Outer Heaven

Outer Heaven refers to a number of concepts that all pertain to Big Boss's dream of ending abuse and exploitation of soldiers by politicians and his interpretation of The Boss's will.

Original Concept
In 1970, Naked Snake (Big Boss) quickly responsed to Gene's Army's Heaven that would in fact victimize soldiers in the pursuit of his goals and soldiers should have something "outside Gene's heaven" while Snake dealt with preventing Gene launching a nuclear missile.

Militaires Sans Frontieres
After 1972, Big Boss became increasingly frustrated with the direction that Zero was taking the Patriots so he along with Ocelot and EVA left the group and began preparations to oppose it. Sometime later, Big Boss used Gene's resources to form his private military group Militaires Sans Frontieres (French for "Soldiers Without Borders") that combined the best aspects of a state army and a special forces unit that he would refer to as "Outer Heaven:.

Though operating as a mercenary group, Big Boss didn't seem to consider the Militaires Sans Frontieres as such and even felt offended when it was described thusly. While being assigned to repel the Peace Sentinels from Costa Rica in 1974, the MSF dispatched several of its forces into several warzones for income to increase its numbers as well as maintain supplies for its personnel. Throughout their mission, Big Boss would often refer to the MSF as "Outer Heaven" when recruiting new members. As the MSF's Mother Base grew in size and power, it even gained nuclear capability and Kazuhira Miller referred to it as the 7th nuclear power at the time. While the army was still considered a group of renegades, Big Boss thought that MSF was quickly becoming his personal Outer Heaven, free of any one global power's political control. After defeating the "Peace Walker" project, MSF repelled an internal rebellion in which Metal Gear ZEKE was confiscated. After the internal rebellion, Big Boss stands before his troops and officially announces that MSF will be called Outer Heaven.

Outer Heaven
Sometime in the late 1980s, 200 kilometers north of Galzburg, South Africa, Big Boss used the funds he amassed during his mercenary career to establish the independent nation "Outer Heaven". Within the nation, he also had architect Kyle Schneider build a great fortress (similiar to the massive military stronghold that Big Boss had infiltrated in 1964) as his private mercenary company's main base and a sanctuary where soldiers would not be used as pawns of their government, where they would always have a place, be it on the battlefield or in society in general. For insurance, Big Boss reinforced the fledgling nation's military force with the black project bipedal tank Metal Gear TX-55 (engineered by Drago Pettrovich Madnar based on Aleksandr Leonovitch Granin's concept) capable of launching a nuclear strike from anywhere on the planet. Also, Outer Heaven began taking prisoners, who were members of the local resistance, that were opposed to its regime.

But in 1995, rookie FOXHOUND agent Solid Snake infiltrated Outer Heaven and succeeded in rescuing fellow agent Gray Fox and destroyed Metal Gear. When Metal Gear's destruction activated Outer Heaven's self-destruct sequence, Big Boss confronted Snake, hoping to kill him but he was ultimately defeated by Snake and seemingly killed. Shortly after NATO launched an air raid to wipe out any remaining Outer Heaven facilities as they were indifferent to the resulting deaths of those in the area since the war orphans and refugees were considered a liability, Big Boss survived the battle and managed to save many of them, including the surviving fortress personnel, mercenaries, and even Resistance members (the latter of whom he forgave for their initial opposition to him).

In 1999, Big Boss continued to pursue his vision of Outer Heaven with Zanzibar Land and a second fortress with Metal Gear D (also engineered by Madnar) but his plans were again foiled by Solid Snake.

It would not be revealed until 2014 that Big Boss's Outer Heaven was never meant to trigger a third world war as his critics feared but was simply his first effort to offer soldiers and citizens a life that was uncontrolled by the Patriots, as well as the previously mentioned goal of giving soldiers a place to be honored and not treated as tools by the government or anyone else while Metal Gear TX-55 was merely a deterrent to ensure that the Patriots never interfered with his vision. However, the world at large was unaware of the Patriots' existence and viewed Big Boss as a traitor and terrorist like The Boss before him and much like Solid Snake after him.

Former members

 * Big Boss
 * Machinegun Kid
 * Shotmaker
 * Fire Trooper
 * Bloody Brad
 * Dirty Duck
 * Vulcan Raven

Shadow Moses Incident
In 2005, Liquid Snake's FOXHOUND along with the Genome Army took over Shadow Moses and threatened the rest of the world with Metal Gear REX. Then Liquid informally changed the name of Shadow Moses to "Outer Heaven" to honor his interpretation of Big Boss's dream and memory but was foiled by Solid Snake.

Manhattan Incident
In 2009, Solidus Snake used the term "Outer Heaven" as a codename for his plan to eliminate the Patriots where he gives Arsenal Gear to Dead Cell operative Fortune as a distraction to lure the Patriots' fire while he would detonate a nuclear warhead over Wall Street to cause a gigantic electromagnetic pulse over an entire area of America, destroying the Patriots computer programs used to control the nation from the shadows then extract the Patriots' "identities" from GW and eliminate all of them to liberate America from their manipulations forever and claim a place in history. But his plan never came into fruition due to Solidus' death at Raiden's hands.

Outer Heaven (mother company)
In 2014, Liquid Ocelot set up a new Outer Heaven as a mother company for his PMC armies and commandeered an Arsenal Gear-class warship with the ultimate purpose of causing the destruction of the Patriots' orbital AI satellite. Although this plan was thwarted when Solid Snake used a virus to infected and destroyed the AI network, Liquid Ocelot believed Big Boss's dream of Outer Heaven was accomplished.

Trivia

 * The skull logo of Outer Heaven displays a left-facing swastika on its forehead, which is used as a geometrical motif and sometimes as a religious symbol, especially in Eastern and Dharmic religions. It can have many meanings, often relating to peace, but despite this, the symbol has become stigmatized because of its iconic usage by Nazi Germany. Modern usage often displays the left-facing swastika (卍) due to the association of the right-facing version (卐) with Nazism.
 * The skull itself originated with the logo of the Militaires Sans Frontieres, which was in use during the 1974 Peace Walker Incident.
 * Dr. Naomi Hunter, when discussing Vulcan Raven's history with Solid Snake in 2005, referred to the Outer Heaven mercenaries as "rent-a-war bastards," despite her benefactor, Big Boss, having been their leader, and her brother, Frank Jaeger, having been a mercenary himself.

Behind the scenes
In the non-canonical Metal Gear: Ghost Babel, Outer Heaven was located in the fictional Central African country of Gindra, rather than the Republic of South Africa. Outer Heaven had actually been formed by the United States government as a venture to provide mercenaries to its "clients," in an attempt to unofficially keep tabs on anti-American forces. The idea was thought up by the CIA Deputy Director at the time, Steve Gardner. However, the man assigned to the project, Big Boss, broke from the program, so the U.S. staged the Outer Heaven Uprising, and Snake's mission there, in order to maintain plausible deniability. Project Babel was a second attempt at carrying out the original intentions of the Outer Heaven project.