The Metal Gear Solid series has been home to two very well known and respected fictional characters in Solid Snake and Big Boss, who carried the series for decades, although they met their chronological ends in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
The character of Raiden was placed for a time as the successor for the former protagonists, but things haven’t panned out that way, with one of the reasons being the fact that Raiden has a whole lot of memes at his expense. Fans just can’t shake the idea out of their heads now that Raiden is someone they like to make fun of, so we’re here now with 10 memes that remind you why this meme-making tradition began in the first place.
10 Uh...What?
When you look at Raiden, you think of a person who’s been converted into a living war machine. This belief is backed up when you see Raiden going up against huge weapons of destruction and putting them down easily due to his arsenal of weaponry.
And yet, Raiden’s favored weapon is a sword, which seems really redundant seeing as the guy has weapons that can be used in long-range as well, making a sword pretty much useless. So why does he keep using it?
9 Think Of His Feelings
At first glance, you’d think Raiden was a really cool character considering his appearance being that of a cyborg, but his uneven dialogue and the series itself not making much sense, in general, led to many memes at his expense.
Since then, it’s been difficult placing Raiden as someone who can be taken seriously, and this meme pokes fun at Konami’s attempts at making people think of Raiden as cool again by pretending to implore upon fans to stop using memes to take the mickey out of him.
8 Burn!
During one point of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Raiden starts wasting time rather than focusing on the mission, this is when Bladewolf appears to tell him not to get distracted from the job. Raiden then lays on a layer of sarcasm as a retort but this isn’t welcomed by Bladewolf.
It is then that Raiden gets verbally burned when Bladewolf reveals he understands the concept of humor, but that Raiden wasn’t a funny guy. The last panel in this meme perfectly reflects the feelings of embarrassment Raiden surely felt at that sick burn.
7 The Cyborg With A Mouth
There were a bunch of characters in the X-Men film series, but Deadpool’s arrival was the one that brought back definite interest. In around the same vein, it was the reveal of Raiden as the protagonist of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance that ensured fans would be interested.
With Solid Snake and Big Boss out of commission by that point, fans needed a favorite character to take up the mantle as the lead character in a follow-up, and they were glad to have Raiden in the role. It seems the Metal Gear series has its own mouthy breakout character much like Deadpool is.
6 We've All Been There
The younger fanbase might not remember this feeling, but those of us who got the game when it was fresh out certainly remember feeling robbed when it turned out that Solid Snake, the overall series protagonist, wasn’t the main character of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty.
It turned out that Raiden was the secret protagonist and Snake was put out of the game after the opening chapter. Many kids had blown their allowance to purchase this game, and all of them had the same feeling Bad Luck Brian had when they found out Raiden was as good as it got.
5 No Budget For The Eye
Coming back to the discussion over Raiden’s cybernetic implants, there’s another issue with the fact that he seems to have had everything replaced, only for the eye that was cut off to remain the same exact way.
What was the point of fitting this man with so many weapons and enhancements if they couldn’t give him a new eye? After all, we saw technology in the Metal Gear series that seemed to be on the brink of magic, so it makes no sense why Raiden was left blind in that one eye. Maybe they were going for the Big Boss look?
4 Metal Gear Called It First
During a bizarre monologue during the game, the dialogue stated that religion and other things that form part of people’s lives are a myth and that memes were the DNA of the soul. In a way, this claim wasn’t wrong.
The funny thing is that a meme has been created to back up this quote, as the creator of this picture used the quote to communicate that their habits on the internet have to do with watching memes. Oddly enough, Metal Gear called it first how people value memes more than free will.
3 No-One Takes You Seriously
We’ve covered the part where nobody took Raiden as a threat anymore due to the presence of memes at his expense, and now here’s another meme that pokes fun at Raiden attempting to sound cool.
In one of the scenes from Revengeance, Raiden used this quote to illustrate how he would fight for those too weak to do it themselves; however, the meme turns it around on Raiden by inferring that nobody even in the Metal Gear universe thinks of Raiden as someone they should fear.
2 Biology Logic
From what we know, Raiden got his arm and his eye cut off, leading to him getting cybernetic replacements for them; however, he somehow also showed up with a new lower jaw as well...for some reason.
One might have been inclined to believe that the lower jaw was gone as well, only for Raiden to later reveal that there was an intact jaw underneath the cybernetic one. It appears as if the lower jaw was totally unnecessary and was placed just to look cool.
1 That Title We're Still Confused About
More than a few people laughed at the reveal of the title for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance as it was clearly overdone. The original name had been Metal Gear Solid: Rising, which at least was in line with the usual style of the series.
The new title made it confusing as to what the “rising” part signified and if it meant we’d be getting more games under the “rising” banner; there was also confusion over the “revengeance” aspect, as simply getting plain old vengeance or revenge meant pretty much the same.