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The Last Days Of Foxhound
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A Fan Webcomic by Chris Doucette hosted at gigaville.com , The Last Days of Foxhound is centered around the Quirky Mini Boss Squad from the first Metal Gear Solid game, starting several years before the events of the game, when the highly dysfunctional group was still running top secret missions for good old Uncle Sam. The comic is mostly a combination of Affectionate Parody (for example a major Running Gag is mocking the game's odd ideas about genetics, sometimes even correctly) and a deconstruction of life within a Quirky Mini Boss Squad where everyone hates one another. Throw in a pinch of Hilarity Ensues, a dash of Villains Out Shopping, a metric fuckton of swearing to accompany the group's antics, and the recipe is complete.
About midway in the comic's run Cerebus Syndrome increasingly takes hold, and the gags get put on hold more and more for the deconstructions and showing the group becoming involved with/aware of The Patriots, their decision to turn rogue against the United States and attempt to revolt against The Patriots, right up until the inevitable conflict with Snake at Shadow Moses.
In a rare accomplishment for a webcomic, the story completed its entire arc, and the complete 500 comic long strip (plus some filler) can be found at the gigaville archive.
This webcomic contains examples of:
- Absolute Cleavage: Parodied, as apparently why Sniper Wolf looks like that is because her shirt was accidentally shrunk from a more reasonable neckline.
- Affectionate Parody
- Alas Poor Villain
- Angrish: here.
- Anti Villains: Well, possibly...
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Mantis, a freaking psychic, has some narrow ideas about what to accept as plausible to believe in.
- Like ghosts. He doesn't believe in ghosts until The Sorrow puts him through his "test". Which is funny considering that in Metal Gear Solid 4 Mantis comes back as a ghost
- And talking/psychic wolves.
Berthold (the psychic talking wolf): A Telepath? no freaking way. ...Yes, I get the irony, Liquid, thank you.
- Author Tract: Mantis is the typical mouthpiece. Dr. Naomi Hunter supplements Mantis' rants with more reasonable but obviously frustrated objections.
- Badass Normal: Wolf is nothing but a normal human being who has received training from the best and is very determined. (And constantly on stimulants). Also, DARPA chief Donald Anderson. I'm completely serious.
- Berserk Button: Everyone in the comic has a few, even Raven, an Inuit shaman.
- Bizarre And Improbable Ballistics/Improbable Aiming Skills: Ocelot. And how improbable? This improbable.
- Calling The Old Man Out: Liquid against Big Boss.
- Character Exaggeration: Most of the squad's personalities are exaggeration of the characters they're based on, although not to excess and still well balanced with real characterization. Sometimes it's just funnier that way.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Named the trope
- Coat Hat Mask: Decoy Octopus' self-image is basically a hat and trench coat, with nothing inside them. When asked why so, he says he's a Bogart fan.
- Compelling Voice: Mantis. It doesn't work on other psychics (except Eddie), Consummate Liars, or people with special nanomachines.
- Compensating For Something: Nope, I'm definitely not looking at you, Raven. Or implying anything. Or even thinking of implying anything, so please don't hurt me!
- Conspicuously Selective Perception: Spoofed repeatedly.
- Crouching Moron Hidden Badass: Liquid.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny: Set aside a weekend, browse the archives, and you'll find a hundred or so. This Troper has always ROTFLOLed at "LIQVIIIIIIID! MANTIS IS TRYING TO MAKE ZOMBIIEEES!"
Ocelot: Oh my God! You WERE going to kill me!
Sergei: [guiltily] My friend, I...
Ocelot: That's adorable!
- Deconstructed Trope
- Depraved Bisexual: Vamp, much to Liquid's dismay.
- Does Not Like Women: Psycho Mantis has a somewhat irrational phobia of direct contact with women, to the extent that he doesn't want Sniper Wolf touching him, even though he is about to fall off a cliff.
- Doomed By Canon: Most of the cast is literally doomed by the canon, since you do kill them in the game
- Downer Ending: Though to anyone who's played the game, it's no surprise.
- Draco In Leather Pants: Revolver Ocelot, to the point that Sniper Wolf develops a short-lived crush on him, despite knowing what a horrible person he is.
- Dramatic Thunder: Invoked and lampshaded.
