WMG / Metal Gear Solid

The first Metal Gear Solid is all VR.

It turns out we weren't playing through the Shadow Moses incident as it happened, we were playing through Raiden's VR training of it. His real combat experience was his child soldiering, but he did do the VR training in his adulthood as well; he was able to identify things and people which "kept coming back to Shadow Moses". And don't forget Ghost Babel — the main story's not canon, but completing all the VR training mission enables you to hear a short conversation between Raiden and the VR controller person thing. Considering what Snake says about what VR does to your head, the VR training probably contributed to his mental instability. Although not as much as the Mind Rape. What actually happened on Shadow Moses was totally different and completely spoilerific, and MGS4 will make absolutely no sense until the huge pivotal difference is revealed at the end.

• This theory is backed up by a conversation between Raiden and Colonel regarding the Nikita in Sons of Liberty; Colonel says that Raiden won't ge the benefit of a birds eye view of the missile like in the Shadow Moses VR, now, how does the player control Nikita missiles in the original Metal Gear Solid?
• Possibly, said difference is that Liquid Snake never existed. He's a personality fabricated by Ocelot, and MGS4 will reveal that in the real Shadow Moses incident, Ocelot was talking to himself, and it was Ocelot driving Metal Gear REX. Big Boss made such an impression on Ocelot in his youth that he was split between his dedication to the Philosophers and the contradicting ideal of Big Boss's Outer Heaven, a world not controlled by the conspiracy. This resulted in a second personality forming in Ocelot, the "son of Big Boss", just as theatric and idealistic as Ocelot was when he was young, while the other personality, Shalashaska, continued to work for the American branch of the Philosophers. Oh, and of course this is why it makes any kind of sense for Liquid to be alive inside an arm.
  • Conversely, while Liquid Snake did exist, he is not being channeled by Ocelot. Ocelot is having a bit of a psychotic break over the aforementioned conflict, and is making up the whole 'possession' thing as a coping mechanism.
    • Which means that Outer Heaven is simply another Fight Club?
    • Er, maybe that...or maybe he's making it up for the sake of some plan (though with the state of this game's canon, a Gambit Roulette seems more likely).
• Alternate Theory: The original Metal Gear Solid for the PSX was real; the remake, Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, is the simulation. Think about it: This explains why Twin Snakes was so messed up. Accents were removed due to being unimportant to the simulation, making characters easier to understand for users, and besides it being easier to accurately simulate just a voice as opposed to a voice and an accent. The remake is considered much easier than the original, just a simulation would be far easier than the real thing. And this explains the rampant abuse of Cutscene Power to the Max — if it's all just a simulation, it can occasionally defenestrate any actual semblance to reality, all for the sake of training its users to feel stupidly heroic.
  • Or maybe its the version Raiden went through? Raiden had never met any of the major players in the Shadow Moses incident, so he would be unfamiliar with their voices and the way they sounded, letting the Patriots get away with free censorship without Raiden noticing. Raiden's more advanced training (and perhaps dormant skills), combined with the test being monitored and controlled would explain the new game play changes and lowered difficulty. As for the cutscenes, Raiden's entire perception of the Shadow Moses incident comes from "In the Darkness of Shadow Moses", and from what he was told. He idolizes Snake, thinking him much more than just a normal man, and this perception could have bled over into the simulation; Raiden is seeing Snake as expects to see him, as a Legendary Badass.
• Alternate Alternate Theory: It's the other way around. Mei Ling appears in MGS4 without an accent, sounding much like she does in Twin Snakes and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which could mean her accent in the original game was a mistake on the part of the simulation's developers. Clips of the original Metal Gear Solid and VR Missions are shown in the montage when Raiden talks about his VR training. Further, well-designed training simulations actually need to be harder than the real thing, so that once you can handle the simulation, you can handle the real thing easily. Denying Raiden the ability to walk slowly, aim guns, and hang from ledges in the simulation could be a way to add Fake Difficulty to the simulation. This could also account for the less realistic graphics in the original game.
  • Makes sense, since it is established that Mei Ling was born and raised in the United States. She's Chinese-American, duh!
  • It may have also been a way to keep Raiden's morale in check whilst still letting him build a sort of adoration for Snake. Raiden might have been less likely to believe he could equal or surpass Snake if he knew and lived the fact that Snake could jump off a Hind D's missile to fire a Stinger missile back at it or baseball pitch a grenade straight down an M1 Tank's turret barrel.
• Another Alternate Theory: The original Metal Gear Solid was VR, and Twin Snakes was just a dream that Snake had. My reasoning for thinking that the original was VR is that they removed the ability to hand from ledges, walk normally and aim properly to add fake difficulty, and added in the accents to simulate an experience where you are dealing with people who have accents that you might have difficulty understanding. As for Twin Snakes being a dream, it would explain why Snakes reactions are so over the top (like jumping over that missile); he's reliving the events in a dream, but subconsciously trying to make himself seem like even more of a badass (maybe he'd been watching too many action movies that evening?).
• Yet Another Alternate Theory: The original Metal Gear Solid is what really happened, while The Twin Snakes is the post-Memetic Mutation exaggerated retelling of the Shadow Moses Incident.
  • Basically, what happened in Band of Brothers with the Captain Speirs German prisoners incident happened here, so that's why Snake in The Twin Snakes does things like have a 3-on-1 fight with the guards before getting captured while in the "reality" of the original game he just put his hands up.

