Terrorism

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, often violent, especially as a means of coercion, although it has no legally-binding definition. Various forms of terrorism exist, including State-sponsored terrorism, State-terrorism, and domestic terrorism.

Terrorist actions
In 1964, rogue GRU Colonel Yevgeny Borisovitch Volgin fired a nuke at the Sokolov Design Bureau with the intention of getting the Soviets and the United States into World War III.

In 1970, the FOX Unit led by Gene hijacked a prototype weapons system, the ICBMG, and intended to launch it at a pre-determined target via the San Hieronymo Soviet missile base. It was originally believed to be Russia, thanks to the Pentagon's influence, but Gene decided instead to fire it at Virginia to wipe out both factions of the American Philosophers, and by proxy, the Russian Philosophers.

Part of Kazuhira Miller's motives for having the Militaires Sans Frontieres expand, including briefly working with Cipher under the promise of MSF's expansion, was the belief that after the Cold War, there will be an increase in terrorist operation, and by consequence, counter-terrorism operations leading to the creation of an economy based on war.

Big Boss was largely considered a terrorist by the world in the mid-to-late 1990s as a result of his actions at Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land. In addition, Dirty Duck and Running Man, members of Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land, were formerly high-ranking members of the terrorist cells Egg Plant and Les Enfants Terribles, respectively.

On September 11, 2001, the Middle Eastern terrorist cell al Qaida hijacked four planes and flew them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. Although the first three succeeded in hitting their targets, resulting in their total destruction and severe damage, respectively, Flight 93 (the plane that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania) had missed the target (believed to have been  the Capitol Building) due to the efforts of the passengers. This eventually led to a counterattack called the War on Terror, which started with an invasion in Afghanistan under George Sears' authority, and eventually led to the War in Iraq.

In 2005, Liquid Snake, the Next-Generation Special Forces Unit, and the FOXHOUND unit went renegade, formed the Sons of Big Boss, and intended to launch a nuclear warhead via REX unless they get Big Boss's remains and, later, $1,000,000,000 and a FOXDIE vaccine. Liquid intended to make China the target for REX's nuke as a way to force America into revealing their secrets, and thus allow himself to sell the secrets of both REX and the Next-Generation Special Forces to the highest bidder. After the mission, when Naomi Hunter was broken out of prison, she was also declared by the CIA as being one of the world's most wanted international terrorists, in part due to her development of FOXDIE.

The Gurlukovich Mercenaries participated in actions that were largely seen as terrorist actions, including the Tanker Incident. Solid Snake and the anti-NGO group Philanthropy were later framed by the Patriots for terrorist actions in the same incident, although Snake admitted in 2009 that some of Philanthropy's actions were comparable to terrorism.

After the arrest and death of Colonel Jackson, the Dead Cell unit ended up going renegade, and ended up committing terrorist actions, although Vamp implied that they were actually framed by the Patriots. In addition, Solidus, with his Sons of Liberty group formed of both the surviving members of Dead Cell and the Gurlukovich Mercenaries, committed a terrorist takeover of the Big Shell. The Patriots themselves were also hinted to have abetted terrorist actions on American soil, including the Big Shell and the Tanker Incidents, as well as Dead Cell's supposed terrorist actions.

A Middle Eastern country in 2014 also was rife with terrorism, which led to them hiring the British PMC Praying Mantis and paying them instead of using their money to feed their people.

The PMC Desperado Enforcement LLC. often lent its services to terrorists and committed acts of terrorism. One of its customers, Andrey Dolzaev, was a European terrorist, who was responsible for a subway bombing at St. Petersburg in 2015, and various terror attacks in 2017, in addition to transforming Sukhumi, Abkhazia into a military junta in 2018. The same year, Desperado was also responsible for a terrorist attack on Africa, an attack that also resulted in the death of N'Mani, the prime minister, as well as Maverick member Raiden being severely injured.

In addition, Colorado Senator and 2020 Presidential Candidate Steven Armstrong attempted to revitalize the war economy via Operation Tecumseh, a false flag operation where he and World Marshal would stage a terrorist attack on the Shabhazabad Air Base in Pakistan, and make it seem as though Desperado and jihadi terrorists attacked the base in an attempt to assassinate President Hamilton when arriving for talks with Pakistani President Farooj Salam, which despite Armstrong's death at the hands of Raiden, had for the most part succeeded, with some commentators labelling Pakistan as being part of the "axis of evil."

Countermeasures and training
Because of the frequent instances of terrorism late into the 20th century, there have been various methods of quelling terrorist plots or stopping them. Some involve planting moles into terrorist organizations to leak plans to various law enforcement groups. Others involve having either a PMC unit or a regular military unit act out the role of a terrorist group in order to train various groups in anti-terror ops. Instances of the latter included Dead Cell (back before it became an actual Terrorist organization in large part due to the Patriots' machinations) and a proposed job for Maverick in South Africa, until events in their mission at Africa forced them to put a freeze on it.

Unconfirmed history
In 1990, during the Liberian Civil War, Solidus Snake had captured Liberian terrorists responsible for the deaths of several Americans. He then had Jack the Ripper, at the time experiencing his tenth birthday, decapitate ten of them as the former's birthday present to the latter, with each terrorist acting as a "birthday candle" representing each year Jack had lived up to that point.

Behind the scenes
The first reference to terrorism in the Metal Gear series was in the English manual for the Nintendo Entertainment System version of Metal Gear, where Colonel Vermon CaTaffy (the supposed main antagonist) was mentioned to have become a terrorist at a very young age and also created a global terrorism network. It was later canonically mentioned in Metal Gear Solid.

Because of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 's release months after 9/11, several scenes and dialogue were either cut or redone due to the events of the attack. One of these was the crash of Arsenal Gear. Similarly, a storyboard idea with Solid Snake investigating Metal Gear in the Middle East and re-encountering Liquid Snake on an aircraft carrier during the game's development was also cut because of rising tensions in the Middle East at the time, and the character Raiden's (Japanese) name was written in kanji instead of katakana like most of the other characters due to the katakana name somewhat resembling Laden, part of the name of al Qaida terrorist cell mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Although 9/11 was not actually mentioned in the games themselves until Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, they were canonically included in the timeline for the Metal Gear Saga DVD, as well as given a brief mention in the Metal Gear Solid novelization by Raymond Benson. Similarly, the subsequent War on Terror was also given mentions in Metal Gear Rising. In the climax of the game, one of the posts that Boris directs Raiden to, shortly after it was revealed that the Shabhazabad Air Base attack had its story leaked early, mentioned that Pakistan was part of the axis of evil, referring to an actual term made in 2002 by the real life (and then-current) president George W. Bush during his State of the Union address, referencing Iran, Iraq, and North Korea for either aiding terrorists or developing WMDs.

A Codec conversation with Kevin Washington, during Chapter R-07, established that the War in Afghanistan had ended around 2014, although it was never stated whether the reasons had to do with killing Osama bin Laden, as was the case in real life.