid 4 we discover the fact that Ocelot was a Patriot and that he was faking being taken over by Liquid - OK, fair enough. The problem is that Metal Gear Solid 4 brings up so many continuity issues with Metal Gear Solid 2 over this retcon that it's actually quite amazing.
 * 1) In 2 he was trying to track down the location of the Wisemans committee despite knowing that they were all dead, was unaware of what the S3 program was and even seemed unaware of the existence of the Patriots AI's (he seemed to believe GW was just another supercomputer). Now I realize Ocelot is the master of the double take but how at all did any of this further his plans? And did he actually HAVE a plan at this point?
 * Tracking down the location of the Wiseman's Committee was Solidus's plan, and based on what we learn from MGS4 a side effect of the S3 Program would result in them being able to create Solid Snake caliber soldiers as this is applied to the PM Cs with their nanomachines so Ocelot's statements about S3 were partially true. MGS4 puts it in clear enough terms that Ocelot did know about the Patriot A Is, the entire reason he was there was so that he could oversee the test trials of S3 to see if it was successful and then take control of the AI network and command them. The PMCs in MGS4 were not founded by Liquid Ocelot the Patriots created them and were going to give Ocelot command over them to grow the war economy further solidifying their control over the Earth. Ocelot's entire plan throughout MGS4 was about working this system to his advantage and taking the Patriots down at their own game, by taking down the system he would destroy the Patriots and free Big Boss.
 * 2)Why did he begin The Plan of faking being taken over by Liquid moments before he tried to wipe them out with a missile barrage from Ray? it kind of made sense in 2 because we all thought that Liquid actually had possessed Ocelot, but after we learn of his deception in 4, this action doesn't actually make a lick of sense.
 * If you ever read the MGS4 Database it states that during the time of MGS2 the possession was real, it refers to Liquid's personality/essence/will having taken over Ocelot and in response to this Ocelot removes the arm. The question you might be asking is if he got rid of Liquid why perpetuate the persona? Ocelot did it to make the Patriots repeat their program like patterns, if he put the threat of Liquid in front of the Patriots they would send in Snake and if he presented GW then they would send a virus to stop it. Ocelot was assigned control of the PM Cs by the Patriots and he let his Liquid persona mess around to serve as a distraction because he knew that the restrictions the network placed would prevent him from starting an all-out revolution leaving the Patriots content to leave him alone for the time being, all the while GW was being reconstructed so that he could gain access to the Patriot's network and take over. Once Liquid Ocelot had control of the Patriot AI the virus that they inevitably were going to send along with Snake would be inserted into GW and he would let them do it so the the entire network would be deleted with GW, as Big Boss says the Patriots are only a program only being able to repeat certain patterns and this is what led to their downfall.
 * 3)If for some reason he HAD to start his deception there, why put on theLiquid voice throughout 2 when in 4 he's using the same old gravelly Ocelot voice?. This is a problem because they made such a pointed fuss about it in 2 that it stands out a mile in 4.
 * As explained by point 2 the lack of Liquid's voice should actually be a case of fridge brilliance, no Liquid no British accent.
 * How do the Dwarf Gekko lose so much intelligence between act 3 and act 4? Previously they were able to actively track Solid Snake a legendary seasoned stealth expert, through a town without him noticing and were intelligent enough to hide if he did. On Shadow Moses however they become little more than gun cameras. Wouldn't it have been far more interesting to have instead forced you to deal with at least a few stealth versions that could have played a game of cat and mouse - during/instead of the boss fight in the snowfield would have been an excellent spot. Especially as this is meant to be a stealth based game.
 * The Dwarf Gekko never follow you anywhere exposed to the snow, so logic would dictate that they can't function in those conditions. That only leaves the interior of the facility, and it's design doesn't lend itself towards stalking. From the PMC's perspective it makes more sense to use them as guards to prevent access to the facility, relying on numbers to deal with you (even your stalker example in act 3 only suceeded because Snake didn't have a reason to suspect he was being followed, and when caught went down very quickly). So either you ahve stealth versions where they just duck behind the limited cover (which just makes the whole exercise annoying and pointless since you can just keep going on your way; they're only a threat in close ranges) or allow you to shoot them on site, in which case they go down with three shots from a handgun.
 * I've never put a gun in a microwave, but, shouldn't some of Snake's ammo have started cooking off at some point during the microwave hallway? I mean, his artificial muscle suit was fucking glowing white hot. (And don't tell me nanomachines stopped it. Fairly sure they can't, without violating Conservation of Energy somehow.)
 * It doesn't appear that Snake has his gun on him as he is desperately crawling through that microwave hallway, if you pay attention in the following scene he pulls his M4 out of literally no where to combat the Mini-Gekkos. (3-legged robots) This implies that the MK. II was carrying it. (don't think about that too hard) Anyway realistically the gun itself would have survived even if it would be a little hot to the touch afterward, but the ammo in the gun would have gone off as the heat from the microwaves would have ignited the gun-powder. This has been tested and bullets do go off when put in a microwave. For reference think of how Volgin ignites his bullets by flowing electricity into them, the bullets only need a single spark to make them explode and fire.
 * So the whole point of Act 4 was to recover the rail gun from the original Rex to destroy JD? Aren't there meant to be hundreds of mass produced Rex's across the world, most of which are in the hands of non-US affiliated countries? Just get your hands on one of these and fire it's rail gun - I'm sure most of these Metal Gear equipped countries either 1) hate the US or 2) hate the SOP equipped PMC's currently kicking their ass. On that note, why did Ocelot even need to defeat SOP in the first place? Shadow Moses is abandoned and unguarded; a small SOP-free insertion team could have easily snuck under in the radar, stole both Rex and it's nuclear payload, and then shot down JD as soon as it left the Rex Hangar; Ocelot would be completely immune to any SOP based reprisals because as long as he has deniability, he could easily claim it was any of the other hundreds of terrorist groups across the world, escaping blame long enough in order to execute the rest of his plans... there is literally no way the Patriots could have pinned it on him.
 * The game explains it by saying that all of those knock-off Rexs had been regulated to pretty much the same role that regular nuclear missile silos and submarines are subjected to, namely they have to have codes inputted by high-level officials in order to be able to fire their nukes in order to prevent them from being fired unnecessarily. Even some of the rogue nations that created Rexs had the Patriots secretly smuggle in SOP parts that would prevent them from attacking the United States, the Patriots thought things out before those blue-prints were sent out to the world. The original REX could fire its nuke with no problem and that is why Liquid Ocelot wanted it, by hijacking the Small Arms of the world the Patriots wouldn't be able to mount a counter-assault in time to prevent JD from being destroyed.
 * The game explains it by saying that all of those knock-off Rexs had been regulated to pretty much the same role that regular nuclear missile silos and submarines are subjected to, namely they have to have codes inputted by high-level officials in order to be able to fire their nukes in order to prevent them from being fired unnecessarily. Even some of the rogue nations that created Rexs had the Patriots secretly smuggle in SOP parts that would prevent them from attacking the United States, the Patriots thought things out before those blue-prints were sent out to the world. The original REX could fire its nuke with no problem and that is why Liquid Ocelot wanted it, by hijacking the Small Arms of the world the Patriots wouldn't be able to mount a counter-assault in time to prevent JD from being destroyed.