Remember, Solid Snake first appeared in Metal Gear and tropes should be applied in his own page. Master Miller and Roy Campbell appeared in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. This page is for characters that debuted in Metal Gear Solid for the PlayStation in 1998, not the entire series.
For other characters in the franchise, see the Metal Gear character index at Characters.Metal Gear.
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Characters that debuted in Metal Gear Solid:
FOXHOUND
Support Unit
Snake's support in Shadow Moses.
Dr. Hal "Otacon" Emmerich
"The private sector's not so bad, is it? Privacy guaranteed."
Voiced by: Hideyuki Tanaka (JP), Christopher Randolph (EN)
"Three generations of Emmerich men. We must have the curse of nuclear weapons written into our DNA."
Computer engineer and part-time hackivist (and full-time Woobie) whom Snake befriends in Alaska. Ashamed of his family's involvement in the Manhattan Project, he chose to pursue his boyhood passion for making robots, only to discover (to his horror) that REX had been outfitted for launching nuclear warheads without his knowledge. He promptly allied himself with Snake in hopes of abolishing Metal Gear. The duo have been presumed dead (several times) by the U.S. government, which freed them up to pursue more clandestine modes of warfare, including Anonymous-style activism and sabotage.
An anime fanboy (so much so that his codename is based off an anime convention), Otacon could not be more unlike his partner. He serves as the 'brain' of the Solid Snake Trilogy.
- Action Duo: With Snake. Although Hal tends to focus more on the non-action side while Snake deals with the physical blood and guts stuff.
- Action Survivor: In Metal Gear Solid. Unlike most of the other characters, Otacon isn't a soldier and has little to no military training beyond what's necessary to work in a top-secret lab. His lack of physical courage saves him from being cut down by the Cyborg Ninja or crushed by the rampaging prototype.
- Ambiguously Bi: Has shown some rather evident attraction to women like Sniper Wolf and Naomi, but he also has some Homoerotic Subtext with Snake.
- Ambiguously Jewish: The Official Mission Handbook identifies the Emmerich family as Jewish, his German physicist grandfather ended up on the Manhattan Project in the first place because he fled the Nazis, and Otacon displays some knowledge of Yiddish in Metal Gear Solid 4. However, Otacon's certainly not devout and his personal status as Jew-or-not depends on whether you apply the rule of matrilineal descent as there's no indication his mother Strangelove was Jewish.
- Ascended Fanboy:
- This is why he wanted to help build Metal Gear REX. Being the mecha-anime fan he is, he wanted to make a real-life one. Pity that he unintentionally helped contribute to a "walking deathmobile" instead. Funnily enough, he gets front-row seats to his lifelong dream via Metal Gear Mk. III, which helped power up a damaged decade-old REX and Snake pilots it which ends up fighting Liquid Ocelot and Metal Gear RAY, much like one of his Japanese animes.
- Lampshaded in Guns of the Patriots, revealing that he added what amounts to Street Fighter code into Metal Gear REX.
- Badass Pacifist: He refuses to fight, choosing instead to give you info and support. He can be brought into the field thanks to his mobile camera robot, but it mostly performs support tasks and stunning enemies and scouting areas ahead.
- Bait-and-Switch: Given that two people have mysteriously died of a heart attack after being in close proximity to Snake during Shadow Moses, he and the player are expecting that this'll happen to Otacon. Nothing happens at all.
- Bring My Brown Pants: He pees his pants in terror during his introduction scene, when a heavily armed Gray Fox pushes him into a corner. The stain is still there a decade later.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Particularly in his first appearance. He's a brilliant engineer who developed advanced optical camouflage as a side project but also a consummate fanboy who gets his weapons design ideas from mecha anime. There's an implication that he was recruited not only because he was one of the very few people who could make Metal Gear REX a reality...but also because Otacon was one of the even fewer nutty and naive enough to actually try. In later games he's considerably more savvy without losing many of his eccentricities.
- But Not Too Foreign: Is half-British, thanks to Strangelove.
- Cartwright Curse: This man is not lucky in love. So far, those close to him who have died include his stepsister, Sniper Wolf, Naomi, etc. In Revengeance, Raiden and Sunny mention that he's become more popular with the ladies, but is still non-commital out of fear of hurting anyone else.
- Cowardly Lion: Prefers to stay behind the scenes but will get in the action if the chips are down, as in Metal Gear Solid 2 when he pilots the hostages to safety in a helicopter despite his fear of heights.
- Cute Glasses Boy: He's a kind, dorky, and very intelligent engineer. He's also had two love interests throughout the series, though they sadly don't go anywhere for him.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Canonically, Snake saved Meryl and escaped with her from the base, but he made sure that Campbell would get Otacon out as well.
- Dating Catwoman: Got to know Sniper Wolf through helping her care for the wolf-dogs, and tries to persuade her and Snake not to fight each other like the rest of FOXHOUND. It doesn't end well.
- Disappeared Dad: In Sons of Liberty, it's revealed that Huey committed suicide in the family pool (and nearly took Emma with him) after discovering his second wife was sexually abusing his teenage son.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: After sneaking around Shadow Moses with some stealth technology, he decides to go give Snake some, only to find out that his remaining four prototypes have disappeared. He then calls Snake about this, which leads to a conversation about the freight elevator's weight limit warning going off which eventually leads to both of them realising that there's four invisible Genome Soldiers with Snake.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Their relationship began with Snake choking the ever-loving crap out of him due to the former infuriated at him for (albeit unintentionally) creating a Doomsday Device. They end up saving each other's bacon a couple times, and have numerous off-screen adventures all over the world.
- Foil:
- His gentle, chatty, slightly bumbling Lovable Nerd persona contrasts with Snake's gruff hyper-competence. And while both of them hate violence to an extent, Hal never gives up being a pacifist, while Snake is implied to still be a Blood Knight deep down, even if he hates himself for it.
- To his own father, as The Phantom Pain reveals. Huey eventually went off the deep end and becomes a selfish, hypocritical, and murderous jerk who sacrfices his family and friends for his own ends. Meanwhile Hal is able to remain a kind and loving man whose actions are all for the greater good of the world and his loved ones. And unlike Huey who betrays his Snake, Hal and Solid Snake remain close to the very end.
- Generation Xerox:
- Played straight in Peace Walker. Otacon's father Huey was similarly nerdy and shy, his role as tech guru for Big Boss paralleled Otacon's relationship with Snake, and they both wound up unwittingly designing walking nuclear death tanks.
- Subverted in Phantom Pain. Unlike his father, Otacon doesn't develop Chronic Backstabbing Disorder and lose sight of everything he stands for, instead retaining his integrity to the bitter end. Contrasting with Huey's callous and self-centered parenting, Otacon is also a good father to Sunny, whom he genuinely loves and nurtures from infancy to young adulthood.
