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All games after Metal Gear Solid 1 are VR simulations.

It's implied that Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is a VR simulation; however, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots seems to have Jossed that explanation. But who says Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is real? Maybe it's a VR simulation as well.

• And just to top it off, maybe all the games that take place during the Cold War are Animus styled reproductions of Big Boss' memories. (of course, this would require Raiden to have some of Big Boss' genetic code, but that's another WMG)

Drebin is Fortune's younger brother

Aside from the obvious fact that they're both Dark Skinned Blondes, imagining them as brother and sister isn't much of a stretch. Keep in mind, if he's Fortune's brother, this would also make him the son of Scott Dolph, the Marine Corps Commandant from Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. If he's the son of a Marine officer and the brother of a professional terrorist, it's not hard to imagine where he got the skills necessary to make it big as an arms dealer. And by my count, this would also make Ocelot responsible for the deaths of two of his immediate family (for all we know, they're the only family he's got). That would give him more than enough reason to want to make Ocelot's life hell with his arms dealing business. It might also explain his fixation with Solid Snake, and why he conveniently turns up wherever Snake is—it's only natural that he would want to meet the guy who stood the best chance of avenging his family.

All of Metal Gear Solid 2 is a VR simulation. Metal Gear Solid 1 the Twin Snakes may also be, or may not be reliable as an information source to the player. (Context from only the first and second games.)

Metal Gear Solid 2 was entirely VR. This includes the Tanker mission at the start. Let's start from the beginning.

• You land on the ship and play as Snake. Kojima used this bit and the advertisements outside the game to make you think you were going to play only as Snake. And then, he took that away, but from the stories' perspective, it's because the simulation doesn't entirely know what happened to Snake in the tanker chapter. They know what kind of tanker it was, so they plotted his likely path, but when the tanker detonated, the simulation took the only likely explanation that Snake bought the farm there. Raiden played this simulation, as you did. In fact, you were controlling Raiden controlling Sim-Snake. Raiden is supposed to be the player analogue after all.
• Then, you (and Raiden) are sent on your seeming first real mission so far. (This would be the first long mission you were sent on in this game.) Raiden comments on having done 300 VR missions, including Shadow Moses. What if Kojima has been training the player/Raiden longer than we know? How are we to know whether or not we are ever given the truth? There is a theory farther down that states that Twin Snakes is the VR simulation, especially with the new crazier things (eg. jumping over a missile). Maybe that's what Raiden saw during his mission. After all, Raiden never witnessed the real events. So Raiden begins his mission in the Plant, but he doesn't know that the Plant is either a giant VR station or a real station that is being influenced by the nanomachines in his body. I am partial to the first, as according to mission control, Snake is not supposed to be in the simulation and should not be trusted. I think he can be trusted, but not for events taking place outside of his philisophical rants or memories. His reality is being just as subjective as Raiden's. He says he has infinite ammo, but that obviously can't be true. Assuming he is not another VR illusion, he merely brought plenty of equipment and figured he had brought enough for them to share. But the VR simulation may actually have made his proclamation real. The simulation needed to stay consistent, and when he said he had infinite, it gave him infinite, at least for the next battle. Snake was probably being fooled by the station into thinking he was fighting all those soldiers just like Raiden was, and that he had continued to have enough extra equipment for Raiden to share with him. For that matter, they may have never been firing weapons of any kind at all at that point, it's nearly impossible to tell. Snake also said that the Tanker simulation Raiden took place in probably wasn't accurate to the real events, as shown by his surviving. Either the sim didn't know what happened to Snake or was deliberately censored, it's hard to tell. The Patriots have a want to censor and control information, but it's unknown if they know know exactly what happened.
  • In any case, Raiden/the player never could bounce bullets with a sword, didn't destroy 25 Metal Gears, and never went to Manhattan. But the player/Raiden were trained to think they could and did, as part of a military VR simulation. Raiden never left the Big Shell. He passed out, woke up in "Manhattan", met "Rose", and then the game ends on a note of confusion for Raiden and most likely the player, leaving you wondering who Raiden is and what exactly he did, if he and you did anything at all. To sum it up, you did not. It was just more training, but it's up to the player and Raiden to decide if there was any merit in it to learn from. As for Snake showing up in the end, well, in that form, it's hard to say. He may have shown up in an attempt to free Raiden, or he may have been a VR illusion or a hallucination, it's difficult to tell.
• You don't even have to go so far as to say that only The Twin Snakes was a VR mission. MGS1 being a VR mission explains why Meryl is alive in MGS4 even though you may have let her die in the ending you saw. As the player, you get your choice of endings because you are a soldier being trained in the Shadow Moses VR mission. The ending where you save Meryl is what really happened. The other is a mission failure but perhaps something the Patriots want in a soldier for some reason (Haven't thought it out enough to figure out why they'd want you to give up under torture.)

So, essentially, Kojima has been training Raiden/the Player since the first game's remake through the entire second game, Both were VR missions since Raiden never saw the original missions with Snake in them. The VR mission had Snake in the game, but his reality was just as skewed as Raiden's, assuming he wasn't just another part of the simulation.

Alternative: Metal Gear Solid is real, but TwinSnakes and the VR missions are Raiden's "Force XXI" VR training.

• Twin Snakes clues us in with tha random shooting mission target in the Metal gear hangar. The random acrobatic bullshit they added to the cutscenes is for additional difficulty in training Raiden, which is one half of how he got the skills to be a Badass cyborg ninja in MGS 4.
• VR missions, when completed, gives you a picture of RAY. Raiden had to complete all of the missions as part of his mission preparation. The picture was a part of his briefing, to know the Metal Gear he was supposed to be on the lookout for. Completing the Ninja missions explains how he was so quickly able to get used to the sword in MGS 2, and the other half of how he became the ninja in MGS 4.

Big Boss is Cross-Dominant.

The proof is in Metal Gear Solid 3. When he loses his eye, his vision isn't that much impaired, because only a small part of the screen is affected. This is very much like the vision of one who has ocular dominance in their left eye. (Whenever they close their right eye.) Yet, his dominant hand is the right hand seeing as his gun is always held with the right hand. This troper knows because he too is cross-dominant.

Sunny is a reincarnation of the Boss and her first friend seen at Meryl and Johnny's wedding is a reincarnation of the Sorrow.

Sunny and the Boss have the same voice actor, and both have known a Snake closely. The little boy who Sunny played with didn't speak English, a hint to how the Sorrow and the Boss were from different countries.

• • This troper went "aww".
  • Alternatively, Sunny could be a clone of The Boss. Les Enfantes Terribles all over again, perpetrated by the Patriots just before the events on the Big Shell, with Olga as a surrogate mother.

The Boss's real name is Rosemary.

Big Boss is referred to as 'Jack', and we all know that Kojima likes reusing names. Plus it would be kind of appropriate since The Boss and Rose share the same Japanese VA.

• • Which would make Ocelot 'Rosemary's Baby', if you get what I mean...

Alternatively, the Boss's real name is Joy.

Because Joy is an actual English name. Plus, as she is the only Cobra who doesn't appear to embody her emotion, this is the only way that calling her "Joy" would make sense.

• Utterly wrong, both because she is in-universe noted for the joy she exudes in battle, and by the fact she embodies the phrase "the greatest joy is the joy of duty."

Third theory: The Boss's real name is Lilith.

If only because we have already have an Adam, Eve, and snake.

The whole reason Ocelot is such a two-faced dick is because he's a Gemini

Not because he was taken from his parents at a few minutes old. Not because he was raised by the evil conspiracy. Not because several intelligence organisations hired him simultaneously (?!). If The Sorrow and The Boss had only got their Marvin Gaye on almost any other time than 9 months before D-Day.

The entire series was a Gambit Roulette set up by the Sorrow

Think about it. He's perfectly content to let the Boss shoot him... My Death Is Just the Beginning anyone? Also, during your "Boss Fight" with him, he makes cryptic remarks about events in the future. And, he's OCELOT'S FATHER. In the Blood indeed...

• There's some untapped Fridge Brilliance in this theory. Remember how in MGS2 it is revealed that the Wisemen's Committee, the brains behind the Patriots, were all dead? What could have happened was The Sorrow using his powers to make the Wisemen's Committee manipulate all the events from behind the scenes, using their not-physically-alive state a good basis for Plausible Deniability. Sadly, this doesn't happen in MGS4.

Metal Gear Solid 5 will be an extreme prequel featuring The Boss and her unit.

Think about it, she's pretty much the entire reason all this shit happened in the first place. Why WOULDN'T there be a game with her as the main character.

• • While this probably won't happen, it would, in fact, be freaking awesome. We can only hope Kojima happens to stumble along this theory and find it to his liking one day...
  • Better yet, playing as the entire Cobra Unit.
    • Or, even better yet, have a game that takes place between PortableOps and the original game, and the main character is Gray Fox.
      • Given the Kojima teaser site and the Raiden looking cyborg with one eye bandaged I'd say it's plausible.
      • Close. There's two more MGS games coming out, one starring Big Boss, the other starring Raiden.
        • If there is a prequel featuring The Boss as the main character—and I think it's bound to happen eventually—I bet you a penny it's prior to her "The Joy" days and her codename is "Hidden Snake", or something
    • To be honest, I don't think they'll ever let us play as The Boss. None of us would be Badass enough to play the game as her properly. The game would probably be too easy anyways...
  • Jossed, as Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker is MGS 5. They just Stopped Numbering Sequels.
  • Kojima pitched the idea after MGS4, but didn't feel that the team was experienced enough to make the game without his involvement. Hopefully, we can say that we called it one day.

Big Boss was messing with Ocelot

And Ocelot fell for it. What kind of idiot uses an obsolete revolver in modern combat? No ammo capacity, and very slow reloading time.

• Obviously, Ocelot's ideal weapon would be the Calico M960 machine-pistol. "One hundred bullets. More than enough to kill anything everything that moves."
• And if he'd known Ocelot were that gullible, Big Boss have probably recommended that he use a Thompson Contender.
  • On the other hand, Ocelot's original sidearm only had seven shots, as did Snake's pistol. At the time he suggested it, six bullets wasn't much less than standard.
    • The problem with this is that not only does it not solve the reloading issue, it Not Solves it to more staggering proportions than most people realize; the Single-Action Army has to have it's spent casings ejected one at a time, and then you can start reloading it one bullet at a time.
    • Given the skill Ocelot had demonstrated up to that point, Snake knew that by the time he had to reload, there would be at least six dead bodies on the ground. Between that and his pack of minions, reloading was unlikely to be a concern.
    • All of this ignores the fact that Ocelot literally gets off on reloading and has a cowboy fetish. It was just a matter of time before he tried reloading a revolver in a fight. Also, choosing the SAA Colt was Ocelot's choice. He could have tried a revolver that could use a speed loader.
      • All of this also ignores the fact that, except for extremely limited and rare circumstances, for military purposes a handgun is an emergency back-up weapon. It's for fighting your way back to pick up the rifle you shouldn't have put down in the first place. It is not the primary CQB weapon of choice. Handguns—any handgun, no matter how many cartridges they hold between reloads—were obsolete in that role even in World War I and haven't been a viable primary choice since, oh, say, 1875—if you were a cavalryman and your only alternatives were a lance and a saber.
• Big Boss specifically tells (an uncomprehending) Paramedic that Ocelot "might just be handy with a high-caliber revolver." Even if he didn't specify which one (the Makarov, perhaps...), it subtracts from the notion that he didn't mean exactly what he told him.
  • A makarov is an autoloader pistol...
    • The makarov is what he was using already

Liquid Ocelot is Hideo Kojima

Consider; you have Liquid Snake, the flamboyant, showy, dominant side. That's Hideo Kojima, the young man who wanted to make movies, the one who fills his games with long, elaborate cutscenes. Then we have Ocelot; once just the same, but then crippled by change [the fall of the Soviet Union] and then by his own hubris [growing so focused on Snake he lost a hand to Grey Fox]. Ocelot is Hideo Kojima, the older man who wanted to make videogames. You could view MGS4 as the struggle between his desire to give the fans a resolution to every plot issue, and the more thoughtful side that wants to make the game he wants, not necessarily the game the fans want. The fact that Ocelot's role is huge in MGS2 [where he did just that] and tiny in MGS4 [which was mostly for the fans, here's to you and all] rather gels with this. I wonder if he realises.

Big Boss is a metaphor for Hideo Kojima's penis.

He's got one eye, is called 'Big Boss' and 'Naked Snake,' and just about every character he meets gets a crush on him. Also, there weren't any silly/ridiculous WMGs on this page, and I couldn't stand that.

