< Metal Gear (video game)

Metal Gear (video game)/Characters


This page is for characters that debuted in the original Metal Gear in 1987, and only Metal Gear. Put all tropes for Solid Snake and Big Boss/Naked Snake here.

See also:

Characters that debuted in Metal Gear

Solid Snake/Old Snake/Iroquois Plissken/David ("!")

Voiced by: Akio Ohtsuka (JP), David Hayter (EN)

The star of the Metal Gear series, Solid Snake is an infiltration specialist whose exploits usually revolve around destroying the titular Metal Gears, nuclear-armed Humongous Mecha whose very existence shifts the balance of power in the world dramatically. Through this, he becomes entangled in a massive web of control and deceit centered around The Patriots, a shadowy Ancient Conspiracy group that want to Take Over the World.

  • Afraid of Needles: Drebin asked if he was this before injecting him with a syringe to update his nanos in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. In this case, his fear, or rather, hesitance, was perfectly justified, as the previous time he got an injection before a mission, it turned out the person injected him with an unwanted gift (FOXDIE). He should have followed that gut instinct.
  • Alliterative Code Name
  • Anti-Hero: Type II, arguably was or still is Type IV in the first Solid game (with the strong implication of the occasional flirting with Type V).
  • Anti-Anti-Christ: He was originally created, along with his brothers, to enforce the Patriots will (albeit unknowingly), but he eventually managed to destroy them and save the planet from their control.
  • Badass
    • Badass Grandpa: In MGS4 due to Clone Degeneration.
    • Badass Mustache: In MGS4.
    • Badass Normal: Is able to take on a world of cyborgs, psychics, and supernaturally empowered warriors and win.
      • Technically he's a Badass Abnormal, as he was a clone of Big Boss and not a natural human being.
      • He brought down a Hind-D helicopter by himself, piloted by a guy who used it to take down two F-16s. And he took out a tank by himself.
    • Blood Knight: Heavily implied in Metal Gear Solid by Liquid Snake, Psycho Mantis, and Meryl Silverburgh (and she's one of the good guys, to boot) to enjoy killing and battle, and in Psycho Mantis's case, is arguably worse than Liquid Snake.
      • This is one of the central conflicts of his character. When he fails in living a peaceful lifestyle (similar to his father) Snake decides to put his Blood Knight tendencies to good causes.
    • One-Man Army
    • Pop-Cultured Badass: If "Sons of Liberty" is anything to go by, he's a fan of Escape from New York.
    • Retired Badass: He's dragged out of retirement in Metal Gear 2 and Metal Gear Solid.
  • Bad Liar: While not as bad of a liar as, say, Roy Campbell or even his father Big Boss, it is clear that he isn't all that good at lying, as evidenced with his first appearance: he states that he got to the Big Shell via a fast-rope descent from a Navy Chopper, yet that exact moment one of the sea lice from earlier falls out from him. Likewise, he disguises himself as a Navy SEAL, yet he gets portions of his uniform wrong (headsets are only used for commanders, who are kept off the battlefield at all costs), and he quotes the wrong military mottos (he says "Semper Fi" and "Who Dares, Wins", which are the Marines and the British Special Air Service mottos, respectively). Also overlaps into Paper-Thin Disguise.
  • Be All My Sins Remembered: He does not like it when someone calls him a hero.
  • Big Brother Mentor: To Raiden.
  • Byronic Hero

Solid Snake: I'm just a man who's good at what he does, killing. There's no winning or losing for a mercenary. I've never fought for anyone but myself, I've got no purpose in life, no ultimate goal. It's only when I'm cheating death on the battlefield, the only time I feel truly alive.

