HISTORY

As an orphan, John was born in Hawaii, where he was presumably raised. He was entered into the field of combat and military and joined the US army at the tender age of 20 where he helped fight in the Korean war. Through the army, he met a woman called The Boss, who became his mentor and figurative ‘mother’ figure. They returned to the United States, where in 1954, John participated in the Bikini Atoll to witness the first testing of the hydrogen bomb.

The Boss remained with John until 1959. She taught him the art of espionage, combat (including CQC), weapons, human psychology and foreign languages. They parted, only to be reunited once more in 1964; a crucial mission for John.

Now at the age of 34, John (now named ‘Naked Snake’) had been sent to Russia under the instructions to rescue a doctor named Nikolai Stephanovich Sokolov. Alongside him on his mission from radio support was Major Zero, Para-Medic (Dr. Clark) and SIGINT (Donald Anderson), all of whom play a crucial part in his future. It was here that he witnessed his old mentor, The Boss, defect from the US to the Soviet Union, working now alongside a man named Colonel Volgin. Baffled by the conversion, John fails his mission in saving Sokolov (who was captured by the Cobra Unit; a group of prestigious soldiers of whom The Boss had founded).

Operation Snake Eater was constructed a week later. John’s mission was to initially meet with ADAM (who is later revealed to being Ocelot, a loyal comrade in later life), but was once again sidetracked by The Boss who warned him to resign his mission. In an attempt to persuade him further, she dismantled his gun and broke his hand. Never the less, John was determined to meet with ADAM. However, someone else shows up; a woman named EVA. She offers her assistance to John, stating that ADAM couldn’t come at that moment and so she was sent in his place. John was wary of her presence, but allowed her to help, including the prompts of his back-up team to encourage him to rest.

The following morning, Ocelot was waiting for John to come out. EVA manages to escape, leaving John to fight Ocelot. It is short lived, before John is encouraged to leave to find Sokolov once again. On his way, Ocelot tracks him down and the two have a duel. Once more, it comes to an end rather abruptly, and John is lead into fighting one of the Cobra Unit members, ‘The Pain’.

Eventually after defeating The Pain, John makes his way Graniny Gorki where Sokolov was being held. In disguise, he found his way towards Granin, another scientist who claims to have created Volgin a weapon; a bipedal tank, and the origins of the first Metal Gear created called the Shagohad. Volgin had used money from the Philosopher’s Legacy (illegally inherited from his father from wars prior) to create the Shagohad and his fortress entitled ‘Groznyj Grad’. He wanted to end the Cold War by using a nuclear deterrent, attacking the United States.

As John leaves with a cardkey given to him by Granin to enter the fortress to stop Volgin, he is confronted with other members of the Cobras; ‘The Fear’, ‘The End’, and ‘The Fury’. All are defeated by his hand, and he proceeds on with his mission.

However, as he proceeds to enter the fortress to rendezvous with Sokolov, Volgin captured him and placed him in his torture chamber. Here, he used electricity to char John, and requested that The Boss cut out both of his eyes as they were the most important function of a soldier. Tatyana, (EVA in disguise) stepped forward and demanded them to stop, which provoked Ocelot into believing she was a spy. He attempted to shoot her, to which John swayed his body against the binds to knock her out the way, and was instead shot in the eye accidentally. Once everyone had left, The Boss shot John in the leg and left him the gun. Tatyana exposed herself as being EVA to him, and constructed a plan to help him get out of the fortress.

Once he had escaped, John was confronted with the last member of the Cobra Unit after plummeting from the sewage system down a waterfall. He was knocked into an unconscious state and forced to wade through The Sorrow’s river, meeting the souls of lives he had taken and killed. He had to remain there until he awoke, and began to have doubts and concerns of an afterlife.

John met up with EVA once more, where she gave him an eye patch to cover up his blind eye and some C3 explosives to destroy the Shagohad and its hangar, but was found by Volgin, who proceeded to speak about The Legacy (money collected by wealthy world leaders who went on to become known as The Philosophers). It paid for nuclear weapons, and the Cobra Unit; essential for winning the war. A microfilm was hidden on EVA, who had now been exposed as a spy to Volgin, containing the transaction funds of The Legacy.

From here, John and EVA fought together to battle against Volgin and his Shagohad. EVA drove them towards the nearest bridge where she had planted C3, and would use John to detonate it once the Shagohad had reached it in the hopes of destroying it once and for all. Volgin was electrocuted by lightening after falling into the river under the bridge

Finally, John was able to confront The Boss to hear her side of the story. She had defected in order to make the world whole again; it had been split due to The Philosophers, into West and East. Her allies had been torn apart, and all she had wanted was a world without communism and capitalism, to see it as just being ‘Earth’. She was used by her government, the United States, and by the President, and forced into killing her partner (The Sorrow). The son she had birthed had been taken from her by The Philosophers (who ended up being Ocelot). As her final wish, she requested they have a final fight, and whoever would win would carry on as a soldier, eluding that John should be the only one to win this fight. As John finally took her down, she gave him the microfilm containing The Legacy’s locations, and her gun named The Patriot. She requested him to shoot her, to which he did with much pain and anguish, something that would linger with him for the entirety of his life.

