Solid Snake

• 1. Introduction

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  Solid Snake, real name David, was born from a government experiment designed to create the perfect soldier. He carries an IQ of 180, speaks six languages, and has spent most of his life on the battlefield. Yet the question his creator Hideo Kojima kept asking was not whether Snake could win, but whether a man built for war could ever be anything more than a weapon.

  Konami's Metal Gear series gave audiences a character who dismantled nuclear-armed robots while quietly doubting whether any of it was worth the cost. Snake's perceived stance on violence may be a case of denial, as his enemies and at least one ally have claimed he enjoys killing. That tension never resolved. It only deepened across decades of games, novels, audio dramas, and crossover appearances that stretched from Shadow Moses Island to the Super Smash Bros. roster. What follows is the story of how a pastiche became a legend, and what it cost along the way.

• 2. A Name Built from Symbols

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  Kojima revealed in March 2014 that the "Snake" in Solid Snake's name was chosen because snakes are a symbol of stealth. The "Solid" prefix was added to counter any soft impression that single word might suggest. Together they form a code-name built from opposites: concealment and hardness, shadow and substance.

  The character's real name, David, is a tribute to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which features a character with the same name. Coincidentally, the English voice actor David Hayter shares that name. For years, many assumed Snake took his name from Snake Plissken, Kurt Russell's character in Escape from New York, and Kojima let that assumption stand before correcting it publicly.

  The cover of the original Metal Gear shows Snake resembling actor Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese in the 1984 film The Terminator, though Kojima stated he had no involvement in producing that packaging illustration. In the in-game portrait of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, the character was drawn to resemble Mel Gibson. Kojima later compared Snake's personality to Lupin III from Monkey Punch's franchise, noting that in Metal Gear Solid Snake became a sharp-tongued figure who flirted with women and told jokes. The character's origins as a collage of action-movie shorthand would soon give way to something with its own gravity.

• 3. Shinkawa's Blueprint

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  Yoji Shinkawa gave Solid Snake the navy blue bandanna and sneaking suit that became the template for every future version of the character. According to Shinkawa, Snake's physique in Metal Gear Solid was based on action star Jean-Claude Van Damme, while his face drew from actor Christopher Walken. Shinkawa described that design as a middle ground between the younger Snake on the cover of the first Metal Gear and the middle-aged figure from the MSX2 version of Metal Gear 2.

  For the opening of Metal Gear Solid 2, Snake's hair was made slightly more blonde and his look was adjusted to evoke the Man with No Name as portrayed by Clint Eastwood. Shinkawa noted that Snake was among the easiest Metal Gear characters for him to draw, since the design remained consistent across games with only minor variation. Kojima specified that Snake's character model should have well-sculpted buttocks, a practical decision given that the player spends most of the game viewing the character from a third-person perspective.

  By the time Metal Gear Solid 4 entered development, Kojima told Shinkawa he wanted Snake to look elderly. Shinkawa's staff were all surprised by the concept, but they grew to like the result. Old Snake in that game was modelled after actor Lee Van Cleef, who had himself appeared in Escape from New York. A detail about Snake's moustache in that game drew specific commentary from the press, with one outlet praising how highly detailed it was as a marker of the character's transformation.

• 4. Voices Across Two Languages

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  Akio Otsuka has voiced Solid Snake in the Japanese version of the games, and David Hayter performed the role in English. Hayter first encountered casting director Kris Zimmerman while working on Captain Planet; Zimmerman later became the voice-over director for Metal Gear games, which is how Hayter's path led to Snake.

  Hayter was impressed by the amount of dialogue in Metal Gear Solid when he first encountered the project. One line he singled out as showing a lighter side of the character was "I just didn't expect a world-class designer of military technology to be so... cute," spoken to Mei Ling. Solid Snake's English voice was shaped in part by Hayter's experience with Japanese storytelling, which led to minor adjustments in the script. Hayter felt shocked when Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty shifted its focus to newcomer Raiden rather than Snake. He later said that Guns of the Patriots gave the character proper closure, though one final scene troubled him: Snake hesitates to take his own life despite having killed many enemies in combat. Hayter stated he loves the character regardless.

  For the European localization of Metal Gear Solid, Snake was dubbed in four additional languages: French by Emmanuel Bonami, German by Stephan Grothgar, Italian by Alessandro Ricci, and Spanish by Alfonso Vallés. Game Informer ranked Hayter's performance seventh on its 2013 list of the most memorable character voices in video games. In 2024, a poll conducted by BAFTA with around four thousand respondents named Snake the fourteenth most iconic video-game character of all time.

