History Headscratchers / MetalGearSolid4GunsOfThePatriots

** According to the Metal Gear database that you can download off the UsefulNotes/PlayStationNetwork as an add-on, Vamp already had preternatural healing abilities. The nanotech inside him just augmented what he already had. As for the pinning your shadow with knives thing, that's also mentioned in the MGDB; it's supposed to be an old ninja technique whose Japanese name translates to "shadow stitching", and depends partly on the victim's belief that the technique works.

*** Yeah, Dr. Madnar has always been called Dr. Madnar in the ''Franchise/MetalGear'' series, except in the original versions of the first game, where he was just plain Dr. Pettrovich (the Madnar surname was given to him in ''VIdeoGame/MetalGear2SolidSnake''). The only modification ''Subsistence'' did was giving him the full name of Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar, which is closer to how a full Russian name would be. In short, he went from Dr. Pettrovich in ''MG 1'' to Pettrovich Madnar in ''MG 2'' and eventually Drago Pettrovich Madnar in ''Subsistence''.

** Considering the line is the exact opposite of what Ron Perlman says in VideoGame/{{Fallout}}, it's either a TakeThat or, more likely, it wasn't done with VideoGame/{{Fallout}} in mind at all. To delve deeper into it; in context, both statements are true anyway. In VideoGame/{{Fallout}} armed conflict is still little more than people with weapons using them against each other to settle disputes and gain resources. The nuances of warfare ''have'' changed in the Franchise/MetalGear timeline by the time ''Guns of the Patriots'' takes place; OILIX all but ensures no resource wars are fought, and the War Economy turns armed conflict into a direct for-profit business.

** [[spoiler:Slash:This is easily explained: there is ''no'' Dr. Madnar in the Metal Gear series. The only reference to Dr. Madnar is in the ''VideoGame/MetalGear2'' fan translation, which was superseded by the one found in ''Subsistance'', by changing Madnar's name to something else. Therefore, the Dr. Madnar living in Eastern Europe who is also a cyborg specialist is a reference to Kojima's oldie Snatcher.]]

*** Yeah, Dr. Madnar has always been called Dr. Madnar in the ''Franchise/MetalGear'' series, except in the original versions of the first game, where he was just plain Dr. Pettrovich (the Madnar surname was given to him in ''VIdeoGame/MetalGear2''). The only modification ''Subsistence'' did was giving him the full name of Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar, which is closer to how a full Russian name would be. In short, he went from Dr. Pettrovich in ''MG 1'' to Pettrovich Madnar in ''MG 2'' and eventually Drago Pettrovich Madnar in ''Subsistence''.

*** But she was forgiven for all that, wasn't she? Snake forgave her for Foxdie (hell, it was the reason he survived [=MGS1=]), Nanotechnology in and of itself isn't bad, it just fell into the hands of the wrong people, and her brother...how is his dying her fault again? but even if it was guilt, she had way too much to live for and killing herself fight in front of her new found love was a very stupid and cruel move on her part, even if she had alot of guilt stored up inside.

*** A lot of people don't realize that [[spoiler:Naomi would have died,]] anyway. [[spoiler:When the Patriots were destroyed, the nanomachine network would go offline. Her nanomachines needed the system to keep functioning, and she would have died from her cancer. After Vamp died, Raiden told her that "Sunny cooked them right." I know it's farfetched, but I think this meant Sunny finished the virus. With Vamp dead and the Patriots' destruction assured, Naomi decided to die here. She would have died anyway, but this way, she freed herself of her own will from the nanomachines, and it was the same place where Gray Fox had died in [=MGS1=].]] Also, it sounds cold, but I think [[spoiler:she wanted Snake to kill himself to avoid exposing Big Boss to the new FoxDie, and was subtly encouraging him to do it. She had already found out the epidemic wouldn't happen, after all, and why else wouldn't she tell him?]]

