Games - List of Metal Gear Solid 2 characters

Home > Listing Index > Games > List of Metal Gear Solid 2 characters

	Games - List of Metal Gear Solid 2 characters

This is a list of fictional characters appearing only in the video game Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.

Main characters

Raiden

Raiden (real name Jack) is the protagonist of the Plant Chapter, the main portion of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. His substitution for Solid Snake as the protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2 was a controversial twist, and making fun of his effeminate appearance is a recurring joke in the subsequent Metal Gear Solid games.

In real life

The player is led to believe that Solid Snake died at the end of the "Tanker Chapter." Konami kept Raiden's presence in the game a well-guarded secret prior to its release, even to the point of editing pre-release footage of the game. (Scenes that featured Raiden were reprogrammed to have Snake in his place.) Although the game was leaked by pirates prior to its release, this secret was still unknown to the majority of fans.

According to the series' creator, Hideo Kojima, the decision of using Raiden instead of Snake as the main playable character was done in order to develop Snake from a third-person perspective, as well as to avoid treating Snake like a rookie again (considering the fact that Snake was already acquainted with most of the gadgets and weapons introduced in the original Metal Gear Solid).

In The Making of Metal Gear Solid 2, designer Yoji Shinkawa reveals that he designed Raiden in reference to what a "beautiful man" looked like. However, Raiden's androgynous appearance has made him an object of ridicule among English-speaking gamers (although he is fairly popular in Japan). This is reflected in the games, as poking fun at his effeminate features becomes a recurring joke; in Metal Gear Solid 2, President Johnson is shocked to discover that Raiden is a man (after grabbing Raiden's crotch), and in Metal Gear Solid 3, an eccentric, homosexual Soviet major (who is Colonel Volgin's lover) is a dead ringer for Raiden. Raiden also makes a (non-canon) comically ineffective trip through time in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
promotional videos, attempting to kill Big Boss and Solid Snake, so that he can be the star of Metal Gear Solid 4. (This promotional video is included as a bonus feature in Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.)

A somewhat older version of Raiden has appeared in other promotional materials for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
. He is pictured holding the "high-frequency blade" Olga was wielding while wearing the Cyborg Ninja exoskeleton in Metal Gear Solid 2, as well as an as-of-yet-unidentified child.

His given name, Jack, was derived from Leonardo DiCaprio's character in the movie Titanic, while his love interest in the game (Rosemary) was named after Kate Winslet's character from the same film. His name also pertains to the Jack in a deck of playing cards, with Fortune being the Queen and Solidus Snake being the King. The codename Raiden is a reference to the Mitsubishi J2M "Raiden" aircraft, which was nicknamed Jack by the Allied forces. The Patriots selected this codename for Jack due to his role as a "living weapon".

He was voiced by Kenyu Horiuchi in the Japanese version and by Quinton Flynn in the localized English versions.

In the games

As a child, Jack was adopted by Solidus Snake, who (unbeknownst to him) had killed his parents. Jack became a child soldier for Solidus' "small boy platoon" during the first Liberian Civil War, and developed a reputation for ruthless efficiency in battle, earning nicknames like "White Devil" and "Jack the Ripper."

When Jack became an adult, sometime after the civil war was over, he left Liberia and forgot about his past (presumably as a result of either cerebral implants that altered his memory or because of "selective amnesia" on Jack's part). He went to the United States, where he joined the Task Force 21 Corps, and trained through various VR simulations, including some which were based on the Shadow Moses and Tanker incidents that Solid Snake was a major participant in. He was also romantically involved with a data analyst named Rosemary.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for List of Metal Gear Solid 2 characters ]

Searches on eBay

list of metal gear solid 2 characters