Liquid Snake

• 1. Introduction

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  Liquid Snake is the villain of the original Metal Gear Solid, and he spends the whole game certain that he was cheated before he was even born. He believes his brother, Solid Snake, received the superior genes of the legendary soldier Big Boss, while he was handed the flawed ones. The truth runs the other way. Liquid is the one who carries the superior genes. That mistaken grudge drives an Alaskan hostage crisis, a pair of brutal fights, and a long afterlife that reaches across several games. So where did these two brothers come from, and what does a man do with a lie like that? How does a character who dies in his first appearance keep returning? And who was he before he ever became a terrorist?

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• 2. Shadow Moses Island

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  Les Enfants Terribles was the name of a top-secret government project that set out to create soldiers artificially by cloning Big Boss. Liquid and Solid Snake are both products of it. Liquid was raised in the United Kingdom after his birth, served as an operative in the British SAS, and eventually became field commander of the FOXHOUND unit.

  By the time of Metal Gear Solid, his command included Revolver Ocelot, Psycho Mantis, Sniper Wolf, Vulcan Raven, Decoy Octopus and the Genome Soldiers. The Genome Soldiers belonged to the Genome Army, and its members were suffering from mutations. Liquid led FOXHOUND in a hostile takeover of Shadow Moses Island, a nuclear disposal facility in Alaska. His goal was to obtain the remains of Big Boss and use the genetic information in them to treat those mutations.

  The plan put one person in his path above all others. Solid Snake arrived on the island, was captured by the enemy, and woke up imprisoned in a medical room.

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• 3. Brothers at War

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  A Hind D helicopter was the first weapon Liquid used against his brother. He piloted it in pursuit of Snake across the Communication Towers, and Snake brought it down with anti-air Stinger missiles.

  Master Miller supplied the second attempt. Liquid disguised himself as that ally and manipulated Snake into activating Metal Gear REX. Snake destroyed the machine, but he collapsed from exhaustion afterward. That gave Liquid the chance to carry his unconscious brother to the top of the wreckage of REX and challenge him to a fistfight. Snake won, yet Liquid survived and chased him in a jeep, a pursuit that ended in a crash outside the island's facility.

  As Liquid closed in on the wrecked jeep, he suddenly succumbed to the FOXDIE virus. The same virus had been injected into Snake. It targets victims by their specific DNA, so Liquid's death left Snake doubting that he would survive it himself.

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• 4. A Voice in the Arm

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  Revolver Ocelot received Liquid's right arm as a posthumous transplant, and that surgery gave the dead man a second career. In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Ocelot took on Liquid's voice and mannerisms whenever Solid Snake was nearby. Snake saw it firsthand when he confronted Ocelot during the hijacking of Metal Gear RAY from a disguised tanker.

  The rest of Liquid's body was kept by an unspecified agency. Hal Emmerich eventually stole it in order to fake Snake's death. During the climax of Solidus Snake's takeover of the Big Shell, Liquid's personality seized control of Ocelot once more. He wanted to rebel against The Patriots, and he was the one who sent Arsenal Gear crashing into Manhattan.

  Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots appeared to push the haunting further, with Liquid's consciousness taking over as Liquid Ocelot. That turned out to be an elaborate facade. Ocelot had used self-hypnosis to play the part, hoping to trick the AIs of the Patriots. As for Liquid's remains, they were used as spare body parts in the restoration of Big Boss.

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• 5. The White Mamba

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  The next official appearance of Liquid Snake is a prequel, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, which introduces him as a child soldier named Eli. He is 12 years old and has run away from his home in England after discovering that he is a clone. In the border region between Angola and Zaire in Central Africa, he becomes a mercenary and builds a unit made up entirely of children. Because he is the only white child soldier in the region, the unit earns the nickname "Nyoka ya Mpembe," which translates to the White Mamba.

  Masa Village is where Venom Snake first meets him, after Eli's group takes the village over. Once subdued, Eli is brought to Mother Base, where the Diamond Dogs staff try to re-educate him and fold him into normal society alongside the other child soldiers. He fights the effort and rebels. His hostility lands on Venom Snake, whom he believes to be his biological father. He does not know that Venom Snake is really Big Boss's decoy.

