Gray Fox (Metal Gear)

Gray Fox (グレイ・フォックス) is a fictional video game character in the Metal Gear series, in which he is the protagonist Solid Snake's friend and enemy. Gray Fox is often regarded as one of the series' most popular characters and one of the top ninja characters in video games.

Character design


According to Hideo Kojima, "cyborg ninja was born from this Shin-chan's graffiti." His face portrait in the MSX2 version was modeled after actor Tom Berenger.

Appearances
Gray Fox first appears in the original Metal Gear as a high-ranking agent of FOXHOUND (the "Fox" codename being the highest commemoration within the unit) who goes missing during a mission prior to the events of the game, his last transmission being a cryptic message simply saying "Metal Gear". Solid Snake's initial objective in the game is to rescue Gray Fox, who reveals the true nature of Metal Gear to the player.

Fox returns in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, having left FOXHOUND and defected to Zanzibar Land to join Big Boss' side. Fox pilots the new model Metal Gear D and confronts Snake a few times, while secretly assisting him as an anonymous informant. Snake destroys Metal Gear D and ends up being challenged by Fox to a fistfight in the middle of a minefield. Fox's past is fleshed out in this game and his civilian identity is revealed to be Frank Jaeger (フランク・イェーガー), Naomi Hunter being his foster sister. Metal Gear 2 also reveals Jaeger's relationship with Gustava Heffner (Natasha Marcova in the MSX2 version), a former world champion Czech figure skater who he met in Calgary, Canada, and fell in love with. She tried to seek asylum with him in America, but failed, and was stripped of her competition rights as a result. Following this incident, Frank developed a great deal of resentment for his superiors. However, he was unaware that Gustava later joined the StB (Czechoslovak State Security) and is present in Zanzibar as Dr. Kio Marv's bodyguard. During his first direct encounter with Solid Snake, Gray Fox piloting the Metal Gear D destroyed the bridge leading to the detention camp where Dr. Marv was being held, which, ironically, became the cause of Gustava's death, unaware of her presence there.

In Metal Gear Solid, Gray Fox appears under the identity of the Cyborg Ninja (サイボーグ忍者), an assassin in a powered armor exoskeleton and armed with a high-frequency blade, who challenges Solid Snake to a fist fight, even though his ultimate goal is to help him. He also provides Snake cryptic advice via CODEC as a faceless contact named Deepthroat. After he destroys Metal Gear REX's radome with the use of a prototype railgun attached to his arm, Gray Fox is killed by Liquid Snake, piloting Metal Gear REX.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, a prequel set two decades before the events of the first Metal Gear, features a teenage Gray Fox as a masked machete-wielding assassin named Null (ヌル), one of the FOX members that Naked Snake faces in the game. Null is a teenage assassin subjected to a secret CIA project to be the "Perfect Soldier" and recruited into Gene's Fox unit. During their second fight, Naked Snake discovers that Null was a boy that he met four years prior in Mozambique, where the boy used his innocence as a cover to kill dozens of government soldiers with only one knife while speaking a little German so his enemies called him, Frank Jaeger (German for "Frank Hunter"). After defeating him twice, Snake sent Null to somewhere outside of FOX for help. In Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops Plus, he was featured as a boss in "BOSS RUSH" mode (only known as "Null").

Despite Gray Fox's death in Metal Gear Solid, the Cyborg Ninja incarnation of the character would still appear in subsequent games in some form or another. The Ninja appears as a hidden character in the Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions expansion as a playable character for three special missions; and the character's exoskeleton is used as an alternate outfit for Raiden in the extra missions mode of Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance. The role of the Cyborg Ninja is taken by other characters in the subsequent Metal Gear Solid sequels, and his identity was assumed by Olga Gurlukovich in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Raiden becomes a Cyborg Ninja as well.

Outside of the Metal Gear games, the Cyborg Ninja is featured as a player character driver in Konami Krazy Racers and as an assist trophy in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The special editions of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance will come with the Cyborg Ninja downloadable content (DLC) that features a Gray Fox-based new skin for Raiden. Hideo Kojima has stated to be interested in developing a game with Gray Fox as the main playable character, although he does not assure it to happen.

A Cyborg Ninja figure was released by McFarlane Toys in 1998. Another one was released by Konami in 2004. In 2007, a block-style figure was also released in the Kubrick line. In 2011, another Cyborg Ninja figure, as designed by Kojima himself, was announced to come from Square Enix's Play Arts Kai line of Metal Gear figures; it was released for the 25th anniversary of the Metal Gear series.

Reception
The character was very well received by critics. In 2008, by IGN ranked Gray Fox as both the third top Metal Gear villain ("whether players are rescuing Gray Fox, battling against him, or watching gleefully as he rips entire rooms of soldiers to shreds, Gray Fox never fails to impress") and the fourth best boss to battle in the series. That same year, Destructoid's Chad Concelmo also placed him twice on the list of ten bost Metal Gear bosses, as ninth (in Metal Gear 2) and seventh (in Metal Gear Solid, making "one of the greatest returns in videogame history"). In 2013, Sam Smith of PLAY ranked Gray Fox as the ninth best character in the series, noting that he "remains one of Metal Gear’s most popular and iconic characters."

He was also frequently featured in the lists of top ten fictional ninja characters in video gaming (and sometimes in all fiction), including by Virgin Media, 1UP.com in 2004 (ranked fifth), CrunchGear in 2008 (ranked ninth), Unreality in 2009 (ranked second), Nintendo Power, GameSpot (ranked fourth), and ScrewAttack (ranked second) in 2010, and Cheat Code Central in 2011 (ranked fifth). Ian Dransfield of PLAY also featured him in the 2011 list top ten ninjas for PlayStation consoles, adding that although Raiden "may have completely redeemed his character", he "can never outdo" Gray Fox, and in 2012 Complex ranked him as the third swiftest ninja in games.

In 2008, IGN's Jesse Schedeen compared Gray Fox to Vergil from the Devil May Cry series as "two formidable warriors from the videogaming realm" who both "met their unfortunate ends in the games," adding that he is "the little ninja who left a big mark on the Metal Gear series." The demise of Gray Fox was featured in GameSpy's 2008 article about the series' eight top moments, ranked as the ninth top cutscene in the series by Jeremy M. Loss of Joystick Division, included on the list of ten most depressing deaths in video games by Shubhankar Parijat of GamingBolt in 2011, and ranked as the seventh most "awesome and awful" character deaths in video games by Phil Hornshaw of GameFront that same year, and as the fourth top Metal Gear highlight by PSU.com's Mike Harradence in 2012.

Complex ranked him at number sixth on the list of characters they wanted to see in Super Smash Bros. Brawl 4, adding, "the Metal Gear Solid series has plenty of other characters to choose from, but we think the Cyborg Ninja would be the perfect selection." The return of Gray Fox as a playable character in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was requested by several publications, including EGM, Shacknews and ScrewAttack.

FHM's Gelo Gonzales placed Cyborg Ninja first on their 2009 list of most memorable hitmen in gaming, adding that he "holds the title for the deadliest ninja ever." In 2012, Matt Elliott of PlayStation Official Magazine included Gray Fox among the PlayStation’s top ten scariest characters, calling him "one of the most brutally unnerving bosses ever, largely because of his jarring, staccato introduction, often at odds with linear military narrative of Snake’s mission." That same year, Cheat Code Central ranked him as the number one swordsman in gaming, commenting that "though this is more a role than an individual character, the Cyborg Ninja is a recurring reminder that, with proper preparation, sometimes a sword can beat a gun."