• Big Boss is sterile - I hate to think what this implies.
  • It's Kojima's way of saying "And YOU people can't have it! Neener neener neener!"
    • Don't forget 'Solid Snake' and how he hides in a box.
      • So the box is Hideo's wife's vagina?
      • It's that old dick in the box prank
• So I guess Raiden, the Cyborg Ninjas, and Snatchers are supposed to be indicative of the sex toy industry? Great for a cheap fix, but incomparable to the real thing (consider how Raiden's role in MGS2 was to make Snake look even bigger than life by observing him in the third person).

John Clark, from Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series, is actually Big Boss

Consider the following:

• Warfare Background
  • John Clark was a former Navy SEAL who served 18 months in Vietnam, earning (at last tally) a Silver Star, Navy Cross, and a belated Medal of Honor for his actions. His most well-known mission was a several-day solo excursion deep into enemy territory to rescue a man captured deep behind enemy lines.
  • Big Boss was a special forces agent who was active during the post-Cuban Missile Crisis era, same as the Vietnam War. His most well-known mission was a several-day solo excursion deep into enemy territory to rescue a man captured deep behind enemy lines.
• Later History
  • John Clark retired briefly from the service after his time in Vietnam. He later joined the CIA as a special covert agent. During the process he faked his own death.
  • After his standard military service as a member of FOX, Big Boss remained with the unit as it separated itself from the regular military hierarchy to become a special operations task force. Subsequent to the Outer Heaven incident, he faked his own death.
• Techniques
  • John Clark has throughout his career been an expert in all manner of hand-to-hand and armed combat. Even into his sixties, he still has the physique of a man nearly half his age and can outshoot almost anyone.
  • Big Boss was taught combat and warfare skills by The Boss herself. And likewise, into his later years he is still able to outfight almost anyone he comes across, even disarming Solid Snake at the end of MGS4.
• Names
  • John Clark's first name is John. During his time in the service his nickname was "Snake".
  • Big Boss identifies himself as "John". His earlier and best-known codename is Snake.
• Continuity
  • Putting aside the story of Big Boss being in a coma for most of 15 years, there is nothing in either man's history that would prevent one from being the other. They, in fact, were the same man, living two separate lives. In the early 60's, John Clark served as a Navy SEAL, during which he studied and learned much of his skill in covert warfare at the feet of The Boss. During his service in Vietnam he distinguished himself during several covert ops. During a brief separation, he returned to civilian life, during which he met a girlfriend who was soon after killed by druglords she had escaped from. Clark then embarked on a months-long killing spree against those responsible and, with the help of the CIA, faked his own death.

Soon afterward, he entered the service of the FOX unit, which was under CIA direction, as a paramilitary operative. One of his first missions was the famed Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater, during which he killed The Boss and her breakaway special forces group, as well as a renegade Russian Colonel and a private army financed by a shadowy political faction. During the 70's, he helped to form the Patriots, but soon became disgruntled in the directions it took and broke off ties. Rejoining the CIA proper, John Clark undertook several missions against the Soviet Union, including extracting the head of the KGB and his family in "Cardinal of the Kremlin", and leading a secret military excursion against Columbian drug cartels in "Clear and Present Danger". The callous treatment he and his men received at the hands of the political leadership, up to and including being cut off and left to die for the sake of avoiding public embarrassment, further convinced him that politicians would never really respect soldiers the way he believed they should be treated.

During the late 80's, at the CIA's command, Clark established contact with a rebellious faction to attempt to establish Outer Heaven, a small African country where he felt that soldiers could gather to receive the respect and dignity he felt they deserved. In the CIA's eyes this was a harmless diversion, as it attracted rebel generals from the region to seek save haven under Outer Heaven's decree of amnesty for all military personnel, thus gathering many of world's worst dictators and rebel faction leaders together in one place. True to form, Outer Heaven soon collapsed, thanks to the efforts of a young operative, codenamed "Solid Snake" who was sent in without the knowledge of the CIA hierarchy. Despite this, the effort was deemed a success; though Big Boss never stopped thinking what might have been if Outer Heaven had been given a true chance to succeed.

Throughout most of the 90's, Clark continued his work with the CIA, mostly in the agency's field school training new agents and keeping a low profile. Eventually he was called back to active duty, culminating in several missions which lead to a terrorist attack against the American congress, the elevation of President Jack Ryan, and a biological war waged from the Middle East. After these crises were resolved, Big Boss left public service soon before President Ryan's resignation and Robert Jackson's assassination, which lead to the ascension of Solidus Snake as President of the United States. It is unknown what role, if any, Big Boss had to play in this turn of events.

Now out of the public eye, Clark became "Rainbow Six", given command of a small, but elite, group of special ops soliders for the purpose of worldwide counterterrorism operations. For every mission Rainbow fought against standard terrorists, they fought another against agents and soldiers working for an as-yet-unknown group. This group's operatives were richly financed, and there was evidence of a massive intelligence network at work. Despite this, Clark was able to outthink them at almost every turn, saving countless lives in the process. None of his subordinates ever stopped to think how one man, supposedly a mere field operative for most of the past 40 years, could consistently unravel the plans of what had to be a worldwide terrorist military network. If ever a statistical study were done, the only logical conclusion would be that Big Boss had some intimate knowledge of this group's plans and methods.

• It kinda odd. But looking at all the stuff that goes on in this series, and the Gainax Ending of 2, it seems reasonable.

• One problem with this theory: According to The Other Wiki, John Clark was born in 1944, which would make him 20 years old (i.e., the same age as Ocelot) during Operation: Snake Eater. And it's been mentioned (or at least implied) that Big Boss joined the military around 1950. Unless the U.S. has a "Child Soldier" Program that we don't know about, the numbers don't match up.
• Child soldiers? AKA one of the main plot points in the series?
  • I simply meant that, based on the numbers from Peace Walker, Big Boss was born in 1935, or 9 years before John Clark. Big Boss joined the military around 1950 (probably lying about his age), and I don't know if he saw any 6-year-olds running around like the way Abraham Simpson did in WWI.

The first Metal Gear Solid is all VR.

It turns out we weren't playing through the Shadow Moses incident as it happened, we were playing through Raiden's VR training of it. His real combat experience was his child soldiering, but he did do the VR training in his adulthood as well; he was able to identify things and people which "kept coming back to Shadow Moses". And don't forget Ghost Babel—the main story's not canon, but completing all the VR training mission enables you to hear a short conversation between Raiden and the VR controller person thing. Considering what Snake says about what VR does to your head, the VR training probably contributed to his mental instability. Although not as much as the Mind Rape. What actually happened on Shadow Moses was totally different and completely spoilerific, and MGS4 will make absolutely no sense until the huge pivotal difference is revealed at the end.

• Possibly, said difference is that Liquid Snake never existed. He's a personality fabricated by Ocelot, and MGS4 will reveal that in the real Shadow Moses incident, Ocelot was talking to himself, and it was Ocelot driving Metal Gear REX. Big Boss made such an impression on Ocelot in his youth that he was split between his dedication to the Philosophers and the contradicting ideal of Big Boss's Outer Heaven, a world not controlled by the conspiracy. This resulted in a second personality forming in Ocelot, the "son of Big Boss", just as theatric and idealistic as Ocelot was when he was young, while the other personality, Shalashaska, continued to work for the American branch of the Philosophers. Oh, and of course this is why it makes any kind of sense for Liquid to be alive inside an arm.
  • Cute, but Jossed.
  • Conversely, while Liquid Snake did exist, he is not being channeled by Ocelot. Ocelot is having a bit of a psychotic break over the aforementioned conflict, and is making up the whole 'posession' thing as a coping mechanism.
    • Which means that Outer Heaven is simply another Fight Club?
    • Er, maybe that...or maybe he's making it up for the sake of some Plan (though with the state of this game's canon, a Gambit Roulette seems more likely).
• Alternate Theory: The original Metal Gear Solid for the PSX was real; the remake, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, is the simulation. Think about it: This explains why Twin Snakes was so messed up. Accents were removed due to being unimportant to the simulation, making characters easier to understand for users, and besides it being easier to accurately simulate just a voice as opposed to a voice and an accent. The remake is considered much easier than the original, just a simulation would be far easier than the real thing. And this explains the rampant abuse of Cutscene Power to the Max—if it's all just a simulation, it can occasionally defenestrate any actual semblance to reality, all for the sake of training its users to feel stupidly heroic.
  • Or maybe its the version Raiden went through? Raiden had never met any of the major players in the Shadow Moses incident, so he would be unfamiliar with their voices and the way they sounded, letting the Patriots get away with free censorship without Raiden noticing. Raiden's more advanced training (and perhaps dormant skills), combined with the test being monitored and controlled would explain the new gameplay changes and lowered difficulty. As for the cutscenes, Raiden's entire perception of the Shadow Moses incident comes from "In the Darkness of Shadow Moses", and from what he was told. He idolizes Snake, thinking him much more than just a normal man, and this perception could have bled over into the simulation; Raiden is seeing Snake as expects to see him, as a Legendary Badass.
• Alternate Alternate Theory: It's the other way around. Mei Ling appears in MGS4 without an accent, sounding much like she does in Twin Snakes and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which could mean her accent in the original game was a mistake on the part of the simulation's developers. Clips of the original Metal Gear Solid and VR Missions are shown in the montage when Raiden talks about his VR training. Further, well-designed training simulations actually need to be harder than the real thing, so that once you can handle the simulation, you can handle the real thing easily. Denying Raiden the ability to walk slowly, aim guns, and hang from ledges in the simulation could be a way to add Fake Difficulty to the simulation. This could also account for the less realistic graphics in the original game.
  • Makes sense, since it is established that Mei Ling was born and raised in the United States. She's Chinese-American, duh!
• Another Alternate Theory: The original Metal Gear Solid was VR, and Twin Snakes was just a dream that Snake had. My reasoning for thinking that the original was VR is that they removed the ability to hand from ledges, walk normally and aim properly to add fake difficulty, and added in the accents to simulate an experience where you are dealing with people who have accents that you might have difficulty understanding. As for Twin Snakes being a dream, it would explain why Snakes reactions are so over the top (like jumping over that missile); he's reliving the events in a dream, but subconsciously trying to make himself seem like even more of a badass (maybe he'd been watching to many action movies that evening?).

The Shadow Moses Incident was set up by the Patriots too.

The whole thing was a prelude to the experiments with Raiden, an examination of nature v. nurture. Two clones of Big Boss were created, and raised according to different specifications. One, Solid, was raised as a normal human being, which in fact he was. The other, Liquid, was tweaked at the genetic level to be superior to Solid in all ways—but raised under the impression that he was the inferior one. When the two were pitted against each other, that belief cost him victory—thus proving to the Patriots that the genes one is born with are not as important as the memes one is exposed to. It was that datum that freed them from the necessity of using Big Boss's genetic material as the basis for their homegrown super soldiers, thus allowing them to use preexisting child soldiers like Raiden in their next experiment...

• Alternatively, Liquid was genetically identical to Solid (as the Word of God has said), but the experiment was otherwise the same.

== The whole ending of Metal Gear Solid 2 was just Raiden having a major psychotic break. == Raiden's dressed in a jet-black rubber gimp suit, and the ex-President of the United States is lying on a plinth in a powered suit, dead. And yet, people just keep walking on by. Rose appears and the people just walk on. Vamp appears and the people just walk on. Snake comes out of absolutely nowhere to share philosophical platitudes and then disappears back into nothingness, and Raiden throws a dog tag with the player's name on it into the gutter and just carries on. Not to mention all the other loony stuff. Therefore, it didn't really happen, Raiden was pulling a Shinji, and god knows what really happened to Dead Cell and Snake. They were lucky they didn't end up in a fantasy dream high school of Raiden's imagining, to be honest. That would be even more terrifying.

• Not to mention that Arsenal Gear just crashed into New York. Those people in the street don't seem to notice at all. Several cops gathered around it wondering what was going on, but they seemed more focused the corpse of the aforementioned ex-President than the big metal internet-controlling submarine just a few feet away. If you look *real* closely some people seem to be glancing at Arsenal Gear as well.
  • Can anyone say, "perception filter"?

Ocelot's entire adult life has been a Long Con against the Patriots

Everything but everything: his 40 years of unswerving service to the Patriot Group, his betrayal of everyone who knew him, every waking moment under the eyes of his masters, have all been an immense ruse to bring him into the same room as the men who killed his mother and betrayed his idol. And then... there will be a old-western style reckoning. "Six bullets. More than enough to kill anything that moves."

