Metal Gear/Characters Introduced in Metal Gear And Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake

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Solid Snake/Old Snake/Iroquois Plissken/David ("!")

Voiced by: Akio Ohtsuka (JP), David Hayter (EN)

The star of the Metal Gear series, Solid Snake is an infiltration specialist whose exploits usually revolve around destroying the titular Metal Gears, nuclear-armed Humongous Mecha whose very existence shifts the balance of power in the world dramatically. Through this, he becomes entangled in a massive web of control and deceit centered around The Patriots, a shadowy Ancient Conspiracy group that want to Take Over the World.

  • Alliterative Code Name
  • Anti-Hero: Type II, arguably was or still is Type IV in the first Solid game (with the strong implication of the occasional flirting with Type V).
  • Anti-Anti-Christ: He was originally created, along with his brothers, to enforce the Patriots will (albeit unknowingly), but he eventually managed to destroy them and save the planet from their control.
  • Badass
    • Badass Grandpa: In MGS4 due to Clone Degeneration.
    • Badass Mustache: In MGS4.
    • Badass Normal: Is able to take on a world of cyborgs, psychics, and supernaturally empowered warriors and win.
      • Technically he's a Badass Abnormal, as he was a clone of Big Boss and not a natural human being.
      • He brought down a Hind-D helicopter by himself, piloted by a guy who used it to take down two F-16s. And he took out a tank by himself.
    • Blood Knight: Heavily implied in Metal Gear Solid by Liquid Snake, Psycho Mantis, and Meryl Silverburgh (and she's one of the good guys, to boot) to enjoy killing and battle, and in Psycho Mantis's case, is arguably worse than Liquid Snake.
      • This is one of the central conflicts of his character. When he fails in living a peaceful lifestyle (similar to his father) Snake decides to put his Blood Knight tendencies to good causes.
    • One-Man Army
    • Pop-Cultured Badass: If "Sons of Liberty" is anything to go by, he's a fan of Escape from New York.
    • Retired Badass: He's dragged out of retirement in Metal Gear 2 and Metal Gear Solid.
  • Bad Liar: While not as bad of a liar as, say, Roy Campbell or even his father Big Boss, it is clear that he isn't all that good at lying, as evidenced with his first appearance: he states that he got to the Big Shell via a fast-rope descent from a Navy Chopper, yet that exact moment one of the sea lice from earlier falls out from him. Likewise, he disguises himself as a Navy SEAL, yet he gets portions of his uniform wrong (headsets are only used for commanders, who are kept off the battlefield at all costs), and he quotes the wrong military mottos (he says "Semper Fi" and "Who Dares, Wins", which are the Marines and the British Special Air Service mottos, respectively). Also overlaps into Paper-Thin Disguise.
  • Be All My Sins Remembered: He does not like it when someone calls him a hero.
  • Big Brother Mentor: To Raiden.
  • Byronic Hero

Solid Snake: I'm just a man who's good at what he does, killing. There's no winning or losing for a mercenary. I've never fought for anyone but myself, I've got no purpose in life, no ultimate goal. It's only when I'm cheating death on the battlefield, the only time I feel truly alive.

