Fridge / Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Fridge Brilliance

• Fridge coincidence(?): In the Metal Gear Solid series, the main character's name was Snake. However, since this game is called Metal Gear Rising, the main character's name is Raiden. Futhermore, in Japanese, "Rising" is almost homophonous to "Raijin", the god of lightning and thunder in Japanese mythology (hell, the name itself literally means "lightning god"), who is also known by another name: Raiden (which so happens to mean "lightning", too). Bonus points for Metal Gear's Raiden having an electric/lightning motif that goes back to MGS4. "I am lightning, the rain transformed," indeed.
  • Raiden's main enemies in this game are named after different types of winds. Considering the Shintō god Raijin's rivalry with Fūjin, the Shintō god of wind...
• Sunny isn't just like her mother in looks and dress. Otacon's own past has rubbed off on her. Remember the woman he fell in love with in the first Metal Gear Solid? Sunny now has her own wolf companion.
• The entire game follows one core rule, the katsujin-ken philosophy (translated as "life-saving sword") and the teachings of the Yagyū Shinkage-Ryū school of swordplay. The style emphasizes deterrent, or winning without fighting, but when you have to fight, it advises that you move with your opponents' rhythm instead of attempting to dominate them. Perfect parries exemplify this, especially at higher difficulties, where one perfect parry can One-Hit Kill multiple opponents at once. Therefore, since your attacks won't do enough in some cases, you should wait for your opponent to strike first and then counter him. Shinkage-Ryū itself also works with this philosophy, highlighting the need to check for other parameters of the battle besides the opponent in front of you. The original creator of Shinkage also had to account for a changing battlefield, what with the arrival of early muskets, specifically arquebuses. He changed many of the traditional tenets of swordplay; some major changes included a new kind of training sword and light armour during training, and the development of a quicker and more precise style of swordplay designed for one-on-one combat instead of military battlefield combat. Similar to Metal Gear, where cyborg technology is changing the face of war, traditional approaches (such as isatsu-no-tachi (the school of the sword that kills only once) or ichi-no-tachi (the sword of only one cut), or regular infantrymen and guns) are no longer relevant. Two Yagyū quotes are as follows.
  • Perfect parrying in two sentences:
    "A stroke of the sword that does not hit its target is the sword stroke of death; you reach over it to strike the winning blow. Your adversary's initiative having missed its mark, you turn the tables around and get the jump on your adversary."
  • This is how you kill Armstrong, and is something you're encouraged to do to regular enemies as well:
    "When you strike a blow, do not let your mind dally on it, not concerning yourself with whether or not it is a telling blow; you should strike again and again, over and over, even four or five times. The thing is not to let your opponent even raise his head."
• Everything about Sam serves to remind Raiden of his stepfather, Solidus Snake. Like Solidus, Sam wears an ability-enhancing suit to fight Raiden. In their first battle, Sam makes Raiden lose an eye, just like Solidus. Both Sam and Solidus are also interested in Raiden's nature, and Raiden's duel with Sam ends not unlike the one with Solidus.
  • Armstrong also shares many similarities with Solidus, given that both of them:
    • Are American politicians and presidential candidates.
    • Are the final bosses of their respective games, with their battles taking place on crashed Metal Gears.
    • Utilize nanomachines.
    • Despise the Patriots.
    • Are willing to sacrifice innocent lives for a cause they beieve is greater.
    • Earned Raiden's respect after their deaths. Armstrong even calls Raiden "son" during his encounter with him. Quite on the nose there...
• Raiden's two default appearances are nicknamed "White Raiden" and "Black Raiden." The two reference medieval knights, with the masked White Raiden sharing multiple similarities with common depictions of knights. When Black Raiden appears, he takes on a darker personality, reflecting how black knights are more corrupted soldiers.
  • This troper thought that a knight's armour being painted black was a sign of him not having a lord, and this trying to keep his costs down by not having to polish his armour as much?
  • What is even more striking about it is that Raiden's opponent Sam looks like your traditional white knight, given that his armour has a lighter color scheme. There is a fitting juxtaposition with Raiden and Sam when it comes to their personalities and appearances; Raiden is the dark knight serving the light, with his physical appearance symbolizing suppressed darkness that he struggles to contain, while Sam is the light knight serving the darkness, who openly serves his desire to kill, and his appearance symbolizes the good tendencies he is suppressing on behalf of Desperado.