** That's why they stole the railgun off REX. They were going to use it to shoot down the satellite that allowed the AIs to control the world. Their main plan was to have Snake and Co. use the virus to destroy the AIs while leaving world infrastructure intact, while Plan B was to just blow shit up. As I recall, they don't even know that the virus is actually going to destroy the AIs until after it's deployed, they just think it's going to disrupt Liquid's control of SOP. The rest of it was just really bloody performance theater to throw the AIs off the scent.

* What was even Zero’s whole plan in [[spoiler: keeping himself a vegetable? Because he can’t make commands or run an organization due to not being able to, well, speak, there was literally no point in keeping him alive. Also, did Zero not have a say in how he should be handled before his complete mental deterioration? Judging by the tape in Phantom Pain where he visits Big Boss in the hospital, the parasites didn’t immediately throw him in a vegetative state, and he still had time to send a will saying “Hey, if I end up as an dementia-ridden old man in a wheelchair who can’t even breath without an oxygen tank, I want you to put me out of my misery, please.” Patients have the right to refuse treatment and Zero doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who would willingly put himself through years of pain at the expense of a medical team wasting time and money on keeping him alive]].

*** The entire purpose of the plan was not just to bring back Big Boss, but to end his war with Zero and the Patriots. Since Big Boss's whole life was spent fighting the Patriots and trying to reach an ideal he admits he didn't understand in the first place, it's likely he went to his death willingly, having no other purpose. I mean, what's he gonna do now, play golf?

** That's why they stole the railgun off REX. They were going to use it to shoot down the satellite that allowed the AIs to control the world. Their main plan was to have Snake and Co. use the virus to destroy the AIs while leaving world infrastructure intact, while Plan B was to just blow shit up. As I recall, they don't even know that the virus is actually going to destroy the AIs until after it's deployed, they just think it's going to disrupt Liquid's control of SOP.

* If Metal Gear Rex's cockpit is in its mouth, how the heck does Snake NOT get crushed like a grape when it literally took bites and tore pieces out of Metal Gear Ray when he piloted it in said balttle?

* Why a US Army unit intervene in Prague, and not the Czech Armed Forces? Seriously the Czechs could had appeared.

** Due to Liquid's presence, the situation is serious enough to warrant full NATO intervetion. Therefore, we can presume the joint Marines/Army unit are more capable than the Czech Armed Forces (which is also a safe presumption in real life) and would have been able to quash Liquid's rebellion had he not had the trump card of Guns Of The Patriots.

** The devs had to be careful not to offend the overall region by suggesting either that it was a warzone (as in every constituent country of it was at war) or that the militiamen were all terrorists. So it's made to be as non-indicative and vague as possible. However, if you do take it to be Morocco, {{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Middle_East there are definitions of the Middle East which include North Africa, which is also associated as the Arab World}}.

*** Also, this troper could ''swear'' the dialogue used actually ''was'' from ''The Twin Snakes,'' considering that he very clearly heard Creator/RobPaulsen saying Gray Fox's lines in the various audio flashbacks.

** The devs had to be careful not to offend the overall region by suggesting either that it was a warzone (as in every constituent country of it was at war) or that the militiamen were all terrorists. So it's made to be as non-indicative and vague as possible. However, if you do take it to be Morocco, {{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Middle_East there are definitions of the Middle East which include North Africa, which is also majority-arab}}.

**

* So I know that it's said the whole [[spoiler:REX debacle was a major embarrassment to the US Government after Metal Gear Solid]], but I still don't see how that explains the fact [[spoiler:Shadow Moses was pretty much just abandoned]]. The place was a [[spoiler:NUCLEAR WEAPONS DISPOSAL FACILITY and it looked like they just left without bothering to move/dispose of anything, including REX itself]]. Considering [[spoiler: REX is literally an intercontinental nuclear delivery system, it seems bizarre the US government would just leave it there for anyone to come grab it(such as Ocelot and Snake did)]]. This troper is kinda surprised that nobody [[spoiler: Stole REX and it's railgun in the intervening decade]].
* Which is the country in RL dubbed as "Middle East" in-game? I know that is based on Morocco, but can't be that as the real Morocco is in NORTH AFRICA. So ideas?