- The Ghost: He's alive and well during the events of Rising, having raised Sunny to the point where she designs space rockets at Solis and Voigt is interested in meeting him, yet he doesn't physically appear.
- Good Parents: Unlike his own neglectful father, Otacon treats Sunny like his own daughter and she has no problem showing that she adores him. In Rising, it's clear that he's done a really good job of raising her, as she's mature enough to be living on her own and working in engineering like he is.
- Guilt Complex: He blames himself for a LOT of failings, some personal (like his naive acceptance of the Metal Gear REX project and his intel lapse in the Tanker Incident) and some collective (like his family's long and troubled history with nuclear weapons development). The opposite of his father in this respect, Otacon DOESN'T blame some other people he really should like calling his stepmother's sexual abuse "an affair" as if they bore equal responsibility.
- The Heart: He and Mei Ling are the only characters who have never betrayed Snake or altered their loyalties. The Phantom Pain shines a completely different light on him as his mother Strangelove considered him the product of her genes and The Boss' memes. Since his main goal has been to make the world a better place by stopping an arms race and preventing information control, he's one of the only people in the whole series who tries to achieve The Boss' dream through peaceful means.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In Metal Gear Solid, if Meryl's alive, he offers to stay behind at Shadow Moses so she and Snake can get out before the base gets fried by nukes by holding the doors open. This becomes Subverted when Roy Campbell manages to call off the strikes and promise Snake to send a rescue team to get Otacon out.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Snake. Neither has much luck with the ladies and they travel the world together, raising Sunny as joint foster parents and bickering Like an Old Married Couple.
- Hikikomori: His shabby, unshaven appearance on Shadow Moses Island is likely a nod to the stereotypical shut-in lifestyle. Justified, as at that point Otacon spent most of his time locked in a basement laboratory.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Kind of: He wasn't actually portrayed by series creator Hideo Kojima, but his overall design, as well as some of his mannerisms, were based directly on him.
- Irony: How the Grand Finale of how his and his father's stories end: In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Huey's ending was the complete opposite on how Hal's was. To elaborate: Huey was basically his son, but in a wheelchair. However, the atrocities he's committed puts him to shame, thereby ending his 9 year friendship with Big Boss/Venom Snake, and bitterly ended in a suicide. Hal never lost sight of everything he's done, holding his 9 year friendship with Solid Snake.
- Last of His Kind: By Guns of the Patriots, he's the last known biological member of the Emmerich family. It's confirmed through The Phantom Pain that he's also the last living "son" of The Boss and thus the last inheritor to her will.
- Like Father, Unlike Son: The Phantom Pain makes it evident that he took much more after Strangelove than after Huey. It doesn't help that Huey almost killed Hal through his experiments.
- Likes Older Women: Inverted, as the incident in question did not involve meaningful consent and ripped his family apart. He was sexually abused by his stepmother and his father caught him in the act and committed suicide by drowning himself in the pool. Unfortunately, he dragged Emma along with him, causing her hydrophobia.
- Line-of-Sight Name: As a civilian, he doesn't actually require a codename, but he insisted that Snake refer to him as Otacon as short for 'Otaku Convention'. His passion for anime is reflected in the posters on the office walls.
- Lovable Nerd: And an effective foil against Snake's gruff hypercompetence.
- Love Hurts: Someone dear to him dies in every game he appears. The only person who he loves that survives is Sunny.
- Missing Mom: It's revealed in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain that his mother Strangelove sent him away to prevent his father Huey from using him as a child pilot for Sahelanthropus. In retaliation, Huey locked her in one of her own AI pods to suffocate to death.
- Mission Control: Hal's the man behind the scenes who makes sure everything's running smoothly and ensures that Snake has all the information or tech he needs to survive a mission.
- Nerd Glasses: Otacon wears circular frame glasses in the first game. In later appearances, he has more modern rectangular frames.
- Nerds Are Sexy: Especially in the fourth game where several characters remark his attractiveness.
- New Powers as the Plot Demands Despite his professed fear of heights, Otacon becomes skillful at piloting helicopters. He claims to have learned how to fly from VR simulators.
- Nice Guy: Perhaps moreso than anyone else in the series. Otacon wants peace above all else, treats everyone he encounters (at first) with a friendly smile, attempts to keep Snake from drifting too far to the dark side, and adopts an orphaned Sunny, whom he raises like his own daughter.
- Non-Action Guy: Otacon rarely gets involved in the physical side of missions, instead preferring to provide intel and tech support from behind the scenes and via Metal Gear Mk 2 and 3. He's so vital in that role that Snake encourages him to stay out of the field.
- Not What I Signed on For: He helped develop REX thinking it was a purely defensive anti-ICBM system, and out of a desire to turn his favorite mecha anime into reality. The guys who hired him conveniently left out the fact that he'd be helping to build a nuclear launch platform.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Snake won't let him forget about his establishing character moment: hiding in a storage locker and wetting his pants, much to Otacon's annoyance.
- Otaku: It's the reason he has the nickname/codename "Otacon". His creations were originally inspired by mecha anime."It's like one of my Japanese Animes!!"
- Parental Substitute: To Sunny Emmerich, the biological daughter of Olga Gurlukovich. After her mother's death, Otacon and Snake take over raising Sunny, with the former even legally adopting her.
- Playful Hacker:
- Before the Shadow Moses project, he spent a brief stint at the FBI, but was promptly fired for hacking the agency's mainframe.
- Otacon had a habit of sneaking prank code into REX against his employer's express instructions. In addition to REX's weakpoint (a "character flaw" to give it personality), Otacon also implemented a program to make REX fight like a boxer, using its own body as a weapon. The suits didn't approve of risking Metal Gear's delicate sensors, but the program is still in there, as Snake discovers and makes use of in Metal Gear Solid 4.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain reveals that he was almost on the receiving end of this trope as his father intended to use him as a pilot for Sahelanthropus. Only his mother's intervention saved Otacon from such a fate.
- Prone to Tears: The poor guy's cried at least once every game after watching someone he loves die. 4 even has a flashback lampshading how much death and tragedy he's witnessed through the series.
- Rape as Backstory: His stepmother sexually abused him in his mid teens, and discovering this drove his father to suicide. Otacon refers to this as an "affair", which seems to be another manifestation of his Guilt Complex.
- Robot Buddy: In Guns of the Patriots, he takes a proactive role in the field via piloting a small robot called Metal Gear Mk 2. (later replaced with Mk 3 after Mk 2 presumably gets destroyed.)
- Say My Name: "Snake? Snake?! SNAAAAAKKKKEEEE!!!!"
