The 10 Saddest Things To Happen In Metal Gear Solid

The classic Metal Gear Solid series is, broadly speaking, about how war creates a cascading series of personal wounds that inspire its victims to externalize their trauma through further atrocities. The main conflict of each title often deals with the protagonist attempting to fix, or at least mitigate, the deadly consequences of past errors and personal vendettas.

As such, a lot of bad things have happened to the casts of each game. Nearly everyone has a tragic backstory, character deaths are frequent, and nobody is really afforded the luxury of a straightforwardly happy ending. Spanning decades of imagined history, Metal Gear Solid has tragedy aplenty.

10 Return To Shadow Moses

There’s a poignant moment in Metal Gear Solid 4 where Snake and Otacon return to Shadow Moses Island, the setting for the events of the original Metal Gear Solid game. While the game occasionally milks this return for nostalgia and some campy references, the overwhelming impression the player gets is one of melancholy.

It’s exciting to see the settings for the original game rendered in HD graphics, sure, but the facilities have fallen into disrepair, with only machines patrolling the premises now. It’s a nostalgic setting for fans of the series, but seeing it in its ghostly state compels the player to imagine what might happen to a video game level after the player is done with it.

9 Sniper Wolf’s Death

An early step in Otacon’s long-running experience of despair is Sniper Wolf’s death at the hands of Snake in the first Metal Gear Solid. While held by the former Foxhound agents, Otacon developed a Stockholm syndrome-like attachment to Sniper Wolf, who showed kindness to him where others were cruel.

Unfortunately, Snake had no such affinity for Wolf. Her near-fatal wounding of Meryl earlier in the game gave him more than enough reason to be upset with her, and that animosity culminates in a duel to the death (as well as one of the game’s best boss battles). As she dies, Otacon wonders whether this outcome could have been avoided. Are she and Snake simply pawns in a larger system, or were there choices available to them that would have saved Sniper Wolf?

8 Emma Emmerich’s Death

Otacon goes through a lot throughout the series. His inventions are perverted to apocalyptic ends, his love interest is killed by his only real friend, and in Metal Gear Solid 2 his stepsister is stabbed to death by an immortal Romanian guy with a freaky tongue.

Snake and Raiden go through a long escort mission on her behalf, escorting Emma Emmerich through flooded components of the Big Shell facility, and then covering her via sniper fire across its exposed catwalks. None of it is enough, though, because although Emma makes it to her destination, she’s fatally wounded by the nefarious Vamp in the process.

7 “We Live And Die By Your Orders, Boss”

Metal Gear Solid V is notably less heavy on storytelling compared to some other titles in the series, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some pretty intense scenes. One such scene, in one of the game’s later missions, forces the player to violently execute the Diamond Dogs staff they’ve been dutifully recruiting throughout the game in order to curb the outbreak of a deadly infection.

Some go willingly, others don’t. By the end of it all, the player is sure to feel terribly guilty, and the level caps itself off with a short cutscene of Big Boss, coated in blood, walking through the once-populated hallways of Mother Base. The game was marketed on the promise of showing Big Boss and his allies’ descent into darkness, and this is one of those sequences that really sells it.

6 Naomi’s Final Message

Dr. Naomi Hunter operated in an advisory role during the Shadow Moses incident, and again during the Guns of the Patriots incident in 2014. However, in both instances, she had her own hidden motives, related to the fate of her foster brother, and to the Patriots.

During the events of Metal Gear Solid 4 she became romantically involved with Otacon, while at the same time manipulating both him and Snake through the illusory threat of a mutant FOXDIE strain to achieve her own ends. She was also terminally ill, another fact hidden to the player, and kept alive only by nanomachines in her bloodstream. When the network finally collapses, and she dies, a preprogrammed video message is sent to Otacon revealing the truth of her deception, and that she really did care for him despite the secrecy.

5 Gray Fox’s Death

The secret identity of the Cyborg Ninja in Metal Gear Solid is Gray Fox, Snake’s former comrade and adoptive older sibling to Dr. Naomi Hunter. He looks pretty different from how Snake last saw him, though, now sporting a cybernetically-infused ninja suit, and dismembering guards with ruthless efficiency.

In his final appearance during Snake’s battle with REX, though, he comes clean about the truth of his identity, and about his relationship with Naomi. He was the one who killed her parents, he explains, and, being unable to cope with his past mistakes, he sacrifices his life to give Snake the edge he needs in the fight against REX.

4 The Return Of Big Boss

The surprise return of Big Boss at the end of Metal Gear Solid 4 is a shocking twist in its own right, but it also sets the stage for one of the game’s most moving scenes. Big Boss, the closest figure Snake has to a father, has seemingly returned from the dead, not to continue the fight, but to bury the hatchet with Snake.

The scene is so impactful because Big Boss is essentially the cause of the Metal Gear Solid universe’s conflict, the one figure from which everything stems. He’s built up as a legendary presence in the mind of the player, but when he levels with Snake, it reveals that the two of them are simply traumatized men, trying desperately to right the wrongs of their pasts.

3 “Snake Had A Hard Life”

The ending to Metal Gear Solid 4 is the big send-off to fan favorite characters in the series, so it’s only natural that it gets a little emotional. One of the most moving moments is Otacon’s final monologue in the closing minutes of the game, delivered to Sunny when she realizes she probably won’t ever see Snake again.

There’s a powerful sense of finality in these closing cutscenes. Otacon’s dialogue helps highlight the notion that, yes, Snake needs time to rest. With the legacy of the Patriots finally washed away, and all his old enemies defeated, Snake can finally live out whatever time he has left in relative peace. It’s what everyone ultimately wanted for the character, but as Otacon emphasizes, it’s hard not to miss him a bit.

2 The Microwave Hallway

One of the most gutting scenes in Metal Gear Solid 4, of many, is Snake’s crawl through the infamous microwave hallway. On the other side is one of the Patriots AI units, GW, a system that Snake intends to take offline with a specially designed virus, forcing him to undergo the grueling ordeal of marching through an irradiated tunnel.

Snake goes through a lot in Metal Gear Solid 4, but seeing this iconic character struggle to make it through the hallway is truly difficult to watch. The scene highlights the physical and psychological toll that forward progress takes on him as he struggles towards the end of the mission.

1 The Boss’ Sacrifice

One of the most iconic moments of the entire franchise, and without a doubt the most tragic moment of Metal Gear Solid 3, is the death of Naked Snake’s mentor and friend, The Boss. Snake’s mission to kill or capture The Boss had been predicated on her supposed defection to the Soviet Union, but when they finally have their fateful encounter, the truth is revealed.

The Boss had, in fact, feigned her defection on orders from the United States government to serve as a scapegoat for and to give plausible deniability to, their covert operations in Soviet territory. At the end of the day, the legendary soldier is a sacrificial offering for the government she spent her life serving, and she has to die at the hand of her protégé.

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