The Twin Snakes is really Metal Gear Solid: The Movie

The original game depicts the real version of what happened during the Shadow Moses incident, while "The Twin Snakes" is a dramatization of the incident as adapted into a mainstream action film (the more over-the-top cutscenes of bullet dodging, doing a backflip off of a missile in flight, the fight with the Ninja in the first encounter, the 3-on-1 fight with the soldiers after the battle with Sniper Wolf, and so on can be explained by those scenes being directed by a director like John Woo or the Wachowskis). Mei Ling spoke with an accent originally, but loses her accent in the adaptation because the filmmakers are worried that audiences wouldn't be able to understand her (or her actress just couldn't do a convincing Chinese accent without sounding like a stereotypical caricature).

• Alternate Theory: They're both "the movie", but The Twin Snakes is The Remake. The original Metal Gear Solid was made as a fairly straightforward action film, while The Twin Snakes is a remake with a much higher SFX budget, John Woo/the Wachowskis either influencing the director or (directing the film itself), and a partially-recasted cast.

The Twin Snakes takes place in the Revengeance universe.

Twin Snakes and Revengeance take place in a side universe, one in which the broad strokes of the Metal Gear story still happen, but in a more crazy awesome way.

The Shadow Moses Incident was set up by the Patriots too.

The whole thing was a prelude to the experiments with Raiden, an examination of nature v. nurture. Two clones of Big Boss were created, and raised according to different specifications. One, Solid, was raised as a normal human being, which in fact he was. The other, Liquid, was tweaked at the genetic level to be superior to Solid in all ways — but raised under the impression that he was the inferior one. When the two were pitted against each other, that belief cost him victory — thus proving to the Patriots that the genes one is born with are not as important as the memes one is exposed to. It was that datum that freed them from the necessity of using Big Boss's genetic material as the basis for their homegrown super soldiers, thus allowing them to use preexisting child soldiers like Raiden in their next experiment...

• Alternatively, Liquid was genetically identical to Solid (as the Word of God has said), but the experiment was otherwise the same.
  • Jossed, given we now know LET was all about having a figurehead who could live up to the legacies of Big Boss and the Boss, and was one of the reasons Solidus/George Sears was put into office. Given Ocelot's status, it does, however, stand to reason that the Patriots let everything at Shadow Moses happen and arranged specific parts of it.