- Spanner in the Works: He's revealed to be this to the Patriots over the course of the series. Fulfilling Strangelove's hopes for him in The Phantom Pain by pursuing the Boss' goals through peaceful means.
- Tender Tears: In a world filled with warriors, he is the only character in the franchise to shed these.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: During Guns of the Patriots, he reacts with sheer disbelief if Snake calls him about not being able to move due to the player switching controller numbers while fighting Screaming Mantis under the assumption that all the tactics from the fight against Psycho Mantis will work. None of them will.
Naomi Hunter
"I'm just surprised you're willing to sacrifice yourself. You've got the genes of a soldier, not a savior."
Voiced by: Hiromi Tsuru (JP), Jennifer Hale (EN)
"I never knew who my parents were or even what they looked like. I guess I got into genetics because I wanted to figure out why I'm the way I am."
A geneticist with a past even she's not completely sure of, Naomi was chosen to support Solid Snake during the Shadow Moses Incident to provide feedback on the Genome Soldiers. She had her own agendas, which included injecting Snake with the biological weapon FOXDIE to kill the FOXHOUND members, which would then kill Snake himself later. It turns out she did it because she was Gray Fox's adopted sister and she wanted revenge (although Liquid also mentions that the Pentagon ordering her to do so had something to do with it).
Naomi returns and redeems herself in the fourth game where she helps Old Snake deal with Liquid Ocelot and forms a close relationship with Hal and Sunny.
- Action Dress Rip: Does it in Metal Gear Solid 4 when Snake, Drebin and she are being chased by Gekkos.
- Ambiguously Brown: Lampshaded in Metal Gear Solid. She claims she became interested in genetics because she grew up knowing nothing about her own ancestry. Naomi's Konami bio for MGS1 also describes her as a "brown-skinned beauty" and in game, Naomi believes that she received her skin tone from the Indian laborers in Rhodesia. Yet in Integral/VR Missions, Naomi could be mistaken as white in her polygon model that can be viewed, being lighter skinned than both Snake and Mei Ling's models. In Metal Gear Solid 4, however, Naomi's new design does give her a bit of a tan but still looks like a light-skinned woman of ambiguous ethnicity.
- Critical Existence Failure: Gets hit with a plot-driven version of this. As soon the nanomachines that holds back her cancer stops working, she immediately starts to succumb to said cancer, and dies in the span of about, well, two minutes, even though she was acting and appearing perfectly healthy prior to this.
- Driven to Suicide: After explaining her actions to Snake and Otacon, she injects herself with what is essentially the kill switch for her nanomachines, allowing the cancer she has to kill her.
- Face–Heel Revolving Door: During MGS4, she goes from helping Liquid, to helping Snake, to helping Liquid again, and then finally helping Snake again.
- Flawed Prototype: She designed the regenerating nanomachines, but they were not sufficient enough at healing outside of slowing the effects of her Cancer. Vamp was her successor.
- Intergenerational Friendship: With Sunny in Metal Gear Solid 4. She helps Sunny grow out of her shell, and finally learn to cook eggs right.
- Inconsistent Dub: In the original English version of Metal Gear Solid, Naomi was given a vaguely British sounding accent. When the dialogue was redubbed for the GameCube remake, Naomi was given a more neutral accent which was also used for Metal Gear Solid 4. The original British accent made sense since she's originally from Rhodesia/Zimbabwe.note
- Ironic Hell: She was ordered to inject Snake with a FOXDIE strain that would kill him at the end of the mission, but instead configured the virus to trigger at a random time as revenge for her brother's death at Snake's hands. The Patriots also took note of this and had her imprisoned.
- Just Following Orders: The other reason for injecting Snake with FOXDIE was because the Pentagon ordered her to, as they wanted a way to both get rid of the Sons of Big Boss, and at the same time retrieve REX and the Genome bodies without risk of them being damaged. Of course, her listing Snake as one of the targets of the virus, or at the very least modifying the virus to activate as a wildcard value in Snake's case, was certainly not done under their orders or even the Patriots' orders.
- Living on Borrowed Time: She injected herself with nanomachines to suppress her cancer, but they're failing to fully stop it from spreading. She later disables them herself and dies shortly after.
- Mugged for Disguise / Kill and Replace: Subverted: This is initially suspected when Master Miller looks into Naomi's background and finds out that the real Naomi disappeared while abroad. It later turns out that this Naomi simply bought her paperwork apparently oblivious to the fact that she now has the identity of a presumably-killed woman.
- My God, What Have I Done?: A subtle version; she injects Snake with FOXDIE and modifies it so it'll kill him as well, but later has second thoughts after she realizes that Snake was far from the savage killer she thought of him as, especially after she discovers that Snake still considered Gray Fox a friend.
- Navel-Deep Neckline: In Metal Gear Solid 4, her labcoat has a plunging neckline.
- Only Known By Her Nickname: It is strongly implied that she is not actually named "Naomi Hunter" (Miller/Liquid mentioned that she stole the identity papers of the "real Naomi Hunter" once). Likewise, even she doesn't know her real name.
- Purple Prose: More often then not she goes on and on about the "shackles of fate". It gets to the point in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots that you're not even sure what the heck she's talking about anymore. For example, she tells Snake that "If you don't want to be a prisoner of fate, then go fulfil your destiny." "Fate" and "Destiny" are synonyms for one another. Heck, "Destiny" is literally the FIRST synonym for "Fate" in the thesaurus!
- Retcon: Exchanged her British accent for an American one in the Twin Snakes remake of Metal Gear Solid which was then confirmed canon in Guns of the Patriots. This makes a bit more sense, since Naomi lived in America since her childhood.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: After Snake nearly kills both Big Boss and Gray Fox, her benefactor and foster brother respectively, she swears revenge and injects him with FOXDIE.
- TV Genius: She's a geneticist, but she still knows a lot about computers and hacking if the fourth game is to be believed...
- What the Hell, Hero?: She calls out Snake for his role in Gray Fox's situation, which also acted as one of the reasons for injecting Snake with FOXDIE.
Mei Ling
"I can't believe I'm being hit on by the famous Solid Snake."
Voiced by: Houko Kuwashima (JP), Kim Mai Guest (EN)
"Snake, remember what De Gaulle said: 'The graveyards are full of indispensable men.'"
A girl on Snake's Mission Control, she is a teenage prodigy and tech wiz who developed the Soliton Radar and Codec. She frequently quotes proverbs to lift Snake's spirits up. She later becomes a Naval officer in the fourth game.
- Anime Chinese Girl: In the original English versions of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, Mei Ling is a cute teenage prodigy who had an exaggerated Chinese accent, including lisping and a problematic relationship with the letter "r." She speaks with an American accent in the Twin Snakes remake and other sequels.