• Of course, if the Patriots are as inhuman/immortal as they sell themselves, he may be in for a rude awakening.
• Also, there are twelve Patriots. Maybe he should start carrying around two guns.
• He owns like three. He has it covered. Ocelot always has it covered.
• Nah. He can kill them all with one bullet.
• Interestingly enough, there were six founding Patriots. And they all ended up dead.
• Possibly Jossed by "Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops".
• And Guns of the Patriots confirmed he's been against the Patriots all along, and that the Philosophers and Patriots were different organizations. He was loyal to the latter, but became disenchanted with the group alongside Big Boss and EVA.

Vamp was infected with Dark Matter from the Doomsday World of {Video Game/{Boktai}}.

We know that portals open there, as Snake was himself sucked into the End Of The World twice in Boktai 2 and Boktai 3 (wasn't officially translated in the U.S.). Being forced to feed on the flesh of his family just attracted the portal.

• Jossed: The Applied Phlebotinum in this case was nanomachines that healed him really fast.
  • New theory, Dark Matter is actually nanomachines powered by negative psychic energy. The Gun De Sol massively purifies this. Given the Schizo-Tech setting of Boktai, it's not too far a stretch. Vamp's are hybridized with Earth tech.

Meanwhile, Snake has the Lunarian and Solarian genetic markers.

Gotta hand it to the Enfante Terrible project, really. Both the Gun Del Sol and the Gun Del Hell are findable weapons in the Metal Gear Ac!d games. Snake can use them, which in Boktai is explained only those of Solarian and Lunarian blood can do. He really, really should bring along the Gun Del Sol the next time he fights Vamp.

• In MGS4, the Solar Gun is an unlockable weapon. That you can use against Vamp. So, he kinda did. However, the Solar Gun's slow-moving projectile makes it very, very easy for him to dodge. It does, however, cause aggravated psyche damage so that if it does hit, beats Vamp quickly.
• Bear this in mind: Due to the card-based nature of the Ac!d games, the Lunarian and Solarian genetic markers extend to Teliko, Venus, and the Model 3 Snake clone by default. Which means any of the following:
  • The Guns Del Sol/Hell are replicas with no wacky genetic mysticism tied to them.
  • Mani Really Gets Around.
  • The following WMG-type chart:

People in the Metal Gear continuity with Cross-Continuity Blood Ties

• Boktai
  • Solid Snake (and presumably the other Les Enfants Terribles children): Solid wields the Gun Del Sol in MGS4 and Ac!d 1 as stated above. EVA was the current Moon Beauty; Big Boss's fear of vampires (try calling Para-Medic in MGS3 and watch what happens when she mentions Dracula) betrays Solarian heritage.
  • Teliko: Can wield either Gun Del in Ac!d 1. When she became a Bonus Boss in Ac!d 2's Arena Mode, she decided to trade for a repeating insta-kill SOCOM.
  • Venus and Model 3 Snake: Can wield either Gun Del in Ac!d 2. Snake at least has the excuse of being cloned from Solid. Venus might be an attempt to create a Moon Beauty among the Model 3s.
  • Sunny: Has apparently been visited by Otenko at least once.
• Snatcher
  • Solid Snake: May be a temporal Distaff Counterpart of Gillian Seed himself. See further below.
  • Dr. Petrovich Madnar: Having apparently survived forcing Solid Snake to either stumble onto mines or shoot RC Missiles at his own back (depending on which way you knocked the sense into him in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake), spent part of the 50 years in between the Great Catastrophe and the events of Snatcher creating Random using Raiden's specs and skin tissue as a base. Elijah was fathered separately of the events of the MSX Metal Gear games.

Arsenal Gear is the TV Tropes Wiki server.

As already established, the whole ending of MGS 2 happened only in Raiden's head. That means Arsenal Gear was not destroyed, and must still be active today. But the continuated existence of 4chan, for example, clearly indicates that it is not controlling the Internet as it was supposed to do. On the other hand, you have this wiki here, with it's unstoppable power to ensnare new tropers, that will someday become Suzumiya Haruhi, it just cannot simply be stored on some server in Seattle. So, obviously, Arsenal Gear was really created to be the Tv Tropes wiki server, and its Internet Control function was only a cover.

• On the contrary, 4chan was created by the Patriots to serve as a testbed for memetic soldier programming techniques, and continues to exist because Arsenal Gear periodically seeds it with CP so that they can V& everyone involved in the event that the project outlives its usefulness.
  • The Great Crash was the result of Raiden crashing Arsenal Gear into New York in the future.
    • Therefore, the admins need scissors. 61.
      • But I gave you scissors YESTERDAY.
        • TIME PARADOX

Ocelot is channeling Liquid's spirit through his arm

Probably quite obvious and the most logical explanation they could use, Ocelot is obviously the son of the Boss and the Sorrow (Kojima himself confirmed this). The Sorrow was known for being able to channel and communicate with the spirits of the dead as a medium, so it would make sense that this natural ability would be passed on to Ocelot himself. Now that Liquid Snake's arm is grafted to him, he is using it as a conductor of sorts in order to subconsciously channel Liquid's spirit.

• It really says something about the series that this is, in fact, perfectly obvious.
• And it's also WRONG! Nothing more than a Red Herring. He's actually faking it because he's actually against the Patriots.
  • But maybe not entirely. I wonder if he did actually absorb Liquid's spirit, but only as a method to improve his acting. The Sorrow was similar, he absorbed the outward personality and skills of his targets but his motives and beliefs remained the same (Otherwise he would turn on the rest of the Cobra Unit the moment he used his powers). It would explain a couple of plot holes, and hardly be inconsistent with what we already know.
  • Turns out that he used to be possessed in MGS II, but got a cybernetic replacement between II and IV, but kept up the illusion of it in order to get his Long Con to work.
    • If he were possessed by Liquid, then why would Liquid allow him to remove the arm?
      • Because Liquid was taking his orders from The Boss and The Sorrow the whole time?
      • Liquid was only really able to physically channel when Snake is around. Thus, the arm could probably be removed at any time in between MGS2 and MGS4.
  • This troper believes that while most of the time Ocelot was acting, whenever Snake was present, Liquid's spirit would forcibly channel itself through Ocelot's latent abilities as a medium, taking control for the duration, and then giving Ocelot his body back once Snake was gone. Or, fleeing once Snake had beaten Ocelot's body to a bloody pulp, as it seems Ocelot was himself after MGS4's final battle.
    • Still wrong. Big Boss says there's no way this can happen.
      • That's hardly reliable. Ocelot himself says in Sons of Liberty, "There's no such thing as miracles or the supernatural, only cutting edge technology." He's clearly come up with some sort of silly, "plausible" explanation for how Psycho Mantis, who he served with for years, worked. Oh, and The Sorrow. Also, I don't think you're remembering what Big Boss said correctly; he was explaining that it was impossible for someone to perfectly impersonate someone to an absolute T, but possible to put on a reasonable facade that would fool people using hypnosis and nanomachines. And why would Big Boss discredit the supernatural, anyway? He did meet The Sorrow, after all. Really, there's absolutely no reason to disbelieve that Liquid could, through tremendous will, usually motivated when Snake was around, possess Ocelot through his own arm, only for Ocelot to remove it during a period when Liquid didn't have control so he could pretend it was still going on as a way of furthering his plans.

Fox Hound doesn't give out codenames.

Solid Snake has a brother, named Liquid Snake, and another named Solidus Snake. Their dad went by Naked Snake for a while. Does this look familiar? They're just names!

• Why does Solid Snake say his name is Dave then?
  • It's a surname. His full name is Dave Snake.
  • To screw with Hal? "Hal and Dave, lawlz!"

Otacon is not going to go bad-ass.

The much-cited Medicom figures include "Octocom". Given that it's a figure wearing Snake's full set of Octocamo with a mask and we've seen that there's an Octocamo mask in Snake's inventory, surely the figure's name is far more likely to be a transliteration error of "Octocamo" than anything bizarre involving an engineer who's never fired a gun in his life?

• But... but... Metal Gear!
• But wouldn't it be cool if it did?
  • As it turns out, this is subjective re: Otacon himself, but in-game the Octocamo mask can be replaced with the head of Snake's younger self with or without bandana -- this actually is revealed in Act 3's opening cutscene -- or the pixelated PS 1-graphics head of his MGS1 self, or the different MGS NPCs... including Otacon. Nothing like the scientist who wet his pants now sneaking around as Snake.

Arsenal Gear had a different primary purpose

It was actually designed to run Crysis on maximum settings, after a year or so of casual attempts proved this was impossible on conventional machines.

• Explains why it crashed, at any rate.

Snake isn't actually fluent in six languages

Snake appears fluent in multiple languages because he's able to recognise intonation. This allows him to recognise an ideal sentence fragment to repeat back to the speaker with a question mark at the end. He doesn't actually know what he's saying.

• A Hind D?
• Metal Gear?!
• Your Russian is superb?
• Subverted/Averted. His VA can do it, therefore, so can he.

The Joy will make an appearance in MGS4

Hey, you didn't see Snake actually kill her in MGS3, and the Migs 'destroyed the body'. And of course, nobody bathed in that much napalm could possibly be dead. Come to think of it, maybe she's a Time Lord too, or Lady, as the case may be...which could mean she's actually already one of the established characters. Tying it in with the idea of Otacon being badass...Otacon is the Joy?

• Didn't see him actually kill her? Did you miss the part where Snake put a bullet through her head with her own gun? Oh wait, you couldn't, because the game forced the player to pull the trigger in perhaps the most heartbreakingly interactive cutscene ever. I'm rather surprised a fan of the game could forget that. Of course, this is probably An April Fool's suggestion anyway.
  • Yeah, but the angle was wrong, there was no blood, and hey, we didn't have any depth perception at the time.
    • But Snake doesn't need depth perception, hes too awesome to be hindered by the loss of an eye.
  • It was mostly based on the idea of Unreliable Narrator and especially Never Found the Body, what with the napalm and all.
    • In fact, the napalm seems like a setup for just this. Why use it?

Solid Snake isn't in MGS4

We've played as Snake's fanboy, Snake's dad and Snake's clone, but the main man himself hasn't been a playable character since Metal Gear Solid 1. And the end of that game was a fine ending point for his personal arc. Why break the trend now?
Also, the trailers have demonstrated that the protagonist, whoever he is, wears a camouflage mask that can change his appearance. Clearly his real identity is:

• Otacon, as mentioned above. What could be more fan-baitingly ironic than to discover that you're not playing as Snake, but playing as a fanboy playing as Snake?
• Big Boss. He's appeared on a few promotional posters. He knows the moves. He's infinitely cynical about wars and causes. He would be about the right age, if he were still alive.
• Liquid Snake. You think a little thing like FoxDie can stop him? He wants his hand back.
• Decoy Octopus, impersonating Snake... All part of Liquid's plan.
• Master Miller. Liquid Snake didn't kill Miller. He's Just Hiding. Miller faked his own death to avoid being killed by Liquid. Now Miller is going around posing as his greatest student, Snake (who is really dead).
• Raiden. Again.
• The Joy.
  • Or possibly the End. He's already over a hundred, what's a few more years? And this time he has a few technological goodies.
    • Or the End's clone.
• The Sorrow. Solid Snake didn't survive the events of MGS2 because of Raiden's stupidity, and now Snake is being channeled by The Sorrow.
• Rosemary. The Internet commits seppuku.
• Some guy dreaming in VR. In the future.
• Hideo Kojima. Just to screw with us.

Solid Snake is in MGS4

He will be saved by mind uploading into an android copy of his younger self to become "Metal Gear Snake".

• Hey, it's one sci-fi trope they haven't used yet. And that name is damn cool. Not to mention there's some tasty irony there.
• If you use the Young Snake FaceCamo, especially w/ Bandana, it's not only true (by being Solid Snake and not Old Snake), it's easier for you to pretend that it really is that android copy of his younger self, even though that's obviously not true.

MGS 3 takes place chronologically between MGS 2 and MGS 4

Metal Gear Solid 3 is a historical reenactment, possibly taking place in an improved VR system. It's what Snake does on his day off (Johnny Sasaki too, perhaps).

• You mean not all the games are supposed to be VR simulations other characters are playing through? I thought that's what they were saying in MGS 2...but then again, I could be wrong.
  • Jossed by Snake not knowing very much at all about Big Boss's story in MGS4, not even his "Naked Snake" codename. Unless he's playing the simulation after that, but Snake probably wouldn't spend his remaining days playing simulations.

Continuing with that theory, all of MGS is a historical reenactment, with or without VR

Could explain why killing people lowers your score.

In a twist on the above....

Metal Gear Solid 3 is a Movie

The first in a series based off of Big Boss' recently released biography, to be precise. Big Boss is, of course, portrayed by David Hayter.