  • Charles Atlas Superpower
  • Child Soldier: Arguably one, as he was raised within the military.
  • Chivalrous Pervert: Snake exhibits this trait to several beautiful women, especially to Meryl, whom he notes has a cute butt, and to Mei Ling, too.
  • Cloning Blues
  • Cool Old Guy: To some extent...
  • The Danza: Although a coincidental example (since the name was already decided in the Japanese version), Solid Snake shares his real name of David with his English voice actor, David Hayter.
  • Dark Messiah: Kind of. He is shown to be willing to save the world, although that doesn't stop him from sometimes acting like a jerk towards his friends, and at one point manipulate a person into getting himself captured in a really complex method of Trojan Prisoner.
  • Decoy Protagonist: In MGS2, and only MGS2.
  • Defrosting Ice King: Part of his "Metal Gear Solid" character arc.
  • Determinator: Oh god yes. He crawls out of a microwave hallway WITH HIS FINGERTIPS!
    • It's the only reason Old Snake is still alive from start to finish.
  • Dirty Old Man: Considering what's happening to him by Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, he comes pretty close to the trope by his appearance and reading Playboys to increase his psyche gauge (not to mention giving implied regret of retiring too soon when he hears that Mei Ling apparently got a promotion after catching an eye with an admiral that was implied to be of this trope), even if he is technically middle-aged.
  • Driven to Suicide: In MGS4, Solid Snake intends to kill himself at a graveyard in order to prevent himself from infecting the world with FOXDIE. It as subverted, though, as he ultimately couldn't go through with it, plus it turned out killing himself proved to be completely unnecessary anyway.
  • Eighties Hair: God, that mullet...
    • Slightly less mullety in the second game, more just generally longish and held back by the bandanna. It's most obviously such while disguised as Plisken and not wearing said bandanna. But he is totally rocking the old man mullet in MGS4.
  • Evil Counterpart: Psycho Mantis, during his dying speech, implies that Solid Snake is this to Liquid Snake, stating that he was as bad as Liquid after declaring that he saw true evil, which was Snake, before correcting himself and states that he's actually worse than Liquid.
  • Embarrassing Nickname: Snake really hates it when people call him "Old Snake". In fact, just hearing the moniker takes a quarter of its psyche out.
  • Eyepatch of Power: The Solid Eye System.
  • Female Gaze
  • Flashback Nightmare: Mentioned a few times in his appearances. The first time was in ‘’Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake’’ when encountering Big Boss at Zanzibar Land, where he states that he took the mission to get rid of the nightmares relating to Outer Heaven that he experienced since his mission to Outer Heaven. In ‘’Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty’’, its strongly implied that Snake was suffering from nightmares from Shadow Moses (contacting Pliskin while Snake is asleep will have him mumbling something before abruptly screaming Liquid's name, presumably this part was during their fight on REX). Finally, in ‘’Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots’’, not only does Snake have a nightmare regarding his entry into Shadow Moses, the player even plays the nightmare in Act 4.
  • Good Is Not Nice: And he's proud of it! Good doesn't need to be nice...!
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Variation in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Because of his rapidly aging body, the FOXDIE virus that Naomi Hunter injected into him during the Shadow Moses Incident was slowly mutating to the point that, by the time three months passed, FOXDIE would kill indiscriminately within three months before killing Snake another three months, all after he spent his life eliminating Metal Gears, he would essentially become a bioweapon, something Naomi even lampshades. It was barely subverted, however, when Big Boss reveals that the new FOXDIE uprooted the old, meaning he was no longer a biological threat to the world.
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation
  • Humanoid Abomination: Strongly implied to be such by Vulcan Raven:

Vulcan Raven: You are a snake which was not created by Nature. You and the Boss... you are from another world... a world that I do not wish to know.

  • Informed Flaw: We only have Mantis's word that Snake is more evil than Big Bad Liquid.
  • In the Blood: Solid Snake is a designer baby made with the DNA of "the greatest soldier ever."
  • I Read It for the Articles: It is strongly implied that Solid Snake has other reasons for possessing dirty magazines besides using them as bait to distract enemies. In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, he refers to the magazines as having "educational value" when trying to convince Raiden that having them isn't that bad, and if the player reads the magazines in the model viewer in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, his Psyche Gauge goes up. Because of his aging problem in the latter game, it also in a way overlaps into Dirty Old Man.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: Quite possibly the best example in gaming.
  • Jerkass: And proud of it!
  • Light Is Good / Dark Is Not Evil: Liquid referred to himself and Snake as "the brother of light" and "the brother of dark", although of whom he was specifically referring to in regards to the titles is never actually specified.
    • Big Mama specifically refers to him as a "shadow, which no light can shine on."
  • Made of Iron
  • Magnetic Hero
  • Meaningful Name: His real name, David, is a Hebrew name that derives from the Old Testament Hebrew ruler, King David, who managed to slay the giant Goliath with nothing more than a slingshot and a dagger prior to becoming the king of Israel. Solid Snake, in a similar fashion, has managed to overcome seemingly impossible odds despite being the Les Enfant Terribles clone that contained supposedly inferior genes.
    • That and he takes on giant war robots with nothing but a rocket launcher (and sometimes less) on a regular basis.
  • Messianic Archetype
  • Military Brat: A rare literal example, as not only is he "related" to someone in the Military (Big Boss, he's a clone of him), but according to the novelization for Metal Gear Solid as well as implied in the source material and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, he was raised within the military from a very early age.
  • Mr. Fanservice
  • The Paragon Always Rebels: Sort of. It became somewhat clear that Solid Snake, after the Shadow Moses Incident, was willing to commit actions that would at the very least get people both foreign and domestic hateful of him enough to issue a bounty on his head, and then the Patriots were ticked off enough at him to try to orchestrate the sinking of a tanker in part to frame Solid Snake.
  • Perma-Stubble
  • Properly Paranoid: In MGS2's tanker chapter, Snake expresses vocal concern about his mission onboard the tanker, citing that it might be a trap, and also expressing genuine worry that the guards weren't undergoing enough SOP. He's right on both fronts, as the former was revealed to be true as a smear campaign against Philanthropy instigated by the Patriots, and the latter had the Gurlukovich Mercenaries (and later, Ocelot) killing the Marines with ease.
  • Psycho for Hire: See Blood Knight above, most specifically Liquid Snake's line about Solid Snake enjoying all the killing when on REX.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran
  • Shrouded in Myth: It seems like everyone who meets Snake for the first time has some sort of memetic badass picture of him.
  • Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes: The lowest he has gone to is Type II, but it is heavily implied in Metal Gear Solid that he has flirted with Type V.
  • Smoking Is Cool: Until he finally quits in the fourth game.
    • Ironically, he actually tells Raiden not to smoke as it would "stunt his growth" in a Codec conversation. Even with trying to cover his identity (he was disguised as Pliskin, after all, to keep his "death" faked), the fact that he actually carried cigarettes around (he was the one who gave Raiden the cigarettes in the first place) would borderline Hypocritical Humor.
  • Super Soldier: Was a clone of Big Boss, and via the Super Baby Method he was one of two surviving fetuses in a method of abortions of the fetal growth.
  • Tall, Dark and Snarky
  • Typhoid Mary: He unknowingly carries the FOXDIE virus, engineered to kill the members of FOXHOUND as well as those involved in creating Metal Gear REX (ie, the ArmsTech President Kenneth Baker).
  • Underwear of Power: Snake's sneaking-suit may count.
  • Warrior Poet
  • Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: It is implied when Snake reveals his true identity in ‘’Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty’’ that the organization that he founded, Philanthropy, committed actions that were comparable to terrorism during their missions, barring the Tanker Incident.
  • Zen Survivor
  • Younger Than He Looks: An extremely tragic example of this: Because of his genes being tampered with during his creation, he starts looking like he is in his 80s even when he is actually closer to being 42 years of age, and it is implied that he'll die by 43 at the latest.
  • Youngest Child Wins: Possibly inverted: As of ‘’Metal Gear Solid 4’’, he is the only one of the Les Enfants Terribles children who not only survived, but can live in peace for the rest of their lives, and he's the eldest of the children (or at the very least the middle child).

