10 Ways Hideo Kojima Should Have Made Metal Gear Solid 5: Phantom Pain

8. Explain The Man On Fire Effectively

It's weird when most of us are okay with a man being made of hornets helping the Allies to victory in World War 2, but a dude throwing fireballs is just too much, but... it is.

Whilst The Pain can mostly be hand-waved away as a parasitic infection rewiring his biological makeup, The Man on Fire's explanation is that he's actually Colonel Volgin from MGS 3, who was so !*$% annoyed when he lost to Naked Snake, that this passion fused with Psycho Mantis' latent power and formed an entity of pure fury.

I mean... sure, but even if we go with that - which is explained in cassette tapes, not by Volgin himself - it's a stretch at best. MGS always has some sort of science-y explanation for its madness, even if it boils down to nanomachines. Honestly, considering we're told that the piece of shrapnel in Venom's head will cause hallucinations, I fully expected a re-run of The Man on Fire's scenes - or anything ridiculous like the flying, flaming Moby Dick - to get played back, Fight Club-style, where we see what was really happening.

Instead, we just have to buy this origin story, which even if you can, leads to a terrible final confrontation where the Man on Fire is dealt with in a quick battle and then a short cutscene - all without Snake remarking on ANY of it.

A little "What the hell?!" goes a long way, you know.