  A helicopter ride to OKB Zero in Kabul changes everything. Eli sneaks aboard, and a young psychic called the Third Child uses his will to activate Sahelanthropus and attack Snake. After the Metal Gear is neutralized and moved to Mother Base, the Third Child slips in and befriends Eli. He gives Eli a vial holding the English strain of Skull Face's vocal cord parasite. Together they plan an escape that frees other child soldiers and repairs Sahelanthropus with help from its creator, Dr. Emmerich. Eli reactivates the machine and hijacks it, fleeing Mother Base with the Third Child and the other child mercenaries.

  The chapter called "Kingdom of the Flies" follows Snake as he hunts them down on an unnamed African island ringed by saltwater. The English strain has been spread across it to keep adults out. Sahelanthropus fights a battalion of Diamond Dogs soldiers, and Eli is defeated. Snake is forced to leave him behind when Eli shows signs of infection, because puberty has stripped away his immunity. The Third Child arrives before Eli can die and uses his psychic powers to remove the parasite. The two escape as Diamond Dogs launches a Napalm airstrike to cleanse the island. Over an image of the Manhattan skyline, Eli vows revenge.

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• 6. Face and Voice

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  Almost nothing separates Liquid from Solid Snake in facial appearance and physique, apart from darker skin and medium-length blond hair. A tattoo of a snake wrapped around a sword marks his left arm. Concept art also shows a small piercing in his left ear and dog tags around his neck. For most of Metal Gear Solid he wears a brown trenchcoat, then fights shirtless when he finally confronts Snake.

  The Master Miller ruse called for a ponytail, sunglasses and a changed tone of voice. In Metal Gear Solid 2, possession by Ocelot alters him again, exposing the surgically attached right arm and loosening his hair. Eli's outfit echoes that of his older self, with a green jacket worn over no shirt, plus shorts. The back of the jacket shows a pig with an eye patch, meant to resemble Big Boss, above the phrase "Never Be Game Over." Beneath the pig, the kanji 液体人間 (ekitai ningen) means "liquid person." A conch hangs from his belt, a nod to the novel Lord of the Flies.

  Banjō Ginga voiced Liquid in the Japanese version of Metal Gear Solid. Cam Clarke did the English version, credited as James Flinders on the PlayStation release, and both actors returned for Metal Gear Solid 2. For Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, stuntman Mark Musashi supplied the motion capture. The young Liquid of Metal Gear Solid V was voiced by Piers Stubbs, who also did the facial capture, while Vincent Giry performed the motion capture. Yūtarō Honjō dubbed that younger version in Japanese.

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• 7. Villain Rankings

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  In 1999, readers of GameSpot voted Liquid Snake into a list of the top ten video game villains. IGN placed him at number 53 on its 2011 list of the top 100 video game villains. Complex ranked him the 16th-coolest video game villain in 2012, and GameDaily put him ninth on its "Top 25 Evil Masterminds of All Time."

  IGN has also ranked him inside his own series. In 2008 it named him first on its list of the top ten Metal Gear villains, and seventh among the top ten Metal Gear boss battles. Play placed him fifth among Metal Gear characters. It added that he "has become one of the most iconic villains of the franchise and is still one of its most popular characters."

  GamesRadar+ liked the camp side of him, listing him fifth among "outrageously camp bad guys" in 2008. That outlet also gave an honourable mention, on a list of "mega plot twists you never saw coming," to the reveal that Master Miller was really Liquid. In 2011, UGO Networks ranked him the fourth-scariest fictional terrorist in entertainment. It also listed his unmasking in Metal Gear Solid among the most shocking twists in gaming.

  GamesRadar+ turned to his cloned origins in 2012, placing him and Solidus Snake second on a list of the most evil clones in gaming. Its verdict was that "as evil clones go, the ones that threaten the world with thermonuclear war and eradication rank as some of the worst." It also named him and Solid Snake as one of the best brotherly rivalries in gaming. IGN agreed about that rivalry, saying "Few rivalries in games have spanned as massive and confusing a timeline as Solid Snake and Liquid Snake."

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