    • Another thing to note is Sam's cybernetic arm, which was presumably supplied by Desperado. Not only does it noticeably contrast with the rest of his armour, it also serves to illustrate the loss of his hope in addition to his human arm.
• Sam being a Brazilian master of the katana seems at first to be something that could only exist because of the Rule of Cool, but it's more likely than you might think; Brazil has 1.5 million Japanese immigrants, which is the highest concentration of Japanese people outside of Japan in the world, and because of ethnic intermarriage, Sam might even be part Japanese.
• The ambiguity regarding Snake's fate following Guns of the Patriots, namely Raiden referring to him in the present tense and Kevin referring to him in the past tense. When Raiden & Snake first met, the latter had supposedly been dead for two years, having used Liquid Snake's corpse to fake his death, so if Snake did die months after the fall of the Patriots, as the player was told was going to happen numerous times during MGS4, then Raiden wouldn't necessarily believe Snake was really dead and not just retired. Conversely, if Snake didn't die, then he's faked his death by using the corpse of the long-believed-dead-but-actually-still-alive Big Boss in his place.
  • Alternatively, if one considers the Japan-only DLC wooden sword which claims to have Snake's spirit in it, then it would justify Kevin's use of past tense as accurate in that Snake would have already passed, but also still justify Raiden's use of present tense as Snake is in some way still actively imparting wisdom to him.
• Armstrong calling Blade Wolf "Fido" is obviously an insult on his part, but such a name is actually rather fitting for him. Fido is the name of a famous Italian dog that was intensely loyal to his master, even going so far as to follow the same routines after his master had died. Not only is Blade Wolf intensely loyal to Raiden, never once faltering in aiding him after Raiden saved him, but he maintains his loyalty to his old master Sam at the same time. Even after Sam dies, Blade Wolf upholds the man's last wishes and gives Sam's sword to Raiden to aid him in his battle against Armstrong. Good boy, Blade Wolf.
• The Winds of Destruction meet their ends via irony.
  • Mistral, named after cold regional winds, is frozen solid and shattered.
  • Monsoon, named after a seasonal wind that brings rain, dies in the rain.
  • Sundowner, named after hot, dry winds, is indirectly killed by an explosion.
  • "Jetstream" Sam, nicknamed after very narrow and very fast air currents that circulate around the earth, is simply stabbed in the gut quickly and concisely.
  • Khamsin, named after a desert storm, seems to fall out of the pattern... which fits perfectly, considering the other Winds pretty much mislead him into thinking the goal was freedom. However, his death seems to have some irony at least, as while he exposes the wonders of freedom and intends to force it on others, he is killed by an LQ-84i in the process of the latter trying to gain its freedom. Essentially, Khamsin was killed by the very freedom he loved so dearly. Another layer of irony to his death: he is a lot like Armstrong. Both differ from the violent nihilism of Mistral, Monsoon and Sundowner in that they're fighting for a higher ideal (perhaps even the same basic ideal of freedom), and they are both loud, rude Americans. Yet, Mistral is in love with Armstrong, but hates Khamsin on a personal level and sets him up to die at the hands of the LQ-84i. The exact implications regarding Mistral are up to you to decide.
• A maverick is someone who has unorthodox belief systems, and makes an explicit effort to act against the common beliefs held by society at large. For this reason, Maverick is aptly named; they have gone out of their way to not simply work for money, but to only work for causes they believe to be righteous, which makes them stand out from the other PMCs that are institutionally only fighting for profit. It is also fitting that Raiden should be their lead agent in the field, since he himself is enough of a maverick to outright break the law in order to uphold his personal view of justice, making him a criminal in the eyes of the law (just like Snake and Big Boss, who were labelled as terrorists because of their actions against corrupt institutions).
