Top 10 Lists : The Top 10 Bro-ments In The Metal Gear Solid Series *spoilers*

Big Boss? More like Big Bro. What do you when you face a veritable Mr. Freeze whose very touch is like liquid nitrogen on your skin? A man who you shared a muddied trench and rations of rat meat with back in 'Nam. A man who was turned into a literal ice man with you as his hit, his only goal in life.

Python was all these things; a former war buddy of Big Boss resurrected by the CIA to be an “anti-Big Boss”. A soldier that could match B.B. on the field of battle if he were to defect. He was put in a suit coursing with liquid nitrogen to keep him alive and sent on regular assassination missions, fuelling the nightmares he had of the people he killed, and waiting for the day he would face down Big Boss and end the nightmares forever.

But as Big Bro stood over the body of his dying former comrade, liquid nitrogen gushing from the wounds he had inflicted on him, visions of a simpler time floated through his mind. Two men, a poker table, and whole lotta hell they had been through. Big Bro plunged his frost bitten hands into the gushing nitrogen to apply pressure to the wound, remarking casually “you still owe me money from our last poker game”. There would be no more nightmares for Python, only memories like the one he just shared.

Imagine, sharing a connection that transcends biology and makes a mockery of nature itself. No I'm not talking about bromance, I'm talking nanomachines. Nanomachines are microscopic electronic do-hickies that course through the veins of every soldier in the near future. They augment a soldier's natural abilities, and tailor every aspect of their mental and physical condition in response to the conditions of the battlefield.

Now how does this fit into the seeming strictly work based relation that Ed and Jon of Rat Patrol 01 share? When people in the same squad sync their nanomachines to each other, the nanomachines regulate pain and mental stress by dispersing the feelings throughout the entire squad. Ergo, whenever a bullet punches through Ed, or a ruthless woman shatters his heart, or his favourite team fails to qualify, Jon feels every bit of the anguish and vice versa.

Then, at the end of act three in Metal Gear Solid 4, Ed and Jon lie at the brink of death after their boat explodes. Lying mangled, they look into each others eyes; they didn't need nanomachines to tell what the other was thinking. Ed and Jon had been through hell and back. And as they lie there at hells gate, feeling the life ebbing from their bro's body, they lock in mental embrace of the bro kind.

Half-naked and in a secret military base in the arctic, legendary soldier Solid Snake has been caught and is being tortured for information. His crime? Trusting his commanding officer and longtime friend, Roy Campbell to tell him the truth about his mission.

There, lying in his cell, organs sizzling from the electric shocks he had received at the hands of Foxhound sadist Revolver Ocelot, Solid Snake heard a tinny noise in his ear. In excruciating pain he answered his codec, and plead to Dr. Naomi Hunter for some relief to the agony, to talk about herself to get his mind off the pain. Dr. Hunter complied, and then asked Snake, about himself, if he had any family. Snake had no family. She asked if he had any friends. Snake replied “Roy Campbell”.

The man who had ordered a crack team of commandos to bring Snake in from his peaceful life, and then put a veritable gun to his head and told him to take on this suicide mission. The man who lied to Snake about his mission time and time again. But as he lay in that cell Snake knew one thing. As much of a tool he may have been to Campbell, Campbell was a bigger tool of some fat cat bureaucrat in the white house. In the moment that transpired, two men miles away from each other found solace in the fact, that they together were one of a kind in their misery. Harking to the years they had spent fighting to save the free world, Snake and Campbell were bros for life.

After putting an end to the rebellion in the San Hieroynmo Peninsula and averting nuclear disaster, Big Boss was given a hero's welcome in the United States. But as he accepted his medal, off in the distance Big Boss could see the men who had loyally served under him to put an end to the Fox Unit rebellion. Technically traitors and enemy agents of the United States, they were now prisoners marching along along dejected and sombre. Shackled, tired, hungry and cold, one of the men looked up and saw the figure of his fearless leader, Big Bro.