- Action Survivor: She survived Liquid's insurrection even when her comrades fell victim to his secret weapon.
- The Captain: In the fourth game. She takes command of the obsolete USS Missouri and wins a fight with it against the massive and technologically-superior Outer Haven.
- Call-Forward: In Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, there's inexplicably a poster of her Naked Snake can find in the back of a truck.
- Demoted to Extra: She's relegated to a single optional Codec call in Metal Gear Solid 2.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: During Shadow Moses, she suddenly calls Snake and urges him to save his progress after getting a weird but scary premonition. This is directly before Snake gets captured and subjected to torture by Revolver Ocelot, which can result in Snake's death and forces the player to restart from when they last saved. Mei Ling's premonition was a coincidence, but a convenient one should the player have heeded her advice.
- Gadgeteer Genius: In the original Metal Gear Solid. However, the Codec conversations in Metal Gear Solid 2 imply she's been pirating technology from the Pentagon. Snake gruffly warns Mei Ling to cut it out before she gets caught.
- Hurricane of Aphorisms: She often quotes Chinese proverbs.
- Male Gaze: In Metal Gear Solid 4’s briefing for the “Outer Haven” mission, the camera spends quite a lot of time focusing on her butt.
- Mission Control: During Snake's adventures in Shadow Moses, she handles saving progress.
- Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Although she does have a legitimate, if not slightly exaggerated Chinese accent, it's at odds with the fact that she was actually born and raised in America. Like Naomi, Mei Ling drops the accent altogether in The Twin Snakes; this became canon in Metal Gear Solid 4.
- Proverbial Wisdom: An erudite and a teenage prodigy with a penchant for quoting Chinese and Western proverbs.
- Retcon: Like Naomi, she lost her Chinese accent for an American one in The Twin Snakes before Guns of the Patriots later confirmed this canon. Also like Naomi, this makes more sense since Mei Ling was born in America.
- Shipper on Deck: Judging by her reaction (tears of joy and inelegant blubbering), Mei Ling very much approves of Meryl and Johnny's wedding.
- Shout-Out: Mei Ling is also a name for a dagger-throwing boss in Konami's earlier Beat 'em Up game, Yie Ar Kung-Fu II. No one acknowledges this although Konami likes to make references to past games.
- Sleeping Their Way to the Top: A couple of comments in Metal Gear Solid 4 from Otacon and Campbell hint that this is how she became a navy captain at such a young age.
Nastasha Romanenko
Voiced by: Eiko Yamada (JP), Renee Raudman (EN)
Ukrainian weapons expert, hired by Campbell and Ames to assist Snake via the Codec. Later on, she recounts the Shadow Moses incident in a tell-all book entitled In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth (which can be read in Metal Gear Solid 2).
- Back for the Finale: Averted. She is one of exactly two characters on this page who survives the first game but doesn't make a reappearance in Metal Gear Solid 4, the Grand Finale of the series. She is name-dropped as someone who provided information to Otacon regarding rumors of the deployment of Dwarf Gekko, but when there's a literal Ascended Extra who shows up instead of her — not to mention the survival of both Meryl and Otacon despite the game's Road Cones setting them up as Mutually Exclusive Party Members — it's still pretty stark.
- Flavor Text: She basically serves as a walking book of facts when it comes to weapons and items whenever you call her.
- Hypocritical Humor: If Snake calls Nastasha while smoking, she will warn you about the health risks of smoking. All while she has a cigarette in her mouth.
- I Should Write a Book About This: She eventually writes a book on the Shadow Moses Incident, the proceeds from which she donates to Snake and Otacon to help their work on Philanthropy.
- Oral Fixation: Her portrait in her codec calls always shows her smoking a cigarette.
- Optional Party Member: While you're required to talk to every character on Snake's support team at least once, she is the only character where talking to her is purely optional. You can easily wind up completing the game without talking to her at all.
- Put on a Bus: After Metal Gear Solid. She gets a brief mentioning in Metal Gear Solid 2, where she is the in-universe writer on the summarization of Metal Gear Solid's plot and one the main donors for Snake and Otacon's anti-Metal Gear organization Philanthropy.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After the events of the Shadow Moses Incident, she went into hiding in fear that everything she learned, and her own involvement assisting Snake, might potentially put her life in danger.
- Soapbox Sadie: She often rants about the dangers of nuclear weapons. Justified, as a Codec call will reveal that she was born in Pripyat, near the Chernobyl power plant and lost her parents (who helped decontaminate the plant and/or build the containment sarcophagus) following the explosion.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: After Metal Gear Solid, we barely hear from her again. All we know is that she wrote a book on the Shadow Moses Incident, and Richard Ames is her husband.
Meryl Silverburgh
"You're a real bastard, just like my uncle said."
"I was a fan of FOXHOUND way back. When guys like you and my uncle were in it. None of that gene therapy like there is today. You guys were real heroes."
The niece of Roy Campbell (later revealed to actually be his daughter), Meryl always dreamt of being in the military and living up to her heroes in FOXHOUND, but proves to be less than competent.
She later makes a comeback in Metal Gear Solid 4 and is a lot more competent and tougher.
- Accidental Truth: She accuses Snake of killing the Darpa Chief when they first meet (She had assumed that he was actually Liquid before realizing her error.) What neither of them realize is that Snake had inadvertantly killed the Darpa Chief with his FOXDIE virus.
- Action Girl: She fights besides Snake at Shadow Moses despite having very little skill at doing so and even takes command of Rat Patrol 1 later. In the canon ending of 1 she even drives her and Snake out of Shadow Moses as they are pursued by Liquid.
- All Love Is Unrequited: Played with. She and Snake got together after the first game but broke up before the second game. By the fourth game they both have a mutually cold attitude toward each other. However it seems they still care for one another, and she still apears to be pining for him.
- Amicable Exes: Upon crossing paths with Snake again in the Middle East during 4, she still shows a lot of respect for him, referring to him as a "legendary hero" and praising his performance against the FROGs who attack them after. She only argues with him when she learns of Campbell's involvement in the mission and when they disagree on the effectiveness of the SOP nanomachines, though it does nothing to stop them from working well together.
- Amazonian Beauty: Meryl is a lot sturdier looking by Metal Gear Solid 4, compared to her appearance in Metal Gear Solid. When you see her in her wedding dress, her arms and back muscles are very noticeable, especially when she arm wrestles one of her teammates.
- Ascended Fanboy: She admits to Snake in 1 that she was a huge admirer of the FOXHOUND unit, of which both Snake and Campbell were part of. Not only she got to fight alongside her idol, she even got to be in a relationship with him- though it didn't last. 9 years later, in 4, she still looks up to Snake as a "legendary hero" and is eager to work alongside him again.
