Actually, it might be due to the internet memes it formed. The Metal Gear series always trod on the line between serious drama and ridiculous yuks. Revengeance continued that while being more self-aware about it, with the stakes getting higher and the atmosphere getting sillier. So, here are the funniest memes Revengeance has passed down over the years.
7 Dog-Shaped Robot Buddy
IF Prototype LQ-84i, or ‘Bladewolf’ for short, served as the midway boss of the game’s first chapter, and the final boss of Revengeance’s demo. After being defeated, he becomes Raiden’s sidekick on the field. Mostly off-screen or within cutscenes, unfortunately.
Still, his deadpan reactions served him well as the straight dog to Raiden’s actions. This inspired a brace of memes that combined his doggy nature with his high IQ, like a canine version of Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
6 Rules Of Nature!
Metal Gear RAY went from being the big boss of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty to opening fodder in Revengeance. Players can shut nearly all the big machine’s attacks with a single parry. This is even reflected in its boss theme, ‘Rules of Nature’, where the lyrics talk about a predator that’s become the prey. The lyrics kick in right as Raiden finishes it off. He lifts the multistory-sized Metal Gear up by its arm, throwing it in the air, and slicing it up.
This scene proved so impressive that fans would cut the song to other scenes, like a boss fight in Sekiro: Shadows Die Twiceor the flying kick in Godzilla Vs Megalon. It’s essentially become the main theme of the game, despite a few contenders.
5 Sundowner
Sometimes, one picture can sum up a character entirely. Sundowner is one of the game’s bosses, the ‘Winds of Destruction’. Revengeance builds him up quite well. He appears at the beginning, kidnaps Raiden’s client, kills him, then flees to take part in the big conspiracy behind the plot.
He does it with such relish too. Not only does he deliver that Cheshire Cat grin in every scene he’s in, but voice actor Crispin Freeman chomps on the scenery with his line delivery. Sundowner wants to take the world back “to tha good ol’ days of Nahn-Elev’n” or how he’s “f**king invincible!”. That said, he’s not the only boss to inspire memes.
4 Meme-Soon
Monsoon is one of Revengeance’s best boss battles. He gives the player a variety of obstacles to overcome, from detaching his limbs to attack the player from a distance to throwing tanks at them that they have to chop up. But what gets him on this list was that he said the magic word.
The magnetic sai-swisher spends his debut cutscene talking about memes. In context, he’s talking about them in the academic definition, like Raiden’s debut game Metal Gear Solid 2 did. Out of context, it sounds like he loves browsing the web and Reddit’s Atheism board.
3 “Doktor! Turn Off My Pain Inhibitors!”
In the same scene that introduced Monsoon, Raiden decides to be honest with himself and his past by bringing back his old persona ‘Jack the Ripper’. In gameplay, this enables Revengeance’s equivalent of Devil May Cry’s Devil Trigger or God of War’s ‘Rage’ mechanic.
In the cutscene, he does it by demanding his support team member, Doktor, turn off his pain inhibitors. This opened him up to meme-ification about turning off some features. Be it cringe, or even other memes. If Raiden can lift giant mechs, he can handle Doge and cat pictures.
2 Senator Armstrong
There isn’t one scene that made the game’s final boss, Senator Armstrong, a meme. Nearly every scene he’s in became one. His ambitions initially caught favor with fans as he’d start a war as a business to end the war as a business. At least until they learned they came at the cost of the underclass. Notably the child brains Armstrong was going to turn into cyborg soldiers like Raiden himself.
Raiden realizes this and tries to kill him. But he has no luck. Why won’t Armstrong die? Nanomachines, son! This is not even getting into the memes about his experience playing college football at the University of Texas, or how he’ll Make America Great Again. Still, there’s one more involving him and Raiden that’s become the most popular Revengeance meme.
1 Pummeling Punches
Before the big final battle, Raiden fights Senator Armstrong during some preliminary encounters. The player can’t win them. All they can do is survive. Especially when Armstrong breaks his sword (“Nice knife!”) and Raiden has to use his bare fists. After a few punches and kicks, the game will switch to an interactive cutscene where the player has to hammer a button while pummeling Armstrong’s chest.
Eventually, the scene was cut to the final boss’s theme, ‘It Has to Be This Way’, producing the ‘Standing Here’ meme. Sometimes they would cut the song to similar pummel scenes in other media. Other times, they’d take gifs of the scene and put text over it, like ‘Cyberbullies trying to bully me after I turn off the computer’. This meme is a rabbit hole in itself, let alone Revengeance as a whole. If the trend continues, there’ll be newer, more crazy memes based on the game to come.
More: Ranking Every Game in the Main Metal Gear Franchise