* Look, I understand euthanasia is illegal and this kind of stuff is TruthInTelevision, but [[spoiler: seriously, Zero’s been vegetative for god knows how long and is essentially a barely-living fossil by the end of this game, and not once has anyone considered pulling the plug on this man who’s essentially beyond saving until Big Boss came along and did it himself? That being said, did Zero not have a say in how he should be handled before his complete mental deterioration? Judging by the tape in Phantom Pain where he visits Big Boss in the hospital, the parasites didn’t immediately throw him in a vegetative state, and he still had time to send a will saying “Hey, if I end up as an dementia-ridden old man in a wheelchair who can’t even breath without an oxygen tank, I want you to put me out of my misery, please.” Patients have the right to refuse treatment and Zero doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who would willingly put himself through years of pain at the expense of a medical team wasting time and money on keeping him alive]].

* Look, I understand euthanasia is illegal and this kind of stuff is TruthInTelevision, but [[spoiler: but seriously, Zero’s been vegetative for god knows how long and is essentially a barely-living fossil by the end of this game, and not once has anyone considered pulling the plug on this man who’s essentially beyond saving until Big Boss came along and did it himself? That being said, did Zero not have a say in how he should be handled before his complete mental deterioration? Judging by the tape in Phantom Pain where he visits Big Boss in the hospital, the parasites didn’t immediately throw him in a vegetative state, and he still had time to send a will saying “Hey, if I end up as an dementia-ridden old man in a wheelchair who can’t even breath without an oxygen tank, I want you to put me out of my misery, please.” Patients have the right to refuse treatment and Zero doesn’t strike me as the type of guy who would willingly put himself through years of pain at the expense of a medical team wasting time and money on keeping him alive]].

* Regarding Naomi's death. Whether it was just powerful nanomachines by themselves, or they were the same or a variant of Vamp's nanomachines, they held back and suppressed the lethal terminal cancer to the point that throughout the entire game up to that point, she'd basically been like any other healthy individual. Then she disables the nanomachines and [[RedemptionEqualsDeath dies]] [[SacrificialLamb almost]] [[TheAtoner immediately]] from the cancer, albeit not without a dramatic death speech even as everyone's leaving minutes later. But Vamp's nanomachines don't make all of his pain go away, and didn't even remotely heal his scarring from years previous at the Big Shell. Even if Naomi's nanomachines were improved somehow, cancer causes one's organs to fail and extraordinary amounts of pain - neither of which she exhibits traits of at all over the course of the game. Even with the HandWave of nanomachines being able to seemingly do anything by this point in the series, there's literally nothing the "magic cancer" makes sense for when having Naomi catch the second strain of FOXDIE from Snake could've solved just about every single plot hole involved.

** I blame it on bad writing. If I WERE to justify it however, it would be that Ocelot's self-hypnosis literally made him unable to do anything to control himself, let alone even be consciously aware of what's happening, which is why after Old Snake beats him atop the Arsenal Gear, he starts having a sort of seizure that is basically his off-switch for his temporary persona. Nanomachines explain everything, it seems.

*** OP here and of course, however the big problem with overdose is how Vamp or pretty much anyone else reacts to it; even if Naomi could have overdosed on it, presumably more of the stuff the nanomachines provide would've been actively working ''against'' her cancer, not accelerating it. Assuming life-threatening conditions don't play a part in the over dosage, plenty of people seen injecting syringes in the game should be by all rights dead, ''especially'' Snake and Liquid Ocelot in the finale who each inject 2 and a half doses of the syringes.\\
\\
Now that all being said, I ''think'' I may know why the syringes seem to do different things. In both cases, Vamp and Naomi are in mortal danger (lethal wounds/cancer), suggesting that what's in the syringes doesn't combat physical trauma but rather psychological trauma. I assume that a side-effect of the injection is that the nanomachines detect a high amount of the drug, which shuts them down until the body is below the safe-zone percentage. Normally characters only inject when the nanomachines are either off or about to be shut off, just to stave them off of insanity. This is why Vamp and Naomi die as a result since their nanomachines are attempting to keep them alive, only to be paused.