Hideo Kojima is behind everything, and will be the final boss of the final game. That game's plot will involve Snake learning that the MGS games inspired the builders of the "real" Metal Gears, and he will invade Konami headquarters in order to stop the franchise once and for all.

In a series wherein the fourth wall wasn't so much broken as only half-built to begin with, what could be a more fitting end?

• David Hayter actually being the real author of the entire series, from 1987, as well as plot to rule the world from his real Outer Heaven in northern South Africa. He gave us shades of it, after all, on one of the channels in the opening scenes of MGS4.

Going along with the above, Ocelot - or at least the older version thereof - is actually Hideo Kojima in disguise.

Because honestly, he would pretty much have to be the god of the franchise's universe in order to survive all the vendettas he must've piled up over the years.

Considering that the Patriots are supposed to be Memes, who want to control and destroy other memes...

...What would be more appropriate (and horrific) than recruiting other memes to fight back?

• Snake is going to use a Kalashnikitty to destroy the Patriots' Metal Gear Crab. Despite losing an eye in the process, he will have to defeat it by attacking its weak point, for massive damage. He will then proceed to get in the Patriots' base and start killing their dudes by doing a barrel roll.
  • Assuming the Patriots are Memes, then logically speaking, what is the single largest known Meme spawning point? Yes, that's right: the Patriots are 4CHAN!! Arsenal Gear was designed to control the internet to ensure 4chan's survival! The entire Metal Gear series has been a plan to get 4chan to make up memes ABOUT METAL GEAR! And the best bit? Hideo Kojima is leading the Patriots, and is behind the whole damn thing!
  • Which would mean... that the real hero of MGS4 is going to be Tom Cruise!
    • Let's not get crazy now.
    • It doesn't matter though, because about halfway through the game, Chuck Norris would sneeze, and everyone would die instantly from the blast.
    • Including the player and his family.

The Patriots, in particular the Wisemans' Committee, aren't memes or AI or anything so strange.

They're zombies. All twelve members of the Wisemans' Committee died about a hundred years ago. It didn't stop them.

• They're all vampires. All twelve members of the Wisemans' Committee died about a hundred years ago.
• Turns out that Old Snake calls the hundred-years-ago thing "a load of crap," and the Wisemen's Committee's last member died after World War II. As for the Patriots, which really had nothing to do with the Wisemen's Committee, the original six founding Patriots were human but were succeeded by A Is after the falling-out and presumably the deaths of Dr. Clark/Para-Medic and Donald Anderson/Sigint.

Solid Snake is not a clone

He is Big Boss's son the old fashioned way. Maybe with EVA, thus 'Big Mama'. Or (since it is Wild Mass Guessing) Para-Medic!

• He's an imperfect clone, along with Liquid Snake, like the Star Wars clone troopers; in contrast, Solidus Snake would be the 'true' clone, like Boba Fett.

The Metal Gears are precursors of the Dreadnoughts of Warhammer 40,000

Realistically speaking, bipedal robots are a pain in the ass to build and get working, simply due to the mechanics of human movement. As such, the modern military normally doesn't consider them a viable combat option. However, the Metal Gear series has depicted various government and terrorist organisations building Metal Gears for various military purposes, which leads to the logical question: if conventional tanks are more effective than bipedal robots, why the hell are they going through all this fuss to build bipedal war machines, let alone making them nuclear? The answer: because the Emperor is pulling the strings behind the scenes (or even in front of the scenes) to make sure the perfect design is created for a bipedal robot to mass produce as part of the original Space Marine legions.

• Which means that the Emperor is either Big Boss (and isn't actually dead, this explains why they did experiments to create super soldiers from Big Boss' genes) or Hideo Kojima (which, knowing the Metal Gear series, is probably more likely...).

Raiden is an Alternate Universe clone of Shinji Ikari

You have to admit it makes sense. Especially since the ending of NGE and the ending of MGS2 are very, VERY similar, and not just because they're both really weird. Explained more thoroughly here.

• By extension, the Patriots are American Bizarro Universe-SEELE.

There is no "Patriots Wisemen's Committee"

The whole organization is simply a headless network of assassins, politicians, and bureaucrats, all of whom think they're reporting to a higher power, but are really just running on sick inertia. The "Wisemen's Committee" really did all die about a hundred years ago; in effect, the "meme" of the original Wisemen's ideals is running the organization, but it's not sapient or anything weird like that. Just a bit mutated, and propagated by the people who think they're working for them.

• Alternate theory: Ocelot is the leader of the Patriots. He seems to be the one everyone else gets their orders from, and yet, we never see him taking any from the Patriots. He wields authority by claiming he's under orders from the Wisemen's committee and relaying those orders (or through his Fake Defector routine, which is what we usually see him in the middle of. Liquid, Gurlukovich, Solidus...they all had the man they wanted nothing but to kill working directly under them). Presumably, Ocelot shot his way up through the ranks sometime in the 70's.
• These theories made by someone who has not played MGS4 and is not going to be reading any spoilers about it for a while, for reference.
• Turns out that this is true; the Wisemen's Committee (whose last member actually died after World War II) had nothing to do with the Patriots, and in a way the Patriots -- or rather, the AIs that succeeded the original Patriots -- kept much of the world unaware of their existence, as well as of the fact that they're AIs... who did mutate, hence the "War economy".

Hideo Kojima reads TV Tropes regularly, particularly the WMG sections

It's the only way to explain how he managed to single-handedly deal with almost every WMG issue regarding Metal Gear in one fell swoop with MGS4.

Johnny Sasaki is going to be the protagonist in Metal Gear Solid 5

Sure, he spends the majority of the series as a diarrhea-plagued Butt Monkey, but man, does he ever power level during the later parts of the 4th game. Once that mask comes off, he looks exactly like a younger blonde Snake. Not only that, but he even gets Meryl in the end, who a lot of fans consider 'Snake's Girl.' Given that Snake won't be the protagonist in future games, someone's gotta replace him. So why not Johnny? Why else would they spend time deconstructing the Joke Character when he could have just remained a faceless Mook? It even makes some sense considering the very nature of the Metal Gear games.

• Following this, Johnny is the fourth Son of Big Boss, either biologically or clone-ically.
  • Or rather, Johnny is the only remaining and only successful Genome Soldier. He survived ten years on pure "Soldier Genes" of the highest caliber. He certainly takes bullets like a Snake.
    • His codename? Bose-Einsteinium-Condensate Snake.
      • I have a really bad sore throat, and this put me in a lot of pain from laughing so hard...
• Alternatively, Meryl will be the main character and Johnny will take the Mission Control role.
  • Or both will be playable, with online co-op.

Ghost Babel, Metal Gear Acid and its sequel are an alternate continuity

Specifically, one where the events of Metal Gear Solid 1-4 never took place because Solidus and Liquid Snake were not cloned-or perhaps killed at some point (perhaps by Big Boss himself), leaving Solid as the only survivor (in MGA 2, it specifically says that the main character is a clone). This had a stabilizing effect on world affairs as neither of his brothers tried to start uprisings, and ironically the Patriots interfered less in global affairs due to the decrease in overall conflict around the world. As a result, any conflicts remained primarily physical (rogue Metal Gear units) instead of biological or information-based.

• True, at least for the Acid games. The Snake of Acid 1 is stated to have toppled Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land per the MSX games, but never bothered coming back after leaving the military and either didn't participate in the Shadow Moses incident or got the Otacon ending and never formed Philanthropy. However, the allegation of fewer biologically motivated conflicts is wrong, since both Acid games feature a wealth of genetically (or chemically) modified soldiers.

The Big Shell incident was an actual training exercise run by Dead Cell for the SEALS, gone horribly, horribly, wrong...

What was Dead Cell's stated purpose? To run terrorist attacks to provide training for the US armed forces. Suddenly, FOXHOUND (rather, the Patriot simulacrum thereof) has to jump in, and the whole thing goes south.

• Explains why everything was so weird right at the end; the remaining members of training exercise were just adlibbing madly.

Conversely, it was a training exercise and everyone but Raiden (or FOXHOUND as a whole) knew about it.

The Big Shell incident was a routine training exercise run by Dead Cell for Raiden.

Would explain why he starts out with a 'silent tranquilizer gun' (it's a MILES gun), and why all weapons procurement is on site (those are MILES guns too).

• And Dead Cell was bored and felt like messing with the FNG. Explains why you have all those weird fetch quests for the cards at the beginning, rather than being supplied at the start. Had they not been drinking (well, Fat Man was definitely boozing), they might have progressed to telling him he needed to mix elbow grease and headlight fluid to pour on the golden rivet to disable Arsenal Gear. As it was, they downed a few too many brewskis and went with the crazy superpowers and Presidents and robot conspiracies angle.
  • Fat Man and the bombs? All the ones going off were only heard about.
  • Vamp? Squibs.
  • Fortune? MILES.
  • Colonel Campbell? Someone spilled beer on the CODEC communicator. Possibly at the same time as someone else was playing a high-stakes game of...damn, whatever that dangerous game with the scissors was called.
    • Swiss Variation Knifey-Spoony?
  • The President? Played by William Hurt.

Solidus Snake was originally going to be called "Gaseous Snake."

It would have fit with his alias (George Sears) and the Theme Twin Naming too well to pass up.

• "Solidus" fits better, though. He's supposed to be a balance between Solid and Liquid, and "solidus" is the highest temperature that a substance can be at and still be defined as "solid", so the name "Solidus" reflects his in-between state.

Big Boss eventually becomes Shelly de Killer.

If the info from the Metal Gear Wiki is accurate (since I haven't played all the games yet, I don't know for sure), then Big Boss' real full name is John Doe. This is also the real name of gentleman assassin Shelly de Killer. From this, we can conclude that Big Boss, in fact, does not die at the end of MGS 4, but instead manages to stubbornly cling to life for at least until early 2017, during which time he became the third professional assassin to use the de Killer name.

• Since we know de Killer values trust above all else, and trust isn't too far removed from loyalty, Big Boss shouldn't have too much trouble filling the role.
  • Big Boss' name is just John. Calling himself "John Doe" was a joke.

Solid Snake is really his voice actor.

Did anyone but me notice that David Hayter voices Snake? And Snake says his name is Dave? And of course MGS loves to break the fourth wall.

• Logically, then, Solid Snake is also Captain America, which...well, yeah, actually.
• In MGS4, possibly false insofar as David Hayter actually appears as an in-universe version of himself... if somehow the pre-gameplay TV commercials have any status in continuity.
  • This proves nothing. He's even wearing a Solid Eye in the commercial.
  • And don't forget the talk-show host interviewing him is Eva's voice actor, too. Anywho, I don't see why the TV content can't be in-canon; they're just shows that exist circa 2014 with today's propensity for bling-bling turned up to eleven as well as a highly bizarre Mood Dissonance for us, the player, because the world as it is in Guns of the Patriots is rather bleaker than it is today. Also, the commercials are all for the five largest PMCs, and the question the contestant on the talk-show host fails is trivia about them, as well.

Nanomachines don't do everything.

Oh, they could do a lot, don't get the theory wrong. It can definitely help regulate and control powers. But the primary reason the Patriots used nanomachines was to control bodies and minds. What better meme than to tell those with special powers that they are the ones who supply the power? That countering the nanotechnology "removes" the powers is an inverse of the Magic Feather phenom.

The ending of MGS2 and MGS4 never happened.

Snake really did pass to Solidus' side in MGS2, Raiden was killed by Ninja Olga and the ending of MGS2 plus all of MGS4 are a dream he had while dying.

• No, of course not. It's obvious that the entirety of MGS 2 is a dream. Whose nightmare is it? That one marine in the tanker chapter who came to work in his underwear. It's the standard "came to work naked" dream, which eventually gets a little out of hand.

The Snake Tales DID happen!.

"Confidential Legacy" happens in 2005 just a few months after Shadow Moses, then in 2006, Snake is introduced to the Big Shell, the hidden place where the US is constructing another Metal Gear (Kept in secret) he goes through "Dead Man's Whisper" then on early 2007, before the Tanker incident, "A Wrongdoing" happens (Ames is refering to "Confidential Legacy" when he speaks about Snake's mission on a tanker, instead of the proper Tanker incident) much later in the year, Snake and Otacon form Philantrophy, and Snake is implicated in the Tanker incident, then, the government makes the Big Shell public, although hiding it's true purpose, Snake rescues Emma in "Big Shell Evil" (E. E. later returns to the plant after having an argument with Otacon) and finally in 2008 he infiltrates Big Shell again to do the "External Gazer" mission (Which is mostly VR anyways). Snake completed all of them with non-lethal methods.