Big Boss/Naked Snake/John/Jack

Naked Snake: Akio Ohtsuka (JP), David Hayter (EN)
Big Boss: Chikao Ohtsuka (JP), Richard Doyle (EN)

After saving the world from nuclear Armageddon back in 1964, a man named John is christened "Big Boss" by America for slaying his teacher and adoptive mother, known as The Boss, from whom he also inherits the title of "The Greatest Warrior of The Twentieth Century."

He later goes on to found the private military company Militaires Sans Frontieres and the black ops group FOXHOUND. In the first ‘’Metal Gear’’ game Big Boss secretly leads the uprising at Outer Heaven and sends FOXHOUND rookie Solid Snake to investigate it, not expecting that he will actually survive. In ‘’Metal Gear 2’’ Big Boss takes control of Zanzibar Land and kidnaps a scientist who developed an alternative fuel source. Solid Snake is sent in to rescue the scientist, and ultimately kills Big Boss with a makeshift flamethrower.

Originally the Big Bad of the first two Metal Gear games (the latter of the two, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, giving him shades of an Anti-Villain), Big Boss undergoes a massive dose of Character Development during his stint as a Player Character, becoming more of a Tragic Hero.

  • Alliterative Code Name
  • A Father to His Men
  • Anti-Villain: Type III
  • Badass
  • Bad Liar: During the Peace Walker incident, whenever confronted in regards to why Big Boss is in Costa Rica, he always comes up with a lie about why he's there, a lie that's very easy to pick apart.
    • Examples of the poorly-crafted lies that he made:
      • Claiming that he was Colombian bird photographer when meeting Amanda and the FSLN (which, not only is his camera not even set right, but when he rescues Chico, he actually slips up and calls himself a War Photographer, to which he says in a somewhat unsure tone to cover up his mistake that he takes pictures of "the birds at the battlefield.")
      • Claiming that he's an Entymologist, and that he's looking for the Ulysses butterfly, and then corrects himself to mean the Morphos butterfly when Huey points out that Ulysses butterflies are not present in Costa Rica, and claims that he is trying to get some for the CITES Washington Treaty before being told that they aren't covered in the treaty.
      • Claiming that he's an Ornithologist and that he was looking for the Quetzal for the CITES Washington Treaty.
  • Benevolent Boss: There's a reason why his followers have undying, genuine loyalty to Big Boss.
  • Blood Knight: One of his primary reasons for creating Outer Heaven, and later, Zanzibar Land, was to give him and his soldiers a place where they can go to war endlessly, due to the fact that he only ever felt truly alive when fighting in a war. He did originally intend and, more importantly, attempted to live his life peacefully after Operation Snake Eater (namely as an instructor or a hunting guide), but he ended up dragged back onto the Battlefield.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: The man is a total geek over his guns and cardboard boxes.
    • Also, he apparently has a tendency to misunderstand exactly how some items are considered valuable to most people in other ways besides battle. In Portable Ops, in a conversation with Para-Medic, Para-Medic explains about El Dorado and that even though it technically doesn't exist, there is evidence to suggest that there were similar civilizations that used gold even in the present, and mentioned that they used Gold Knives. Snake expressed interest in the knives, although not in regards to its value as much as using the knife to distract the enemy so he could CQC them into submission, with Para-Medic exhasperatedly explaining that she wasn't meaning that. In Peace Walker, Paz explains to Big Boss about the Stone Spheres in Costa Rica, where it is not known what they were used for, but Big Boss guesses that he could use them for a trap, and that being nearly perfect spheres would make them perfect for rolling down slopes, causing Paz to express shock at what Big Boss is implying.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: Big Boss' superior soldier genes apparently have some mutant healing factor thrown in for good measure, since he's able to still move around after breaking his legs twenty times as long as he's put splints on them.
  • Cigar Chomper
  • Composite Character: Made out of the coolest equal parts of John J Rambo and Commander James Bond.
    • And in his later years, Sean Connery.
  • Cool Old Guy
  • Dark Messiah
  • Defector From Decadence: Big Boss lost some respect for his native land after he learned that The Boss was in fact innocent of defection and that the US Government cast her aside because of an unanticipated factor involving Volgin and a nuclear weapon. Eventually, he ended up leaving the Patriots after Zero had Big Boss cloned without his knowledge or his consent.
  • Deuteragonist: He's got the second-most playable appearances after Snake, and plays a major role behind the scenes in the few games he doesn't appear in.
  • Disney Death
  • Even the Guys Want Him: Almost every guy shows some attraction to him.