The Twin Snakes was merely a Dream Sequence experienced by Snake

Sometime after Shadow Moses but before the events of the Big Shell snake went through an extremely long Dream Sequence. Alternatively it could have been a Mind Screw. Anyway, in this since there is No Fourth Wall David Hater is extremely quiet because Snake was supposed to sound tired! Also, he cannot remember the dialog exactly, or the accents because it had been at least a year past those events. His fake badassness in the game comes from an ego he suppressed throughout his life, and partly from all the people who saw him as the greatest hero ever. He developed a higher opinion of himself, and remember himself doing far more stunts then he actually did.

• Although it could be Raiden's VR training of the events. (Same author as the Dream Sequence WMG)

Sarah Palin is connected to the Patriots

Sarah Palin governed over Alaska during the Shadow Moses incident. Coincidence? I think not.

• If anything, she's actually become a target of the Patriots. I'd say more, but I already got in trouble for Soapboxing once. (I hear David Letterman has just been put on the FOXDIE short list, though.)
  • MGS2 seemed to imply that pretty much every politician, regardless of political affiliation, was in the patriot's pocket. It's basically the mother of all political machines. Do you really think someone could become a governor without their backing?
  • Does that mean Obama is actually a white guy named Johnson who likes to grab peoples' balls as an icebreaker? Wow, that's... hmm.
    • Have you ever actually seen Obama? Sure, through pictures and stuff, but how do you know they're not of some model in a controlled environment to trick the masses? Did you take the pictures yourself? (Emma, stop haunting my computer.)

In the Metal Gear universe, it is possible for Liquid to have really been the "dominant" clone all along and have naturally blond hair.

There is a rare allele for blond hair in this universe that's dominant over brown. And at least one other character has it - The Boss. She's blonde, there's no reason to believe that she dyes her hair, and, well, ''everything'' about The Boss is dominant.

Liquid's real name is John/Jack.

Big Boss's real name is John, or alternatively Jack. Zero's name is David. It's not that much of a stretch to assume that Solid was named after Zero, thus meaning Liquid was probably named after Big Boss.

• Jossed, MGSV reveals his real name to be Eli.

Master Miller is impersonating Liquid in MGS1.

There really was a Liquid Snake, but Miller killed him and disguised the corpse to look like his own in his Alaskan home. He then impersonated him during the Shadow Moses incident. in order to finish what Big Boss started with Outer Heaven and Metal Gear. When designing the FOXDIE virus, Naomi based it on DNA that was supposedly Liquid's, but was really Miller's, provided to her by the Patriots in order to remove him from power. This is the real reason why the FOXDIE virus would kill Liquid but not his twin/clone, and explains Liquid's annoying fake British accent. The corpse of "Snake" mentioned in MGS2 is really Liquid's, though.

• The events of MGSV make this highly unlikely. For a multitude of reasons. Number one being that Miller's age by the time of MGS would be around 60. That doesn't even take into consideration the story elements of PW-V that would make this nearly impossible.
  • Yeah and some materials of this game suggested that he looked younger and the Alaskan air did him quite some good.
• Alos in MGSV reveals that in the end, Miller would go against the real Big Boss, assisting Solid Snake with advice in earlier games. He'd have no reason to try to resume what Big Boss began.

The Last Days of FOXHOUND is canon

Due to the fact that I haven't played MGS4, I can honestly say I have seen absolutely nothing that contradicts The Last Days of FOXHOUND. Anything that DOES is actually one of Ocelots LIES!

• There's his claims to be loyal to the PATRIOTS as his "real" loyalty, but that's easily explainable as a layer of his deception to convince Them that he's their loyal puppet. There's also the bit where he tortures to death the DARPA guy who turns out WAS a PATRIOT, but that's easily explainable as both of them being cautious and not wanting to reveal anything to the rest of FOXHOUND, in which case the conversation was probably code and lies on both sides.

Psycho Mantis's brain broke when he tried to read Deadpool's mind.

It would explain so much.