Hideo Kojima is any combination of the following

Blessed with the gift of prophecy, a Time Lord and/or The Chessmaster behind Anonymous.

Observe the following conversation, taken from the game script of MGS2 on GameFAQs:

Otacon: Snake -- There’s something I have to tell you. Snake: What? Otacon: We didn’t dig up this info -- about the new Metal Gear -- on our own. Not like usual... Snake: How did you find out, then? Otacon: It was a tip. An anonymous tip. Snake: Anonymous? You’ve never trusted those -- why would you start now?

I assume this sounds perfectly innocent when it's voice-acted, but consider the actual words: Capitalize the 'a' in Otacon's last line, and consider the '--' in Snake's last line him interrupting himself (presumably to stop himself calling them "hackers on steroids") and suddenly it's NOT. SO. INNOCENT! According to The Other Wiki, 4chan was launched in October 2003, almost two years after Metal Gear Solid 2 itself was released! So you see, clearly this means that—hang on, there's someone at the door, I'll be back to finish this post shortly.

• The previous poster is clearly insane. Pay him no mind. His absence is due to ordinary liver problems and will be...resolved shortly.
• You shouldn't have done that...

Snake does not actually recognize "Master Miller" in Metal Gear Solid.

The characters are well aware of the fourth wall (or lack thereof). As such, they are also aware of technical improvements from one game console to the next, and that their own appearances can change from game to game. So when Liquid impersonated Miller, Snake had no idea what Miller was actually supposed to look like (not having seen him since Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake on the MSX2), and as a result was easily fooled by Liquid's Paper-Thin Disguise. This also explains why nobody noticed Otacon's hair change from gray to brown between the first two games or his inexplicable bishiefication in MGS4. For the same reason, Snake can hardly be expected to notice anything unusual about Miller's voice, since until that point everyone had spoken in subtitles.

• • This fits in well with the polygon mask in MGS4 and the flashbacks to original graphics in MGS2 and 4..

Zone of the Enders takes place in MGS's future.

The Orbital Frames & L.E.V.s are "descendants" of the Metal Gears. Furthermore, The Patriots are somehow connected to "The Will Of Metatron".

• This is actually supported in MGS3. Check out the model of Jehuty on Granin's desk.

Johnny Sasaki has a codename, and it is Gaseous Snake.

They call him that because of his bowel problems and the fact that, well, he kinda looks like Snake.

Johnyy Sasaki from Snake Eater is the real Eva

Eva said it herself at the end when talking about the defectors That Adam and Eva were both men, Johnny did say he used to live in America. Also he was so helpful, making sure Snake got food and if you shared your food, he even gave you another weapon and showed you a photo with a radio frequency you could accidentally see written on the back, what a coincidence...

The "Snake" codename will be retired.

Big Boss dies saying "The world would be best without snakes." A new main character will be named Solid something, not something Snake.

• And thus Saint Patrick's day was born.
  • ...the new character will have the real name of Patrick!

Ocelot made up the ridiculous thing about inferior recessive genes to manipulate Liquid and Solidus.

The Database and MGS4 only call Solid and Liquid imperfect clones. Also, this it totally Ocelot's style.

The Twin Snakes was merely a Dream Sequence experienced by Snake

Sometime after Shadow Moses but before the events of the Big Shell snake went through an extreamly long Dream Sequence. Alternativly it could have been a Mind Screw. Anyway, in this since there is No Fourth Wall David Hater is extremely quiet because snake was supposed to sound tired! Also, he cannot remember the dialog exactly, or the accents because it had been atleast a year past those events. His fake badassness in the game come from an ego he suppressed throught his life, and partly from all the people who saw him as the greatest hero ever. He developed a higher opinion of himself, and remember himself doing far more stunts then he actually did.

• Although it could be Raiden's VR training of the events. (Same author as the Dream Sequence WMG)

Every copy of MGS4 has a coating of nanomachines on the top of the disc, activated through touch, programmed to infect and give the player a Johnny Sasaki-like experience.

This troper is not kidding when he says he, with no warning, became violently, violently ill shortly after helping Rat Patrol Team 01, soiled Johnny included, fight through the wave of Frogs. Clearly, Hideo Kojima was worried that we would have a hard time being sympathetic to Johnny, not because he's unlikeable, but because of schadenfreude over his diarrhea. After ten hours of intense stabbing pain in the stomach, followed by nearly a full hour in the bathroom and repeated, random spells for a day afterward, this troper has gained an immense amount of sympathy for Johnny.

• This troper would like to second this. While not nearly as bad, she had to make a big deposit at the brown bank (and she's leaving it at that, lest we get into Too Much Information territory) shortly after either that sequence or the scene where you first meet Johnny; she can't quite remember at the moment, but she's thinking it's the former.
  • This Troper hasn't yet played MGS4 because he doesn't have a Play Station 3, but following a recent surgery that forced him to take anti-biotics with a side effect thak can only be called "Johnny Sasaki Syndrome". Upon playing MGS1 after this incident this Troper tried to kill Meryl for what she did to Johnny.

Both "explanations" for Liquid Ocelot are true

Yes, yes, we all know by now that Ocelot used nanomachines and hypnotherepy to become Liquid Snake, as opposed to Liquid possessing him, at least according to the information that's explicitly mentioned.

But let's read between the lines here, people. Keeping in mind that the former spoiler-tagged method is true, let's take a look at another MGS4 character, Screaming Mantis. She too had been given nanomachines and hypnotherepy to take on the personality of Psycho Mantis. And what ended up happening? Psycho Mantis' ghost ended up possessing her. Both Ocelot and Mantis' methods are identical, so logically the results should have been the same.

• Alternatively, since Ocelot bothered to have Liquid's arm cut off and a prosthetic mounted, Liquid posessing Ocelot in MGS2 was genuine and Ocelot had the arm re-amputated after it became apparent how much of a problem it was, choosing instead to fake the rest of it.
  • Well, the MGS2 events are genuine; that much is said in the MGS database. I'm talking about the time after he had Liquid's arm removed. In any case, the result, under this theory, is the same: When Ocelot "faked" the possession, Liquid's ghost possessed him, much like with Screaming/Psycho Mantis (whether that was the intended result or not is debateable).
    • Wow, talk about phantom limb syndrome!

JD is the subject of the Judas Priest song Electric Eye

Up here in space \ I'm looking down on you \ My lasers trace \ Everything you do You think you've private lives \ Think nothing of the kind \ There is no true escape \ I'm watching all the time I'm made of metal \ My circuits gleam \ I am perpetual \ I keep the country clean

Solid Snake is actually Gillian Seed from Snatcher

• See Snatcher for an explanation.

There are no clones of Big Boss.

He's just so awesome that he stuck his toes through a rift in space/time and they all became little replicas of him once they popped out the other side.

Big Boss has a Code

Explains how he fell a really long distance—twice—and survived, along with all the other punishment he takes, and how he was still alive in MGS4. For a really happy ending, he gives it to Snake at the end, so he can live longer than a few months.

• So, what was Snake's geass before he was given Big Boss's code?
  • The Solid Eye of course.
• Buy if he had a Code during the Virtuous Mission, then how did he age? You don't age when you have a Code.

Big Boss is Odin in disguise.

He looks the part. And it would explain everything he's managed to survive.

• This, of course, means that he faked his death again at the end of MGS4, as the Allfather is fated to perish at the hands of Fenrir, and as such he couldn't die to a new FOXDIE varient.
  • Really? Fenrir is often depicted as a wolf or other canine. Dogs are used to hunt foxes (much to This Troper's fury), hence making dogs "Foxdie." So FOXDIE (Fenrir) killed Big Boss (Odin).
• Which would also make Outer Heaven Valhalla, the Norse "warrior's heaven" (which Odin was in charge of).

Metal Gear Solid 5 will involve the original Metal Gear RAY.

Plenty of speculation goes on about who the protagonist will be in MGS5 without any thought about the opposition. Pay attention to the fight in MGS4 between Metal Gear REX and Metal Gear RAY; although RAY has a cockpit, it has no tail. This is not the original Metal Gear RAY built by the Marines and stolen from the tanker by Ocelot, but a production-model. Liquid didn't just have the tail removed (and what reason he'd have for doing that, I don't know anyway) because the AI-driven RAY units that launch from Outer Haven and attack the Missouri later have the same two-eyed, no-tail design. They're likely a newer version of the AI driven production models seen at the end of Sons of Liberty, incorporating a cockpit but remaining, primarily, unmanned units.

Thus, the original Metal Gear RAY is pretty much the only loose end in MGS4. We have no idea where it is. Odds are it's going to show up in the next game, possibly absconded with by some militant group seeking to impose their will on a smaller country that lacks a sizable state army and no longer has large PMCs to hire. Though RAY isn't nuclear capable like REX, it can still attack strategic targets from the water or a decent distance inland, where local forces too weak to take on entire armored columns would be incapable of fighting it off. It could very well be an effective tool for terrorism, able to hit hard and retreat very quickly.

• Also, if it was one of the mass-produced RAY:s and not the original, it gives us a good explanation for how Snake managed to beat it while piloting REX (aside from sheer baddassness, that is), despite RAY being designed to counter REX. Since it was one of the mass-produced RAY:s, it would likely be of lesser quality and thus weaker than the original. Compare with the RAY:s Raiden was fighting in MGS2; they were mass-produced to guard Arsenal Gear, and Raiden managed to take down a number of them.

Otacon is an otakin of Snake.

It makes sense. Although he has to believe that reincarnation is not time-constrained for it to work.

Otacon is an otakin of Konata.

Otacon... o-ta-kon... konota.. Konata! They're both self-professed otaku, and well, somebody back me up on this. (This implies nothing about a connection to Suzumiya Haruhi.)

Big Boss didn't kill the Joy

Think about it. We have only Big Boss' word for it, and right after the fight migs napalmed the hell out of the body.

The Boss and the Big Boss were prior (or future) The Guys

Mainly because everytime I type "The Boss (the Joy)", or vice versa, I immediately think of The Kid The Guy or Grandfather the Guy, etc.

Solid Snake has a Shout-Out to Dawn of War in MGS 4

He has upgraded to hiding in METAL BOXES!

Big Boss is actually the reason that early bacteria evolved differentiation between the sexes

This one honestly makes perfect sense. Big Boss is SO SEXY that it created a ripple in time, back to before life began. This aura of sexiness covered the universe, and when life began to develop, the bacterium that were originally just splitting in two to procreate evolved sex chromosomes out of the futile hope that it would allow them to sleep with him. Since then, all animal and plant life and more or less anything with an urge to procreate has that urge in the off chance that it means that they'll get to have sex with Big Boss.

Rose was impregnated with Yet Another Clone of Big Boss (or Solid Snake) without her knowledge or consent.

The Patriots have had multiple opportunities to harvest cells from Solid, Liquid, or Solidus (or even Big Boss himself, since MGS4 retconned it so that the Patriots have kept Big Boss in stasis since his first death). They didn't tell Rose because they were worried that she would break cover over guilt that she's not carrying Raiden's child. (Of course, they didn't count on her breaking cover because she genuinely fell in love with Raiden, and believing that she was pregnant by him didn't help.) Or this was part of a massive Gambit Roulette in which they could somehow use this new clone!baby to their advantage should the whole "turn Raiden into the next Snake via memes" thing didn't work out.

Still, Raiden more or less worships the ground Solid Snake walks on, so even should he ever find out, he wouldn't mind playing surrogate Dad. And he'd get to mentor a Snake, how cool is that?

(Extending this WMG, the Snake in Metal Gear Acid is a clone of Solid Snake raised by Rose and Raiden.)

• There are a few problems with that theory. First, the events of Metal Gear Solids one and two showed that the Patriots didn't particularly want to make more clones and were looking at alternate methods of creating super soldiers. Second, given that MGS2 specifically proved that genes were less important than memes, it would be thematically inappropriate for them to give Rose a Big Boss clone. Finally, did you see the family resemblance on that kid? If he's a clone of anybody, it's Raiden. Actually, isn't blond hair supposed to be a recessive trait...?
  • This is assuming that the pregnancy began before they kicked off the "genes verses memes" plan. Maybe the Secret Clone thing is Plan B. Plus, the kid is arguably albino, and we know of at least one other famous albino clone...
  • Or maybe one of his parents are albino. You know, like Raiden?

Adrian Veidt was a secret associate of the Patriots whose fate wasn't settled in Guns of the Patriots, and will be the Big Bad in MGS 5.

Given the different political situations of the Metal Gear and Watchmen universes, Veidt had to channel his Dark Messiah tendencies into something a bit more subtle.