Shouting out to his comrades, the soldiers stopped, stood at attention and gave one final salute to Big Bro. B.B. returned their salute as payment for all the trials they had been through; brother fighting brother on an isolated island for the fate of the free of the world. At that moment Big Boss realized, his goal in life. To create a country of bros, where bros can be bros doing manly things everyday forever. No utopia could be complete, without that feeling of bromance echoing throughout its lands.

Normally a bro-ment is a thing to be celebrated. But in the case of Big Boss and Revolver Ocelot, you can't help but think that B.B. could have saved us all a lot of trouble had he just put his fist through Ocelot's head.

Over the course of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Big Boss and Ocelot square off against each other. And each time Big Boss defeats Ocelot, he imparts a small token of wisdom on the young soldier. Their relationship culminates at the end as Big Boss and his babe Eva are making a daring escape from Soviet Russia on a broken plane, Ocelot chases after them on a crazy flying go kart, and leaps on board as it is taking off. The added weight of the third man stops the plane from gaining altitude and plane threatens to smash itself on a conveniently placed mountain range.

As B.B. and Ocelot lock in mortal combat, Ocelot pulls out two revolvers and offers to end the battle with a crazy aberration of Russian roulette; one bullet, two guns, 10 paces. What. Exactly. It's Russian roulette wild west style. As the two men dash for the revolvers lying on the floor, and fire wildly hoping to have the gun with the bullet in its chamber, a bang is heard. The bullet was a blank, Ocelot was fooling. Despite beating each other half to death Ocelot and Big Boss laugh it off and leave amiably as Ocelot leaps off the plane and Big Boss sails into the sunset. The relationship between Ocelot and Snake was more than teacher-student, or hero-fan, it was bro-bro, and it almost got everyone killed.

Raiden is a textbook case of the girly man. Or at least he was for the better half of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. It's not until he meets a real manly man -Solid Snake- does Raiden really take on the monicker “bro”. Side by side fighting the forces of evil with his hero, Raiden earns himself a place alongside his idol. Then at the end, just as Snake's leaving, he imparts some rocking wisdom that turns Raiden into a ninja.

Yes, a ninja.

Raiden comes back in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriot as a crazy cyborg ninja hell bent on destroying giant robots and vampires with moves that would put Elvis Costello to shame. But ninja powers come at a price. Raiden launches a suicidal attack on an army of giant robots led by the tap dancing vampire Vamp to rescue and repay Snake for saving him in Metal Gear Solid 2. In the ensuing battle Raiden is horribly wounded. Later, as he lies on his death bed, Raiden wants to continue fighting to repay his debt to Snake, claiming he has nothing left to live for.

And then the unthinkable happens, as Raiden starts gushing his girly feelings, Solid Snake, legendary soldier, saviour of the world, listens to him sympathetically. Hell, Snake sits down and lays some ill-arranged metaphors and sappy emotions of his own to comfort him. What begins as a break down of all things manly, ends as a bro-ment between two legends.

As Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots comes to a close, we come to the well awaited showdown between Solid Snake and Liquid Ocelot. At this point the world is saved and there is nothing at stake, beyond the shame of defeat that is. High above the submersible fortress of Outer Haven, Solid Snake and Liquid Ocelot are locked in a battle of life and death. As the tide of the battle fluctuates depending on who can inject the most nanomachines to ward off their fatigue, there comes a moment when the two men grab the last nanomachine syringes, and instead of injecting it into themselves, they inject it into each other. Like lovers trading wine glasses, but much more awesome because right after comes a brutal brawl for the sake of brutal brawling. The two fighters were no longer in it for ideology, they were fighting for the sake of manliness, like two lumberjacks racing to a steakhouse by riding logs down deadly rapids and a waterfall as a pack of hungry lions chase after them.

As Snake and Ocelot fight each other, Ocelot's personality begins to reemerge from under the shrouds of his Liquid Snake persona. Their battle echos the bro-ment of the battle Big Boss and Ocelot shared at the end of Metal Gear Solid 3. And at the end with his dying breath, Ocelot gives Snake the old “you're pretty good kid!”, thus cementing the moment as one of the most memorable bro-ments of the series. Although they had been sworn enemies, Ocelot and Snake ended their journey as bros.

