Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: Difference between revisions

* [[Badass Normal]]: Naked Snake and his mentor The Boss both qualify, big-time. Most of The Boss's subordinates have bizarre, often horrifying superpowers, but her only skills are the ability to shoot a machine pistol one-handed and enough martial arts prowess to dismantle a gun in two quick moves. Volgin, the [[Psycho Electro]], shows his only truly vulnerable moment when he mentions he doubts her loyalty, and backpedals immediately when she turns to face him with an angry glare. And, of course, Naked Snake earns his "Big Boss" title by defeating the Boss and every one of her subordinates despite having no superpowers at all, just good aim and a lot of tenacity.

* [[Bad Boss]]: Colonel Volgin dismisses his own subordinates, and is implied to kill off those he feels have no more use for him (such as the scientists and engineers after the Shagohod was completed), not to mention running over his own men and destroying his own base simply because they were in his way when piloting the Shagohod. Going by statements EVA made about Raikov after disguising as him, not to mention the personnel's reaction to Snake disguised as Raikov and Snake, while disguised as Raikov, beating up the personnel and getting away with it, Raikov also is cut from the same cloth.

* [[Big Bad]]: Colonel Volgin.

* [[Book Ends]]: In the beginning of the game, Snake loses his backpack by it snagging onto the tree. During the last few moments of the game, his backpack is thrown out of the WIG by Ocelot.

* [[Break the Cutie]]: At first, Naked Snake is a dorky if badass soldier. By the end of the game, he's a broken man. [[Tear Jerker|There might have been a few players who felt the same way.]]

** A subtle one would be the gunsight on the player's replacement M1911A1, which is the same as Snake's SOCOM in earlier games.

** It ends the same way as the first game: {{spoiler|Ocelot places a secret phone call where he reveals that he's actually a triple agent for the U.S. government}}.

* [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe]]: Used to [[Lampshade Hanging|parody]] some of the more unrealistic game mechanics. For instance, Snake can find glowcap mushrooms, and call his [[Mission Control]] team to discuss its nutritional properties, when Snake starts to wonder if eating the mushrooms would replenish the batteries on his equipment. His [[Mission Control]] tells him to believe whatever the hell he wants...and as luck would have it, eating glowcaps ''does'' replenish the player's batteries, which Para-Medic assumes is some sort of weird placebo effect.

* [[Clark Kenting]]: EVA's actually pretty good at this. Her face and voice are the same, but her body language, speaking tone, hair style, and, yes, glasses, combine to give the player the impression that the nervous, mousy girl Volgin's captured is an entirely different person from the dazzling, cleavage-exposing showoff [[Action Girl]] helping out Snake. Even some first-time players get totally suckered.

** Snake does this no less than twice. First, he must pose as a scientist to infiltrate a small weapons lab. He puts on a lab coat and glasses. The second time, he must pose as a maintenance worker to infiltrate an even larger fortress. Only now, he also has an eye patch, and the enemy knows his face.

* [[Cold-Blooded Torture]]: Colonel Volgin's favorite pastime. He seems rather proud of his skill, though in actuality, he's very, very bad at it; nobody he tortures ''ever'' talks, and he actually manages to interrogate ''himself'' while torturing Snake. Not that this matters to him--it's outright stated by EVA that he literally gets off on the pain of others, and doesn't really care if his victims talk as long as he gets his kicks. After witnessing it firsthand, Ocelot decides that torture isn't as bad as he previously thought; anyone who's played ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' will know his ratio of people tortured versus information extracted is similar to Volgin's.

** Although in Ocelot's case {{spoiler|[[The Plan|it's extremely deliberate.]]}}

** To put it another way, after the twist, killing the [[Big Bad]] seems much less meaningful.

* [[Downloadable Content]]: There were a few bonus camo patterns available for those with an online PS2, and they can be found on-disc in ''Subsistence''. Unfortunately, a single camo takes up an entire megabyte off the player's memory card.