  • Expy: Similar to Raiden in MGS2, Zadornov had intended to manipulate the entire mission of the Militaires Sans Frontieres, and especially Big Boss to, aside from launching a nuke at Cuba and making it seem as though America had done this (which unfortunately ends up working too well for his tastes) also intending to essentially mold Big Boss into the next Che Guevara, even going as far as to execute him right when he's at age 39 shortly thereafter both due to expending his usefulness and to orchestrate more rebellions that the KGB / Soviets could manipulate.
  • Extreme Omnivore: The first question he asks of any wildlife is how it tastes.
    • Surprisingly averted by Big Boss in Portable Ops and Peace Walker, when he actually declines on attempting to hunt for food during the San Hieronymo Takeover because he and his men have more than enough food with them as it is.
      • Though he still asks Paz what several of the animals in Costa Rica taste like.
  • Eyepatch of Power
  • Fallen Hero
  • Final First Hug: With Solid Snake
  • Flashback Nightmare: It's implied in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake that Big Boss himself suffered from nightmares from the battlefield (he reacts to Snake's mention of nightmares with some recognition). In Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Big Boss awakes from a nightmare that presumably was flashing back to his capture by the FOX unit and Null. In Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, the two instances that Big Boss was unconscious, he had dreams relating to his fights against The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
  • Good-Looking Privates
  • Go Out with a Smile
  • Grandpa What Massive Hotness You Have
  • He's Just Hiding: Not that he had much of a choice, though, given the fact that he was injected with will-subduing nanomachines shortly after being recovered from Zanzibar Land by the Patriots.
  • I Was Quite a Looker
  • Kill the Ones You Love
  • Made of Iron
  • Medal of Dishonor: Awarded for murdering The Boss to save America's face.
    • Made even more so when it is later made apparent that the reason that The Boss had to die didn't even to do with saving America's face and that a certain member of the American Government wanted her offed from the start, and actually manipulated the events of the ending of the Virtuous Mission just so there could be an excuse to send Naked Snake in to kill The Boss.
  • Magnetic Hero
  • Mole in Charge: He was leading both FOXHOUND and Outer Heaven during the 1990s. However, given what happened in Peace Walker, it's unknown how he was even able to hide his loyalties or ties to Outer Heaven in the first place, especially after Zero already knew about Big Boss's leadership of Outer Heaven, and attempted to gain control of it before eventually deciding to frame them with a nuclear strike on the US via an agent of Cipher due to Big Boss's refusal.
  • Redemption Equals Death
  • Ret Canon: Kind of. Prior to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the closest thing to a hint that Big Boss's original codename was Snake was in the non-canonical game "Snake's Revenge" where, despite the title being "Snake's Revenge," the only character who actually desired any revenge was Big Boss.
  • Scars Are Forever: Subverted in Peace Walker. It initially seemed like he cut himself a scar in the shape of The Boss's scar, but it is later revealed to be faked, having placed a jigsaw on his person by disguising it as a scar in case Snake got captured.
  • Slasher Smile: Seen in MGS3 during the Virtuous Mission, when about to shoot down a hornet’s nest around some KGB soldiers.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran
  • Smoking Is Cool Heck, he even smoke while he's dying, even lampshading it saying: “It's good isn't it?”
  • Snake I Am Your Father
  • The Paragon Always Rebels
  • Super Strength: Implied in Peace Walker, where Big Boss was capable of lifting up a sealed garage door to gain entry to Peace Walker's hangar twice with his own bare hands, and, at least in game play, bench-pressing even Cocoon.
  • Tall, Dark and Handsome
  • Tragic Hero
  • Training from Hell: It's strongly implied that he underwent this when under The Boss's tutelage and when joining FOX. In regards to the former, she tells Volgin (who at the time was electrocuting him with electric shocks that was heavily implied by him to be around ten million volts) that it wouldn't break him as she trained him not to, and in the case of the latter, Cunningham stated that his attempts at beating him wouldn't even qualify as torture to Snake due to his former FOX membership.
  • Unexplained Recovery
  • Unfortunate Name: Although his codename, Naked Snake, was intended to be a reference to the fact that he doesn't have any equipment or weapons on him besides for the clothes on his back, some characters in the sequels seem to misinterpret it as meaning that the codename meant that he was literally naked when he got it.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist
  • Wrote the Book: Came up with the name for the Hind D, alongside Zero and Sigint. Also co-invented CQC with The Boss and invented the use of the tactical cardboard box as a hiding place.
  • Zen Survivor