Both he and EVA left on the WIG she was piloting to escape to Alaska to a safe house to rest for the night. The two finally were able to relax, and make love. But as John awoke the next morning, he found an audio track of EVA admitting that she had been a Chinese-American spy. She had obtained The Legacy for China in order for them to catch up with nuclear weaponry. She had been a member of The Philosophers, but was unable to fool The Boss. She had made a promise to her that she would refrain from killing John.

John was sent to see the President of the United States in order to receive medals and thanks for being a patriot to their country. He was assigned the name of ‘Big Boss’, despite the fact he didn’t believe he had reached the same status as his previous mentor had.

In 1970, John was taken captive by a man named Cunningham in South America due to an organization named FOX going renegade. In prison, John met a man named Roy Campbell, and the two of them, along with the help of Para-Medic, SIGINT and Major Zero were able to get their names cleared. They persuaded members of the Red Army to stand up against the renegade members.

While on this mission in San Hieronymo, John met a young boy named Null (Frank Jaeger), and an old partner of his named Python (the two fought in Vietnam together, but John assumed he had died on the battlefield. He was, in fact, taken in and trained by the CIA to fight against John instead of alongside him). The leader of FOX was a man named Gene, of whom John went on to fight, and proceeded to destroy Metal Gear RAXA, a weapon threatened to be aimed at the United States. Once the renegade members had been disposed of, John officially created FOXHOUND alongside Roy Campbell, Para-Medic, SIGINT and Major Zero, along with the soldiers he had found in San Hieronymo including Frank Jaeger. However, this was the start of something problematic, starting with a bizarre rivalry between both John and Zero.

Ocelot and Zero had formed a pact and had created The Patriots, set up in honour of The Boss and her last wish. Zero had wanted Big Boss to join them because he knew The Boss more than anyone, even her own son. It was all in the act of power, to strive forward in the new era. Zero had become obsessed with glory, which irritated and drew a rift between him and Big Boss. Zero became anxious that he would be betrayed, and so he took the only opportunity he had to ensure the legacy of Big Boss was captured for the future.

Big Boss fell into a coma in 1972. DNA was extracted thanks to Dr. Clark and implanted into an egg of a Japanese woman to create three clones of Big Boss. Two were twins; Solid and Liquid, and the third was a complete and perfect clone named Solidus. As soldiers, they would be elite and superior in all aspects of the combat field. The project was entitled ’Les Enfants Terribles’. EVA was chosen as the surrogate mother to carry the twins, to which she became significantly close to David (Solid Snake), caring for him as her own son.

Once Big Boss found out about the controversial project, he completely lost it. He left everyone behind and sought out a new organization built by himself. His own army, stationing in Columbia, to which he had attempted to create peace among civilians in specific parts of the country during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Throughout the 70s towards the 80s, he became an iconic figure, and a superior fighter, settling feuds and conflicts in many countries. He took Frank under his wing, along with a newer child named Naomi, to whom Frank had taken over a surrogate brother figure. Big Boss took them to the United States, before taking Frank with him to Africa where began his own fortress entitled ‘Outer Heaven’. His dream was to confront The Patriots once he had trained soldiers and create a Metal Gear of his own to destroy them in their wake for butchering The Boss’s dream, and his own life.

While building his fortress, Big Boss trained FOXHOUND members and also ran his own mercenary dispatch company in order to make it bigger, to be stored in Outer Heaven. In order to create a Metal Gear, he kidnapped a scientist named Drago Pettrovich Madnar. Big Boss’s hunger for revenge was growing stronger every day, even when the United States had asked FOXHOUND to infiltrate the base of Outer Heaven (of course, Big Boss had been playing them for fools, not allowing anyone to know he was secretly behind Outer Heaven). He sent Gray Fox (Frank Jaeger), and then Solid Snake (of whom he had become his mentor in FOXHOUND). However, he used this as an opportunity to delay the US from infiltrating and giving him more time to work on Metal Gear, which was unfinished.

However, his plans had changed. Solid Snake had managed to infiltrate and destroy Metal Gear, much to Big Boss’s dismay. He confronted his son and revealed that he had been the one in charge of Outer Heaven the entire time. The two of them fought together, even as Big Boss attempted to self destruct Outer Heaven. He managed to escape Snake’s attempts at killing him, only to return two years later to Badakshan, taking control of a nation entitled Zanzibar Land. He captured war orphans and raised them into soldiers in the hopes they would be treated as such, and not tools as he had been. Dr. Madnar worked alongside Big Boss this time and created a second Metal Gear.

Solid Snake infiltrated once more in an attempt to destroy Metal Gear. He initially came into combat with Gray Fox, who had been hired again to work with Big Boss in securing Zanzibar Land. It was from this point where Big Boss confronted his son in a final fight to determine who would live on in a world with war, something he had tried so desperately to rid of.