- Ambiguously Jewish: Her legal last name "Silverburgh" sounds Ashkenazi Jewish, but the revelation that her uncle is her real biological father raises doubts about her heritage.
- Berserk Button: Campbell becames a major one for her in 4 after their soured relationship. The mere mention of his name and the knowledge that he is behind Snake's mission with the Rat Patrol causes Meryl to throw a fit, trashing a nearby chair. They reconcile at the end.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Canonically, Snake saved her from Shadow Moses, meaning that he didn't submit to Ocelot's torture which would've led to her death.
- Daddy's Girl: Averted, her legal father died while she was very young, and she never actually knew that her birth father was actually her uncle until after the events of Metal Gear Solid. Even after that, Meryl ends up having an estranged, non-talking relationship with her father both because he married a woman (Rosemary) who was young enough to be his daughter by the time of Metal Gear Solid 4 (not knowing that the marriage was actually a sham to protect Rose and her son from the Patriots, as they won't use them as leverage for Raiden) and from the fact that she was conceived by her uncle in an extra-marital affair with her mom that she learned from Roy Campbell. It wasn't until the ending where Meryl marries Johnny Sasaki/Akiba that she and Campbell even start having a decent conversation.
- Does Not Like Men: During the first game she revealed to Snake that she underwent psychotherapy as an Army recruit to render her uninterested in men (presumably to prevent fraternisation), though this didn't stop her from having feelings for Snake. By the fourth game she had become a full blown misandarist after discovering that her uncle was her biological father and that he apparently married a woman much younger than him, leading her to hate him with a passion for being a "womanising piece of shit" and denouncing men in general as "selfish, egotistical pigs", and even treating Snake with mean spiritedness. Though later in the game she mellows out and eventually forgives her father and marries Johnny (after apologising for how she treated him earlier). Her personality becoming less harsh and bitter after the SOP was disabled makes it ambiguous whether or not it had at least partially influenced her extreme anger at men, since it's purpose was to optimise each soldier's emotions and personality traits (theoretically making her aggressive anger more powerful than her hesitation to kill).
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After getting sniped by Sniper Wolf, nearly drowns and almost getting killed by an army of FROGs, she marries Johnny in the end.
- Expy: Of both Gustava Heffner and Hollie White from the previous game. She's the female contact you have to find and follow her to the women's restroom. Unlike Gustava, she canonically survives (Snake alluded to her after having witnessed her dying in front of him). For Hollie White, her fauxness ended up getting her captured by the enemy who Snake has to save.
- Faux Action Girl: A deconstruction of it in the first game. She badly wants to be an Action Girl, but she's completely inexperienced and in over her head, and has has her illusions destroyed when she learns that War Is Hell. She actually starts out with an impressive debut, busting herself out of prison and mowing down several enemies in a shootout while allied with Solid Snake. But that's the extent of her glory, as she spends almost the entire remainder of the game wounded and captured, doing nothing else productive except serving as Snake's Jeep driver in the game's final scene.
- Flanderization: Both her appearance and her personality were intensified in 4.
- In 1 her messy hairstyle seemed to be a combination of naturally wavy "hat hair" (presumably from wearing a helmet as she's in the Army) with the hair on the sides and rear of her head appearing to be extending laterally because of the blocky graphics. Whereas in 4 she has straight hair with the hair at the rear pointing outwards in long spikes that appear to have been cut and gelled that way as part of an elaborate hairstyle.
- In 1 she had an athletic build and was strong enough to overpower Johnny (who whilst a grown man, was not exactly the strongest of Liquid's henchmen). In 4 she has a much more muscular body, and won an arm wrestling contest with Jonathan who is nearly seven feet tall with a powerlifter's build.
- In 1 Meryl mentioned to Snake that she lacks interest in men because of psychotherapy given to her by the military (presumably to prevent fraternisation), but didn't express any disdain towards the opposite sex, and her conditioning self evidently didn't stop her from having feelings for Snake, or expressing admiration for her male military heroes (namely, Snake, her uncle, and her late father). By 4 she has become much more of a Straw Feminist, as best exhibited by her having an intense tantrum and condemning the entire male sex as a bunch of "selfish egotistical pigs" after Snake brought up her uncle (who turned out to be her real biological father).
- In 1 she beat up Johnny when he was one of Liquid Snake's henchmen to escape from the Shadow Moses holding cells but had no further interactions with him (or any personal grudge). In 4 she became something of a bully and started to beat up Johnny on a routine basis as a running gag after he joined her unit, as a form of punishment for inadequate performance.
- Fighting Irish: if her biological father's surname "Campbell" and her red hair is any indication, she is likely of either Northern Irish or Scottish descent.
- Hand Cannon: Desert Eagle handguns. Though she has used other firearms, such as a bullpup rifle, she switches to an Eagle and it becomes her main weapon. In 4, she comes with two: a "standard" model and a modified one with a scope and an extended barrel. Apparently she's trained with them since childhood.Snake: Isn't that gun a bit big for a girl?Meryl: Listen, I've used guns like this since I was eight years old. I'm more comfortable with it than I am with a bra.
- Heroic Bastard: Meryl was conceived in an extramarital affair between her uncle, Roy Campbell, and her mother. It's also hinted that this is one of the reasons for her sore relations with her father in Metal Gear Solid 4.
- Humanizing Tears: In the ending of Act 1 in 4, after Ocelot's attempt at shutting down/hijacking the SOP system failed due to his using the wrong DNA (It Makes Sense in Context), Meryl is seen breaking down into tears due to her suppressed emotions being unexpectedly released from the lockdown, strongly suggesting that, although she is certainly not a rookie anymore, she certainly hasn't gotten over her sorrow and reluctance to fire a weapon at living targets.
- The Real Heroes: She praises the old guard of Foxhound (which included her uncle and Snake) as real heroes in 1, because they were an elite unit without the use of gene therapy.
- The Lancer: Serves as one to Solid Snake during the events of the first game, being a less-experienced soldier and the only character to actually fight alongside the player, albeit briefly.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: The masculine girl to Johnny's feminine boy.
- Ms. Fanservice: In Metal Gear Solid. In addition to her being rather cute, a lot of emphasis is put on her rump (which actually becomes a plot point in the game when you have to identify her distinct hip-shaking walk when she's in disguise) and she even gets a couple scenes in her underwear.
- Prison Rape: Implied at the end of Metal Gear Solid.
- Statuesque Stunner: She's Ms. Fanservice and 5'9.