Gray Fox

Voiced by: Kaneto Shiozawa (JP, MGS1), Jun Fukuyama (JP, MGSPO), Greg Eagles (EN, MGS1), Rob Paulsen (EN, MGSTTS & MGS4), Larc Spies (EN, MGSPO)

Gray Fox is the only member of FOXHOUND ever to receive the Code Name of Fox, and not without good reason. Born to German/American and Vietnamese parents, Frank Jaeger had to grow up in harsh conditions. Originally a child soldier, he was one of the deadliest people on earth at just the tender age of eleven. Frank was rescued by Big Boss, who tried to leave him at a relief shelter where he could be safe, but he ended up getting abducted by the CIA/the Philosophers so they could turn him into the perfect soldier, codenamed Null.

After a series of complicated events, he ends up supporting Big Boss and Zanzibar Land, and then nearly dies, and is turned into the Cyborg Ninja. As the Ninja, Fox helps his old buddy Solid Snake one last time in Shadow Moses to take down Metal Gear REX.

  • Ascended Extra: Given Fox's major role in both, Metal Gear 2 and Metal Gear Solid, and the way Snake talks about him in later games as if Fox was some sort of mentor during the Outer Heaven incident, it's very surprising at how little Fox actually does in the first Metal Gear. He gets kidnapped, Snake rescues him, and he disappears for the rest of the game. You can even beat him to death with your bare fists which has little to no effect on the rest of the game game.
  • Back from the Dead: Unfortunately, thanks to Liquid, goes back on being dead - for good.
  • Badass: The original Cyborg Ninja.
  • Blood Knight: Not necessarily enjoying battle, but he does feel as though he needs war, as he isn't able to function in society if he is deprived of it.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: The method of his training as Null was placing him within a memory/emotion depriving tank, and presumably left without free will as a result.
  • Child Soldier: Most of his origin story entails this, as early as someone working at a work camp in the early stages of the Vietnam War to as late as being deployed in the Mozambician War of Independence, and later experimented upon.
  • Combat Sadomasochist: "Hurt me more, Snake!" Justified, as he wants to die especially after he was denied the chance to die by Dr. Clark and instead put through the Cyborg Ninja project, and preferably die a painful death of fighting.
  • Cyber Cyclops: His helmet does have eyeslits, but the big orange light in between draws most of the attention.
  • Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: By the time he is a Cyborg Ninja, he "should be dead" but is kept alive through prosthetics, though it really seems to cause him more suffering than just dying would. Being a guinea pig for dozens of cybernetic and gene therapy experiments probably didn't help either.
  • Death by Disfigurement: Dies just after losing an arm.
  • Death Seeker: In Solid.
  • The Dragon: To Big Boss in Metal Gear 2.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death: He gets squished by REX in at least two versions of Metal Gear Solid.
  • Friendly Enemy: He and Snake are best friends and war buddies, but conflicting ideologies pit them against each other in Metal Gear 2.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Goes out in a blaze of glory destroying Metal Gear REX's radome.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: In Twin Snakes, that's Yakko Warner who's itching for a rematch with Snake.
  • I Have Many Names - The only Metal Gear character to have more aliases than any of the Snakes or Ocelot (Frank Jaeger, Frank Hunter, Gray Fox, Deepthroat, Null, Cyborg Ninja)
  • Katanas Are Just Better
  • Machete Mayhem: In Portable Ops.
  • Meaningful Name: His surname is German for Hunter, as in Naomi Hunter's older brother, and is in itself derived from a common tactic he employed as a child soldier by stabbing the Portuguese soldiers with a single knife when they let their guard down.
    • Also, his codename during Portable Ops was Null, which is the German word for Zero and is meant to exemplify that he was a lost number in an unethical CIA project for creating the Perfect Soldier, due to being the Sole Survivor and Sole Success of the project.
  • My Hero Zero: He is known as Null in his youth during Portable Ops (Null is German for Zero).
  • My Master, Right or Wrong: Justified due to Big Boss saving his life twice (arguably three, if one does not count Vietnam and counts the two times he saved him in Portable Ops).
  • Nietzsche Wannabe: While he was under the persona of Null, Gray Fox indicated that he saw no point in life, feeling that even if he doesn't kill anyone, they still die anyways, and remarks tha the world is "full of death."
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot
  • Noble Demon
  • Psycho Prototype: Kind of. While not quite a prototype, it is known that he was the only successful test subject in the Perfect Soldier Project, as most of the other test subjects died from the procedure.
  • Recurring Boss: Null is fought twice in Portable Ops.
  • Retcon: His origin story in Portable Ops contradicts the original origin in Metal Gear 2. In Metal Gear 2, Gray Fox states that he first met Big Boss in Vietnam, where he was working in a labor camp as a half-white war orphan. In Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Naked Snake says he first met Gray Fox in Mozambique.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Fits the bill: He needs war despite clearly not liking it, has been through war enough times that he cannot function in society, and is also implied to suffer from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
  • Sixth Ranger: In Solid.
  • The Slow Walk: In the Twin Snakes remake.
  • Stealth Mentor: In Metal Gear 2 (where he provides anonymous radio support) and Metal Gear Solid (where he helps Snake despite wanting a fight to the death).
  • Super Soldier: He was even referred to as the Perfect Soldier in Portable Ops.
  • Super Speed: He was shown to be extremely fast even when he was not the cyborg ninja.
  • Trickster Mentor
  • The Obi-Wan
  • The Other Darrin: In Metal Gear Solid, Fox was voiced by Greg Eagles, who also did the DARPA Chief. In Twin Snakes, Fox was voiced by Rob Paulsen.
  • Tyke Bomb
  • Unexplained Recovery: Subverted: While he did ultimately survive Zanzibar Land, he also was recovered by a cleanup crew belonging to the Patriots and was experimented on by turning him into a cyborg ninja, and the process was heavily implied to be quite horrific and very, very painful. In fact, not only was he used as a guinea pig for the Cyborg Ninja project, but also the gene-therapy project as well, and had to be sedated with drugs for four months as they experimented on him. Also, at least two instances where Gray Fox encountered Snake before his final hurrah, he also spazzed out and seemed in pain, with the second time screaming for medicine as he was losing himself.