  • Charles Atlas Superpower
  • Child Soldier: Arguably one, as he was raised within the military.
  • Chivalrous Pervert: Snake exhibits this trait to several beautiful women, especially to Meryl, whom he notes has a cute butt, and to Mei Ling, too.
  • Cloning Blues
  • Cool Old Guy: To some extent...
  • Dark Messiah: Kind of. He is shown to be willing to save the world, although that doesn't stop him from sometimes acting like a jerk towards his friends, and at one point manipulate a person into getting himself captured in a really complex method of Trojan Prisoner.
  • Decoy Protagonist: In MGS2, and only MGS2.
  • Defrosting Ice King: Part of his "Metal Gear Solid" character arc.
  • Determinator: Oh god yes. He crawls out of a microwave hallway WITH HIS FINGERTIPS!
    • It's the only reason Old Snake is still alive from start to finish.
  • Dirty Old Man: Considering what's happening to him by Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, he comes pretty close to the trope by his appearance and reading Playboys to increase his psyche gauge (not to mention giving implied regret of retiring too soon when he hears that Mei Ling apparently got a promotion after catching an eye with an admiral that was implied to be of this trope), even if he is technically middle-aged.
  • Driven to Suicide: In MGS4, Solid Snake intends to kill himself at a graveyard in order to prevent himself from infecting the world with FOXDIE. It as subverted, though, as he ultimately couldn't go through with it, plus it turned out killing himself proved to be completely unnecessary anyway.
  • Drowning My Sorrows: Snake mentions after revealing his identity to Raiden that before Shadow Moses, he took to heavily drinking while living in isolation at Alaska.
  • Eighties Hair: God, that mullet...
    • Slightly less mullety in the second game, more just generally longish and held back by the bandanna. It's most obviously such while disguised as Plisken and not wearing said bandanna. But he is totally rocking the old man mullet in MGS4.
  • Evil Counterpart: Psycho Mantis, during his dying speech, implies that Solid Snake is this to Liquid Snake, stating that he was as bad as Liquid after declaring that he saw true evil, which was Snake, before correcting himself and states that he's actually worse than Liquid.
  • Embarrassing Nickname: Snake really hates it when people call him "Old Snake". In fact, just hearing the moniker takes a quarter of its psyche out.
  • Eyepatch of Power: The Solid Eye System.
  • Female Gaze
  • Flashback Nightmare: Mentioned a few times in his appearances. The first time was in ‘’Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake’’ when encountering Big Boss at Zanzibar Land, where he states that he took the mission to get rid of the nightmares relating to Outer Heaven that he experienced since his mission to Outer Heaven. In ‘’Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty’’, its strongly implied that Snake was suffering from nightmares from Shadow Moses (contacting Pliskin while Snake is asleep will have him mumbling something before abruptly screaming Liquid's name, presumably this part was during their fight on REX). Finally, in ‘’Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots’’, not only does Snake have a nightmare regarding his entry into Shadow Moses, the player even plays the nightmare in Act 4.
  • Good Is Not Nice: And he's proud of it! Good doesn't need to be nice...!
  • He Who Fights Monsters: Variation in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Because of his rapidly aging body, the FOXDIE virus that Naomi Hunter injected into him during the Shadow Moses Incident was slowly mutating to the point that, by the time three months passed, FOXDIE would kill indiscriminately within three months before killing Snake another three months, all after he spent his life eliminating Metal Gears, he would essentially become a bioweapon, something Naomi even lampshades. It was barely subverted, however, when Big Boss reveals that the new FOXDIE uprooted the old, meaning he was no longer a biological threat to the world.
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation
  • Humanoid Abomination: Strongly implied to be such by Vulcan Raven:

Vulcan Raven: You are a snake which was not created by Nature. You and the Boss... you are from another world... a world that I do not wish to know.

