Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5085906-20130627191357/@comment-4913740-20140801174934

That line from the original game about entrusting your life to a weapon being foolish... probably not meant to be taken super literally. Especially seeing as how the gameplay often revolves around using WEAPONS to defend yourself, and using hand-to-hand combat as a self defense in MGS1 was a very poor way to fight enemy guards in confrontations. And that Gray Fox himself even uses his sword at various points in the game and his arm cannon during the fight with REX. That simple line does not mean Gray Fox would never use weapons at any point, because that's just ridiculous.

While it could resemble a fox (especially if you superimpose an image of a fox over it to make it even more apparent), it's clearly demon imagery. Through and through. The debris as a horn. The strap as a tail. Even in the E3 2014 trailer with the blood-covered face, as well as his arm being red. That resembles a traditional Japanese oni (which literally means 'demon, devil, ogre, troll' - remember the codename Project Ogre?) to a T.

It's interesting to note, this demon imagery in fact goes all the way back to Project Ogre - if you see early screenshots of the game, he has the same damn strap dangling from his belt.