Characters of the Metal Gear series
The Metal Gear franchise, created by Hideo Kojima and featuring character and mecha designs by Yoji Shinkawa, features a large cast of characters, several of whom are soldiers with supernatural powers provided by scientific advancements.
The series initially follows the mercenary Solid Snake. In the Metal Gear games, he goes on government missions to find the Metal Gears while encountering Gray Fox and Big Boss in Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land. In the Metal Gear Solid games, he works with Otacon and Raiden while opposing Liquid Snake's FOXHOUND, Solidus Snake, the Patriots and Revolver Ocelot. Beginning with Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, several games have served as prequels, following Big Boss' past as Naked Snake, as well as the origins of the organizations.
While the characters of the Metal Gear games had designs modeled after Hollywood actors, the Metal Gear Solid games established consistent designs based on Shinkawa's idea of what would appeal to gamers, with several characters that he designed following ideas from Kojima and staff. Critical reception of the game's cast has been positive, with publications praising their personalities and roles within the series.
Creation and design
Metal Gear began as a pastiche of action films of the time and its characters were pastiches of contemporary action movie heroes. When Shinkawa began designing the characters for PlayStation's Metal Gear Solid, they were given their respective established visual appearances. Due to hardware limitations, Shinkawa designed them to appeal to gamers. Because of the time skip between titles, some characters were redesigned to fit in the game's setting. With the improved technology of consoles like the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, starting with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty the staff gave the characters a more realistic look, despite their initial doubts. This caused difficulties for the staff, as they had to make the faces more realistic. When illustrating characters, Shinkawa does not focus on minor details such as eyes, instead illustrating something more symbolic. While Solid Snake was easy to illustrate due to having a consistent design, with Big Boss's younger self, Naked Snake, being conceived via minor changes to his original version, other characters' designs were more time-consuming.When they debuted, player characters Solid Snake and Raiden were meant to represent the player, though in subsequent games they gained more defined personalities. As Snake became more experienced in combat throughout the series, Kojima attempted to create more challenging antagonists for boss fights. This resulted in Big Boss's clones from Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, who have the same abilities as Solid Snake, the Cobra Unit from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, who participated in World War II, and the Beauty and the Beast Corps from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, who possessed few human traits. While the villains in the first games had detailed backstories, the Cobra Unit members were intended to have little information known about them, resulting in a significant impact among players upon their deaths. This also made it difficult for Shinkawa to conceptualize their visual appearance, as he had little to no background information. By Metal Gear Solid 2, Kojima was inspired by the Sherlock Holmes novels to introduce a sidekick character in order to view Snake from a different perspective.
Metal Gear Solid marked the first time that characters had voice actors, with Solid Snake and Naked Snake being voiced by Akio Ōtsuka in Japanese. Ōtsuka remembers being surprised during his debut as a result of the large amount of dialogue Snake was given. In English, casting was directed by Kris Zimmerman and supervised by a member of Konami. Solid Snake's English voice actor was David Hayter, who, despite having issues with some of the dialogue in Metal Gear Solid, became attached to the series.
Various Metal Gear Solid games have been expanded upon in remakes and other media, such as Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel, Metal Gear Solid 2: Digital Graphic Novel, and Metal Gear Online.
Introduced in ''Metal Gear''
Solid Snake
Solid Snake, real name David and otherwise known as Iroquois Pliskin and Old Snake,is the main protagonist of the original series. In the original Metal Gear games, he is a rookie FOXHOUND agent tasked with finding and destroying the Metal Gears in Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land, leading to confrontations with his comrade Gray Fox and superior Big Boss. Snake befriends Otacon while fighting the corrupt FOXHOUND, led by his terrorist twin brother Liquid Snake in Metal Gear Solid, and assists Raiden in fighting Solidus Snake and the Patriots in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, he returns as protagonist, with an accelerated aging process. Solid Snake is voiced by Akio Ōtsuka in Japanese and by David Hayter in English.
