Les Enfants Terribles (event)

After Big Boss had been exposed twice to nuclear radiation (at Bikini Atoll and at the end of the Virtuous Mission) he was discovered to be infertile. Not wanting to let the genetic legacy of the greatest soldier to have ever lived simply die out, the American Government hatched a plan to create clones of Big Boss. This became known as the Les Enfants Terribles project.

In 1972, Big Boss returned from a radical mission in a coma, and the government used this opportunity to extract DNA from him. Utilizing the latest in Analog Cloning technology and the Super Baby Method, eight embryos were created from the DNA sample. Six of these embryos were aborted and the remaining two were genetically modified. One was to have all the dominant genes, while the other was to carry entirely recessive genes. They were then placed into the womb of a surrogate mother. At around the same time, the sample of Big Boss' DNA was being used to create a perfect clone of Big Boss.

Nine months later in New Mexico, the Surrogate Mother was giving birth to the first two clones. Dr. Clark oversaw the project under the watchful eye of Jim Houseman and the U.S. President. The President, incredibly nervous about the project, stated that he would be taking the Dominant Clone, to which Dr. Clark reminded him that there was no definite way of telling which would become the better soldier. The project was so secret that Big Boss himself was not to know about it.

Eventually, the clones were born and given code-names. The dominant clone was codenamed Liquid Snake, the recessive was codenamed Solid Snake and the third perfect clone was codenamed Solidus Snake.

After The Project

Sometime after the project, Big Boss was made aware of his children. He requested that Liquid Snake be told he was the inferior clone, given the "flawed" genes and destined to live in Solid's shadow. Big Boss may have been acting on his beliefs that soldiers should carry emotions into battle, and was perhaps trying to coerce Liquid into carrying his Rage with him. Liquid was raised in the UK shortly after birth and was the youngest person to serve in the Special Air Service. During the Gulf War in Iraq, he was assigned to track down and destroy mobile Scud missiles. In truth, he infiltrated the Middle East as a sleeper agent for the British SAS, but was taken prisoner by Iraqi forces and held captive as POW until 1994, when he was rescued by the U.S. Government.

Solid Snake made his way into the military by 1991. He had been inducted into the Green Berets and took part in a mission to infiltrate western Iraq during the Gulf War. Sometime after the Gulf War and before 1995 he joined FOXHOUND under the command of Big Boss.

Solidus Snake fought in the first Liberian Civil War during the late 1980's as a teenager in which he commanded the "small boy unit." He trained many young boys into ruthless killers. In 2001 he became the 43rd President of the United States of America.