• The Sears Program shares similarities with the S3 Plan from MGS2, which involved Raiden going through VR training and multiple scripted fights to obtain Solid Snake's skills and become an example of the Patriots' puppets. In the Sears Program, several orphans were kidnapped by Desperado and World Marshal, stripped of their bodies, and forced to undergo VR combat training. With this, World Marshal and Desperado would have obtained an army of Raiden replicas. Additionally, while in MGS2, the subject (Raiden) represented the player, in this case, he is trying to save the new subjects, meaning that the brains could represent players going through VR where they act as Raiden.
• Raiden's skill with swords has always seemed somewhat out of place in the Metal Gear universe, with it's emphasis on gun porn and military fetishism. Even though this game does an adequate job of explaining why bladed weapons have become so in vogue (with cyborgs being Immune to Bullets), the fact that Raiden, who was trained as a child soldier in Africa and later as a Delta Force/FOXHOUND operative, is a master of a weapon hundreds of years out of date seems odd. Indeed, Sam notes that Raiden's style of swordplay seems "self-taught". However, trailers for Revengeance flashing back to Raiden's training under Solidus show that Solidus trained him extensively in the use of a combat knife ("a blade has honour"). Indeed, it was Raiden's use of this weapon that earned him the name "Jack the Ripper". Raiden learned to use the combat knife as a child. To a child, a large enough combat knife is basically a sword. Suddenly, Raiden's proficiency in swordplay makes a lot more sense. Obviously, this crosses over with Fridge Horror.
• Thanks to the DLC chapter, we have new Fridge Brilliance about Sam and Raiden's duel with Armstrong. Unlike with Raiden, we never get to hear the song "It Has To Be This Way" with Sam. This probably has to do with the fact that Sam did not push Armstrong to reveal his real motives, with "Collective Consciousness" playing instead. Also, Sam's defeat parallels Raiden's defeat at Sam's hands in the prologue. While both Raiden and Sam lost an arm, Sam submitted to Armstrong, whereas Raiden decided to continue fighting. Raiden's determination is probably why Sam posthumously gives him his Murasama.
  • Sam's DLC also adds different context to two scenes in Raiden's story, one being how after wiping the floor with Raiden, Armstrong suddenly takes the initiative to stop Blade Wolf from helping, since in Sam's DLC, we find out that he already knows that the Murasama can cut through his nanomachine armour. Also, the final scene of Sam's story adds context to his first appearance in the prologue—at first, it looks like he's just showing off his cool red sword, but context from the DLC implies that he's actually getting used to his recently acquired cyborg arm.
  • On a more subtle note, the DLC also shows the evolution of Sam's sword style prior to when he first fights Raiden. In the DLC, pretty much all of Sam's light attacks require the use of both his hands. Once he got his Cyborg arm, he's able to accomplish all his light moves with just his right hand. Additionally, all his charge moves from before become instantaneous apart from his new charge attacks that are far more lethal and impressive with his new arm.
• Like with Raiden, the only human parts of Monsoon that remain are above his shoulders. One of the first things he does when he appears is crack his neck.
  • Before the fight with Monsoon, he rambles on about memes in a manner reminiscent of MGS2. However, one of the soldiers to the side gets bored and ends up playing with a cute cat instead. Now, what's the internet's favorite source of memes?
• There have been complaints that Sam can't stealth-kill enemies in the Jetstream DLC, but it makes sense when you think about it. As a samurai-like Blood Knight who prefers honourable battles, Sam doesn't bother with stealth kills, since there's nothing honourable about them.
• The final boss fight from Sam's DLC does a good job at proving that Armstrong was just fucking around, unlike with Raiden, against whom he tried his hardest. For starters, Armstrong has half the health (200% against Raiden, 100% against Sam), and never uses a regenerative skill or tries to disarm Sam. Additionally, Armstrong praises Sam for his actions, whereas he is determined to kill Raiden.
  • This also shows how much stronger Raiden is, specifically where in the second phase of Sam's fight with Armstrong, Armstrong uses what appears to be a "new" move, until you realize that against Raiden, Armstrong uses this move as well (albeit not burning pure red). The irony goes further in that Sam cannot parry this move. For Raiden? It is not only parryable, but a perfect parry results in a devastating QTE that deals around 20% damage to Armstrong.