Gray Fox
Gray Fox is a high-ranking agent of FOXHOUND, with the "Fox" codename being the highest distinction within the unit.He first appears in the MSX2 games, where his face portrait was modeled after actor Tom Berenger. In Metal Gear, he goes missing during a mission to Outer Heaven, with his last transmission being a cryptic message that reads "Metal Gear". After Solid Snake rescues him, he reveals the TX-55 Metal Gear's true nature. In Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, he pilots the advanced Metal Gear D and confronts Snake while secretly assisting him as an anonymous informant. The game reveals that he left FOXHOUND and defected to Zanzibar Land and expands on his past as Frank Jaeger who fell in love with Czech figure skater Gustava Heffner while in Calgary. Gustava unsuccessfully attempted to seek asylum with him in the United States and was subsequently stripped of her competition rights. Afterwards, Jaeger came to resent his superiors, while being unaware that Gustava joined the StB and was working in Zanzibar as a bodyguard for Dr. Kio Marv. During his and Snake's first direct encounter as enemies, he kills Gustava while piloting the Metal Gear; after Snake destroys the Metal Gear, he challenges him to a fistfight in a minefield and is seemingly killed.
In Metal Gear Solid, Gray Fox returns as the original Cyborg Ninja, having been grafted into a powered armor exoskeleton and armed with a high-frequency blade. According to Hideo Kojima, the Cyborg Ninja "was born from this Shin-chan's graffiti." During Liquid Snake's FOXHOUND revolt at Shadow Moses, Fox challenges Solid Snake to a fight, maiming Revolver Ocelot in the process, before disappearing in a violent rage. Throughout the game, he is the faceless contact "Deepthroat" who provides Snake cryptic advice through codec. Naomi Hunter reveals to Snake that she is his foster sister and that he is the Cyborg Ninja. After revealing to Snake that he killed Naomi's parents and became her foster brother out of remorse for his actions, Fox fights Metal Gear REX and its pilot Liquid, and destroys its radome with a prototype railgun. He is mortally wounded and is killed by REX after Snake refuses to kill him.
In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Raiden initially believes him to be alive during Solidus Snake's Manhattan incident before learning that the Cyborg Ninja is actually Olga Gurlukovich.
Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, set twenty-five years before Metal Gear, features a teenage version of Fox under the codename Null, a masked machete-wielding assassin. He is subjected to a secret CIA project to be the "perfect soldier" and recruited into Gene's corrupt FOX unit during the San Hieronymo takeover. Throughout the game, he fights Naked Snake before Snake realizes that Null was a boy in Mozambique who used his innocence as a cover to kill government soldiers with only a knife while speaking some German, leading to the name "Frank Jaeger", German for "Frank Hunter". Snake defeats Jaeger and sends him elsewhere for help.
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots reveals his murder of Para-Medic was part of a plan to free Big Boss from Zero's control.
There is a Cyborg Ninja unique character card in Metal Gear Acid. Outside of the Metal Gear games, the Cyborg Ninja appears as a driver in Konami Krazy Racers and as an Assist Trophy in both Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. The original Cyborg Ninja's exoskeleton also appears as a downloadable content skin for Raiden in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, and Venom Snake in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
Kojima once expressed interest in developing a game with Gray Fox as the main playable character.
In Japanese, Gray Fox is voiced by Kaneto Shiozawa in Metal Gear Solid, Jun Fukuyama in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, and Takumi Yamazaki in Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel. In English, Gray Fox is voiced by Greg Eagles in Metal Gear Solid, Rob Paulsen in Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Larc Spies in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel.
Dr. Madnar
Dr. Drago Pettrovich Madnar is an Eastern engineer. In Metal Gear, he is the creator of the TX-55 Metal Gear mecha and TX-11 Arnold androids and one of the hostages Snake must rescue along with his daughter Ellen. In Metal Gear 2, after being rejected by the scientific community, he defects to Zanzibar Land and develops Metal Gear D. He comes in contact with Solid Snake while posing as a hostage, but attacks him after the truth is revealed. He is mentioned in Metal Gear Solid 4 as the scientist who saved Raiden's life after he was turned into a cyborg.A character with the same name plays a supporting role in Kojima's adventure game Snatcher, though the English version for the Sega CD spells his name as Dr. Petrovich Modnar.