The Patriots

The Patriots (or the "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo") were an organization whose sole purpose was once to carry out The Boss's final wish, and later sought to control the world.

Zero founded the group and recruited Ocelot, Big Boss, Para-Medic, Sigint and EVA.

Among other duties, the Patriots decided who the President will be and staged the Presidential elections in order to please the American public, tricking them into believing they have a small level of control. The Patriots' tactics can be viewed as totalitarian in their efforts to deceive the public.

The Beginning of The Patriots
The Patriots are the successors to The Philosophers, which included members of China, the Soviet Union and America. The Patriots were originally put together in 1970, by Zero using the Philosophers' Legacy which he had Ocelot steal for him from the DCI after luring him out of hiding when the Director thought a nuclear missile fired by Gene during his takeover of a Soviet base. As the DCI and his two bodyguards were moving to a safer location, Ocelot emerged, killing all three of them. Taking the legacy, Ocelot claimed he was going to end the Philosophers and carry on the spirit of the true patriot saying "it's all part of our plan to make the world she (The Boss) envisioned a reality."

Later, Zero and Ocelot recruited Big Boss, Sigint, Para-Medic, and EVA and started their plans to reunite the world by governing it from behind the scenes. Zero used his influence to turn Big Boss into a legend, a messiah-like figure for the world to follow. Big Boss eventually grew tired of Zero's way of running things, believing he had misinterpreted The Boss's final vision. In retaliation, Big Boss defected and went on to form Militaires Sans Frontieres in an attempt to make his own version of The Boss's dying wish.

After Big Boss left, EVA and Ocelot began to drift away (although it appears Ocelot remained a spy for them, perhaps to keep an eye on the organization). Zero, Para-Medic, and Sigint stayed with the organization and became power hungry to control everything with Para-Medic as a morally corrupt medic within FOXHOUND and Sigint abusing his position at ARPA by accepting bribes.

After Operation Intrude N313 and Operation Intrude F014, Zero put Big Boss in a nanomachine-induced coma. This infuriated EVA and Ocelot and they secretly defected and schemed on how to destroy the Patriots. In 2003, EVA and Ocelot started to achieve their plans and enlisted to assistance of Naomi Hunter, who helped her foster brother Gray Fox killing off FOXHOUND medic Dr. Clark (Para-Medic) for all the torment Clark caused to him.

Meanwhile, Zero got older and didn't want to pass the organization down to the next generation, believing they wouldn't be able to truly realize his vision (and was still bitter about Big Boss). With his immense amount of money, he commissioned the creation of four AIs with a fifth head AI that would control the world even after his eventual death. These AIs (GW, TJ, TR, AL, and JD) became Zero's successors of the Patriots. The AIs were formless, and alloted funds to specific R&D Centers and other such companies under the Patriots control. The AIs were a "set of norms", a neural network in its simplest form, designed to decide and eventually manipulate the fate of the world.

In 2005, US President George Sears directly instagated the Shadow Moses Incident, by having his agent Revolver Ocelot incite Liquid Snake to use his FOXHOUND unit to steal Metal Gear REX. During an "accidental" torture session, Ocelot killed off the DARPA Chief Donald Anderson (who was really Sigint and was intentionally killed off as a part of EVA and Ocelot's plan) during a torture session. While Solid Snake defeated Metal Gear REX and Liquid, Ocelot retrieved REX's battle data for President Sears and leaked the data via the black market.

However, Sears wasn't the only one had instigated the Shadow Moses Incident, as The Patriots were also directly involved with the Shadow Moses Incident, the creation of FOXDIE and the creation and recovery of the Metal Gear REX project.

Later on, in June 2007, the Patriots captured a journalist named Gary McGolden, who had travelled to Shadow Moses in order to investigate the truth behind In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth. He was interrogated within a weather station, but the agents involved were then put out of commission by Solid Snake, who had returned to the island in order to rescue McGolden.