* I got lost with the final act. [[spoiler: What the hell was the deal with Big Boss? Several questions: 1) What was the point in bringing him back if he was going to die almost immediately? Was that necessary just to kill Major ZERO, the almost-corpse in a wheelchair who dies by loosing his life support? 2) Was all of this REALLY necessary to kill a man in a wheelchair? As far as I can tell, he was pretty much in a vegetative state in the first place. Sure, its poetic and all, but why go through all that trouble to kill a decrepit old husk? If I recall correctly the AI's stopped listening to him ages ago. ]]

** I think the point is that since the United States goes hardcore unilateral post-Sons of Liberty, much of the world relies on the [=PMCs=] for military protection; in the first three acts, the [=PMCs=] have all been hired to put down revolutions, and the revolutionaries themselves are hiring smaller, local [=PMCs=] to fill out their own ranks. The idea seems to be that the [=PMCs=] have become an inextricable part of society. Imagine, for example, that [[=McDonalds=]] goes out of business. Many would cheer that a large corporation often seen as putting profit and effective marketing over morality gets taken down, but there would be consequences; the producers who provide the product have no one to sell their massive stocks to. The delivery companies who ship it have no one to deliver to. The hundreds of thousands of workers don't even have the option of just finding new customers and are simply no longer making an income; they no longer have money to spend at Wal Mart or Insert Commonly Shopped At Store Of Choice, so even other companies seemingly unaffected notice a profit loss, maybe to the point of laying people off. It's the same with the Big Five [=PMCs=] which, remember, are larger than the entire US military as a whole; if fighting stops, their only source of income stops with it. You've got literally millions of grunts who are suddenly out of a job with no useful skills they can use to find a new one (and, indeed, they may not even be mentally stable enough for work once they lose SOP) and even if they could, there wouldn't be enough jobs to go around for them all. They're not spending the money they used to be earning on other parts of the economy, and it goes beyond the soldiers; Eva insinuates that joining a PMC is the only employment option many have at all, so you've suddenly got poorer families entirely stripped of their income when their husbands and sons don't have a paycheck to send home anymore. You've got weapons and equipment suppliers who have no one to sell to, because their customers don't need weapons and equipment anymore. You've got investors who have seen how lucrative the PMC business has gotten investing in it left and right suddenly seeing the stock drop like a rock. It's simply a very simplified metaphor for the economy as a whole; whether or not it's either believable or even an acceptable {{Handwave}} / {{Justification}} is up to you, but this seems to be the intent, at least.

*** To be fair with Snake, he was there, standing up, and firing a M4. It make sense that he was tagged as "dangerous" by the scarabs instead of the harmless looking MKIII.
*** Dear god this has gone on for a long time. My take on the matter; the MKIII was just too small to open the doors. If the doors in the microwave corridor only registered a human-sized object with their motion detectors then you would need someone to activate them so the [=Mk3=] could get through. It would make a handy security measure since the scarabs prove you can make small robots, so it would be an effective defense against them.

** The answer is obvious. There's no guarantee that the MkIII could also make it through the microwave hallway. People don't seem to remember the fact that whilst Snake's muscle suit being fried and popping one limb at a time, the MKIII also is suffering damage. About halfway through the hallway, once both arms on the suit have popped and are showing the white underlayer, there's a sudden popping sound that comes off the MKIII, followed by a little cloud of smoke coming from it. It kept moving because apparently that part wasn't necessary for any of the actions that is was currently doing and so it could continue. After you leave the hallway, the MKIII also has smoke coming out of it for a small part of the cutscene. "Otacon, can you do it?" "Sure thing." That wouldn't have been the answer if the hallway fried out the circuits needed for the MKIII to move, so if Snake wasn't there, it wouldn't have been able to get through the hallway, and he'd have to carry it over to the place it jacked into GW.