• Kojima Production's special E3 2010 shows a bunch of video screens showing different programs. Hmm, now where have we seen that before?

The main character of MGS5 will be Sunny.

The sun is a recurring motif in MGS4. All Acts, with the exception of Naked Sin, have the word 'sun' in their title. Sunny even gets the final line in the series (as of now) which incidentally refers to the sun again. Sunny will take on the role of main character, with Otacon as support and perhaps some help from Raiden's son and Meryl and her team.

• Tai-yooooooooh!
• Jossed. Hideo Kojima says that Metal Gear Peace Walker (starring Big Boss) is the spiritual "Metal Gear Solid 5".

Snake's Revenge exists in the MGS universe...

As a Hollywood action movie based on the Zanzibar Land incident, or what the public THINKS happened there. Campbell mentions he and Snake being the only ones who know the truth of what happened there, suggesting that what the public knows is very different.

Raikov is a Jolteon.

One that has taken human form, obviously. Only someone with Volt Absorb could sleep with Volgin on a regular basis without getting so much as a single burn mark.

Vamp is still alive.

It's explained flat-out that Vamp's regeneration is a natural ability highly augmented by nanomachines. It's a reasonable assumption that he didn't get these nanomachines until after MGS2, just compare his scenes in Sons of Liberty to his scenes in Guns of the Patriots. In the former, mortal wounds like shots to the head drop him for a good long while. The headshot also leaves a permanent scar. It's suggested that he needs contact with water to regenerate, but this might just be symbolism of some kind. In the latter, however, he gets up seconds after a shot to the head, the wound closes instantly, and wounds from blades heal nearly as fast as they're made. The conclusion, then: what we see in Sons of Liberty is Vamp's natural ability, without nanomachines to help. Thus, injecting him with the nanomachines suppressor should simply put him back to this state, not remove his regeneration entirely. As such, Raiden was able to actually beat him in a fight, because now he can't raise instantly from anything, but that's different from killing him.

Of course, he has another problem; he's buried under several tons of rubble. And he'll probably be mightily pissed off if anyone ever drags him out. Then again, anyone who would drag him out after arriving at this conclusion might very well just want to set him loose in a specific direction...

• There's also the little matter that Shadow Moses Island is sinking under the sea due to global warming. This means that, soon after MGS4's ending, Vamp is trapped under both a huge pile of rubble and an ocean, unable to move but unable to die... waiting.

This ninja is Olga.

Olga is already a ninja. She was shot in the head, but said head was mostly intact when she died and Gray Fox came back from worse. This ninja's eye is covered, which could cover Olga's gunshot wound. She could potentially be brought back to life if her brain wasn't damaged.

• Jossed. The game stars Raiden and is supposed to take place between Metal Gears Solid 2 and 4. That said, Zombie Cyborg Ninja Olga making an appearance would be hella cool.

Solid Snake's accelerated aging isn't due to the fact that he's a clone or because of his genetics...

It's all a lie. The reason he's aged terribly and has bad cardiopulmonary health is because he's a chain smoker. Still think smoking is cool, kids?

The Late June '09 rash of celebrity deaths? All FOXDIE.

Despite theories to the contrary, a constant string of celebrity deaths needs many more than 23 days to properly orchestrate and execute. Hence the use of FOXDIE as a smokescreen by the Patriots to lure public attention away from their 1500-page climate control bill, designed to control the amount of carbon humans can use as yet another extension of the S3 Project.

Roy Campbell is part Nanoha.

How else can he instantly befriend prisoners from within an army truck AND detect when the wrong people are killed in Snake Eater? Green Beret cross-training with the TSAB, that's how.

Sarah Palin is connected to the Patriots

Sarah Palin governed over Alaska during the Shadow Moses incident. Coincidence? I think not.

• If anything, she's actually become a target of the Patriots. I'd say more, but I already got in trouble for Soapboxing once. (I hear David Letterman has just been put on the FOXDIE short list, though.)
  • MGS2 seemed to imply that pretty much every politician, regardless of political affiliation, was in the patriot's pocket. It's basically the mother of all political machines. Do you really think someone could become a governor without their backing?
  • Does that mean Obama is actually a white guy named Johnson who likes to grab peoples' balls as an icebreaker? Wow, that's... hmm.

The Acid games run parallel to the Solid games, but still in the same continuity.

For this recipe, you'll need an inexplicable identical twin of Solid Snake, some acreage in Alaska, and a lot of caffeine.

• Step 1: Proceed with the MSX games as usual with regular Snake.
• Step 2: While regular Snake is in retirement, tap the other Snake to go through the events of Snake's Revenge and Ghost Babel. Fortress Galaude should be wrecked by the time regular Snake gets shipped to Shadow Moses.
• Step 3: Proceed with MGS1 and MGS2 up to the Tanker Incident. With the real Snake disavowed as an eco-terrorist, confer the title to the twin Snake and sic him on Lobito Physics and Chemistry Lab (Acid 1).
• Step 4: Wipe twin's memory during Lobito debriefing, replace with amnesia-locked story about just now having been cloned from the original Snake. Sic on the next biggest military contractors behind Liquid Ocelot's little cartel (Serena Republic and SaintLogic, backstory and events of Acid 2).
• Step 5: With the original Snake finally retired, bring in the other one under the codename Vic Viper.

Rosemary actually exists, but played no part in the Plant chapter whatsoever.

Metal Gear Solid 4 has already confirmed that Rosemary is not a figment of Raiden's imagination, but she and Campbell also know about the Big Shell incident. In the Plant chapter of Metal Gear Solid 2, the Patriots only tell Raiden they have Rosemary after GW became infected by Emma's virus; it is rather abrupt and without the subtle manipulation that the Patriots possessed without the virus.

This Troper's theory goes something something like this:

• Rosemary knows that Raiden is joining the army but she doesn't know what for. Before Raiden is sent off on the Big Shell, they have farewell sex, resulting in Rose's pregnancy. The Patriots wire Raiden's house and base their AI depiction of Rosemary off of the very emotional post-coital Rosemary, exaggerating all of her traits to the point of absurdity. This exaggeration is why Raiden is so uncomfortable around the AI Rosemary.
• In MGS2's denouement, Raiden makes no mention of the Big Shell incident to the real Rose, and keeps it hidden deep within him as a dark secret. The torment of having to bottle his emotions inside him, Rosemary's confused but ultimately calm complexion when the two finally meet up in the game's finale. Raiden hits the bottle and his condition deteriorates, becoming abusive but still never telling Rosemary what happened to him for fear of scaring her.
• Colonel Campbell, acting as a U.N. ambassador, tracks down Raiden as part of his investigation into Liquid Ocelot's war crimes, sometime after Arsenal crashes into Manhattan. Raiden is finally forced to confess his involvement in the Big Shell incident, and the pain of doing so leads him to leave Rose and his son, becoming a cyborg ninja. Campbell and Rosemary finally realize the danger Raiden's son is in and, trying to protect him, fake their marriage.

Solid Snake has a mild form of Asperger's Syndrome or another high-functioning autism spectrum condition.

It might explain the echolalia.

• Echolalia?
  • Echolalia.

The BnB Unit girls' traumas didn't happen exactly the way they were depicted in the game.

They did suffer horrible trauma that drove them Axe Crazy in their various individual ways, but the Animal Motifs of their particular psychoses were instilled by hypnotherapy once Liquid Ocelot recruited them, as some sort of twisted tribute to FOXHOUND. Given that this is the guy responsible for Mount Snakemore we're talking about, it wouldn't necessarily be out of character for him to go to this much trouble over an issue of style, and even in the Metal Gear universe, it's a bit improbable that Ocelot managed to locate four young women who each manifested two traits from two separate, previous Quirky Miniboss Squads.

The Cobra Unit retired during MGS3

And Snake was in on it. It was all a plot to get out of the military life, a practice often refered to as desertion.

• Or it was to set Snake up as Big Boss.
• Again, Unreliable Narrator and Never Found the Body.
  • Unreliable Narrator to the point of Breaking the Fourth Wall and lying to the player.
    • Well, this series never cared much about the fourth wall.

In the Metal Gear universe, it is possible for Liquid to have really been the "dominant" clone all along and have naturally blond hair.

There is a rare allele for blond hair in this universe that's dominant over brown. And at least one other character has it - The Boss. She's blonde, there's no reason to believe that she dyes her hair, and, well, everything about The Boss is dominant.

Volgin is the son of Larxene (from Org. XIII)

Both have similar coloring, slasher smiles, are sadists, have lighting powers, hang around with effeminate men and even their weapons are similar( Blades in between the fingers for Larxene, Volgin just uses bullets). Volgin seems to have women issues, possibly from abandonment. The age difrence could be explained by the fact that Nobodies don't age and it's possible that in her pre-Nobody days Arleen (or Relena) could have been using her female charms on Volgin's father to further herself before becoming the Savage Nymph KH fans know and either love or loathe.

The Ending of Metal Gear Solid 4 was all a dream.

Snake died in the microwave hallway, the rest of the game was all a hallucination. The Patriots Demise was Snake's desire to see them destroyed before he died, Johnny and Meryll's Wedding was the life he failed to have after MGS1 (Supported since the other members of Rat Patrol are there...and they looked pretty dead at the end of Act 3), The scene between him and Big Boss was taking place at the pearly gates.

The name "Metal Gear Solid" refers to Snake himself.

In MGS4, Otacon says that the name 'Metal Gear' is applied to a walking tank relevant in terms of the tactical nuclear map (hence why the non-nuke carrying RAY and Mk II were still Metal Gears), and MGS2 makes it clear that Philanthropy was allowed and encouraged to exist by the Patriots, presumably for controlling the wild Metal Gear proliferation that Ocelot had been forced to start under the guise of working for Solidus. Basically, Solid Snake himself is a 'walking tank', relevant in terms of the tactical nuclear map. "Metal Gear Solid" could therefore be an in-universe description of him, and it's just like Kojima to do something like that, isn't it?

Volgin is an Occidental Otaku.

It would explain why his Survival Mantra is in gratuitous Japanese when he's Russian. And he likes bishies.

Galvez will kill Paz.

If only because their English voices are the same as Gene and Ursula/Elisa. Plus Galvez will probably end up being the villain due to there being 'more to him than meets the eye'. Alternatively...

Paz is the true villain.

Considering how many times the word 'peace' is used to associate with her, would it really be that shocking to learn she is behind the Peace Walker Project? She does say she'll do 'anything' to protect her namesake, perhaps making her a Well-Intentioned Extremist. She will kill Galvez after he's lived out his usefulness to her goal.

• The music video featuring Paz may in fact foreshadow this. Starting at 2:15, portraits of the main cast are shown in logos corresponding to their alligence or group. Notice anything implied at 2:33-2:39? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7aACDTi278
  • Confirmed. She pulls out an ocelot working as Triple Agent for CIA, KGB, and Cipher the proto-PATRIOT although she is not exactly the Magnificent Bastard

Amanda is Meryl's mother.

They look somewhat simular, plus it would establish a Snake, Otacon, Meryl parallel with Big Boss, Huey, and Amanda.

Kazuhira Miller will change his name to McDonell Benedict Miller by the end of Peace Walker

Perhaps due to Paz's death, he decides it's too painful to keep a name with simular meaning to hers. Alternatively, 'Kazuhira' is simply a code name or alias.

Big Boss's scar is due to an operation he underwent as a result of the injury that put him in a coma.

Alternatively, Kojima read one too many M-Preg fics...

Coldman is based on designs and elements of cut character Old Boy.

Remove the 'C' and you get 'old'. Man=Boy, therefore 'Old Boy'.

Strangelove was The Boss's Stalker with a Crush

It has been mentioned that she has a 'strange love', plus it would make a nice parallel with Ocelot and Big Boss's relationship. Perhaps they even met the same way, with The Boss besting Strangelove in battle causing Strangelove to develop obsessive feelings for her. Strangelove seems to imitate The Boss when Big Boss encounters her, with even the same type of horse The Boss owned.

• Isn't this canon?

In Peace Walker, the traditional boss squad (eg. FOXHOUND, Dead Cell, etc.) will not be humans but...

...Machines. A character, possibly Galvez, in the TGS trailer talks about how "from now on our only heroes will be machines". Machines like the new Shagohod and the flying mech were created to be the 'new heroes' to replace the old. Both mechs also seem to have a red cylinder object, perhaps a power source, attached to them. The rest of the machine bosses will most likely have these devices too.

• This theory has been totally confirmed. Most of the bosses in the game are either AI weapons or armored vehicals of some sort. The only exceptions are the Non-Canon Monster Hunter bosses, but those don't count.

