10 Times Metal Gear Solid Went Too Far

Metal Gear Solid is a series that pushes the boundaries of taste, decency, and basic logic on a regular basis, but that's also the reason a lot of people love it.

At times a political thriller, others a campy Hollywood blockbuster, the franchise's labyrinthine, overarching plot and innovative gameplay has attracted praise and derision from gamers for twenty years.

For Metal Gear Solid fans, the tonal inconsistencies, high melodrama, and exposition-heavy monologues are all part of the experience. Overly loquacious super-soldiers think nothing of waxing philosophical in the middle of a gunfight, and it's not unusual for moments of thick tension to be broken up by a bizarre piece of toilet humour.

The cast of characters run the gamut from a hundred year old sniper to a wine-glugging, rollerblading demolition expert, while the story deals with heavy topics like nuclear disarmament, torture, and child soldiers.

But even the staunchest supporters of Metal Gear Solid's quirks and foibles have to admit that on one or two (or ten) occasions, Hideo Kojima perhaps overdid it a bit.

Sometimes, Metal Gear Solid just gets silly.

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Note: Spoilers for the entire saga within.

Metal Gear Solid IV: Guns of the Patriots was a fitting end for the series, feeling both decidedly final and utterly ridiculous in equal measure.

Part of the feeling of finality that comes with playing the game is due to Hideo Kojima's insistence on providing an answer for basically every lingering question that had ever been posed throughout the series.

Unfortunately, a lot of these answers were to questions that didn't necessarily need clearing up, and many of the reveals relied on one recurring solution: nanomachines.

For the uninitiated, nanomachines are tiny little robots that float about in your blood, and they've been part of the lore of the series since the first game in 1998. But in Guns of the Patriots, they became the cheap answer for every supernatural occurrence in the series.

The most egregious of these revelations was that Vamp wasn't a vampire, but just had special nanomachines in his blood that made him immortal.

How are tiny little robots magically fixing his body from the inside less silly than him sleeping in a coffin every night? He's called Vamp. We saw him drinking blood in Metal Gear Solid 2. Come on.