*** [[spoiler:And what the hell use was Snake in stopping them? He was half-fried and practically dead. He made no difference at all to the Scarabs' ability to attack MG Mk3. It's MookChivalry at it's finest that the thing survives, or that Snake does, for that matter.]]
*** [[spoiler: A good part of it may also just be Snake's determination that he has to see this battle to its end. On a more pragmatic note, the Mk.III has a fairly limited range, and that range certainly would not have extended beyond two long hallways, thick metal doors, potential guards, all of which was covered in microwaves.]]
*** No, that's gone into. ''Snake's'' control of the Mk3 has limited range so Snake isn't producing a high-powered [and thus detectable] command signal. Otacon's control of the Mk3 is vastly more far-reaching. How do you think he can contact and control it from huge distances throughout the game?

*** [[spoiler: Yeah, but Snake was so far gone he was almost shanked by FROGS even ''before'' he entered the hallway. What the hell was he supposed to do if there ''had'' been serious resistance in the server room, wheeze at it? Mk3 was probably more combat worthy than he was himself at that point. Hell, it's got enough guns to arm a small country inside it somehow.]]

*** Dear god this has gone on for a long time. My take on the matter; the MKIII was just too small to open the doors. If the doors in the microwave corridor only registered a human-sized object with their motion detectors then you would need someone to activate them so the Mk3 could get through. It would make a handy security measure since the scarabs prove you can make small robots, so it would be an effective defense against them.

* Why a US Army unit intervene in Prague, and not the Czech Armed Forces? Seriously the Czechs could had appeared.

** Actually, Snake cannot pull the trigger on the M4 Custom because he has first-generation nanomachines, which were injected into him by Naomi. Among other things, first-generation nanomachines influence muscle contractions and therefore cause him to involuntarily not be able to pull the trigger. Drebin then injects him with third-generation nanomachines, which allow Snake to use any gun without nanomachines in it, since the new nanomachines operate by stopping the gun itself, not the user. All of the major PMC's and government troops have third-generations nanomachines, too, which explains why they are not able to fire when Ocelot takes over the SOP system. Third generation nanomachines are also able to be implemented in inanimate objects, like a helicopter. When the "user check" fails, the helicopter is not able to function anymore, thus causing the helicopter to self-feather its rotors. Finally, [[CaptainObvious nanomachines are tiny.]] It's very hard to launder them because of this fact.

* Which is the country in RL dubbed as "Middle East" in-game? I know that is based on Morocco, but can't be that as the real Morocco is in NORTH AFRICA. So ideas?

* So I know that it's said the whole [[spoiler:REX debacle was a major embarrassment to the US Government after Metal Gear Solid]], but I still don't see how that explains the fact [[spoiler:Shadow Moses was pretty much just abandoned]]. The place was a [[spoiler:NUCLEAR WEAPONS DISPOSAL FACILITY and it looked like they just left without bothering to move/dispose of anything, including REX itself]]. Considering [[spoiler: REX is literally an intercontinental nuclear delivery system, it seems bizarre the US government would just leave it there for anyone to come grab it(such as Ocelot and Snake did)]]. This troper is kinda surprised that nobody [[spoiler: Stole REX and it's railgun in the intervening decade]].

** According to the Metal Gear database that you can download off the PlayStationNetwork as an add-on, Vamp already had preternatural healing abilities. The nanotech inside him just augmented what he already had. As for the pinning your shadow with knives thing, that's also mentioned in the MGDB; it's supposed to be an old ninja technique whose Japanese name translates to "shadow stitching", and depends partly on the victim's belief that the technique works.

* What is up with the Syringes in the final battle against Liquid? All the syringes are supposed to do is suppress Nanomachines, but there's no sign of nanomachines being the problem at the time. If anything, the way they keep injecting themselves/each other in order to keep going in the fight, it's more like they're injecting heroin!