• As noted under Artistic License – History, Raiden's assertion of the samurai's ideals is questionable. He eventually admits his schtick about justice was just a way of excusing himself for his crimes, and it's when you realize that he simply believed what he wanted to about samurai to satisfy his own desires, not unlike how Liquid did with genes.
• At the end of the Jetstream DLC, Armstrong doesn't seem all that concerned that he just viciously severed Sam's arm from his body, and even tries to shake the severed hand. This shows just how out of touch with normal people Armstrong really is; he does not consider the loss of a limb to be a big deal, since he can easily have his underlings undergo cybernetic enhancement, and he himself can heal thanks to his nanomachines. He does not empathise with Sam's pain and shock for this reason, and it also shows just why his Social Darwinist views are flawed. Raiden was right to call him out on it.
• Mistral's weapon fits her theme perfectly—"L'Etranger" translates to "The Stranger".
• Parallels could be drawn from the fighting styles Armstrong and Raiden use and their respective ideals. Armstrong wants to burn the slate clean, destroy everything, and start from scratch, without any mercy or tact. As such, he uses AoE attacks and wide haymakers, with lots of fire flying all over the place. Raiden has the same issues with the world (war profiteering and the loss of ideals among warriors and civilians alike), but his solution is far more precise and careful—he destroys the decaying core and tries his best to avoid collateral damage, just like how he uses a sword.
• The Blade Wolf DLC provides an explanation for why Wolf refused to shake Raiden's hand when he offered. When Blade Wolf first tried to escape, Mistral ended up subjecting him to a restraining mechanism that forced his body to move against his will. Just to drive the point home that Wolf was nothing more than an obedient dog, Mistral also made Wolf shake one of the Dwarf Gekko's hands against his will. Perhaps on some subconscious level, Wolf couldn't bring himself to shake Raiden's hand because he reminded Wolf of Mistral and her brutality. By contrast, Sunny (being an innocent 10-year-old girl) provided no such baggage, and that's why he allowed her to pet him. Interestingly, this also suggests that Sam isn't as psychologically broken as Raiden, since Wolf had no problem accepting Sam petting him on the head.
• In Sam's DLC, he tells the LQ-84i that the latter lost because it wasn't fighting for its own reasons. When Sam and Raiden first fight, the former gets the upper hand when the latter begins to question his reason for fighting, and when Raiden finally defeats Sam, it may have been because Sam didn't believe in the cause he was fighting for (since he couldn't care less about Desperado & Armstrong's ambitions).
• While all other boss songs are sung from the boss's point of view, "It Has to Be this Way" has drawn debate over whether it's supposed to be from Raiden's or Armstrong's perspective. However, the ambiguity was intentional: the point of the song is to highlight the similarities between the two.
  "But maybe we're both the same..."
• The last time Raiden sees Sam before their boss fight is outside the World Marshal headquarters. Since you never see him on the way up, it's a safe bet to assume he left via the heliport on the roof. When you fight him later, talking to Blade Wolf over Codec has him mention a World Marshal helicopter crashed in the area. After the later reveal that Sam was having a Heel Realization before the fight, one wonders if maybe Sam was the one who brought down the chopper so they couldn't attack Solis headquarters.
• During the initial phases of the fight, Raiden's punches do next to no damage to Armstrong. However, the punches delivered during the last phase's QTE are considerably more effective. Why? It's all about positioning. Rather than just punching into Armstrong's general midsection, Raiden goes for liver blows (essentially targeting a specific vital) and a cross counter (with the force of his punch amplified by Armstrong charging into it).
• When the LQ-84i is escaping from Desperado and Mistral, its boss theme is used instead of the regular battle theme. Now, remember that said theme is "I'm My Own Master Now", so it fits that this song is used when it thinks it's escaping, and it feels like its freedom is within reach.
• Sharp observation or reflection would realize that it's easy to assume that Sam, right arm aside, isn't a cyborg, given that every time he fights (including in the Jetstream DLC), he doesn't display the same Super-Strength as Raiden, Sundowner or Armstrong, or the same bizarre abilities as Monsoon; he relies on pure speed and reflex. This neatly avoids the realistic complications that MGS games are fond of smattering here and there, since if he tried to do what he does without his suit, his still-human spine would snap like a twig.