  • Informed Flaw: We only have Mantis's word that Snake is more evil than Big Bad Liquid.[1]
  • In the Blood: Solid Snake is a designer baby made with the DNA of "the greatest soldier ever."
  • I Read It for the Articles: It is strongly implied that Solid Snake has other reasons for possessing dirty magazines besides using them as bait to distract enemies. In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, he refers to the magazines as having "educational value" when trying to convince Raiden that having them isn't that bad, and if the player reads the magazines in the model viewer in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, his Psyche Gauge goes up. Because of his aging problem in the latter game, it also in a way overlaps into Dirty Old Man.
  • Knight in Sour Armor: Quite possibly the best example in gaming.
  • Jerkass: And proud of it!
  • Light Is Good / Dark Is Not Evil: Liquid referred to himself and Snake as "the brother of light" and "the brother of dark", although of whom he was specifically referring to in regards to the titles is never actually specified.
    • Big Mama specifically refers to him as a "shadow, which no light can shine on."
    • Then again, considering Mantis' statement about Snake deduced from what is strongly implied to be mind and past reading, Snake himself might have been Light Is Not Good / Dark Is Evil.
  • Living Legend
  • Made of Iron
  • Magnetic Hero
  • Meaningful Name: His real name, David, is a Hebrew name that derives from the Old Testament Hebrew ruler, King David, who managed to slay the giant Goliath with nothing more than a slingshot and a dagger prior to becoming the king of Israel. Solid Snake, in a similar fashion, has managed to overcome seemingly impossible odds despite being the Les Enfant Terribles clone that contained supposedly inferior genes.
    • That and he takes on giant war robots with nothing but a rocket launcher (and sometimes less) on a regular basis.
  • Messianic Archetype
  • Military Brat: A rare literal example, as not only is he "related" to someone in the Military (Big Boss, he's a clone of him), but according to the novelization for Metal Gear Solid as well as implied in the source material and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, he was raised within the military from a very early age.
  • Mr. Fanservice
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Let's see, his actions in Outer Heaven resulted in NATO blowing up the Outer Heaven Resistance members despite their being their allies, his defeating Gray Fox and Big Boss not only got Naomi very angry at him (enough to inject a bioweapon in him to target him specifically, among other things), but it also led to the Patriots controlling humanity by the 21st century, and heck, even after defeating both the Patriots and Outer Heaven in 2014 while dying, if Rising is anything to go by, things actually ended up worse than before.
  • The Paragon Always Rebels: Sort of. It became somewhat clear that Solid Snake, after the Shadow Moses Incident, was willing to commit actions that would at the very least get people both foreign and domestic hateful of him enough to issue a bounty on his head, and then the Patriots were ticked off enough at him to try to orchestrate the sinking of a tanker in part to frame Solid Snake.
  • Perma-Stubble
  • Properly Paranoid: In MGS2's tanker chapter, Snake expresses vocal concern about his mission onboard the tanker, citing that it might be a trap, and also expressing genuine worry that the guards weren't undergoing enough SOP. He's right on both fronts, as the former was revealed to be true as a smear campaign against Philanthropy instigated by the Patriots, and the latter had the Gurlukovich Mercenaries (and later, Ocelot) killing the Marines with ease.
  • Psycho for Hire: See Blood Knight above, most specifically Liquid Snake's line about Solid Snake enjoying all the killing when on REX.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran
  • Shrouded in Myth: It seems like everyone who meets Snake for the first time has some sort of memetic badass picture of him.
  • Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes: The lowest he has gone to is Type II, but it is heavily implied in Metal Gear Solid that he has flirted with Type V.
  • Smoking Is Cool: Until he finally quits in the fourth game.
    • Ironically, he actually tells Raiden not to smoke as it would "stunt his growth" in a Codec conversation. Even with trying to cover his identity (he was disguised as Pliskin, after all, to keep his "death" faked), the fact that he actually carried cigarettes around (he was the one who gave Raiden the cigarettes in the first place) would borderline Hypocritical Humor.
  • Super Soldier: Was a clone of Big Boss, and via the Super Baby Method he was one of two surviving fetuses in a method of abortions of the fetal growth.
  • Tall, Dark and Snarky
  • Trojan Prisoner: Had to undergo this in Metal Gear in order to locate the prison cell that Gray Fox was imprisoned inside.
  • Typhoid Mary: He unknowingly carries the FOXDIE virus, engineered to kill the members of FOXHOUND as well as those involved in creating Metal Gear REX (ie, the ArmsTech President Kenneth Baker).
  • Underwear of Power: Snake's sneaking-suit may count.
  • Warrior Poet
  • Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: It is implied when Snake reveals his true identity in ‘’Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty’’ that the organization that he founded, Philanthropy, committed actions that were comparable to terrorism during their missions, barring the Tanker Incident.
  • Zen Survivor
  • Younger Than He Looks: An extremely tragic example of this: Because of his genes being tampered with during his creation, he starts looking like he is in his 80s in Metal Gear Solid 4 even when he is actually closer to being 42 years of age, and it is implied that he'll die by 43 at the latest.
  • Youngest Child Wins: Possibly inverted: As of ‘’Metal Gear Solid 4’’, he is the only one of the Les Enfants Terribles children who not only survived, but can live in peace for the rest of their lives, and he's the eldest of the children (or at the very least the middle child).