Introduced in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

Roy Campbell

Young Voice: Toshio Furukawa (JP), David Agranov (EN)
Old Voice: Takeshi Aono (JP), Paul Eiding (EN)

A rather amiable man, driven by duty and Snake's commanding officer, Campbell has been around for a long time. He's an old friend of Big Boss' and helped him defeat Gene in Portable Ops before helping establish FOXHOUND. He then fought helped Solid Snake fight Big Boss in Zanzibar Land, and was forced to pull Snake out of retirement for the Shadow Moses takeover. In MGS4 he sends Snake on ‘’another’’ mission, though it’s more of a personal favor, to hunt down and eliminate Liquid Ocelot.

He is Meryl Silverburgh’s father, which she did not know for most of her life. By MGS4 he is married to Rosemary, Raiden’s old girlfriend.

  • Badass
  • Bad Liar: Colonel Campbell, during the briefing, as well as the overall story in Metal Gear Solid, is terrible at lying. In the briefing, he tries to claim he participated in the mission because of inner desire for conflict, but Solid Snake saw through it. Later on, when suspicious things are occurring, it is further exemplified that Campbell is such a bad liar that whenever he tries to react with shock or deny any involvement, Snake seems to see through it.
  • Cool Old Guy
  • Chivalrous Pervert: In a few radio calls in Portable Ops, Campbell will often give advice to soldiers on how to land them chicks when asking him for advice, for which the subject matter, although initially similar, actually turns out to be quite different (namely it pertains to the battlefield). He also gave similar advice to Big Boss when giving advice to commanding soldiers. He also gave up an opportunity to go out with a woman he was attracted to for his brother's sake, which served as the reason why he joined the Green Berets in the first place.
  • Cowardly Sidekick: Heavily subverted during Portable Ops. Although he doesn't actually help Big Boss in any way besides driving a truck and occasionally planning missions with Big Boss and was initially reluctant to help, he actually had a very good reason for his limited involvement in the action and reluctance to get involved: His leg was broken at the time (not serious enough to be rendered completely incapable of moving, but enough to slow him down), and he also very early on in the mission suffered from malaria. Although the Malaria infection was gone shortly thereafter, he still had a broken leg for the remainder of the story.
  • Dirty Old Man: While he did apparently marry Rosemary, someone young enough to be his daughter in Snake's own words, he actually faked the marriage in order to protect her as well as Little John, the son of Rosemary and Raiden, from the Patriots.
    • He comes off as one in MGS2 as well; if you start doing perverted stuff like stalking around the women's bathroom and peeking under a female hostage's skirt, Rosemary will call to chew you out, while Campbell will sympathize with you. Of course, we discover later that he's not the real Colonel.
  • I Was Quite a Looker
  • I Have Your Niece/Daughter: This is the reason why Roy Campbell ended partaking in the Shadow Moses and why he had to keep secrets to Solid Snake, as the Pentagon and the Patriots arranged for the Sons of Big Boss to hold Meryl hostage by sending her in the same day they would revolt, and it is implied that they would have Meryl murdered if he refused to cooperate.
  • Mission Control
  • Reluctant Traitor: Roy Campbell, during the Shadow Moses Incident, was forced to lie to Snake as well as keep a lot of secrets from him during the mission because Richard Ames, and The Patriots, threatened both his life and Meryl's life if he didn't.
  • Retirement From Decadence: In the non-canon game Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, Roy Campbell retired from FOXHOUND due to guilt after a person named ANONYMOUS (later revealed to be Steve Gardner) supplied him with false information that terrorists were arriving back in America, and dispatched FOXHOUND to eliminate them, and it wasn't until after the fact that he learned that the "terrorists" that he and FOXHOUND ambushed were actually the Black Chamber unit.
  • Running Joke: See Chivalrous Pervert
  • Shout-Out / Expy: His design was inspired directly from Colonel Trautman from Rambo. Likewise, his younger self seems to have some physical traits that mirror that of Shaggy.
  • Sole Survivor: Of the Green Berets unit that was sent into San Hieronymo after the FOX unit ambushed him. He almost ended up "going back" on that had Snake not found the necessary drugs to eliminate the malaria infection that he managed to get.

Master Miller

Voiced by: Banjo Ginga (JP, MGS-MGS4), Tomokazu Sugita (JP, MPW), Cam Clarke (EN, MGS-MGS4), Robin Atkin Downes (EN, MPW)

Master Miller, real name Kazuhira / McDonell Benedict Miller, was the Japanese mentor of Solid Snake, who helped him in Zanzibar Land. He had a huge military background, including training Marines, Green Berets, the SAS, and even acting as a coach at a mercenary school twice a year before joining FOXHOUND. He is killed before Metal Gear Solid, with Liquid implied to be the murderer. In Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, he is revealed to be the second-in-command to Big Boss of Militaires Sans Frontieres.