The "Saladin" mentioned by Sniper Wolf wasn't actually Big Boss

Because the idea of Snake assuming any soldier in any conflict after World War II who gained a nickname must have been Big Boss was just way too amusing to me. Especially since this series has No Fourth Wall and the Shadow Moses Incident chronologically takes place after Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was released.

• Technically, this is accurate.
• Considering Phantom Pain, it could've been Venom Snake that she met.
  • Not quite what I meant by this, but still amusing that I could have been technically right.

Vulcan Raven is asexual.

He's not repulsed by sexuality the way Mantis is, he just doesn't care to pursue such things for himself. The evidence - unless running around shirtless wielding a giant phallic symbol counts, he's probably the least sexualized of MGS's Quirky Miniboss Squad. Ocelot has his reloading fetish among other kinkiness, Wolf has her Stalker with a Crush eros/thanatos business, Liquid brings the Twincestuous tension and tries to get Snake's clothes off - even Mantis wears bondage gear and makes Meryl hit on Snake. And, if you include non-FOXHOUND opponents, there's the sadomasochistic throwdown with Gray Fox. Raven's just a Blood Knight with a bit of a mystical-philosophical bent.

Mei Ling is gay or asexual, and Otacon knows it.

Which probably saved her life. She's an attractive, sympathetic single female, the age difference between her and Otacon probably is no greater than that between Snake and Meryl, and they have some things in common. Considering how affection-starved MGS1-era Otacon is, it's not unlikely that he'd develop some kind of feelings for her, and we know what that means. If Hal had any hope of Mei Ling requiting any affection sent her way, the poor girl'd be hurtling fridgeward.

Alternatively, by the time Otacon got to know Mei Ling well, he was already in love with Snake.

Mei Ling's still alive because Otacon's lethal affection was otherwise occupied.

Psycho Mantis had some kind of neuromuscular disease.

And it was fairly advanced by the time of the Shadow Moses incident. His muscles aren't atrophied because he uses his psychokinesis for everything: he was forced to depend on his psychic powers more as his physical body got weaker. If Mantis was in the late stages of an incurable illness, it might have provided an additional incentive to go along with Liquid's coup, with the reasoning that "I'm going to die soon anyway, might as well go out doing something."

Gray Fox's new actor in The Twin Snakes was a deliberate artistic decision.

To quote the Behind the Black article: "In Metal Gear Solid, [Snake] can't identify the voice of his best friend, due to this being the first game in which Fox had a voice actor." Considering the sheer amount of fourth-wall destruction that goes on in this series, it only makes sense that Fox's voice would be different for the remake - Snake would have recognized it if it hadn't changed completely, and they didn't want to change the story as much as would be required if Snake caught on to "Deepthroat"'s real identity as soon as he first contacted him.

• Similarly, this is the reason for a change in Psycho Mantis' final words. In the original dubbed version of MGS, he said that using his powers to help someone "feels kind of nice", while in the original Japanese version, and in TTS, he remarks on "such a nostalgic feeling". Sure, it could just be a more accurate translation of the original line... but given he's demonstrated that the fourth wall is no more hindering to him than it is to Snake, it could also be him commenting on the entire series of events, being vaguely aware that, yes, everything he just did has happened before.

Mantis called Snake worse than Liquid because (at the time) he did not have a cause of his own

Sure Liquid's cause is misguided in various places but it was his. Snake up to this game mainly did things solely on orders, including this, this Snake was naugh more than a pawn of possibly worse people. This stopped being the case with Gray fox's final moments inspiring Snake to find his own cause with the 4th Solid game less on orders and more doing a favor for a friend/doing one last good thing in his life.

Mantis' father was psychic as well.

Psycho Mantis claims that his father hated him because of the mother dying in childbirth. Seems a little cliche doesn't it? But, what if Mantis inherited his psychic powers from his father? His father probably looked into his son's future and realized he'd grow up to be a killer. That's probably why his father tried to kill him, not out of blame for "killing" his mother.