- Supermodel Strut: She moves with a distinctive feminine hip-swaying strut, which actually becomes a plot point, as it allows Snake to identify her when she's disguised as one of the many male Mooks. Discussed by Snake and Otacon at one point.Otacon: She has a cute way of walking. Kind of wiggles her behind.
Snake: You were really looking, weren't you?
Otacon: Well... she has a very cute behind! - Tomboy: Invoked, as she wants to be taken seriously as soldier, requiring her to put on a tough persona. In 4, she even partakes in arm-wrestling with her male allies- and wins! Snake even calls her one as a reason he broke up with her, saying he is "tired of tomboys. Though she does look very elegant in a wedding dress at the end of 4.
- Took a Level in Badass: In nine years, she went from a Faux Action Girl to a dangerously competent Special Ops Commander. Even when her SOP nanomachines are permanently disabled halfway through the game, she's still able to fight off waves of FROGs with only Johnny backing her up.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: She's pretty hard on Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4. She deliberately and venomously calls him "Old Snake" just to put him down, and it appears that she has no sympathy to either him or Johnny. However, this is not the case. When Snake and Meryl first meet in the Middle East, she's concerned and sympathetic to his aging problem. And of course, when Johnny reveals that he has no nanomachines, she's clearly sorry that she treated him like crap.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: Kept a key card there.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: When she finds out that it was Colonel Campbell that sent Snake, she says a variation of this phrase and throws a brief tantrum, flipping a chair and punching a wall.
Others
Johnny "Akiba" Sasaki
"Achoo! That witch! She took my clothes!"
Click here to see him unmasked in MGS4
Voiced by: Naoki Imamura (JP, 1st voice), Jun Fukuyama (JP, 2nd voice), Dean Scofield (EN, 1st voice), Beng Spies (EN, 2nd voice)
Johnny first appears in Metal Gear Solid as a guard with stomach problems whom Meryl strips and uses his clothes for her escape. His grandfather also served as a guard during the Cold War.
In Metal Gear Solid 4, he becomes a member of Meryl's Rat Patrol Team 01. He loved Meryl ever since she stripped him in Shadow Moses, and ends up marrying her after admitting his love for her.
- Ascended Extra: In the first two Solid games he was a comedic relief character and was briefly mentioned in the third by his grandfather, until Metal Gear Solid 4, where he evolves into a Badass Normal and becomes Meryl's love interest.
- Action Survivor: Manages to land in the middle of not one, but three ultra deadly covert standoffs that decide the fate of the planet. At first, his survival is seemingly due to dumb luck (which he has plenty of), then in Metal Gear Solid 4 his hero worship of Snake and Meryl drives him to risk his life against some of the deadliest soldiers on the planet with no nanomachines and gut issues.
- Afraid of Needles: The explanation Johnny gives when revealing why he doesn't have any nanomachines in his body. This was foreshadowed in Act 1 of the fourth game where his squadmates and Snake were suffering from withdrawals.
- Amazon Chaser: Meryl's action girl status certainly seems to be a plus for Johnny.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: With Meryl in Metal Gear Solid 4.
- Badass Normal: In the fourth game, he was able to fight without having nanomachines in his body. This ends up making him more effective than many who do have them, since he can’t be as easily shut down or suffer from withdrawl symptoms. It also means that he never underwent gene therapy on Shadow Moses. All of the skills he demonstrates all come from natural prowess rather than enhancement.
- Battle Couple: With Meryl in the fourth game.
- Beautiful All Along: Once he takes off his balaclava and sunglasses.
- Been There, Shaped History: Johnny's gimmick. By sheer coincidence, he manages to get involved in all of Snake's missions. note His grandfather (also named Johnny) even met Big Boss during Operation Snake Eater.
- Big Damn Heroes: Verbatim. When Meryl was out of ammo and surrounded by FROGs in Outer Haven, Johnny charges to the rescue guns blazing. Together the two manage to hold out until Snake crashes the Patriot's AI.
- To a lesser extent, he helps Snake to his feet after the latter's been affected by Liquid hacking of SOP,
- Bring My Brown Pants: If he doesn't actually shit his pants in his appearances, he comes pretty damn close to it.
- But Not Too Foreign: His surname is Sasaki, but he is apparently Russian-American and his features are clearly Caucasian.
- Butt-Monkey: Besides suffering from occasional bouts of diarrhea, Johnny was stripped by Meryl on an Alaska island (resulting in him catching a cold), launched over a ship (and missing it, causing him to land in the ocean), and many more that resulted in him getting his ass kicked.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He may be a clumsy oaf who crapped his pants in the middle of battle but he managed to help Snake ruin Liquid's ultimate plan and has killed a number of FROGs.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Canonically, Snake didn't kill him at Shadow Moses. His grandfather doesn't die either despite his future father being born already and the death of Johnny's grandfather wouldn't have had any impact on his existence at the time.
- Delicate and Sickly: His perpetual diarrhoea.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After being pitched against Snake several times, got beat up by Meryl for his uniform and his frequent stomach problems, he manages to survive the whole ordeal and marries Meryl at the end.
- Generation Xerox: Naked Snake meets a guard who is Johnny's grandpa during Metal Gear Solid 3. He is also named Johnny and shares the same intestinal problems and incompetence at his job.
- Handicapped Badass: Mixed in with Johnnys' Badass Normal status is that due to not having underwent gene therapy on Shadow Moses, or having any Nanomachines in his body: his chronic stomach problems can quickly take him out of a fight.
- Happily Ever After: Marries Meryl at the end.
- Heel–Face Turn: Not particularly bad or villainous to start with, but after being opposed to Snake for so long, he eventually joins the side of the good guys in MGS4.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: He or his ancestors are usually on the side you're against, but all of them are genuinely nice people and not all that threatening.
- It Runs in the Family: All of the male first-born in his family are named Johnny. Also, his grandfather was a prison guard like him and they both had a form of a stomach issue.
- Love at First Punch: He apparently falls in love with Meryl ever since the day he knocked him out at Shadow Moses.
- Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: The feminine boy to Meryl's Masculine girl.
- Mask Power: He disregards using it in the fourth game, though this is a subversion. Johnny only becomes any kind of badass once this happens.
- Meet Cute: He met his future wife when she stripped him in order to get a disguise in which to escape. That's certainly an interesting first meeting.
- Military Brat: He comes from a long-line of soldiers also named Johnny. His grandfather even shows up as a guard in Metal Gear Solid 3.
- Mooks: His job as a guard at Shadow Moses and later the Big Shell.
- Naked People Are Funny: See the above image. His first encounter with his future wife had him beaten up and stripped of his uniform by her.
- Nice Guy: Despite his inability as a soldier at first, he's pretty upbeat and friendly when he's not being tormented by bowel problems. His abrasiveness towards Snake in the first game is understandable, being his prison guard and all.