Big Boss/Naked Snake/Jack/John Ishmael

Naked Snake: Akio Ohtsuka (JP), David Hayter (EN)
Big Boss: Chikao Ohtsuka (JP), Richard Doyle (EN), Kiefer Sutherland (EN)

After saving the world from nuclear Armageddon back in 1964, a man named John is christened "Big Boss" by America for slaying his teacher and adoptive mother, known as The Boss, from whom he also inherits the title of "The Greatest Warrior of The Twentieth Century."

He later goes on to found the private military company Militaires Sans Frontieres and the black ops group FOXHOUND. In the first ‘’Metal Gear’’ game Big Boss secretly leads the uprising at Outer Heaven and sends FOXHOUND rookie Solid Snake to investigate it, not expecting that he will actually survive. In ‘’Metal Gear 2’’ Big Boss takes control of Zanzibar Land and kidnaps a scientist who developed an alternative fuel source. Solid Snake is sent in to rescue the scientist, and ultimately kills Big Boss with a makeshift flamethrower.

Originally the Big Bad of the first two Metal Gear games (the latter of the two, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, giving him shades of an Anti-Villain), Big Boss undergoes a massive dose of Character Development during his stint as a Player Character, becoming more of a Tragic Hero.

  • Alliterative Code Name
  • A Father to His Men
  • Anti-Villain: Type III
  • Badass
  • Bad Liar: During the Peace Walker incident, whenever confronted in regards to why Big Boss is in Costa Rica, he always comes up with a lie about why he's there, a lie that's very easy to pick apart.
    • Examples of the poorly-crafted lies that he made:
      • Claiming that he was Colombian bird photographer when meeting Amanda and the FSLN (which, not only is his camera not even set right, but when he rescues Chico, he actually slips up and calls himself a War Photographer, to which he says in a somewhat unsure tone to cover up his mistake that he takes pictures of "the birds at the battlefield.")
      • Claiming that he's an Entomologist, and that he's looking for the Ulysses butterfly, and then corrects himself to mean the Morphos butterfly when Huey points out that Ulysses butterflies are not present in Costa Rica, and claims that he is trying to get some for the CITES Washington Treaty before being told that they aren't covered in the treaty.
      • Claiming that he's an Ornithologist and that he was looking for the Quetzal for the CITES Washington Treaty.
  • Benevolent Boss: There's a reason why his followers have undying, genuine loyalty to Big Boss.
  • Blood Knight: One of his primary reasons for creating Outer Heaven, and later, Zanzibar Land, was to give him and his soldiers a place where they can go to war endlessly, due to the fact that he only ever felt truly alive when fighting in a war. He did originally intend and, more importantly, attempted to live his life peacefully after Operation Snake Eater (namely as an instructor or a hunting guide), but he ended up dragged back onto the Battlefield.
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer: The man is a total geek over his guns and cardboard boxes.
    • Also, he apparently has a tendency to misunderstand exactly how some items are considered valuable to most people in other ways besides battle. In Portable Ops, in a conversation with Para-Medic, Para-Medic explains about El Dorado and that even though it technically doesn't exist, there is evidence to suggest that there were similar civilizations that used gold even in the present, and mentioned that they used Gold Knives. Snake expressed interest in the knives, although not in regards to its value as much as using the knife to distract the enemy so he could CQC them into submission, with Para-Medic exasperatedly explaining that she wasn't meaning that. In Peace Walker, Paz explains to Big Boss about the Stone Spheres in Costa Rica, where it is not known what they were used for, but Big Boss guesses that he could use them for a trap, and that being nearly perfect spheres would make them perfect for rolling down slopes, causing Paz to express shock at what Big Boss is implying.
  • Charles Atlas Superpower: Big Boss' superior soldier genes apparently have some mutant healing factor thrown in for good measure, since he's able to still move around after breaking his legs twenty times as long as he's put splints on them.
  • Cigar Chomper
  • Composite Character: Made out of the coolest equal parts of John J Rambo and Commander James Bond.
    • And in his later years, Sean Connery.
  • Cool Old Guy
  • Dark Messiah
  • Defector From Decadence: Big Boss lost some respect for his native land after he learned that The Boss was in fact innocent of defection and that the US Government cast her aside because of an unanticipated factor involving Volgin and a nuclear weapon. Eventually, he ended up leaving the Patriots after Zero had Big Boss cloned without his knowledge or his consent.
  • Deuteragonist: He's got the second-most playable appearances after Snake, and plays a major role behind the scenes in the few games he doesn't appear in.
  • Disney Death
  • Even the Guys Want Him: Almost every guy shows some attraction to him.
