Naomi Hunter

Dr. Naomi Hunter was the chief of FOXHOUND's medical staff prior to the Shadow Moses Revolt, and a member of Solid Snake's support team during that mission.

Early life
Naomi's parents were killed during the Rhodesian Civil War by Frank Jaeger/Gray Fox. Jaeger deeply regretted this action, and subsequently adopted Naomi after finding her near the Zambezi River half-dead from starvation, raising her as a sister. She never found out that Frank was the man who had killed her parents.

Naomi never knew her true name, parents or ethnic origin; she became interested in genetics and nanotechnology in an effort to uncover this information. In the 1980s, with the help of Big Boss, she gained access to the United States, where she later achieved her doctorate in genetics, specializing in nanotechnology-based gene therapy.

When Solid Snake defeated Big Boss and crippled Gray Fox in the Zanzibar Land Disturbance, Naomi developed an intense hatred for him and vowed revenge. She obtained the identity of "the real Dr. Naomi Hunter", who had gone missing in the Middle East some years prior.

In 2002, Naomi was recruited by ATCG, a private pharmaceutical corporation that was jointly working with the Pentagon on a project to provide medical treatment to the Genome Soldiers. In 2003, Naomi was assisted in her brother's escape from FOXHOUND's medical research division (after he killed his "tormentor" Dr. Clark), by covering it up as a lab accident and faking his death in the reports. She later became the head of FOXHOUND's medical staff and chief geneticist, and eventually joined the Pentagon's biological weapons program, perfecting the FOXDIE virus.

Naomi was on the team that was assembled to aid Solid Snake during the Shadow Moses Incident. During Snake's briefing, she injected him with various nanomachines, nootropics and an anti-freezing peptide to prevent his blood and other bodily fluids from freezing. However, Naomi had also been ordered to inject Snake with the FOXDIE virus as part of his mission. Naomi, still seeking revenge, illegally modified the FOXDIE so that it would kill Snake in addition to the rebelling FOXHOUND members, Kenneth Baker, and Liquid Snake, but chose to set the virus to a "wildcard" value, leaving Snake vulnerable at a later time.

Naomi, after realizing that Snake was not a merciless killer as she had come to known him as, would eventually forgive Snake for nearly killing Frank following their cooperation in destroying Metal Gear REX; unaware of when the FOXDIE would kill him, Naomi told Snake to live his life to the fullest until it did. Although it was Frank's last wish for Naomi to know the truth behind her parents's death, Snake hid the truth. After Shadow Moses, Naomi was arrested and placed in an undetermined maximum security facility. However, according to Nastasha Romanenko's book In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth, Naomi escaped from the facility with the aid of an unknown stranger.

In 2014, Naomi sent Otacon and Solid Snake a video message claiming to have been kidnapped by Liquid Ocelot in order to hijack the SOP System. In reality, she was working with him in order to destroy The Patriots's AI. Snake found her in South America, and she discovered the cause of Snake's accelerated aging, as well as informing him that FOXDIE would cause an epidemic due to his genetic mutation. She also found the second strain of FOXDIE within him (which was injected by the Patriots (via Drebin) to kill EVA, Liquid Ocelot, and Big Boss). Naomi the accompanied Snake and Otacon to Eastern Europe. Aboard the Nomad she formed a bond with Sunny Gurlukovich (the daughter of Olga Gurlukovich) and became romantically involved with Otacon. She also told Snake about the differences between his DNA and Liquid Snake's DNA when explaining the SOP's genetic locks, and also stated that these same differences made FOXDIE unable to target Solid Snake, but infected Liquid Snake. She even felt a deep sympathy for Raiden, the newest Cyborg Ninja (succeeding her foster brother and Sunny's mother) and was angered that the same project was still continuing on. She created 2/3 of the FOXALIVE program to destroy GW and, leaving the last part to be completed by Sunny. She escaped the Nomad and returned to Liquid Ocelot. After Vamp's death, she revealed she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, kept in check through the use of nanomachines. She died shortly afterward by suppressing said nanomachines.

Before her death, Naomi left Big Boss a message concerning the second strain of FOXDIE that had replaced the mutated old strain within Snake. This meant that the old strain would not lead to an biological pandemic, so Snake would not need to commit suicide in order to prevent a potential outbreak.

Trivia

 * Naomi gave a false history when questioned about her past during the Shadow Moses Incident. She stated that her Japanese grandfather became assistant secretary to J. Edgar Hoover in the FBI and went undercover to bring down the Mafia in New York in the 1950s. Liquid Snake (disguised as Master Miller) later revealed this to Solid Snake as false as Hoover was a well known racist, which meant there were only white FBI agents in his time as director (1924–1972), and the Mafia undercover operations first started in Chicago in 1960.
 * Although Naomi stole the identity papers of "the real Naomi Hunter", it is likely she chose this particular name in honor of her brother, whose surname translates as "Hunter".
 * Naomi died in the same place as her brother, Gray Fox, in the underground hangar of Metal Gear REX.
 * In the novel In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth, Nastasha Romanenko implies that Solid Snake may have been the one who released Naomi Hunter. However, Snake later reveals to Roy Campbell that he never did free her, which made Campbell suspect that it may have been Liquid Ocelot who had truly freed her from imprisonment.

Behind the Scenes

 * Naomi (along with several other characters from the Metal Gear series) makes a special cameo appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl as a collectible sticker, which can be used for enhancement in the Subspace Emissary Adventure Mode.
 * Although Naomi had a British accent in the original Metal Gear Solid, the remake retconned the accent to sound more American. These altered accents remain in Metal Gear Solid 4. Mei Ling and Nastasha's accents were also retconned (though it is unknown if Nastasha's accent was canonically replaced or not, as she did not appear in MGS4). The MGS novelization stated that she spoke in an Ivy league accent.