In 2007, the US Marines had started up a project to build a new type of Metal Gear, in order to counter-act the large amount of Metal Gear REX models being built after the specifications were leaked onto the black market and this new Metal Gear was codenamed Metal Gear RAY. This did not fall in line with the Patriots' plans however, and they decided to reclaim RAY for their own.

In August 2007, whilst simultaneously leaking information to Philanthropy to lure them out, they planned to frame Solid Snake and Otacon for the incident. Patriot agent Revolver Ocelot took over the Tanker where RAY was being held with the help from Sergei Gurlukovich and his mercenary army, but Ocelot later betrayed Sergei, sinking the dummy tanker, taking RAY for himself, and framing Snake and Otacon. For the Patriots, the incident was a success.

They immediately sent a fully loaded tanker to the same location and sank it, spilling oil everywhere in the process. This allowed them to set up the Big Shell, which they could use as camouflage to build Arsenal Gear.

Arsenal Gear was the Patriots' tool for securing power over the United States and in the world. The Patriots hoped to use Arsenal as a way of shaping the "truth" to fit their agenda. Arsenal Gear served the sole purpose of housing GW, one of their proxy-AIs designed to censor and delete unwanted information that could loosen their grip on the United States. For instance, GW controlled information through the media, television and mainly the free flow of data from the Internet. This was a means to completely censor any data detrimental to the Patriots's rule. This is a method of memetic eugenics, in which memes were artificially selected for or against by GW. Emma Emmerich was one of the main contributors to the production of the programming for GW.

In 2009, the Big Shell Incident was staged by the Patriots for their plan. By manipulating the information that surrounded the incident, the Patriots had proved that they could manipulate world events. Their agent Raiden was sent in to test the exercise and forced Olga Gurlukovich (by holding her child hostage) to assist Raiden. The AI posing as Colonel Campbell revealed to Raiden that the Patriots were formed as a sort of non-corporeal "consciousness" over the course of many years in the White House, comparing it to the formation and evolution of humanity itself. The Patriots also revealed to Raiden that their agent Rosemary was posing as Raiden's girlfriend. Using the data they collected from this exercise their AIs (such as GW) would be improved even more.

After GW was infected with Emma's worm cluster, The Patriots later had Arsenal Gear crash into Manhattan in order to destroy GW, killing thousands of civilians in the process and destroying national landmarks in the process. However, it is unknown if any data survived the incident thanks to the interventions of Raiden, Emma and Philanthropy, who apparently managed to destroy GW. Another AI (possibly JD) told Raiden told to defeat Patriot agent defecter Solidus Snake. While goading Raiden to deliver the finishing blow, JD also hinted that The Patriots only view soldiers and humanity as being tools and machines to be discarded after their usefulness has been expended.

After the Manhatten Incident, Philanthropy "traced" the Patriots using information retrieved from the Arsenal Gear, but discovered that all twelve members of "The Patriots" had been dead for at least a hundred years (as early as 1900), and that "one of them was their (Philanthropy) biggest contributor." Snake deduces that the information retrieved from the Arsenal Gear was false; it was only a fake lead orchestrated by the Patriots. The names they discovered were those of the original Wisemen's Committee that founded the Philosophers.

Zero had originally intended the AIs to create a unified state by using the military-industrial complex to make economics and politics uniform and devoid of free will, all in the name of Zero's megalomaniac attempt to erase individuality. According to Big Boss, the proxy-AIs began to deviate from that plan by undergoing a mutation that gave them a will of their own and enabled them to decide on a better way to accomplish their goals: war. They created the War Economy and started a battlefield revolution similar to the industrial and digital revolutions, a new world without ideology, principles, or ideals, not even the thing The Boss treasured the most: loyalty. "It was a colossal error in judgment – one Zero couldn't possibly have foreseen." To control the flow of information, they would control the economy, by influencing the outcome of these wars through the SOP system which would also allow them to control individual people. According to Naomi, the Patriots planned to extend their control down to the civilian level, actively controlling and censoring people through nanomachines, such as the nickname "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo". In this case, members of "the system" were under the Patriots's direct influence could not even mention the name "the Patriots" and were forced by their nanomachines to say the codename.