  • Expy: Similar to Raiden in MGS2, Zadornov had intended to manipulate the entire mission of the Militaires Sans Frontieres, and especially Big Boss to, aside from launching a nuke at Cuba and making it seem as though America had done this (which unfortunately ends up working too well for his tastes) also intending to essentially mold Big Boss into the next Che Guevara, even going as far as to execute him right when he's at age 39 shortly thereafter both due to expending his usefulness and to orchestrate more rebellions that the KGB / Soviets could manipulate.
  • Extreme Omnivore: The first question he asks of any wildlife is how it tastes.
    • Surprisingly averted by Big Boss in Portable Ops and Peace Walker, when he actually declines on attempting to hunt for food during the San Hieronymo Takeover because he and his men have more than enough food with them as it is.
      • Though he still asks Paz what several of the animals in Costa Rica taste like.
  • Eyepatch of Power
  • Fallen Hero
  • Final First Hug: With Solid Snake
  • Flashback Nightmare: It's implied in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake that Big Boss himself suffered from nightmares from the battlefield (he reacts to Snake's mention of nightmares with some recognition). In Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Big Boss awakes from a nightmare that presumably was flashing back to his capture by the FOX unit and Null. In Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, the two instances that Big Boss was unconscious, he had dreams relating to his fights against The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
  • Good-Looking Privates
  • Go Out with a Smile
  • Grandpa What Massive Hotness You Have
  • He's Just Hiding: Not that he had much of a choice, though, given the fact that he was injected with will-subduing nanomachines shortly after being recovered from Zanzibar Land by the Patriots.
  • I Was Quite a Looker
  • Kill the Ones You Love
  • Made of Iron
  • Medal of Dishonor: Awarded for murdering The Boss to save America's face.
    • Made even more so when it is later made apparent that the reason that The Boss had to die didn't even to do with saving America's face and that a certain member of the American Government wanted her offed from the start, and actually manipulated the events of the ending of the Virtuous Mission just so there could be an excuse to send Naked Snake in to kill The Boss.
  • Magnetic Hero
  • Mole in Charge: He was leading both FOXHOUND and Outer Heaven during the 1990s. However, given what happened in Peace Walker, it's unknown how he was even able to hide his loyalties or ties to Outer Heaven in the first place, especially after Zero already knew about Big Boss's leadership of Outer Heaven, and attempted to gain control of it before eventually deciding to frame them with a nuclear strike on the US via an agent of Cipher due to Big Boss's refusal.
  • Redemption Equals Death
  • Ret Canon: Kind of. Prior to Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the closest thing to a hint that Big Boss's original codename was Snake was in the non-canonical game "Snake's Revenge" where, despite the title being "Snake's Revenge," the only character who actually desired any revenge was Big Boss.
  • Scars Are Forever: Subverted in Peace Walker. It initially seemed like he cut himself a scar in the shape of The Boss's scar, but it is later revealed to be faked, having placed a jigsaw on his person by disguising it as a scar in case Snake got captured.
  • Slasher Smile: Seen in MGS3 during the Virtuous Mission, when about to shoot down a hornet’s nest around some KGB soldiers.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran
  • Smoking Is Cool Heck, he even smoke while he's dying, even lampshading it saying: “It's good isn't it?”
  • The Stool Pigeon: Inversion of the Lacerated Larry type in Peace Walker. He remained silent about the truth behind his killing of The Boss outside of the official story of her betraying the United States when Strangelove tortured him. Unfortunately, his remaining silent on the issue is exactly how Strangelove managed to deduce the truth behind her final mission.
  • Snake I Am Your Father
  • The Paragon Always Rebels
  • Super Strength: Implied in Peace Walker, where Big Boss was capable of lifting up a sealed garage door to gain entry to Peace Walker's hangar twice with his own bare hands, and, at least in game play, bench-pressing even Cocoon.
  • Tall, Dark and Handsome
  • Tragic Hero
  • Training from Hell: It's strongly implied that he underwent this when under The Boss's tutelage and when joining FOX. In regards to the former, she tells Volgin (who at the time was electrocuting him with electric shocks that was heavily implied by him to be around ten million volts) that it wouldn't break him as she trained him not to, and in the case of the latter, Cunningham stated that his attempts at beating him wouldn't even qualify as torture to Snake due to his former FOX membership.
  • Unexplained Recovery
  • Unfortunate Name: Although his codename, Naked Snake, was intended to be a reference to the fact that he doesn't have any equipment or weapons on him besides for the clothes on his back, some characters in the sequels seem to misinterpret it as meaning that the codename meant that he was literally naked when he got it.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist
  • Wrote the Book: Came up with the name for the Hind D, alongside Zero and Sigint. Also co-invented CQC with The Boss and invented the use of the tactical cardboard box as a hiding place.
  • Zen Survivor