- Dropped A Bridge On Him: By virtue of the comic's Foregone Conclusion, in the comic itself the fate of 95% of the cast is dealt with in a single strip. You know it's coming, but after getting to know the characters for 498 strips straight, the suddenness of it all is actually quite a Tear Jerker.
- Egopolis: Averted, Liquid wanted to rename Outer Heaven into Liquidia, but no one supported the idea.
- Even The Guys Want Him: Ocelot is definitely gay for Big Boss.
- Evilly Affable
- Fan Girl Mei Ling
- Fanon: A number of the comic's characterizations and theories gained widespread support in the fandom. And in a few cases, they turned out to be true.
- Expressive Mask: Psycho Mantis.
- Five Man Band/Five Bad Band
- Foregone Conclusion
Liquid: "That sucked."
Big Boss: You suck.
- Fourth Wall Mail Slot
- Funny Animal Berthold, the telepathic wolf.
- Gatling Good
- Genius Ditz: The comic goes to pains to show exactly how ditzy Otacon would have to be in order to build a walking nuclear death tank while thinking that he was designing a missile defense system. Also includes a tremendous amount of mocking him for it.
- There's Mei Ling, who starts her Powerpoint presentation of Nanotechnology with a picture of Hello Kitty.
- Genki Girl Mei Ling again.
- Glass Cannon: Odds are anyone in the world could tear Mantis' fragile body apart. Fortunately for Mantis, his mind reading ability lets him know what people are going to do and react accordingly.
- Good Angel Bad Angel: Played with hilariously in one strip.
- He Man Woman Hater: Mantis. At one point, Ocelot contemplates killing him by surrounding him with big breasted women chanting "Give us babies" and forcing him to flee onto railroad tracks, but decides it would be too much trouble.
- Heroic BSOD: Liquid starting here along with a Journey To The Center Of The Mind.
- Later repeated with Ocelot, though that might have been part of his Xanatos Gambit.
- Hands In Pockets: Naomi
- Heroic Sociopath: Psycho Mantis, who uses his immense psychic powers mainly to cause lots and lots of problems for the other cast.
- He Who Must Not Be Seen/He Who Must Not Be Heard Solid Snake only occasionally appears towards the end of the comic... as a silhouette who doesn't get any lines.
- Idiot Hero: The comic's explanation for Liquid's Narmtacular and idiotic statements and behavior in the original game is that he literally suffered brain damage just before the start of the comic.
- Jossed: Right up to and, as of Metal Gear Solid 4, including the last page.
- A retroactive version of this trope exists in oversights on the writer's part, as he seems to forget that Wolf is a Kurd, Dead Cell are actually an anti-terrorist training squad not an actual field unit, and that Snake actually used specially timed placements of explosives, not a rocket launcher, to defeat the first two Metal Gears.
- Well, the first seems to be a Take That towards the performance of the voice actress who did Wolf's part, hence the running gag about her accent constantly slipping. (It's even on the cast page) The other two...
- The whole "rocket launcher thing" happened in Metal Gear Solid 2, though. Perhaps the author was projecting their thoughts on one soldier being able to scrap 3 to 20 Metal Gears on foot, and forgot exactly how Snake did it in the first games.
- Solid Snake used a rocket launcher to defeat Big Boss in Metal Gear. Or at least, that was the easiest weapon to do the job with.
- Also happened in MGS3, which came out during the comic's production and necessitated some re-writes. The author predicted it would happen yet again when MGS 4 was released. He finished the comic before the game was released. He was later proved right.
- Of course, the opposite has happened a time or two.
- Kick The Dog: Liquid is revealed to have had a few of these moments in his past, and then there's what happens when Scratch stumbles onto his plans to steal Metal Gear Rex...
- Lamarck Was Right: Spoofed to hell and back.
- Luke I Am Your Father: Parodied.
Ocelot: There are things I must tell you, Mantis. Things only you can know.
Mantis: Like what?
Ocelot: I am your father, Mantis.
Mantis: No you're not. I killed my father when I was eight.
Ocelot: Yeah, I know. I just wanted to remind you of that.
- Made Of Iron: Liquid. And how!
- Magnificent Bastard: Despite early appearances to the contrary, Ocelot is still one of these here.