* [[Dying Dream]]: {{spoiler|The fight with The Sorrow qualifies as this. Afterwards, Snake wakes up, realizing it was all just a dream.}} [[Or Was It a Dream?|Or was it?]]

* [[Earn Your Title]]: This game shows how Naked Snake earned the moniker that would stay with him for the rest of his life, {{spoiler|by defeating his lifelong mentor, The Boss, and surpassing her in the eyes of his superiors}}.

* [[Gaussian Girl]]: Ocelot sees Snake this way after their initial encounter. Somewhat justified, since he is losing consciousness at the time. Ever since then, Ocelot has become his [[Stalker with a Crush]]. Also, it is played with jokingly in the ''MGS3'' Secret Theater, "He's Still Got It," where The End sees EVA like this.

* [[Gender Is No Object]]: Surprisingly, nobody ever gives The Boss any guff for being a woman, despite this taking place in [[The Sixties]], long before the glass ceiling disappeared for women in the military (and as far as combat-intensive roles go, that ceiling still hasn't really gone away). And she's been doing this at least since the forties. It's possible nobody dares bring it up because ''she's that good.''

* [[Gotta Catch Them All]]: In order to obtain the EZ Gun on any difficulty above very easy, the player has to catch at least one of every 48 plants and animals in a single playthrough. If the player passes one of several points of no return without a certain food, the game needs to be started again, and this includes [[Guide Dang It|catching the undetectable Tsuchinoko]].

* [[Gratuitous Foreign Language]]: Immediately after praising Snake's Russian with both [[Translation Convention|speaking in English]], Sokolov says the name "Shagohod" in Russian. Snake then accepts the rather flowery translation "The Treading Behemoth" as opposed to the more mundane meaning of "Step-Walker."

** Volgin uses the phrase "Kuwabara, Kuwabara" several times. It's a Japanese expression equivalent to the English "knock on wood" that is believed to ward off lightning. At the end of the game, {{spoiler|he refuses to say the phrase, instead ''mocking'' the storm, and [[Poetic Justice|is promptly struck by lightning]].}}

** Raikov's name "Raidenovitch" can be read in Japanese as "Raiden No Bitch," meaning "Thunderbolt's Bitch." The impossible-to-translate pun seems basically the only reason for Volgin's barely-used nickname.

* [[Luke, I Am Your Father]]: A combination of radio conversations with EVA and {{spoiler|The Boss's own admission that she gave birth}} on the battlefield at Normandy reveal that {{spoiler|The Boss is Ocelot's mother}}. While it is never outright said in ''Metal Gear Solid 3'', if the player talked to the support team throughout the game, this will be piece together.

* [[A MacGuffin Full of Money]]: The Philosopher's Legacy.

** [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|Heartwarmingly]] subverted later on, towards the end of the game.

* [[Manly Tears]]: Big Boss sheds one manly tear in the final shot, and he's perfectly justified in doing it, as is the player.

* [[The Mario]]: Tiger Stripe camo is effective, but not the best, for a good chunk of areas (it's also the best in a few as well).

** And the Snake camo, which the player gets for stamina killing The Boss.

* [[Red Scare]]: Both played straight (initially) and inverted in this game. Naked Snake and Zero were almost executed (the former while hospitalized) because the government felt that they were involved in The Boss's defection, and an optional radio conversion revealed that during the week between the Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater, several less stalward key Government members were placed under house arrest due to The Boss's defection, fearing that they'd follow her example. Likewise, over on the Red end, Volgin attempts to justify his actions by claiming that spies are everywhere, and that his job is to root them out and then kill them. Of course, the former was actually all just an act due to their intention of getting the Philosophers' Legacy that went sour.

* [[Regional Bonus]]: The European version of the game featured a boss battle mode, demo theatre, some extra facepaint patterns based on international flags, two new ''Snake vs. Monkey'' levels, and the "[[Harder Than Hard|European Extreme]]" difficulty setting. The default European version of ''Subsistence'' was the three-disc pre-order version of the North American release.

* [[Retcon]]: How Naked Snake/{{spoiler|Big Boss}} managed to lose his eye was different than previously stated (in the manual for [[Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake|Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake]]'', it mentioned that Big Boss lost his eye while in conflict during the 1980s).