- No-Sell: He's immune to Screaming Mantis' powers in MGS4, since he doesn't have nanomachines inside him.
- Notice This: The "J" on his balaclava is ridiculously out of place among legions of Faceless Goons.
- Opinion Flip Flop: After his embarrassing encounter with Meryl at Shadow Moses, he becomes very resentful of her. He later joins her Rat Patrol 01 in hopes of getting close to her to the point where they agree to get married.
- Pose of Supplication: Whenever Johnny is knocked unconscious, he slumps forward in a humiliating pose where he's bent over on his knees, with his butt protruding upward.
- Potty Emergency: Suffers them quite a bit.
- Running Gag: His stomach problems. The fact that he still has this in Guns of the Patriots despite the nanomachines in his body supposedly suppressing his issues becomes a plot point later on where he doesn't suffer from losing their benefits due to not having them in the first place.
- Super-Soldier: Yes, really. He's such a hapless dork that it's easy to forget, but he was a Genome Soldier just like all the other guards on Shadow Moses. Actually not. Turns out he skipped out on all the shots due to his fear of needles, so he doesn't have any of the enhancements like the other Genome's.
- Took a Level in Badass: In the fourth game.
Kenneth Baker
Voiced By: Yuzuru Fujimoto (JP), Allan Lurie (EN)
"Maybe they're like us in the arms industry. Always looking forward to the next good war."
Former president of ArmsTech, the developer of Metal Gear REX. Solid Snake tries to rescue Baker after he is taken hostage in Shadow Moses, but Baker is killed by the FOXDIE virus before he can divulge any information about REX.
- Asshole Victim: Probably: The ability to have the stealth nuke on a rail gun on REX to basically break retaliation theory is strongly implied to have been Baker's idea, and if the alluded to rumors of Boorda's true cause of death and the timing of the death and REX's development is anything to go by, he may have also had Boorda killed specifically because he wasn't able to get into the Pentagon's black budget before Boorda.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Though he's no more corrupt than any of the other arms dealers bribing Congress. He's really just trying to save his company, which is in danger of going bankrupt.
- Fat Bastard: He's rather obese and comes off as an unpleasant person who has no qualms against making a profit off of war.
- Small Role, Big Impact: He's not even on-screen for half an hour before he dies, and overall in the series no one really bothers to remember him at all. But it's his rescue and the aftermath prior to his death that helps set up Snake with a proper objective to progress in the Shadow Moses operation (find Meryl, get the means to shut down REX), it's his words that set into motion the heroes realizing they're dealing with a Metal Gear threat, and it's his funding and profiteering ways that helped start the entire REX project. Which is one major reason why the world goes to shit in the future.
- The Stool Pigeon: Lacerated Larry Type: He divulged his half of the PAL code from having his arm broken by Ocelot, as he wasn't trained in resisting physical interrogation. He was the only one to divulge his code, as Anderson died before he could divulge the other half thanks to Ocelot.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: His development of REX led to the data being used in the creation of RAY, which in turn led to the perfection of mass produced, commercially available Metal Gears, including the enormous EXCELSUS by the time of Rising.
- War for Fun and Profit: The military-industrial complex is embodied in this sardonic, wizened war profiteer."Maybe they're like us in the arms industry. Always looking for to the next good war."
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Baker dies from the FOXDIE virus just after you save his ass from the first boss of the game, Ocelot, and only after meeting Snake once.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He developed REX as a means to keep his company from going under as a result of SDI, and his loss of the Generation X fighter plane to another stealth manufacturing company.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The implied reason for why he was targeted for FOXDIE despite not being affiliated with the Terrorists.
Jim Houseman
The Secretary of Defense, he's mentioned in a throwaway comment by Baker and becomes more important at the very end of the game. He plans to nuke Shadow Moses to keep its secret buried.
- All There in the Manual: In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth reveals that Houseman was an agent of the Patriots, and that they were not happy with his decision to order a bombing run of Shadow Moses.
- Driven to Suicide: The Patriots disguise his death as this to cover up their retribution for his failure.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Considered the DARPA chief his friend, even being on a first name basis with him. When Snake points out that a nuclear strike would kill innocents, he casually states the DARPA chief is already dead, implying he'd only hold back if he were still alive.
- Greater-Scope Villain: In many ways he's the real villain of Metal Gear Solid 1's overarching plot, though in the grander scheme he's just a pawn in the grand chess game between Ocelot/Big Boss and the Patriots.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After getting Colonel Campbell arrested and taunts Snake for this as well as planning to get him killed in a nuclear strike, he later gets arrested himself by Campbell's intervention.
- Smug Snake: Happily rubs the fact that Colonel Campbell has been arrested and the fact that Shadow Moses is about to be nuked in Snake's face, never losing the shit-eating grin he greets you with.
- You Have Failed Me: Receives this from the Patriots and Solidus Snake after they learn of his plan to nuke Shadow Moses in an attempt to cover up the entire incident.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Tells Snake as much once Metal Gear REX has been destroyed. He actually says he'll spare Snake's life if can bring the REX test data back with him, but Snake admits that Ocelot took it from him when he was captured. Ironically, he himself ends up on the receiving of the trope by the hands of his own superiors, the Patriots.
Next-Generation Special Forces
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Several of the Genome Soldiers were brainwashed into participating by Mantis, although Liquid's specific words imply that he more or less gave them a morale boost.
- Elite Mook: The Heavily Armed Troops unit, which explicitly established to be former Outer Heaven mercenaries.
- Faceless Goons: Naturally.
- Flawed Prototype: Every single one of the soldiers ended up undergoing an illness thanks to their having asymmetry theory. That's also not going into the Gulf War, where the Gulf War Syndrome and the Gulf War Babies that resulted in it were apparently side-effects of the procedure.
- Gas Mask Mook: The NBC Warfare soldiers.
- Genius Bruiser: According to Naomi and Campbell, the Genome Soldiers, in addition to being skilled warriors, also have an IQ of 180. They don't display these attributes in gameplay.
- The Goomba: The Arctic Warfare variants are the first to appear, but the Light Infantry soldiers are actually much more common and weaker.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: Despite being intelligent soldiers, they apparently fail in spotting Snake even when he's only a few yards away from their line of vision. Probably justified regarding the outdoor soldiers, at least, since there was a blizzard at the time of the mission, which would cause a poor amount of visibility on their end. May also be a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation; Snake himself can't "see" much further than they can (assuming the screen area represents his range of vision) without going into first-person mode, or relying on the radar. There's also a theory that they deliberately avoided spotting Snake in order to trick him into activating REX.
- Mascot Mook: The Arctic Warfare soldiers reappear more often in later games than the other enemy types in the original MGS, such as in the VR Missions expansion, Portable Ops Plus and in the Deja Vu mission in Ground Zeroes.