• A Call-Back you can notice in the final battle against Armstrong is that, like with Sam's boss fight, Raiden being disarmed of Murasama causes the boss music's lyrics to fade out. Unlike Sam, however, Raiden doesn't pick the sword back up and instead kills Armstrong with his bare hands. This could be considered another way in which Raiden has become stronger than Sam, emphasizing Raiden's status as a Determinator. Sam picks the sword back up and is thus unable to reject Desperado, discarding his honor previous honor as someone who takes criminal groups. Raiden, however, refuses to rely on the sword and ultimately rejects Armstrong and Desperado, discarding the weapon that he could have used for vengeance and literally taking justice into his own hands, reclaiming his honor as someone who protects the weak.
  • Raiden actually does pick the sword back up and the lyrics do return, and he uses Murasama to cut Armstrong's chest open enough for him to tear out his heart. As shown in the epilogue, while Raiden does symbolically take justice into his own hands, he still does become affected by the philosophy of Desperado. The symbolism is still accurate though: he might be an agent of justice who protects the weak (as symbolized by him using his hands for the finishing blow), but he still ultimately uses the same methods as Desperado, with Murasama being the epitome of the Might Makes Right mentality.
• The first hint that Armstrong is more than he seems is the fact that he's present at the attack in Pakistan at all - For a supposed Non-Action Guy Sleazy Politician, he's weirdly okay with risking his life and reputation instead of just sending somebody else to pilot EXCELSUS.
• All of the bosses got a very appropriate theme song during their epic showdown with Raiden, however, some claim that Sundowner's "Red Sun" theme sounds more tame then the rest. Many of the themes fit their respective boss fights, the reasoning of the fight and/or what they are fighting for, as if trying to convince you and/or themselves at what they are doing is what's needed or what's at stake. Sundowner makes it perfectly clear why he's doing it, he just loves it. He doesn't hide his unapologetic love for war, the business aspect of it and how happy he is with it. "Red Sun" doesn't sound all that blood pumping, it sounds more sinister and disturbing because it's describing how beautiful war is to someone like Sundowner, and isn't trying to convince anyone, he just loves it and will happily admit it.
  • An odd pattern of characteristics is present in the boss' songs. Namely, those who still struggle with inner turmoils focus on the present to discuss the past, while those who have no inner struggle (Sundowner and Armstrong) focus entirely on the future they want to see. Blade Wolf wants freedom, stating indirectly that he has known nothing but slavery. Mistral has found a place where she can fit in, stating that she didn't find such a place before by proxy. Monsoon only feels anything during the rush of battle, and everything else before and after is dull bleakness. Sam only knows senseless violence, and has forgotten who he once was. Khamsin wants freedom for the people but is still a loyal soldier who ignores the negative effects of his brand of "freedom", directly referencing his military background where this mindset came from. Sundowner, by contrast, just wants a wartorn world where even the wind can bring death, and Armstrong initially claims he wants the people to exist in total subservience to their country. It Has To Be This Way is different, as it also focuses on the present, but that's because this is the part where Raiden and Armstrong come to realize how similar they really are; it focuses on the present thanks to Raiden's struggle with his own ideals, but it sees into the future that they both truly want by the end of the day where man can fight for his own beliefs instead of those of a greater power.
• The fact that Metal Gear EXCELSUS isn't nuclear-armed and uses the "Metal Gear" title as a cheap marketing tactic is hilariously meta - Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance itself does the same, as its gameplay barely resembles the original Metal Gear franchise at all and the name is a borderline Artifact Title at this point.
• For the Japan-only Snake sword DLC, it seems more than fitting that the weapon chosen to house Snake's soul is a wooden sword; while the man has canonically killed his fair share of folks, remember that the highest level of play in previous Metal Gear games involved the player non-lethally taking down opponents rather than killing them. Even if Rising marks such a departure from the way older games operate, it's apropos that a weapon holding the series' main protagonist still enforces some pacifist tendencies for the sake of higher-level play.
• Armstrong snaps Raiden's sword. Then Bladewolf shows up with Sam's sword in his mouth. He fetched a "stick".