Metal Gear Rex has come to life, Solid Snake has seemingly failed in his task to save the world from nuclear annihilation. As the sinister foot of Metal Gear Rex comes to end Snake, a crazy cyborg ninja ghost appears! Gray Fox, Solid Snake's best friend and who he seemingly killed in fist fight in a mine field has returned. Claiming that only he, Snake, can put his spirit to ease after being revived, leaves Snake in charge of taking care of his sister. Then, as a final act of friendship, Gray Fox takes on Metal Gear by himself.

What follows is nonstop bullet dodging, off the wall, laser beam action which results in Gray Fox blowing out Metal Gear's sensor and revealing its weak point, the cockpit. But as a trade off, Gray Fox is brutally mangled. As Gray Fox lies dying under the foot of Metal Gear, he faces Snake in one last bro-ment and tells him that even though being a fighter is the only thing Snake is good at, he should always fight for the things he believes in. A message that Snake would impart to many a bro in the coming games. And with that, Gray Fox dies a hero's death, saving the world, and his bro.

Wait what? A woman being a bro? Get out of here. But it's true, sometimes a man and a woman can transcend the hormonal desires of their sexes and become true bros to the end. At the end of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, we see The Boss take on this transformation. Her mission? To become a traitor and be known throughout history as a monster, and then to be killed by her most beloved pupil, Naked Snake, the man who would become Big Boss.

As Naked Snake stood over the body of his mentor ready to end her life, there was a feeling in the air that seemed to transcend the natural bounds of human emotion. The two shared a love for each other that went beyond petty attractiveness. They had been through the impossible, and in the end, one of them had to die at the hands of their bro. In the end The Boss had imparted everything, her skills, her history, and her knowledge to Snake. The bro-ment the two shared as the Boss lay dying at Snake's feet could last for as long as the player wanted to savour it, but in the end, you had to press the action button and fire the gun that heralded the end of a beautiful bromance between a man and a woman.

When you think about it, you can count the number of friends Solid Snake has on one hand. So you can pretty much guarantee that he doesn't make friends with just anyone. Especially not with some computer nerd who wets his pants and is overly obsessed with anime. Oh wait.

Scenario, you are legendary soldier Solid Snake, manliest of mans. The fate of the world is hanging in the balance and the only person you can count on is your emotionally wrecked nerdy sidekick who just watched his sister bleed to death. You need to calm him down so that he can fly hostages off the battlefield while you save the world. What do you do?

You pull out your secret hand shake. The one you've been practising in secrecy over the course of the last four years for moments like this. And at the end, you top it off with a big bro hug infusing him with your legendary spirit, and brotitude.

In a game with demon cow robots, psychics that can control people, and ninja cyborgs that regularly leap 20 stories into the air, this seemingly out of character handshake between the stern faced Solid Snake and the even minded logical Otacon holds its ground among the absurd in the Metal Gear Solid series, but in a good way. Otacon and Snake have been through Shadow Moses together, and then the next four years fighting Metal Gear models around the world. This bro-ment is the pinnacle of bro-ments as the hardened soldier shows a rare compassionate side to his cowardly but most trusted friend. The viewer witnessing this bro-ment (and Raiden lol) can't help but feel jealous (especially Raiden lol) at Otacon for scoring a bro like Snake.

You can relax your hand now as I'm sure you've been bro-fisting the air repeatedly as you read through this list. Without bro-ments like the ones listed above, Metal Gear Solid turns into a hippie tale of environmentalism or something lame like that. It's the action beats of manliness that keep the game in the hearts of its many adoring fans.

Hopefully now you have an understanding of what it means to have bro-ment and to apply what you've learned and engage in bro-ments of your own in real life. Thank you.

List by FlipFlopFloop (08/13/2010)

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