Short answers, pulled from the story.
Solid Snake was created by Hideo Kojima and is one of the protagonists of Konami's Metal Gear series. He is depicted as a former Green Beret and highly skilled special operations soldier whose missions frequently involve destroying lipedal nuclear-armed robots known as Metal Gear.
Solid Snake is voiced by Akio Otsuka in the Japanese versions of the games and by Canadian-American actor and screenwriter David Hayter in the English versions. Hayter's connection to the series began through casting director Kris Zimmerman, whom he met while working on Captain Planet.
Solid Snake's real name is David, a tribute to the character of the same name in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The name coincidentally matches that of his English voice actor, David Hayter. Kojima revealed in March 2014 that the "Snake" part of his code-name was chosen because snakes symbolize stealth, while "Solid" was added to give the opposite impression of a soft image.
Designer Yoji Shinkawa based Snake's physique in Metal Gear Solid on action star Jean-Claude Van Damme and his facial appearance on actor Christopher Walken. The cover of the original Metal Gear depicted Snake resembling Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese in the 1984 film The Terminator, and the in-game portrait for Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake drew from Mel Gibson. Old Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4 was modelled after Lee Van Cleef.
Solid Snake appeared in Fortnite as the "Bonus Outfit" of Chapter 5 Season 1's battle pass, unlockable through in-game quests from the 23rd of January 2024 through the 8th of March 2024.
Electronic Gaming Monthly ranked Solid Snake first on their 2005 list of the top ten video game characters of all time, and a 2010 Famitsu poll named him the most popular video game character as voted by readers. A 2024 BAFTA poll of around four thousand respondents named him the fourteenth most iconic video-game character of all time. In an Oricon poll from 2008, he tied with Pikachu as the most popular video game character in Japan.