In 2014, the Patriots (now fully controlled by JD) managed to trick and manipulate Meryl Silverburgh and her group (similar to how they tricked Raiden) and enlisted Drebin (who, unlike the others, knew of his stance as a Patriot agent) to assist Old Snake and Otacon in their mission to terminate Liquid Ocelot, though the Patriots did not foresee that Snake and Otacon would destroy the Patriots themselves in the process thanks to the true nature of Liquid Ocelot's plan.

The Patriots were ultimately destroyed by the FOXALIVE virus (an opposite to the FOXDIE virus) created by Naomi Hunter (and unknowingly by Sunny Gurlukovich, who borrowed some code from the original virus created by Emma Emmerich to destroy GW), which would infect and terminate the AIs which now ran the Patriots, ending them forever. However, Sunny managed to pick and choose parts of society vital to the survival of modern civilization.

With the Patriots AIs had been destroyed and Liquid Ocelot defeated by Snake, there was one more threat that needed to be eliminated and that threat was the man who started the entire fiasco and the main founder of the Patriots: Zero. Big Boss, shortly after JD had been effectively destroyed, had found the location of Zero's stronghold. After arriving there, he discovered Zero was a mere shadow of his former self: a man, whose advanced years had put him in a vegetative-like state, and who was kept alive solely by machines. Big Boss then wheeled him over to Arlington Cemetery, and after explaining the full story of what happened in regards to the Patriots to his son Solid Snake, Big Boss euthanized Zero by cutting off his oxygen supply. Shortly thereafter Big Boss died from the effects of the new FOXDIE virus within Snake, thus ending the Patriots for good.

Founding Members

 * Zero (founder)
 * Ocelot
 * Big Boss
 * Sigint
 * Para-Medic
 * EVA

AI Codenames

 * JD (The master AI, John Doe)
 * GW (George Washington)
 * TJ (Thomas Jefferson)
 * TR (Theodore Roosevelt)
 * AL (Abraham Lincoln)

Agents

 * Revolver Ocelot
 * Solidus Snake
 * Jim Houseman
 * Richard Ames
 * James Johnson
 * Fatman
 * Olga Gurlukovich
 * Drebin
 * Liquid Ocelot

Trivia

 * The names of the AIs (aside from the master AI "John Doe") were the initials of the four American Presidents whose likenesses appear on Mt. Rushmore.
 * Since the Shadow Moses Incident in 2005, many soldiers have been fitted with nanomachines. From 2007 onwards, it was discovered that the Patriots themselves had modified these nanomachines, in that they would force a person to say (or hear) the phrase "La li lu le lo" instead of the word "Patriots." This was done in order to make discussion of the organization difficult and maintain some secrecy.

Behind the Scenes

 * In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, when Snake contacts Colonel Campbell while fighting Luigi, the Colonel shuts Snake out by repeating "La li lu le lo", a reference to the Patriots's "codename".
 * The name La-li-lu-le-lo is a reference to the basic vowel pronunciation in the Japanese language. In Japanese, the "L" and "R" sounds are indistinguishable, although the Hepburn romanization of Japanese Gojūon uses "Ra-ri-ru-re-ro" instead of "La-li-lu-le-lo." The use of "La-li-lu-le-lo" in the English version of Metal Gear Solid 2 instead of the proper "Ra-ri-ru-re-ro" is a translation liberty, albeit one that fits with the game's motif of information control.
 * In the Snake Tales story External Gazer, Snake is briefly stuck in a parallel universe and believes that he is Raiden. He and Rose keep getting interrupted while trying to enjoy each other's company. At one point, the La-li-lu-le-lo shows up on their television set, randomly talking about how to keep toilets clean. They are then joined by two alternate versions, called the Ta-ti-to-te-to and I-ro-ha-ni-ho-he-to, which also give advice. The last version's name refers to Iroha, an old-fashioned Katakana ordering system (the more prevalent ordering is called gojūon). "I ro ha ni ho he to" is the first of seven lines in an Iroha poem that contains each character of the Katakana exactly once, much like the English ABCs song.