5. Acknowledging The Controller Switch In The Screaming Mantis Fight
It's only when you really sit down and think about how much of an influence this series had that it allows for later callbacks and references like this to hit home as perfectly as they do. Essentially when everyone realised it was Psycho Mantis pulling some literal puppet strings behind the scenes in MGS 4, anyone who'd played the original (and the battle referenced earlier in this list) tried straight away to switch their controller ports - on a wireless controller. Outside the box-thinkers dove into the PS3's dashboard and literally reassigned them through brute force, hoping for the best - but Kojima and his team were still one step ahead, having Snake call Otacon to remark on how it wasn't working if you did. This then gave way to one of the best fourth wall-shattering moments in history, as Mantis fails to read your memory card (because there isn't one) and can't move your controller like before (early PS3 SixAxis pads didn't have vibration). Of course if you'd bought the newly-released (at the time) DualShock 3, Mantis could actually make it move before disappearing, screaming "Vibration is back!", proving Kojima really did think of everything. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTWHX2Px3hI