Gray Fox/Frank Jaegar/Frank Hunter /Null/Cyborg Ninja/Deepthroat

Voiced by: Kaneto Shiozawa (JP, MGS1), Jun Fukuyama (JP, MGSPO), Greg Eagles (EN, MGS1), Rob Paulsen (EN, MGSTTS & MGS4), Larc Spies (EN, MGSPO)

Gray Fox is the only member of FOXHOUND ever to receive the Code Name of Fox, and not without good reason. Born to German/American and Vietnamese parents, Frank Jaeger had to grow up in harsh conditions. Originally a child soldier, he was one of the deadliest people on earth at just the tender age of eleven. Frank was rescued by Big Boss, who tried to leave him at a relief shelter where he could be safe, but he ended up getting abducted by the CIA/the Philosophers so they could turn him into the perfect soldier, codenamed Null.

After a series of complicated events, he ends up supporting Big Boss and Zanzibar Land, and then nearly dies, and is turned into the Cyborg Ninja. As the Ninja, Fox helps his old buddy Solid Snake one last time in Shadow Moses to take down Metal Gear REX.

  • Ascended Extra: Given Fox's major role in both, Metal Gear 2 and Metal Gear Solid, and the way Snake talks about him in later games as if Fox was some sort of mentor during the Outer Heaven incident, it's very surprising at how little Fox actually does in the first Metal Gear. He gets kidnapped, Snake rescues him, and he disappears for the rest of the game. You can even beat him to death with your bare fists which has little to no effect on the rest of the game game.
  • Back from the Dead: Unfortunately, thanks to Liquid, goes back on being dead - for good.
  • Badass: The original Cyborg Ninja.
  • Blood Knight: Not necessarily enjoying battle, but he does feel as though he needs war, as he isn't able to function in society if he is deprived of it.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: The method of his training as Null was placing him within a memory/emotion depriving tank, and presumably left without free will as a result.
  • Child Soldier: Most of his origin story entails this, as early as someone working at a work camp in the early stages of the Vietnam War to as late as being deployed in the Mozambician War of Independence, and later experimented upon.
  • Combat Sadomasochist: "Hurt me more, Snake!" Justified, as he wants to die especially after he was denied the chance to die by Dr. Clark and instead put through the Cyborg Ninja project, and preferably die a painful death of fighting.
  • Cyber Cyclops: His helmet does have eyeslits, but the big orange light in between draws most of the attention.
  • Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: By the time he is a Cyborg Ninja, he "should be dead" but is kept alive through prosthetics, though it really seems to cause him more suffering than just dying would. Being a guinea pig for dozens of cybernetic and gene therapy experiments probably didn't help either.
  • Death by Disfigurement: Dies just after losing an arm.
  • Death Seeker: In Solid.
  • The Dragon: To Big Boss in Metal Gear 2.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death: He gets squished by REX in at least two versions of Metal Gear Solid.
  • Friendly Enemy: He and Snake are best friends and war buddies, but conflicting ideologies pit them against each other in Metal Gear 2.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Goes out in a blaze of glory destroying Metal Gear REX's radome.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: In Twin Snakes, that's Yakko Warner who's itching for a rematch with Snake.
  • I Have Many Names - The only Metal Gear character to have more aliases than any of the Snakes or Ocelot (Frank Jaeger, Frank Hunter, Gray Fox, Deepthroat, Null, Cyborg Ninja)
  • Katanas Are Just Better