- Mildly Military: The Colonel states that the unit is made up biochem units, technical escort teams and the Nuclear Emergency Search Team. Then he adds, more troublingly, ex-members of Outer Heaven. The unit's strength and organization is not revealed.
- Super-Soldier: They were genetically enhanced with Big Boss's soldier genes.
- Thicker Than Water: Naomi theorizes that due to them all receiving genes from the same person, they have formed a degree of family loyalty towards each other.
Metal Gear Codename: REX
In reality, Metal Gear Rex was anything but a deterrent. Its main purpose was to be used as a weapon, with the Shadow Moses facility built as a cover-up for its creation. Its railgun is actually meant to fire nuclear weapons from across the globe, launching them as projectiles rather than ballistic missiles (rendering them virtually impossible to detect by early warning systems), and was going to be used as a weapon from the United States.
It is eventually hijacked by Liquid Snake and the renegade members of FOXHOUND, and is used as a "loaded gun" to bargain with the Administration.
- Animal Mecha: A little. It roars occasionally, its cockpit looks vaguely like the head of a dragon, and it has a distinctly beast-like stance.
- Broken Armor Boss Battle: In the fight against it, you have to destroy REX's radome in order for the vulnerable interior to be exposed.
- The Bus Came Back: Appears towards the end of Metal Gear Solid 4, when Solid Snake finds it in the ruins of Shadow Moses and pilots it to escape the re-destruction of the facility and to battle Liquid Ocelot's Metal Gear RAY.
- Crippling Overspecialization: During development, the dev team realized that despite the absurd amount of ranged weaponry given to REX, what would happen if it had to fight at close-range? The answer was to use itself as a battering ram which due to the heavy armor, would make it very effective. Despite the excellent results from the simulations, however, the idea was scrapped over fears that doing this could damage REX's delicate internal systems. Otacon secretly left the program in as a laugh after being told to wipe it. Turns out that the program was what Snake needed to beat Liquid Ocelot and Metal Gear RAY.
- Energy Weapon: It has a free-electron laser that it can use to quickly tear through conventional forces.
- Gatling Good: It's other short-range weapon alongside the laser. Two 30mm Vuclans, in this case.
- Heroic RRoD: Straight after defeating Liquid Ocelot and Metal Gear RAY, REX's aging systems and structure finally gave up and collapsed.
- Humongous Mecha: It's quite large, easily reaching three stories.
- Loophole Abuse: Its railgun exploits a specific loophole that existed in anti-nuke treaties, since projectiles fired from a rail gun were not technically ICBMs, so the START treaties imposing limitations on ballistic missiles did not apply.
- MacGuffin: In the fourth game. Liquid Ocelot seeks its railgun to launch a nuclear attack on the Patriots' core AI; as it had been developed prior to the System's introduction and had laid untouched since the Shadow Moses Incident, REX is the only weapon capable of making such a strike.
- Macross Missile Massacre: It can fire enormous amounts of AT Missiles, especially evident when Snake uses it to take down RAY.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: The only way Snake could hope to beat it was by destroying the radome that lets the cockpit see, so that Liquid would expose himself with opening the cockpit — an intentional weakness Otacon put in as a character trait. And even that took a Heroic Sacrifice on Gray Fox's part to be rid of it proper. Without this weakness, neither Gray Fox nor Snake would've been able to hope to defeat this thing, and when all is said and done, only the cockpit was damaged to disable it. And it still gets up without too much issue well over a decade later thanks to Otacon's updated tech bypassing said cockpit damage, without any external wear whatsoever.
- Not Drawn to Scale: The REX in Twin Snakes is notably scaled down compared to the original size for both the PSX version and Guns of the Patriots. As a result, this Metal Gear looks slightly smaller, with the REX's legs looking thinner, this resulted in Snake's body looking like an action figure instead of a toy soldier.
- Nuke 'em: Its railgun allowed it to fire ICBMs without any of the traces that would normally trip early warning systems, giving it the ability to launch stealth nukes anywhere in the world.
- Put on a Bus: After being destroyed at Shadow Moses, it was left forgotten within its ruins and no one was able to recreate it using what data was gathered from its test after Ocelot ran off with the disk albeit with shoddy knockoffs running rampant due to some other data being leaked online thanks to the Patriots, forcing the hand of the US government to pus forward the development of Metal Gear RAY, which fitted into their plans for Arsenal Gear, unlike REX.
- Sequential Boss: Rex makes up the first two stages of the final battle with Liquid Snake after the Point of No Return is crossed, as Liquid is piloting it.
- Spanner in the Works: It's existence alone throws a wrench in the Patriots' plans as it gives Liquid a shot against them, in addition to divert resources from Metal Gear RAY, one of the components they need for the S3 plan.
- Super Prototype: It is implied that none of the derivative designs based of its blueprints and test data were built to the same standards. And with Otacon's supercomputer working in parallel with its on-board attitude control AI to significantly reduce its response time to control input, it is capable of fighting toe-to-toe with the allegedly technologically superior RAY (designed to fight the knockoffs based off its exercise data) in a severely damaged state from the outset. In fact, aside from the missing radome and railgun, REX appears to have suffered minimal actual damage from being disabled by Solid during the original Shadow Moses incident.
- Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: The ultimate fan wanted showdown of Metal Gear REX vs Metal Gear RAY.
- REX being the prototype and RAY being the upgrade. REX suffered heavy damage years ago in the Shadow Moses Incident, has had its primary weapon (its railgun) removed, had laid in the ruins of Shadow Moses untended for years and the pilot has to have the cockpit open at all times to even see, thus rendering them vulnerable; but it has been repaired to functionality by Otacon, has been granted far more processing power via cloud connection, and has a secret combat subroutine activated this time around.
- Meanwhile, RAY was made to destroy other Metal Gears and is fairly fresh off the factory floor, but the Metal Gears it was designed to fight were cheap knockoffs and far weaker than the real deal. End result: REX manages to defeat and destroy RAY mere moments before its own aging systems finally failed. Had REX been at 100% capacity during the fight, it would have likely wiped the floor with RAY much quicker.
- Use Your Head: If REX is instructed to attack RAY close-range against a wall, it plows its head into RAY.
- What a Piece of Junk: By the time Snake pilots it, REX had been left untouched and heavily damaged over the years without any physical repair, the radome's damage meant that the pilot has to leave the cockpit open which leaves them vulnerable, yet after a little reprogramming by Otacon, it still works and hold its own against RAY, built as an anti-Metal Gear machine from the start. Until ZEKE and Sahelanthropus, REX was bar none the toughest Metal Gear in the series.
