50 Video Game Characters: 11

"I've learned something...I'm not living unless I'm in battle"



11. Big Boss/Naked Snake (Metal Gear)

A young ex-Green Beret by the name of John, codenamed "Naked Snake," is tasked with extracting defecting Soviet scientist Nikolai Sokolov. Later on, he betrays his clone son by trying to kill him with a Metal Gear. Then he hugs him when they're both old, and then he dies.

Oh yeah, some stuff happened in between that was sort of important. As important as Solid Snake is to the Metal Gear universe, Naked Snake is probably even more so. He starts as our mentor Big Boss in the original Metal Gear game before he reveals Outer Heaven was his idea to begin with, so soldiers always have a place to fight, a Militaires Sans Frontieres, if you will. Snake is forced to kill his traitorous mentor. Then he comes back a second time and he has to be killed again. Then he reappeared in Metal Gear Solid 4, still alive. The man is practically unkillable.

But hey flashback to 1964 and Big Boss is just Naked Snake, being forced to do the same thing his son did: kill his mentor. On Operation: Snake Eater, he's betrayed by the Boss and is charged with finding and killing her. By the time the deed is done, he's got a new title and has lost an eye. Over the course of a couple more games, Big Boss creates an army and forms what would become Outer Heaven. Somewhere down the line, he loses a screw and goes overboard with it.

Or does he? Turns out, he was forming an army and Metal Gearing up to stage a coup against his former boss, Major Zero, who he formed the Patriots with. In the end, he was just sacrificing himself as a scapegoat to stop a dangerous power.

And we shot him in the face with rockets.

Best moment: His heartbreaking salute to the grave of an unknown patriot.