• 5. Kojima's Alter Ego on Screen

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  Various scenes in the Metal Gear Solid games connect Snake's ideals directly to Kojima's own perspective. During Metal Gear Solid 2, Snake encourages Raiden to trust himself in making choices. Kojima intended Snake to represent himself as the veteran developer, with Raiden standing in for younger staff who would decide whether a sequel would be made without Kojima's involvement.

  In Metal Gear Solid 4, Snake's effort to protect the next generation by stopping Ocelot represented Kojima working with staff to prevent bugs from appearing in the game. Kojima introduced Snake's cloning origins in Metal Gear Solid to give him an adversary who would be his equal, since the series had already established Snake as a deeply experienced soldier by that point. The decision to replace Snake with Raiden as the playable character in Sons of Liberty was made to develop Snake from an outside perspective, and to avoid treating him as a rookie who would need basic instruction.

  Kojima and his staff had planned for Snake and Otacon to die in Metal Gear Solid, with Kojima drawing inspiration from the film Sacco and Vanzetti for the idea that the two characters would face execution as criminals rather than heroes. Staff members who were disappointed by that ending led Kojima to change it, and both characters survived. Following Kojima's departure from Konami, the company stated it did not plan to make further Metal Gear games with Snake as protagonist. Kojima said that Solid Snake is one character he does not want to entrust to other people.

• 6. Beyond the Main Series

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  Snake's Revenge was released in 1990 for the western market as a sequel to the original Metal Gear on NES, developed without Kojima's involvement. Set three years after the Outer Heaven incident, it placed Snake in command of a team of FOXHOUND operatives infiltrating a base where Metal Gear was being mass-produced. In that game Snake holds the military rank of Lieutenant and begins already equipped with a handgun and a combat knife, unlike the original game where he had to find his weapons on-site.

  After Metal Gear Solid's success, KCEJ produced three portable spin-offs for a parallel universe outside the main Kojima-directed series. All three were directed by Shinta Nojiri. The first, Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, sent Snake into a rebuilt Outer Heaven to destroy a Metal Gear prototype called Gander. Although in-game artwork was handled by Ikuya Nakamura, Yoji Shinkawa contributed promotional art as he had for the original Metal Gear Solid. Metal Gear Acid saw Snake tasked with retrieving something called "Pythagoras" from the Lobito Physics and Research Laboratory, with a subplot involving subtle brainwashing that nearly convinced him he was a ruthless scientist named Hans Davis.

  Outside games, Raymond Benson wrote novelizations of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2, with Benson's version of Snake frequently leaning into the character's more comical qualities. Project Itoh's novelization of Metal Gear Solid 4 tells Snake's story from Hal Emmerich's point of view. A non-canon version of the character appeared in the Worlds of Power book series written by Alexander Frost, where he is reimagined as Marine Captain Justin Halley. In the Japanese version of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a DLC weapon called the Hebidamashi speaks with Snake's voice as performed by Akio Otsuka; that weapon was never released in the English version.

• 7. Guest Fighter, Cultural Icon

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  Brawl Director Masahiro Sakurai has stated that Snake's inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Brawl came at Kojima's personal request, and that Kojima had raised the idea of adding Snake to the roster of the earlier Super Smash Bros. Melee, which did not happen because that game was too far into production. Snake appeared again in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate after being absent in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Fans expressed disappointment over the version of Snake in Ultimate, particularly regarding changes to his sneaking suit and a reduction in the detail of his physique.

  Solid Snake appeared in Fortnite as the "Bonus Outfit" of Chapter 5 Season 1's battle pass, unlockable by completing in-game quests from the 23rd of January 2024 through the 8th of March 2024. He was added to Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege as a playable Operator in its Year 11 Season 1 update, with his role set between the events of Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2; Konami considers this a "what if" scenario rather than official series canon.

  In an Oricon poll from 2008, Snake tied with Nintendo's Pikachu as the most popular video game character in Japan. A Famitsu poll in 2010 named him the most popular video game character as voted by readers. Electronic Gaming Monthly listed him first on their 2005 ranking of the top ten video game characters of all time. He was runner-up in three GameFAQs Character Battle contests: in 2006, 2008, and 2013. In a 2009 GameSpot contest for greatest video game hero, he reached the final sixteen before losing to Gordon Freeman on a tiebreaker.