The red cylinders attached to the mechs aren't simply just power sources, but also contain...

...AIs. A Is based on the personality and mind of The Boss. Since The Boss was a legendary hero, the machines having A Is based on her would explain why Galvez(?) is so confident that they will replace the heroes of old. At the beginning of the TGS trailer, there seems to be a conversation between Strangelove and The Boss. However, perhaps instead of being a flashback, this takes place in 'present' time with Strangelove briefing an AI though a series of questions to make sure it answers in the same way The Boss would. One character also mentions something saying "Jack" over and over again, perhaps she's talking about one of the A Is. The technology of the A Is could also be recovered at the end of the game and later be used as the basis of The Patriots's AI.

• Confirmed... mostly. You're right about the cylenders being AI cores, but the fact that the A Is arn't quite as smart as a human is actually a plot point.

Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar did indeed die in Metal Gear 2.

The Dr. Madnar mentioned in MGS4 is his daughter, Ellen Madnar. We never see 'Madnar' in person. Perhaps Dr. Madnar is like Dr. Clark, somewhat of a recluse and rarely exposing themselves in person to others. Naomi thought Dr. Clark was a man as a result of this, so it's possible that this could be the case again. Dr. Madnar apparently did work strictly underground, so perhaps this is why she stayed hidden.

Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar is a cyborg

There's cyborg Ninjas, why not a cyborg scientist? Who better to Cyborgize somebody than Doctor Madnar, Cyborg Doctor?

The deaths of Sigint and Para-Medic were both assisted suicides

In The Last Days Of Foxhound webcomic, DARPA chief Donald Anderson talks Ocelot into killing him so he wouldn't reveal that O Celot was involved with the Patriots in exchange for not letting Foxhound have the code to activate REX. Since he's Sigint it would explain why he knew all this as he founded the Patriots with Ocelot, so that would fit into canon. Whether Sigint still supported Zero's methods or just wanted to keep nukes out of Foxhound's hands is up for debate. Dr Clark aka Para-Medic may have also done a similar thing although her motivations are a little more sketchy, possibly to prevent herself from messing with the laws of nature, or possibly so she'd never have to deal with any of the reccecive/dominant bullshit ever again, which she tried to explain to Big Boss who grasped completley the wrong end of completley the wrong stick and used it to drill in an inferiority complex in Liquid Snake.

Strangelove does not really exist

She's a mental projection of Big Boss trying to cope with the loss of his mentor and may be in his coma (when his genes will be gathered for Les Enfants Terrible. They meet on the bridge where The Boss's betrayal began, perhaps signaling a change of roles, as Snake is heading towards being a soldier but not blindly obeying the government to his own detriment. To do this he needs a The Boss yet not The Boss, so he uses the closest thing to a younger The Boss he knows, Her son Ocelot for a template. Strangelove refers to the feelings Snake felt for The Boss and the feelings she had for him.

Strangelove is from the future.

She traveled to the past to make sure Big Boss starts Outer Heaven and ensure a stable time loop takes place. It's possible she's an adult Sunny, as Strangelove does seem to have a resemblance to her...

• Furthermore, this might explain the presence of technology that seems advanced for the time, even by Metal Gear standards. Strangelove brought her knowledge of future technology to the past and offered her expertise in helping to create the AI Weapons.

Zero was behind Liquid's upbringing

They are both Brits and Zero seems to have been behind a lot of things, why not his old teamate's project.

• • Considering they share the same Japanese VA, this would be really fitting.

Liquid's real name is John/Jack.

Big Boss's real name is John, or alternatively Jack. Zero's name is David. It's not that much of a stretch to assume that Solid was named after Zero, thus meaning Liquid was probably named after Big Boss.

Raiden won't be the hero of Rising

You'll switch to some new guy an hour in.

• • Or new girl...

Ocelot raised Liquid and Solid and Snake and both had their memories of this replaced/wiped.

Because it would be dramatic.

EXTREMELY STUPID CROSSOVER-TYPE THEORY GO!!

House is the fourth clone of Big Boss and he found a way to fix and reverse the rapid aging problem, along with FOXDIE. Through cardboard box-related threats, Snake made him share this secret with him and became young again/FOXDIE-less. He faked his own death so that far into the future he could become the mysterious Master Chief. And, in the past, Ocelot fathered Light Yagami, Lelouch Lamperouge, and many others, including God. Because his Manipulative Bastard / Chessmaster / Magnificent Bastard skills are In the Blood.

Raiden's...modifications...in MGS4 are similar in nature and root to that of the B&B corps

Just compare how they look. Not to mention that Raiden has the pre-requisite "tragic war-related past" thanks to his child soldiering years.

Metal Gear and Hellsing share a universe.

Big Boss is said to have been with a group called the Wild Geese for some amount of time. That could be the mercenaries from Hellsing, hell BB could've been fighting alongside Pip's dad/grandpa. Other than that I have no proof besides Rule of Cool and… wouldn't it just've been awesome to see what Millennium would've done with their own Metal Gear?

• • The reference is most likely directed towards the classic war movie The Wild Geese, featuring a group of mercenaries.

There will be a character named Fūjin in Rising.

He or she will have some kind of connection to Raiden.

Not only was Big Boss sexually attracted to boxes, but this was the driving force of the plot

As we know from Metal Gear Solid 4, the bulk of the series plot stems from various men and women having massive crushes on him that weren't reciprocated or even noticed. He didn't notice any of said crushes because he only has eyes for The Box.

• He is, however, willing to have threesomes. As long as The Box approves.

Ocelot knew he was the biological son of The Boss.

Two versions.
1) Big Boss figured it out after finding out that he's a x-tuple agent brought up in a Philosopher-controlled facility. The time frame fits, and he even looks like his parents in MGS3, as far as This Troper is concerned (she didn't know that they were related before the end of MGS4, mind you.) He then used this to cement his trust with Ocelot and earn him a lifelong and loyal-to-death subordinate (without realizing that he didn't have to do any of this, of course.)
2) The Boss herself told Ocelot/he figured it out himself during the events of Operation Snake Eater. Given that Ocelot was ADAM all along he must have picked up on The Boss' true mission from the start, and might have even called her out on this. The Boss must have also been aware of Ocelot's true status, both as a triple agent and her son, so she might have either outright told Ocelot or let him cautiously probe the information out of him. If her impending Heroic Sacrifice wasn't enough a reason for Ocelot to trust her and make a promise that he wouldn't intervene with Volgin's and Snake's match, this information surely was.

• As a sidenote, regarding Ocelot's sudden ability to counter and act against Snake's CQC in the plane sequence after defeating The Boss, The Boss might have, either by her own volition or after being asked by Ocelot, taught him some basic CQC. As she and Snake were both the very best in CQC, basics is a pretty liberal term here, so a small-scale Training from Hell might have ensued. All the more time for The Boss to tell him or for Ocelot to figure it out.

Besides, Ocelot is ever only portrayed showing real loyalty towards The Boss and Big Boss. The latter he was in love with (canonically now) and the former... well, Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas.

Metal Gear Solid Rising will star Raiden's son

(Spoiler tagged due to MGS4 ending details)

In the teaser picture, "Raiden" has brown eyes. The Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 2 and 4 has blue eyes. However, Raiden's son, John II (Little John) DOES have brown eyes. Besides, "Raiden" is just a codename, like there have been more than one Snake. Hideo Kojima has already stated that Solid Snake won't appear in any more games. Metal Gear Solid 2 stars the first Raiden (Naked Raiden). Little John (Solid Raiden) will have to fight his ACTUAL twin brother (from whom he was separated at birth. The reason Rose told Naked Raiden that she had had an abortion was to hide that there were two), just as Solid fought Liquid. The next few games will all focus on Solid Raiden, whose main love interest will be Sunny Gurlukovich, mission control and chef. Naked Raiden will clearly be killed by Solid Raiden using a makeshift weapon, and someone will make another nuclear-equipped walking battle tank.

• Jossed. New artwork has made the eyes blue again. Here: http://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid:_Rising

The entirety of Metal Gear Solid is a fantasy concocted by Roach, and also his Dying Dream.

At some point during the campaign, Roach gets a little disgruntled at how much he's done, for seemingly little effect. He starts thinking back to "Cliffhangers" - the basic elements are there, a sneaking mission in a frozen environment, complete with near-sighted guards using FAMAS'. However, in his hypothetical world, Roach is a great and respected hero, with a better codename - Snake, that sounds good. Solid Snake, the brave war hero, single-handedly stopping the evil terrorists from destroying the world, none of this shoddy Gray and Grey Morality. Metal Gear, of course, is a representation of the submarine from "Contingency."

After retrieving the DSM, and being knocked silly by an artillery blast, Roach's scrambled mind rethinks the events of his original story, and...well...Metal Gear Solid 2. Finally, after being shot by Shepherd, who he finds represents the scheming politicians of the world, who could care less about soldiers, Snake (now much older, as Roach realizes the end is nigh) destroys the Patriots. He then reconciles with Big Boss (Price, whom Roach was more than a little annoyed at after he launched the nuke). And then he dies.

Raikov was a woman in disguise, Raiden was her grandson and Volgin was the grandfather.

Raikov is practically identical to Raiden, only with a voice that sounds like a woman (badly) imitating a man. This is because "he" wanted to do something for "his" Mother Russia. Affirmative action wasn't in place in the Soviet Union (there certainly aren't any female combatants besides American war hero The Boss) so, like any good Soviet, "he" disguised "his" gender.

Miss Raikova was quickly promoted despite being remarkably bishonen for a Russian man. Sometime later, she and a sadistic Colonel fell in love. A sadistic Colonel with lightning powers. GENETIC lightning powers presumably fueled by sadism or something. Volgin saw through her disguise (or, being bisexual, didn't care once the clothes came off). As a side note, this was the real reason Volgin identified Snake as an impostor by grabbing his dick - the real Raikov didn't have one!

Sometime before Volgin's death, he knocked Raikova up. Sometime later she gave birth to one (or both) of Raiden's parents, who either developed lightning abilities or they skipped a generation. When Raiden was born, he was orphaned (or whatever the hell happened) and can't remember his parents. So now we have the remarkably pretty depending-on-how-you-view-cyborgs Raiden - the Japanese word for 'lightning' by the way - finally revealing his lightning powers near the end of MGS4. Powers he inherited from his grandfather and looks he scored from his grandmother.

• One: Very visable male chest when stuffed in locker two: The "no females" is gameplay mechanics, the Soviets did have female combatants.
• Alternately, Raikov and Volgin were more in love than the game let on, and they decided to have a child through artificial insemination. Their child also rose through the ranks to become a high-ranking officer in the Russian military. Sometime later, Solidus (who must have served in the military at some point before the Patriots made him president) killed Raikov's son while fighting in some future conflict with Russia, but decided to spare his infant son (Raiden) so that he could raise him as a child soldier and make him the subject of the Patriots' S3 Program.

Peace Walker takes place after MGS4

It's all an advanced VR Simulation that Little John is going through, playing the role of Big Boss. Sunny also takes part in the training under the codename 'Strangelove'. The Monster Hunter mode was also her idea, being a video game fan as indicated by her owning a Play Station 3 and PSP.

The entire series is one big Stealth Parody...

...of Hollywood action movies.

The ending of MGS2 is all a dream (with a twist)

The twist being when it became a dream. Prior to the Shell 2 Core everything was real, but then something happened that caused Raiden to begin dreaming. What was the event that caused this? It was when the president grabbed Raiden's balls. The ball grab was a secret technique taught to each president and the secret service that knocks out anyone. Raiden passed out instantly and began dreaming that everything after that happened (due to a drug secretly injected into him before the mission). In reality Raiden was transported out of the Big Shell. As always, this was The Patriots' doing.

The poisonous Zanzibar hamsters are poisonous because they were injected with nanomachines

Hey, if they can make a guy into an invincible vampire who walks on water, prototypes could probably make a hamster poisonous...at least in the Metal Gear world.

Master Miller is impersonating Liquid in MGS1.

There really was a Liquid Snake, but Miller killed him and disguised the corpse to look like his own in his Alaskan home. He then impersonated him during the Shadow Moses incident. in order to finish what Big Boss started with Outer Heaven and Metal Gear. When designing the FOXDIE virus, Naomi based it on DNA that was supposedly Liquid's, but was really Miller's, provided to her by the Patriots in order to remove him from power. This is the real reason why the FOXDIE virus would kill Liquid but not his twin/clone, and explains Liquid's annoying fake British accent. The corpse of "Snake" mentioned in MGS2 is really Liquid's, though.

Raiden will demonstrate electrical abilities in Metal Gear Solid: Rising.

Which will explain why he was able to hit people with lightning bolts at the end of MGS4.