Fridge Horror

• Monsoon's body is obviously specialized to counter slashes. On top of that, his choice of weapon is the sai, a weapon with the ability to disarm those wielding a katana. Monsoon is an anti-samurai weapon! Worse yet, if his concept was taken even further, he would have been that much more of a nightmare; objects that were magnetized enough could become immune to cutting, since they'd still be held together by magnetic force. The magnetism could also mess with Raiden's precision during Blade Mode as well, to say nothing about what it could do to his cyborg body. It's no wonder that in codec calls, Raiden mentions he would have definitely lost if he didn't enter Ripper Mode just before the fight.
• Armstrong being Unskilled, but Strong; even being no match for Raiden's actual skill, he was easily capable of wiping the floor with him through sheer brute strength without the one-of-a-kind Murasama blade. What if he'd undergone hand-to-hand combat training... or the tech behind his augmentations was leaked?
• Raiden finally admitting that he likes to fight, and that all of his talk of being a hero is meaningless in light of the killer he has become, is a fitting callback to what Snake said about himself. Snake claimed that he was never a hero and nothing more than an old killer. This begins to make you wonder how much of a sadistic dark side Snake must have been holding back all those years if Raiden is hit by a Blood Knight psychotic breakdown this bad.
• Here's Fridge Melancholy for you: even in a stable world without the Patriots, where people can be truly free without needing to go back to the days of warrior cultures and civilian serfs, the war economy made it so that mercenaries who actually enjoy war are now the dominant force in armies, rather than actual governmental soldiers and mercs who are respected by the civilian populace. In effect, despite everything Snake and Philanthropy did, the world became Outer Heaven anyway.
• Were Big Boss and Liquid right all along? They both claimed that in this world, there would always be people that wanted to fight, and that such men would have a natural compulsion to create an environment where they will always be able to fight. War has changed to the point where it isn't about power, money, or even sex; men like them do it for the thrill of battle alone. War is fought for the sake of war itself. The present state of the world seems to coincide with what Big Boss and Liquid believed to be true.
• Senator Armstrong's No Party Given entry mentions that his tie is neither Democrat blue or Republican red, but rather yellow. Yellow isn't associated with any major American parties, but it is associated with anarcho-capitalism, which (among other things) would replace government-run military and law enforcement groups with Private Military Contractors and Law Enforcement, Inc. As bankroller of Desperado and de-facto CEO of World Marshal, that's Armstrong's M.O. in a nutshell. Even when taking into account the more idealistic interpretation of his vision (which would be closer to individualist anarchism or libertarianism), Armstrong would still be at the top of the food chain. How much would things really change for the common man?
• Notice all the Shout Outs to previous Metal Gear games? One of them was Senator Armstrong telling Raiden that the two have similar philosophies, similar to Gene suggesting that Big Boss become the successor to his cause. Big Boss, who had an Eyepatch of Power. Big Boss, who became a Stranger in a Familiar Land. Big Boss, who tried to avoid becoming addicted to the battle, but failed due to necessity. Big Boss, who was manipulated and nearly killed by the Patriots. Big Boss, who was a Child Soldier—Oh shit.
• In the ending of the Jetstream DLC, Armstrong defeats Sam, which causes him to join Desperado. Now, remember the cutscene near the end of the main campaign where Armstrong offers Raiden a hand after beating him up? He was trying to do the exact same thing to Raiden. Fortunately, Raiden refuses to give into his demands, but imagine if he joined Desperado...
• In MGS2, Raiden had less than consensual options with hostages and other vulnerable people called out in disgust by his codec contacts. He retains this with the sword stripping of hostages, despite not being into guys. This consistency implies that he has a fetish for sexually exploiting the helpless, combined horrifically with his Child Soldier past, and this aspect of him is far less repressed than his Ripper persona.
• If one thinks about what Sunny says about Otacon getting a new date every week but keeping them at arm's length anyway (which doesn't sound at all like a self-confident or enjoyable love life), and thinks back to when Snake was suave with women but couldn't keep a relationship, standing up Holly White for a Christmas dinner and breaking up with Meryl Silverburgh several months in... could it be that now, after Snake's passing and with the world on fire yet again, Otacon has ended up nearly in the same place mentally as Snake was just before Shadow Moses?