Mantis: But it's all about the little details! I mean, you must spend every day pretending to act like you’re falsely letting on that you aren’t not unbetraying someone you don’t not purport to allegedly work for but really do! How do you keep all this shit straight without having an aneurysm?
Ocelot: *shrugs* Practice.
- Magic A Is Magic A
Liquid: How did The Sorrow put it? The only body a spirit can inhabit... is his own.
Big Boss!:What a delightfully ambiguous rule.
- Magical Native American Vulcan Raven
- Memetic Mutation: "I'm covered in bees!!!"
- Mind Screw: Ocelot rather likes these.
Even if I can't kill you, I can still make your life miserable. Take that cup of coffee, for example. Maybe this morning, when you weren't looking, I poured a jar of my own urine into it while it was brewing. Or maybe not. Anyone else, you could read their mind and find out. But with me, you'll never know. So I think I'll have a very nice day, in fact. Enjoy your coffee.
- More Dakka: Raven's a believer in it.
Subtlety is a thing for philosophy, not combat. If you're going to kill somebody, you might as well kill them a whole lot.
- Must Have Caffeine: Do not get between Psycho Mantis and his coffee.
- Nakama: In a twisted fashion.
- Near Death Experience (Ocelot and Liquid)
- Non Action Guy: Decoy Octopus, as The Sorrow learns.
- Quirky Mini Boss Squad: Obviously. A very dysfunctional one, usually played for laughs. Dead Cell from MGS2 is presented as being even worse. Also the Cobras from MGS3, although they're specifically not dysfunctional, just quirky.
- Ragtag Bunch Of Misfits
- Red Eyes Take Warning Naomi, Mantis, and even Liquid have shown this on occasion.
- Ret Con: to account for new canon after MGS3. Handled rather masterfully starting here (with a cheerful lampshade hanging, via the title)
- As early as here even, concerning Big Boss' eye loss (or the first one, anyway, according to him).
- Reverse Funny Aneurysm: Your Mileage May Vary on this, I suppose, but when Mantis threatened to find Ocelot's mom's grave and fuck her corpse? Considering his mom is The Boss, this troper found that hilarious. Have fun getting your ass kicked, Mantis!
- Sarcasm Failure: Psycho Mantis is occasionally prone to the humorous variant.
- Sign Language: The Sorrow communicates exclusively through this, except when he's actually in people's heads. It occasionally gets a bit ridiculous.
- Spit Take: Frequently appears. One set of them may mark Ocelot as a Magnificent Bastard. (If the Mind Screws and other antics didn't already).
Ocelot: I mean, I only gave you that coffee so I could watch you do spit takes.
- Even Mantis manages to do them through a gas mask!
- Spot The Imposter: Some of the better humorous examples this troper has ever seen, starting here.
- Tear Jerker: The fate of Berthold. The penultimate comic, which shows us the dead bodies of all the main characters (excluding Ocelot), might also count.
- Might? This comic will totally altered how this troper perceived Foxhound on playing through MGS1 again. It's that sad.
- Theme Naming: Hilariously lampshaded with Bose-Einsteinium Condensate Snake
- Thirty Xanatos Pileup: Well, it is based on Metal Gear Solid...
- This Is For Emphasis Bitch: Then return from whence you came, and do not trouble this world again. Bitch. This might be a subversion.
- Those Two Guys: Eddie and Scratch.
- Torture Technician: Ocelot. Just.. Ocelot
- Trap Door
- The Unreveal: Several.
- Villain Protagonists
- Well Done Son Guy Liquid's relationship with Big Boss.
- Wham Episode: Timed to take place about once every hundred comics, or once a year, making this one of the few webcomics with seasons.
- What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway: The Chinaman, who lacks any abilities besides being a swimmer and is thus useless outside of water.
- You Fail Biology Forever: Played for laughs with The Pain, whose status as a living Bee Bee Gun is attributed with his mother's constant craving for sweets led to The Pain being born with honey DNA.
- You Should Know This Already: The main characters are the bosses of Metal Gear Solid, so the inevitable ending resulting in everyone's (save for Ocelot's) death should be expected.
- Your Mom: Quite often, usually between Ocelot and Mantis.
- You Suck: Big Boss's response to GHOSTLiquid's verdict of "that sucked" in 499.
- World Of Cardboard Speech: By Liquid, who combines it with Calling The Old Man Out in strip #253.
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