• Considering the game's tagline is "lightning bolt action," I'm gonna have to go with a resounding "no shit" on this one.

The Mole in Peace Walker had undergone Decoy Octopus/Liquid Ocelot style mental conditioning.

"Paz" was a real personality, created mentally in order to infiltrate MSF. Pacifica Ocean was the original, but when the sleeper activation code was given, it resulted in severe mental stress; (created personalities don't just tidily "go away") hence the crazy.

The entire series was just a dream

"I'M STILL IN A DREAM, snake eater"

• or...

Naked Snake forgets to take the venom gland out of a snake he ate & everything from then on was a hallucination

that would explain all the supernatural stuff, the insane plot twists in MGS2, &...pretty much everything that would normally be impossible.

Strangelove is Otacon's mother.

It's known that Huey has a thing for her, and heavily implied that she returns his affection. Plus it would explain Otacon's massive Ho Yay if we're assuming that homosexuality is at least partially genetic.

• Is silver/gray his natural hair color then? Since he manages to have it at age 25. Maybe he learned his computer judo from her too.

The Boss faked her death at the end of Mission Snake Eater

She then moved to New Jersey, got a sex change operation complete with hair dye and colored contacts, and became a musician. We now know hir as Bruce Springsteen. They are both known as The Boss, after all, so they must be the same person!

Otacon was the Spanner in the Works necessary to defeat the Patriots, and his being so is a direct backfiring of what the Patriots had intended for him.

Here's what happened: Julie was a Honey Trap /Patriot plant meant to seduce both the Emmerich men, thus driving Huey to commit suicide (they no longer had any use for him) and causing Hal to think of himself as a worthless person (therefore a malleable one), as well as driving him to make something of himself. Through subtle planting and information monitoring (an inspiring teacher here, a cool robot show there), they created in him the desire to make super robots, a desire they knew they could take advantage of. Thus, he was the chief architect of Metal Gear REX.

As they monitored his interactions with the other scientists on the REX project, the Patriots realized that they could not remove his strong Neutral Good tendency and turn him fully into their tool. Nor, they realized, could they hide the truth from him for the rest of his productive life. Thus, their plan was to leak him the information about REX having nukes after its first successful deployment. Distraught by the notion that he was and would be responsible for a large-scale loss of human life, and feeling utterly abandoned by humanity, Otacon would then commit suicide, like his father before him. His attraction to Sniper Wolf ensured that he would be too distracted to discover just what was going on until it was too late. After his death, the Patriots would upload Hal's knowledge and thinking style into an AI, without that pesky Neutral Good alignment.

But they didn't reckon on Snake finding him in that storage locker.

Not only was Hal instrumental in defeating REX, he also saved Dave from a probable Despair Event Horizon after all of the events in the latter's life. The two gave each other a home, purpose, and love, thwarting the Patriots' plans to make them both useless through either death or severe isolation. Emma's death was intended to drive Hal over the Despair Event Horizon and make him abandon Snake and Philanthropy, but instead it made his will and bond with Snake stronger. Due to the education Otacon had received, not to mention his Emmerich genes, he was the perfect weapon against the Patriots. This cute little Otaku who wasn't supposed to live to his thirty-first birthday was the Patriots' greatest mistake and the key to their defeat.

Alternatively:

In reality, Ocelot set up the Dave/Hal partnership both as the ultimate Anti-Patriots tool and as a way for him to vicariously achieve being with Big Boss.

The above WMG was what the Patriots thought was going on. In actuality, Snake and Otacon meeting was all part of the plan. Ocelot knew full well that they would bond and *cough*fall in love*cough*. In fact, he was counting on it. The two of them were planned to be the ones who took the Patriots down.

In addition, Hal was Ocelot's stand-in of a sort. His Ascended Fanboy tendencies were meant to be a mimic of Ocelot's own attitude towards Big Boss. The mostly-happy life that they built in those ten years was what Ocelot wished he had with Big Boss. Their happiness gave Ocelot a second-hand joy.

The Last Days of FOXHOUND is canon

Do to the fact that I haven't played MGS4, I can honestly say I have seen absolutely nothing that contradicts The Last Days of FOXHOUND. Anything that DOES is actually one of Ocelots LIES!

• There's his claims to be loyal to the PATRIOTS as his "real" loyalty, but that's easily explainable as a layer of his deception to convince Them that he's their loyal puppet. There's also the bit where he tortures to death the DARPA guy who turns out WAS a PATRIOT, but that's easily explainable as both of them being cautious and not wanting to reveal anything to the rest of FOXHOUND, in which case the conversation was probably code and lies on both sides.

In Snake Eater 3D, you can eat a Yoshi

We've seen one in the trailer.

The HD Collection will have a Nintendo 6 version, with Twin Snakes as an exclusive bonus

Being a partnership with Nintendo is 99% the reason it isn't in the PlayStation 2 or 360 versions.

In Snake Eater 3D, the 3D effect will be disabled when Snake loses his eye.

Seems like something Kojima would do.

Mrk II and III are a new generation of benign Patriots, and everything was according to plan.

As You Know, Drebin and Rat Patrol 01 were both sent by the Patriots, to help ensure Ocelot's defeat. They simply didn't predict Foxalive. The catch is, however, they actually did. The Mark II and III show considerable personality when not being directly controlled, most notably in the ending, suggesting they have at least some level of AI. And who designed most of them; Sunny. During her time in VR, the Patriots either directly or indirectly caused her to gain knowledge of AI creation, in addition to the rest of her computer skills, in order to allow her to create a Robot Buddy for Snake and Otacon. The reason for this being, that they realized they had gone off the rails. The were made to be safeguards to the world, and the War Economy was destroying it. However they could not go against their programming and resist the norms they had set, there was no other course for them. And so, they ensured their own destruction, and that it would be witnessed by a new generation of AI's. Who would learn from their mistakes, and the actions of the heroes, and use that knowledge to create a way for their "species" to help the planet without destroying it.

Psycho Mantis's brain broke when he tried to read Deadpool's mind.

It would explain so much.

Hot Coldman was posthumously responsible for the creation of the Patriots' Proxy A Is, the Tanker Incident, the Manhattan Incident, and the War Economy, and not Zero.

In a briefing file, Strangelove explains that the A Is used for the Peace Walker project, barring the Mammal Pod, were named by Hot Coldman after the Rushmore Presidents. These same A Is are later remade for the Patriots' AI system. In addition, when Coldman encounters Big Boss at the Mine Base, not only does he gleefully admit that he set up The Boss to die, admitting his personal hatred of her, but he even states that her beliefs are "bankrupt", and that her ideals, the age of heroes, died alongside her. Now take note about Big Boss stating that the War Economy not only eradicated everything in The Boss's final will, even Loyalty, the one thing she treasured most, but it was created by the A Is without Zero's knowledge or consent ("It was something not even Zero could have foreseen."). Likewise, Coldman was heavily implied to have programmed the Mammal Pod and Peace Walker to leak false data to NORAD, and that he may have at least had programmed the basic programming of the Mammal Pod (The rest of the characters reacted in a way that indicated that they didn't know about the NORAD leak, and Coldman claimed that he was the only one who knew the abort code, and was implied to have intended to die before divulging it, to which even Strangelove, the one who actually programmed the Mammal Pod, didn't know the abort code.).

The End's surname was LaBeouf and was a Texas Ranger in his youth.

He invented the basics of sniping when he shot a notorious gang leader from more than 400 meters away to stop him from killing an old and fat one-eyed Federal Marshall and kept improving his technique from there. As a side effect of developing photosynthesis, he was also able to use the sun's healing power to heal a nasty wound to his tongue that left it nearly severed.

The "message" behind Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is not meant for the player

Enter Kojima Hideo's name and personal info into the dog tag rather than your own, and the end where Raiden throws it away takes on a whole new meaning. He's not freeing himself from the player's control and chastising them, he's shrugging off the influence of his creator. No longer is he a pawn forced down a road, part of a game designed by a contemptuous higher being, he's his own man; no one programs him or sets out a path for him to follow. Raiden is truly liberated.

The "Saladin" mentioned by Sniper Wolf wasn't actually Big Boss

Because the idea of Snake assuming any soldier in any conflict after World War II who gained a nickname is actually Big Boss was just way too amusing to me. Especially since this series has No Fourth Wall and the Shadow Moses Incident chronologically takes place after Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was released.

Metal Gear Online (2) is a depiction of the War Economy in action, mercenaries against other mercenaries.

Furthermore Liquid Ocelot participates in these battles because he is testing out his control of the SOP system. Everyone else is just a gameplay interpretation of the various battles that took place in the story, for example Raiden vs Vamp.

Snake is responsible for Sunny's mental/emotional problems.

Come on, he shot Sunny's mother full of tranquilizers while she was pregnant. That can't be good for a developing baby.

Vulcan Raven is asexual.

He's not repulsed by sexuality the way Mantis is, he just doesn't care to pursue such things for himself. The evidence - unless running around shirtless wielding a giant phallic symbol counts, he's probably the least sexualized of MGS's Quirky Miniboss Squad. Ocelot has his reloading fetish among other kinkiness, Wolf has her Stalker with a Crush eros/thanatos business, Liquid brings the Twincestuous Foe Yay and tries to get Snake's clothes off - even Mantis wears bondage gear and makes Meryl hit on Snake. And, if you include non-FOXHOUND opponents, there's the sadomasochistic throwdown with Gray Fox. Raven's just a Blood Knight with a bit of a mystical-philosophical bent.

Mei Ling is gay or asexual, and Otacon knows it.

Which probably saved her life. She's an attractive, sympathetic single female, the age difference between her and Otacon probably is no greater than that between Snake and Meryl, and they have some things in common. Considering how affection-starved MGS 1-era Otacon is, it's not unlikely that he'd develop some kind of feelings for her, and we know what that means. If Hal had any hope of Mei Ling requiting any affection sent her way, the poor girl'd be hurtling fridgeward.

Alternatively, by the time Otacon got to know Mei Ling well, he was already in love with Snake.

Mei Ling's still alive because Otacon's lethal affection was otherwise occupied.

Kojima thinks that the gene for blond hair is common in all non-Japanese ethnic groups.

The games have several fair-haired characters of Sub-Saharan African ancestry (Scott Dolph, Fortune, and Drebin), a blonde Kurd (Sniper Wolf), a couple of blond Eurasians (Kazuhira Miller, and possibly Liquid Snake if you consider Vulcan Raven's remark about Snake's Asian ancestry to be canon), and Paz is pretending to be a blonde Latina. None of this is impossible (see the Real Life section of Dark-Skinned Blond), but fair-haired people of color seem uncommonly thick on the ground in this universe. Combined with all the blond and white-haired Europeans and white Americans, maybe someone on the creative team just has a blond hair fetish?

The reason for such a game shift with Metal Gear Rising Revengance? Kojima is trying to kill off the franchise forever (like he has wanted to do for years).

He has repeatedly stated his desire to stop the series from continuing yet sales keep making him return. As such, to stop the cycle once and for all, he has allowed the new game to be as alienating as possible, so that fans won't keep bugging him for a new game. This is why a fake trailer was release as well before being changed to a hack n slash, and why a different group of developers are doing the game. Kojima really has had enough, and by making a game so different and so bad, he will finally succeed although he will claim it to be canon (although really he know he and the fans think it isn't).

• This gets a little more likely when you consider that Kojima is barely involved with the game compared to previous efforts, and that his next project will have him going back to one of his other series.

Metal Gear Solid 3 is Solid Snake in the Animus.

He talks to Raiden about the differences between virtual reality and real life and seems pretty knowledgable about it. Also, if the player kills Sokolov, Ocelot or EVA, Colonel Campbell can be heard telling Snake off for creating a time paradox. "Time Paradox" could be Foxhound's own Animus' type of desynchronisation. As for why he's in the Animus, they could be trying to teach Snake about CQC, and I can't think of a better way to do so than use the bleeding effect from the man who helped create it, Big Boss.

The cyborg Raiden is fighting in the Revengeance trailer is Vamp.

The cyborg looks like Vamp, and even sounded like him. He is also fighting Raiden, and as any MGS fan knows, Raiden and Vamp have a bit of a rivalry.

Psycho Mantis had some kind of neuromuscular disease.

And it was fairly advanced by the time of the Shadow Moses incident. His muscles aren't atrophied because he uses his psychokinesis for everything: he was forced to depend on his psychic powers more as his physical body got weaker. If Mantis was in the late stages of an incurable illness, it might have provided an additional incentive to go along with Liquid's coup, with the reasoning that "I'm going to die soon anyway, might as well go out doing something."