Big Boss (Metal Gear)

Big Boss is a fictional character in Konami's Metal Gear series. He was introduced in the original Metal Gear series first as the commanding officer then arch-nemesis of the player character Solid Snake and later becomes the protagonist of Metal Gear Solid prequels where he is depicted as an American covert operative.

Big Boss's character has been praised by video game publications for his role as a villain as well for his relationship with Solid Snake while Naked Snake's debut as a playable character resulted in multiple speculations regarding his true identity as a result of his physical similarities with Solid Snake.

Main Metal Gear games
Big Boss (ビッグ・ボス) is introduced in the original Metal Gear game as the Special Forces Unit FOXHOUND's leader and Solid Snake's commanding officer. He initially acts as a radio contact who provides Snake with information about mission objectives, as well as weapons and equipment. But near the game's end after Snake destroys Metal Gear, Big Boss exposes himself as Outer Heaven militia's leader at the base's escape route and confronts Snake in a final battle where he is defeated.

Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake revealed that Big Boss had survived, and has since taken control of another fortified nation in Central Asia - Zanzibar Land. This time, he establishes a military force along with his trusted lieutenant Gray Fox and commissions the development of the new model Metal Gear D. Solid Snake confronts Big Boss once again while escaping from the Zanzibar Land detention camp, with the former incinerating the latter.

Big Boss's presence figures prominently in the first two Metal Gear Solid games when Solid Snake is revealed to be Big Boss's genetically-altered clone created from the secret government "Les Enfants Terribles" project (French for "The Terrible Children") that also created Liquid Snake (the main antagonist of Metal Gear Solid), and Solidus Snake (the main antagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty).

The prequel Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater depicts a young incarnation of the character, under the codename Naked Snake (ネイキッド・スネーク), as a member of the special forces unit FOX in 1964 that was founded by the CIA and Zero. He's also commonly called Jack (ジャック), diminutive for John (ジョン), by various characters. In the game's prologue sequence, Snake is given orders to infiltrate the fictionalized Soviet region of Tselinoyarsk and extract defecting Soviet scientist Nikolai Stepanovich Sokolov. After rescuing Sokolov, he is confronted by his mentor The Boss defecting to the Soviet Union and defeats Snake, before Colonel Volgin deploys a nuclear weapon on a nearby research facility and leads the United States and Russia to the brink of war. In retribution to Volgin's attack and The Boss's defection, the United States sends Snake back to Russia on a second mission where Snake's objective this time is to assassinate both The Boss and Volgin, rescue Sokolov once again, and destroy the secret Soviet weapon Shagohod. He loses his right eye when a bullet fired by a young version of Ocelot skims his eyeball and begins to wear his characteristic eye patch late in the game. Snake fulfills his mission and is awarded the "Big Boss" title and the Distinguished Service Cross by President Johnson, only to learn the true nature of The Boss's defection from a recorded confession left by the female spy EVA that he worked and became intimate with during the story: The Boss was deep undercover to retrieve the Philosophers' Legacy before Volgin does, but was ordered to become a scapegoat after she was blamed for Volgin's nuclear attack on Sokolov's research facility.

The direct sequel Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (set six years after Metal Gear Solid 3) shows Big Boss preferring his former Naked Snake codename as he believed that he has yet to surpass The Boss as a warrior. Snake finds himself involved in an armed uprising caused by the FOX unit led by Gene in the fictional San Hieronymo peninsula in Colombia and learns that he has been convicted for instigating the revolt. Hoping to clear his name, Snake forms his own team of specialists by recruiting both old allies and defecting enemy soldiers to his cause, one of whom happens to be Roy Campbell. He faces not only the members of the FOX unit, but also the first built Metal Gear prototype. After he learned the possibility that The Boss's death have been planned all along, he defeats Gene and obtains the fund for Army's Heaven (a precursor to Big Boss's Outer Heaven).

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots reveals that Big Boss and Zero were the founding members of the Patriots. But a fallout between Zero and Big Boss occurred due to each of them interpreting The Boss's will differently, with Big Boss believing that she wanted a world where soldiers were not used as tools by the government. This caused Zero to initiate the "Les Enfants Terribles" project which caused Big Boss's defection from the Patriots and plot a coup d'état against Zero, causing the events of Outer Heaven (Metal Gear) and Zanzibar Land (Metal Gear 2). Big Boss is revealed to have survived his defeats, but is placed in an artificially induced cryogenic coma, with his genetic code used for the SOP ID recognition system, the use of which allows access to the AIs that make up the Patriots. His body is recovered by EVA and reconstructed using parts from the bodies of both Liquid and Solidus and he awakens from his coma while the fall of the Patriots' AIs occurred. Following the voice casting credits at the game's ending, Big Boss appears before Old Snake (Solid Snake). After revealing the truth about Zero and the Patriots, Big Boss shuts down his catatonic arch-nemesis's life support system. He manages to come to terms with his feelings regarding The Boss, and then reconciles with his son before dying from exposure to the FOXDIE virus implanted in Snake.

