Highlights
- Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear series is known for its groundbreaking and innovative gameplay, as well as its weird and creepy moments.
- Some of the scariest moments in the series include encounters with supernatural characters like Psycho Mantis and the Man on Fire.
- The series also features unsettling scenarios and missions, such as vivisections, horrifying surgeries, and encounters with creepy bosses like Laughing Octopus.
Hideo Kojima’s acclaimed Metal Gear series has been called a lot of different things, like "groundbreaking," "innovative," and "weird." All of these are undoubtedly true, considering how much of a game-changer many entries in the series have been for the stealth-action genre, not to mention the countless memorable moments and scenarios it’s known for.
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Kojima has always mixed a variety of genres into his works, and he’s no stranger to horror. Long-time fans can attest to the numerous creepy things that have popped up, ranging from bizarre, fourth-wall-breaking dialogue to unsettling missions involving dodging angry spirits.
10 Psycho Mantis - Metal Gear Solid
One of the most iconic moments in the series takes place in the classic Metal Gear Solid. Solid Snake’s encounter with Psycho Mantis pulls the game deeper into supernatural territory as he begins to analyze the player’s progress based on how many times they’ve been caught, killed, and saved their game. On top of that, he then reads the memory card for other Komani-made games present (he does the same on the Gamecube remake Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes).
During his boss battle, he’ll turn the screen black briefly to make it seem like the TV is malfunctioning or that someone is fiddling with the remote. For a game from 1999, this was incredibly eerie.
9 The Man On Fire - Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
Venom Snake arrives at a so-called “hospital” during his trek through North Africa during Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. As if the slew of corpses covered in blood, weird growths, and headphones placed in their cut-open throats wasn’t unsettling enough, the Man on Fire from the beginning of the game makes an appearance yet again.
A boss battle ensues, and it’s a seriously nerve-wracking encounter on the first try. Bullets and explosives seem to have no effect, while this guy is capable of summoning great infernos with little effort. Seeing the floating boy in the gas mask making an appearance amps up the weirdness, sure, but choosing to either take on the burning figure or make an emergency exit is all too thrilling and spooky.
8 Guy Savage - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (PS2)
On the original PlayStation 2 release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Naked Snake (i.e. Solid Snake’s dad, the soon-to-be Big Boss), is eventually captured and thrown in prison. It wouldn’t be a Metal Gear game without a prison escape section!
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Should the player save, close the game, and then revisit it at a later time, they’ll end up playing a brief demo of a hack-and-slash title against hordes of monsters. There’s no music, just a hooded man with blades fighting. Supposedly, this was a game pitch of Kojima’s that never took off. Afterward, Snake wakes up gasping in shock from what he describes as “a nightmare." Really freaky stuff right there…
7 Vamp’s Reveal - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
The “blood-sucking freak” Vamp made a hell of an introduction in Metal Gear Solid 2 during Raiden’s Plant chapter. A squad of SEAL Team 10 members are seen exploring the Strut B Transformer Room. From the pipes above, Vamp tosses daggers in the throats of two soldiers.
Those were the lucky ones, as the third guy, frantically firing his assault rifle to no avail, ends up getting butchered with rapid swings of Vamp’s knife, with a single slit of the throat to finish him off. When Raiden and the not-so-mysterious Iroquois Pliskin slinks in, Vamp is seen feeding on the blood of one of the dead troops and carves a mark on his skin to signify his kill count.
6 Paz’s Emergency Surgery - Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes
While Ground Zeroes was an exceptionally short game, there was one moment that had fans wincing in their seats. The extraction of Paz from an illegal internment camp by Big Boss proved to be disastrous. It turns out that she was stuffed with explosives, and the medic onboard the evacuation helicopter had no choice but to perform surgery without anesthetic.
What follows is a vivisection on Paz, who is screaming in pain while the medic desperately tries to remove the bomb. The game spares no grisly detail, pointing the camera at her exposed organs all the while.
5 Laughing Octopus - Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
- Platform(s)
- PS3
- Released
- June 12, 2008
- Developer(s)
- Kojima Productions
This encounter from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots has it all. Copious amounts of creepy laughter. The game’s first boss, Laughing Octopus, collapses onto the scene and slithers onto her feet before fighting Old Snake. Playing hide-and-seek for ambushes, barfing out a huge puddle of blood; it’s just one creepy aspect after another.
After the battle, she starts to break down gradually before apologizing repeatedly for laughing, only to cackle more and more. The slow, seemingly harmless walk she does once she’s shed her mechanical tentacles (she’ll even crawl toward the player if they're hugging the floor) really makes it all so uncomfortable.
4 The Sorrow - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater
The Sorrow has a rather unusual “boss fight” in Metal Gear Solid 3. The truth is, it’s not really a fight; it's more like a guilt trip taken to the extreme. After escaping from prison, Naked Snake finds himself walking through a shallow river, dodging the phantoms of those killed along the way and narrowly dodging the ESP blasts of The Sorrow himself, who is also revealed to be a ghost.
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Codec calls are pointless, as everyone screams into Snake’s ear as if he’s just died. In fact, right at the end of the “journey,” Snake abruptly dies, and a Game Over screen appears. Who could’ve guessed the solution was to select and use the Fake Death Pill?
3 Sneaking Past Ghosts - Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Big Boss can take part in one of the spookiest missions of Peace Walker. Items must be collected from fallen comrades in the dead of night during the 'Dead Man's Treasure' side-ops. They are very angry and will attack the player if spotted. To defeat them, it’s possible to give the soldiers emergency CPR before the specters attack.
However, calling Mother Base repeatedly will result in some static-filled responses. Eventually, patient players will hear a creepy Easter egg involving The End (from the third game, whom Snake defeated in a sniper duel) speaking from beyond the grave.
2 Mother Base Quarantine - Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain
Partway through the game, Mother Base is hit with a highly infectious epidemic. In a linear sequence, Venom Snake slowly strolls past the infected who are locked inside a darkened quarantine bay. Reaching an R&D whiz at the end, he finds a gadget that can show who is infected, and it turns out everyone is.
The player is forced to execute every soldier. Some are scared, others try to fight back, and some salute to honor Snake before their demise. All the while, Huey is piping in on the call, guilt-tripping and berating the player repeatedly. Everything about it feels so wrong, and yet so compelling as a result.
1 Crazy Colonel - Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Raiden’s capture and imprisonment inside Arsenal Gear features a truly legendary moment. The Colonel starts spouting all sorts of nonsense, going so far as to tell Raiden to “turn the game console off right now," talking in Japanese, demanding 61 scissors, reciting quotes from older Metal Gear games, and more.
When it’s revealed that Raiden’s handler is an AI and not the same Colonel that worked with Snake, the impostor eventually has a long monologue in regard to The Patriots’ goals: the control of digital information. The erratic dialogue is one thing, but the dialogue that fans have dubbed as prophetic easily makes this one of the creepiest moments in the entire series.