  • Beware the Nice Ones: Kazuhira Miller might be a person who never attempts to refuse kindness to anyone who wants it, but if he wants to ensure MSF to expand, he will do everything he can to ensure it happens, being quite ruthless.
  • By-The-Book Cop: Miller was a deconstruction of this trope while he was a JSDF officer. His skills in the force were unmatched, but the head brass chose not to promote him with those skills because they feared the skills.
  • The Casanova / Chivalrous Pervert: Miller is shown to be a playboy and womanizer during his youth. A notable instance is when he picks up Cecile on Big Boss's orders partly because she was a blond Parisenne (initially, he was going to refuse due to Mother Base having little room left for civilians). This attribute also got him into deep trouble.
  • Combat Sadomasochist: Is implied to be this in the (non-canon) date with Kaz mission. Basically, CQC him into unconsciousness and wait for him to wake up, and he will act oddly happy about it, and doing it three times or more will likewise result in getting an S-rank.
  • Death by Origin Story: He was killed three days prior to Shadow Moses by an assassin who is implied to have ties to Liquid Snake. The novelization implies that he died as a result of nerve gas poisoning.
  • Drill Sergeant Nasty: His position upon becoming a member of FOXHOUND. It's also the reason why his recruits often refer to him by the name "Hell Master."
  • Heroic Bastard: He was heavily implied to have been the byproduct of prostitution in Post World War II Japan.
  • Eighties Hair: He sported a mullet during the 1970s.
  • Not What I Signed on For: It's heavily implied that Miller did not know about Cipher's plans to nuke the East Coast of the United States to frame MSF if Big Boss refused to rejoin them. To elaborate: Miller briefly worked with Cipher solely to expand MSF, even doing so behind Big Boss's back, something that would been ruined if Cipher succeeded in launching a nuke at the East Coast of the USA and then framing MSF with the launch, and certainly something that would have resulted in Miller not agreeing to help Cipher had he known about the nuclear launch plan, and after the battle Kazuhira apologized to Big Boss for not revealing anything about what they did, with the implication that he helped them.
  • The Obi-Wan: To Solid Snake.
  • The Other Darrin: Miller's voice actors in the Japanese and English versions are different between Metal Gear Solid and Peace Walker. Justified, as the former was actually an imposter.
    • A meta-example also exists: In the original release of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Master Miller looked like an asian american (almost resembling George Takei). However, by Metal Gear Solid, and especially the rereleases of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Miller looks blond with shades.
  • Retcon: In Miller's original backstory, he was third generation Japanese American, and his grandparents immigrated to America sixty years prior to his birth. It was changed in Peace Walker to him being born in Japan, with his father being a GHQ officer under Whitney.
  • Shout-Out: Although its not likely to be intentional, some fans have noted that he resembled either Johnny Bravo or Albert Wesker.
  • Sunglasses at Night: Miller possesses sunglasses for every instance of his appearances (save for the initial release of Metal Gear 2), even at times when it wouldn't have been beneficial at all (eg, when driving during a storm).
  • Taking You with Me: In the backstory tape regarding when he and Snake first met, he had been severely wounded by Big Boss and the Militaires Sans Frontieres, with his own guerilla army also being wiped out. He attempts to kill Big Boss by luring him close and then blowing themselves up with a grenade. Big Boss actually managed to keep the grenade shut, and also save Miller's life as well.
  • Talking to Himself: In the English and Japanese versions of Metal Gear Solid and its remake, the Twin Snakes, both Master Miller and Liquid Snake share the same voice actor. Makes sense, since the latter is impersonating the former.
  • Two-Timer Date: Actually did this trope once with two female MSF members. Let's just say that when the girls reported it to Big Boss, he made sure he let Miller know that it was a very bad move on his part.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: He worked for Cipher as a business partner, not for any malevolent intent, but rather so MSF can expand.
  • Who's Laughing Now?: A subtle instance of this is alluded to in the briefing tape relating to Miller's past: During his childhood, Miller was frequently mocked by the other Japanese children for his distinctly Western appearance (eg, blond hair, Blue Eyes, and tall appearance). When his request to see his birthfather in America and go to College there was granted by his father and he arranged to have him picked up, his ride arrived in the form of a limousine, causing all the kids who mocked Miller to literally stand agape.