  • Known Only By Their Nickname: Variation. Gray Fox is often identified by that name rather than "Frank Jaegar." However, Frank Jaegar is also not even his real name, as it was actually given to his fellow comrades in FREMILO in reference to his means of killing soldiers (he acted as a frank young boy, yet then killed them with the ferocity of a hunter when the soldiers let their guard down). His real name (as in: birth given name) is unknown.
  • Machete Mayhem: In Portable Ops.
  • Meaningful Name: His surname is German for Hunter, as in Naomi Hunter's older brother, and is in itself derived from a common tactic he employed as a child soldier by stabbing the Portuguese soldiers with a single knife when they let their guard down.
    • Also, his codename during Portable Ops was Null, which is the German word for Zero and is meant to exemplify that he was a lost number in an unethical CIA project for creating the Perfect Soldier, due to being the Sole Survivor and Sole Success of the project.
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: He didn't truly defect from America until after Operation Intrude N313, but it was made very clear that he was very sore about his country well beforehand due to their denying his lover Gustava Heffner U.S. Citizenship, forcing her into being deported, and thus being responsible for all the heck she has to endure back at her country.
  • My Hero Zero: He is known as Null in his youth during Portable Ops (Null is German for Zero).
  • My Master, Right or Wrong: Justified due to Big Boss saving his life twice (arguably three, if one does not count Vietnam and counts the two times he saved him in Portable Ops).
  • Nietzsche Wannabe: While he was under the persona of Null, Gray Fox indicated that he saw no point in life, feeling that even if he doesn't kill anyone, they still die anyways, and remarks tha the world is "full of death."
  • Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot
  • Noble Demon
  • Psycho Prototype: Kind of. While not quite a prototype, it is known that he was the only successful test subject in the Perfect Soldier Project, as most of the other test subjects died from the procedure.
  • Recurring Boss: Null is fought twice in Portable Ops.
  • Retcon: His origin story in Portable Ops contradicts the original origin in Metal Gear 2. In Metal Gear 2, Gray Fox states that he first met Big Boss in Vietnam, where he was working in a labor camp as a half-white war orphan. In Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, Naked Snake says he first met Gray Fox in Mozambique.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Fits the bill: He needs war despite clearly not liking it, has been through war enough times that he cannot function in society, and is also implied to suffer from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.
  • Sixth Ranger: In Solid.
  • The Slow Walk: In the Twin Snakes remake.
  • Stealth Mentor: In Metal Gear 2 (where he provides anonymous radio support) and Metal Gear Solid (where he helps Snake despite wanting a fight to the death).
  • Super Soldier: He was even referred to as the Perfect Soldier in Portable Ops.
  • Super Speed: He was shown to be extremely fast even when he was not the cyborg ninja.
  • Trickster Mentor
  • The Obi-Wan
  • Tyke Bomb
  • Unexplained Recovery: Subverted: While he did ultimately survive Zanzibar Land, he also was recovered by a cleanup crew belonging to the Patriots and was experimented on by turning him into a cyborg ninja, and the process was heavily implied to be quite horrific and very, very painful. In fact, not only was he used as a guinea pig for the Cyborg Ninja project, but also the gene-therapy project as well, and had to be sedated with drugs for four months as they experimented on him. Also, at least two instances where Gray Fox encountered Snake before his final hurrah, he also spazzed out and seemed in pain, with the second time screaming for medicine as he was losing himself.


