The plot of the stealth-action franchise Metal Gear Solid is known to be complex, thanks, in large part, to the numerous outrageous plot twists that take place throughout the events of each game. After all, this is a series where a boss fight can end with a dying character launching into a lengthy monologue about how war is bad, with a couple of crazy plot twists thrown in for good measure.
Although some of these twists might seem contrived and out of place to outside observers, the complexity of Metal Gear Solid's story and the ever-shifting loyalties and motives of its characters are some of the elements that have made it so beloved by fans the world over.
The Truth About The Patriots
Who are the Patriots? Arguably the most important faction in the entire franchise, the Patriots are a secret group of individuals founded after the events of Metal Gear Solid 3 that covertly pulled the strings behind the United States government, thereby exercising considerable influence over the course of global affairs.
In Metal Gear Solid 2 and 4, the player knows the original Patriots to be long dead, their legacy being carried out by a complex network of Artificial Intelligences that controls the global information sphere. This understanding changes at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4, however, when a resurrected Big Boss reveals to Solid Snake that the patriots had, in fact, been founded as Cipher by him and his comrades after Operation Snake Eater.
The Truth Of Venom Snake's Identity
The big twist at the end of Metal Gear Solid V is also one of the franchise's most shocking. During a tense cinematic cutscene, it's revealed that the player was not, as they were lead to believe, playing as Big Boss. In fact, the player character in Metal Gear Solid V is a perfect body double of Big Boss by the name Venom Snake.
This reveal also ties up what had been one of the franchise's most glaring plot holes: who was the "Big Boss" who Snake killed during the events of the first Metal Gear? As it turns out, the "Big Boss" who had founded Outer Heaven in that game had been Venom Snake, not the true legendary soldier himself.
Master Miller's True Identity
"Snake! Did you like my sunglasses?" gloats Liquid Snake to the player at the end of Metal Gear Solid. In what is undoubtedly one of that game's biggest twists, Liquid reveals that he had been posing as Master Miller, Snake's former mentor, the entire time.
The reveal itself is exciting, but Liquid's deception becomes all the more sinister when he explains that he had been using the guise of Miller to manipulate Snake into activating Metal Gear, thereby bringing about the very outcome he had been tasked with stopping! It's an excellent moment for the villain and a shocking plot twist in its own right.
Drebin 893's Motives
Drebin 893 is an arms dealer in Metal Gear Solid 4 who initially appears to be just that: a weapons dealer who can sell the player various equipment and firearms over the course of the game. Drebin initially explains that he's part of an underground weapon laundering network, stripping weapons of their ID-tagged status so they can be used by people outside of the SOP system.
It's later revealed, however, that Drebin was an agent of the Patriots tasked with assisting Solid Snake on his mission to assassinate Liquid. Under the guise of injecting him with nanomachines that would allow him to use ID-tagged weapons, Drebin 893 had actually infected Snake with a specialized strain of the FOXDIE virus specifically designed to target Liquid, Eva, and Big Boss.
Paz Is A Double Agent
Paz Ortega Andrade initially appears to be little more than a peace-loving high school student, driven by a strong hatred of violence on account of losing her parents during the Costa Rican civil war of 1948. She was rescued by Big Boss and his mercenary faction during the events of Peace Walker, but her true motives and identity were far more sinister.
In reality, Paz was a double agent working for the Patriots, then known as Cipher. Her true objectives were to bring Big Boss back into Cipher's fold, or in the event that she failed, to use a nuclear strike on the United States to frame Big Boss as a rogue actor and discredit him in the eyes of the public.
I Need Scissors!
By far the spookiest moment of Metal Gear Solid 2, and perhaps the entire series, is the shocking and unsettling degradation of the Artificial Intelligence that was posing as Colonel Campbell throughout the events of the game. Colonel Campbell was a familiar face from Metal Gear Solid, so him reprising his role as an advisory figure in Metal Gear Solid 2 made perfect sense to players at the time.
These expectations were dramatically betrayed when it was revealed that "Colonel Campbell" was simply another facet of the Patriots' simulation -- an A.I. construct designed to guide Raiden through their hypothetical battlefield. When the veneer is lifted, his erratic behavior and appearance make it clear to the player that the Colonel they thought they knew was little more than a machine.
The True Motives Of The Boss
The inciting incident of Metal Gear Solid 3 is the defection of the legendary soldier and mentor to Naked Snake, The Boss, to the Soviet Union. Her former student is tasked with ascertaining the reasons behind her defection and, if necessary, killing her.
In reality, the Boss's defection was not a defection at all. She was, in fact, working for the U.S. government the entire time, ordered to feign defection as a rogue agent to give the United States plausible deniability for their activity in Soviet territory. Her cynical sacrifice at the hands of a government she gave her life to defend is one of the franchise's great tragedies, and the starting point for Big Boss' fall from grace, which would make him into one of the franchise's most iconic characters.
Liquid's Secret Objectives
Throughout the events of Metal Gear Solid 4, the player and Snake are under the impression that Liquid Ocelot, the psychological doppelganger of one Liquid Snake, aims to seize control of the Patriots AI network, and the SOP system at large, to take over the world in a dramatic insurrection against the Patriots themselves.
In his dying words, though, Liquid reveals that his motivations were not quite so simple, which is a reveal befitting his status as a frequent double or triple agent for the franchise's many interest groups. It turns out that Liquid Ocelot, who was perhaps never as much of a doppelganger as we were lead to believe, had stayed loyal to Big Boss' dream of a so-called Outer Heaven the whole time, and was acting to bring about that goal in Metal Gear Solid 4.
The Surprise Appearance Of Big Boss
In a surprise that absolutely nobody saw coming, Big Boss, the supposedly long-dead "father" to Solid Snake, appears at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4 to put a stop to Snake ending his own life. He then sets into a deluge of expository dialogue, itself containing approximately a half-dozen plot twists related to the foundation of the Patriots.
Really though, the core of this moment is the appearance of Big Boss himself. Revealing himself to make peace with Solid Snake, his so-called son, instilled a strong sense of closure at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4. His final resting place being the foot of the Boss' grave is a poetic conclusion to his story, and the conflict that spanned the entire series.
Metal Gear Solid 2's Big Reveal
The most shocking reveal in the entire Metal Gear Solid series is, without a doubt, the surprise twist that much of Metal Gear Solid 2 was entirely simulated. The protagonist, Raiden, spends much of the game under the impression that he's trying to stop a group of terrorists who have hijacked the offshore Big Shell facility, but this couldn't be further from the truth.
In reality, the entirety of the Big Shell Incident was a vast simulacrum created by the Patriots to train Raiden for the express purpose of killing Solidus Snake, who at that time represented their biggest threat. The system must live on and Raiden, as well as the player, has spent the entirety of the game as a cog in a much larger machine. This twist is so shocking that it's cited often as a reason why Metal Gear Solid 2 is the high point in the franchise.