Holly White

A freelance journalist who infiltrated Zanzibar Land in 1999. The daughter of a French mother and a British father, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the wars in Afghanistan. She was also a well-known director for KTV and received an Emmy for her acclaimed documentary The Unknown Bloodshed. Holly also worked as a fashion model for the magazine Depeche Vogue. Behind all of this, however, she served as an undercover agent for the CIA, which made use of her status and fame to further its intelligence operations.

  • CIA Evil, FBI Good: Averted; Holly is a CIA agent with no ulterior motive in helping Snake in his mission.
  • Faux Action Girl: She was able to infiltrate Zanzibarland, but got captured and had to be rescued by Snake. Then at the end she hands you her gun and just follows you around.
  • Intrepid Reporter: Who works for the CIA.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: She looks an awful lot like Christina Applegate in her original art.

Dr. Kio Marv

A Czech scientist, responsible for the creation of the genetically-modified oil-producing microbe, OILIX. Dr. Marv accidentally discovered the basis for OILIX in one of his experiments, subsequently refining the concept to completion. OILIX was a microalgal organism capable of producing high amounts of petroleum-grade hydrocarbons, with relatively little expense and effort. He's kidnapped by Zanzibar Land agents, and had to be rescued by Solid Snake. He only speaks

  • Sdrawkcab Name: Dr. Kio Marv's name is VRAM 0.1K backwards, a riff on the MSX booting sequence, as revealed during the ending.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite the fact that OILIX was supposed to end the energy crisis, and it was recovered in the end of the game, no mention of it was ever made again in the Metal Gear Solid games.

Gustava Heffner

Formerly an Olympic gold medalist figure skater, Gustava was known as the "Ice Princess" both in professional ice skating and in the Olympics, where she previously won two championships in a row. During the 1980s, she met and fell in love with a Westerner named Frank Hunter (Gray Fox) during the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She tried to elope with him, but she was denied U.S. citizenship and could not leave her country. Because of her failed defection, Gustava was stripped of her competition rights and her family was constantly persecuted and humiliated. With very few places left to turn, Gustava joined the St B (the Czech State Police). She reveals that while in the service of the St B, she managed to kill a man. She was assigned to protect Dr. Kio Marv, acting as his bodyguard as well as his translator.

  • Art Evolution: Like most of the characters in Metal Gear 2, Gustava gets a redraw to be more in line with the modern Metal Gear Solid art style when the game was packaged with Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence. She went from this to this.
  • Disposable Woman: She's killed right after you meet up with Dr. Marv and start to cross the bridge.
  • Retcon: She was orignally named Natasha Marcova, and looked a little bit pudgy in her original appearance. The name change is thought to avoid confusion with the similarly named Nastasha Romanenko.
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