Shoot Gunner/Shotgunner/Shotmaker

A mercenary and prison warden at Outer Heaven.

  • Dirty Communists: Prior to his joining Outer Heaven, he was formerly a Spetsnaz operative for the Soviet Union.
  • Implacable Man: Implied by his being the only guard in the prisons of Outer Heaven besides the guard dogs.
  • Renegade Russian: He was a Spetsnaz member before becoming the jail guard of Outer Heaven.
  • Shotguns Are Just Better: Shotguns are his speciality.


Machinegun Kid

A mercenary at Outer Heaven.

  • Evil Brit: He was formerly a member of the Special Air Service regiment within Great Britain.
  • More Dakka: His weapon of choice is a machine gun.


Fire Trooper

A mercenary at Outer Heaven.

  • All Germans Are Nazis: Subverted: He was a member of Outer Heaven and of German origin, but he was in fact a former member of the anti-terrorist German police division GSG9, which was created as a way to deal against terrorist threats without worrying about becoming another Nazi Germany.
  • Kill It with Fire: His speciality is a flamethrower.


Coward Duck/Dirty Duck

A mercenary at Outer Heaven. Should not be confused with Howard the Duck.


Kyle Schneider/Black Color/Black Ninja

The leader of the Outer Heaven Resistance. Returns in Metal Gear 2, having defected to Zanzibar Land.

  • Lost in Transmission: He ends up being silenced before he could report to Snake who the leader of Outer Heaven was.
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Part of the reason why he defected to Zanzibar Land dealt with this trope, as most of his resistance was killed by NATO in an air raid, with them not even caring because they were war orphans and war refugees, and he himself was severely injured and experimented upon.
  • Shout-Out: The original name for his ninja getup was Black Color, which as a misromanization of the book Blackcollar.
  • Unexplained Recovery: He ends up returning as an enhanced ninja (not a Cyborg Ninja, that comes later with Gray Fox).
  • You Killed My Father: His main motivation for creating the resistance was because his wife and child were killed in an incident not revealed other than it involving Outer Heaven.
  1. ↑ although it is strongly implied that he deduced this flaw from reading Snake's mind and past, thus possibly making it an actual flaw rather than simply an informed one.
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