Big Boss's past serves again as the scenario in Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker (set a decade after Metal Gear Solid 3 and four years after Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops) when Naked Snake has established his new group Militaires Sans Frontières (French for "Soldiers Without Borders") on Colombia's Barranquilla Coast with his new partner Kazuhira "Kaz" Miller. When two representatives of the Costa Rican government, Paz Ortega Andrade and Ramon Gálvez Mena, seek to hire MSF to liberate Costa Rica from the CIA's "Peace Sentinel" unit that has established bases in the country. Snake accepts the mission after Gálvez hands him an audio cassette with a recording of The Boss's voice. Following Kaz's advice, the MSF takes over an offshore research platform in the Caribbean as their base of operations in a bid to expand the group's capabilities. Over the course of the story, Snake comes to learn about the true purpose of Hot Coldman's Peace Sentinel unit and gradually lets go of his guilt for killing The Boss after encountering an AI replica of The Boss and finally accepting his Big Boss title. Later in the game, Big Boss has Huey Emmerich create Metal Gear ZEKE to defend not attack. After Big Boss killed Gálvez out of self-defense, Paz pilots ZEKE to launch a nuclear strike on the Eastern Coast of the United States as part of an insurance policy if Big Boss refused to rejoin Cipher. After hearing her offer, Big Boss refuses and is forced to fight ZEKE in order to stop Paz. In the end, he is victorious but ZEKE was heavily damaged with Paz being ejected into the Caribbean Sea. After ZEKE's destruction, Kaz tells Big Boss that from then on, they will no longer be able to see the outside world unless they reveal their true nature as well as admitting that he was in on Cipher's plot. Big Boss rejects this idea, stating that his "life shall be different from The Boss's". After this conversation, Big Boss gives a speech to the Militaires Sans Frontières, telling them that if the times demand it, they will be vigilantes, criminals, terrorists, etc.

Other Metal Gear games
In Snake's Revenge, the first, non-canonical sequel to the original Metal Gear, Big Boss returns as the leader of the enemy organization, having survived the injuries he sustained in the original game by becoming a cyborg. He fights Snake as a boss prior to reaching the new Metal Gear prototype and has two forms: his human form and a fire-breathing cyborg form.

Big Boss will return in two games: Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (a prologue set in a year after Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker) and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (the main portion set another nine years later). Big Boss takes a sneaking mission in Cuba in the former game, and will assume the new codename Punished Snake (処罰・スネーク) in the latter game.

Creation and design
In his initial appearances, Big Boss's visual appearance was inspired by actor Sean Connery. However, for the ports of the game released as part of Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, the original design was replaced by Yoji Shinkawa's design. During the making of Metal Gear Solid 3, Hideo Kojima asked Shinkawa to make Naked Snake (Big Boss's younger self) similar to Solid Snake but with the differences that unlike Solid Snake, Naked Snake was a rookie and thus acted more naive. Shinkawa stated he had no difficulties in designing Naked Snake as it was basically a revised version of Solid Snake. As a result, Naked Snake is virtually identical to Solid Snake from the previous Metal Gear Solid games in terms of appearance. Since the game's trailers did not state that Naked Snake was Big Boss, Kojima often gave vague answers to the character's true identity. Although the ending of Metal Gear Solid 3 reveals Naked Snake was given the Big Boss title, Kojima stated "he's not really the Big Boss yet." With Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, he wanted to explain how Naked Snake became the Big Boss who appeared in the first Metal Gear game as Solid Snake's enemy.

As Naked Snake, the character shares Solid Snake's voice actors (Akio Ōtsuka in Japanese and David Hayter in English). In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Big Boss is voiced by Chikao Ōtsuka (Akio Ōtsuka's real-life father) in the Japanese version and Richard Doyle in the English version. On June 6, 2013, during the third annual Konami Pre-E3 show, Konami officially confirmed that actor Kiefer Sutherland (Big Boss's voice actor) will also be doing motion capture work for Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Sutherland was assigned the role after a suggestion to Kojima from Hollywood producer and director Avi Arad; Kojima's reason for replacing Hayter was to "have a more subdued performance expressed through subtle facial movements and tone of voice rather than words," and that he "needed someone who could genuinely convey both the facial and vocal qualities of a man in his late 40s."

Reception
Big Boss's character has been well-received with IGN having ranked him number 32 on their 2010 list of top video game villains, and as the fourth top Metal Gear villains. In 2010, IGN's Jesse Schedeen found him one of the most important characters from the franchise to the point his "influence is felt in every Metal Gear game, even if he isn't always present in the flesh." Computerworld named Big Boss as one of the most creative "badass villains" in video games, citing the complexity of his betrayal of Solid Snake, fueled by Snake being his genetic heir. Additionally, GameSpot listed him as one the 20 best Metal Gear bosses with focus on his importance within the series' plot. He was ranked as the 28th "coolest" video game villain by Complex in 2012.

The inclusion of Naked Snake's role in Metal Gear Solid 3 has also received praise from critics. Prior to the game's release, Naked Snake was often called 'Solid Snake' or simply Snake by critics due to his resemblance with Solid Snake, although some still were not sure about his true identity. Additionally, early speculation of Big Boss being the playable character from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater was listed by IGN as one top ten rumors on the PlayStation 2. GameSpy further noted that various fans started making theories about Naked Snake's identity before the game's release as while they thought it was Solid Snake, the setting from the game made it impossible for Solid Snake to be the game's main protagonist due to their difference of years. Finding the revelation of Naked Snake's identity was considered by GameSpy as "the single coolest thing Kojima could have done in MGS3" because of [Naked Snake's] differences from [Solid Snake] in regards to their personality as well as because it made fans wonder how Naked Snake would become the series antagonist Big Boss. Another comparison between Big Boss' and Solid Snake's character was made by IGN's Phil Pirrello in article titled "Stars Thunderdome: Snake vs. Big Boss." GamesRadar placed his relationship with Eva in their top list of disastrous game romances due to how it was ruined by the two's different roles in the story. Play editor Nick Jones listed Naked Snake's final fight against The Boss in such game as the second best moment from the franchise, citing the emotional focus from their characters. Various gaming sites such as 1UP.com, Game Informer and Kotaku placed him as one of the worst fathers in video games due to his poor relationship with Solid Snake and his attempts to murder him. David Hayter's performance as Naked Snake's English voice actor in Metal Gear Solid 3 has been criticized by Edge while discussing the dialogues from the game.