* [[Rock-Paper-Scissors]]: Spoofed in one of the Secret Theater segments.

** If the player doesn't pull the trigger after a while, {{spoiler|it will happen automatically.}}

* [[Shout-Out]]: Many, in optional radio conversions. Obvious cases are Snake berating overly complicated survival knives (''[[Rambo]]''), Zero's love of ''James Bond'' movies and Para-Medic's B-movie obsession.

** Want to know what the trophy/achievement for CQC-interrogating a soldier is called in ''Metal Gear Solid: HD Collection''? "[[24|Tell Me Where the Bomb is!]]"

** In the intro codec for "Snake vs Monkey," Snake asks the colonel if Sam or Gabe can go on the mission instead of him, referring to ''[[Splinter Cell]]'' and ''[[Syphon Filter]]'', respectively.

* [[Straight Gay]]: Considering this is one of the most [[Ho Yay]]-laden video game franchises out there, it should come as no surprise. Colonel Volgin in particular comes across as extensively macho, so his little affair with Raikov (who is also an example, to an extent at least) might be a bit of a surprise. There's also Ocelot, whose raging man-crush on Naked Snake only ''begins'' to take form in this game, and carries on through the rest of the series.

* [[Super Drowning Skills]]: Snake has this when it comes to mud. Normally justified in that by the time his head goes under, he'll likely be too far from solid ground to pull himself out, but it also means Indian gavials can instantly kill the player by knocking them on their ass in the wrong place.

* [[Sympathetic Murder Backstory]]: The game is the story of Big Boss's [[Start of Darkness]], where {{spoiler|he's manipulated into killing his mentor and mother figure, as part of her and the Philosopher's [[Zero-Approval Gambit]].}}

* [[Taking the Bullet]]: {{spoiler|Naked Snake, when he was being tortured by Volgin, ends up counting the bullet chambers as Ocelot decides to play his version of [[Russian Roulette]] with Tatyana when deducing that the latter's the spy, and flings himself at Ocelot to deflect the bullet away from Tatyana. It worked, but in the process, he received muzzle burn near his right eye, costing him the use of his right eye.}}

** The ''HD Collection'' has an trophy/acheivement for killing Ocelot (thus killing the man behind almost everything in the series) called "Problem Solved, Series Over".

** Zero's statements about James Bond are something of a paradox themselves; while ''[[Dr. No]]'' and ''[[From Russia with Love]]'' had been released by the date the game takes place, the only gadget Bond had ever had at that point was the briefcase in the second movie. Though given he's such a Bond fan he might be referring to gadgets from the novels.

*** Bond in the novel rarely used gadgets though, and they tended to be no more extreme than what was saw in ''From Russia With Love.''

* [[Tempting Fate]]:

{{quote|'''Colonel Volgin''': "Who's afraid of a little thunder?"}}

* [[Too Awesome to Use]]: The Tsuchinoko. A one-of-a-kind incredibly rare and hard-to-find mythical snake that you can eat to restore full stamina... which nobody ever does, because keeping it in your inventory until the end of the game unlocks the Infinity Facepaint, and your [[Mission Control]] will ''hate'' your guts if you eat it.

* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: There's an easy trick to beating The Fear with a stamina kill; he'll pick up any food left lying around the arena when his stamina runs low as a priority rather than killing one of the critters himself. This means discarding spoiled food will result in him eating it, damaging his stamina even ''more'', and making him the easiest Cobra to defeat by far. Also, The Fear tested his weapons on rabbits, which also now have an immunity to his Cobalt Blue Tarantula venom. The same rabbits are also conveniently in the same area as where The Fear is fought.

** Also, The End keeps falling asleep in the middle of the battle, which makes beating him considerably easier. Although it is because he's old, it can be questioned why a man of his age goes to the battlefield in the first place.

** The Fury gets special mention for using a flamethrower in an underground tunnel filled with water pipes that can be shot at to put out the flames.