1980s

198X
Big Boss battles in various African civil wars. He is reunited on the battlefield with Frank Jaeger (then a RENAMO soldier), and rescues him from imprisonment and torture.

Big Boss meets Frank Jaeger's adopted sister in Mozambique, and takes them both to America. The young girl eventually takes the name of Naomi Hunter.

VR training is researched and developed.

The world has more than 60,000 nuclear warheads.

Early 1980s
Jack (Raiden) is born.

1980
September 17th: Somoza is assassinated by the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

September 22nd: Iraq launches a full-scale invasion of Iran, triggering the Iran-Iraq War. Both the U.S. and the USSR back Iraq, out of fear of the ripple effects of the Iranian Revolution.

Huey Emmerich's first son, Hal, is born with Strangelove. The two had previously married while Huey was working on the design of Metal Gear Sahelanthropus for Skull Face.

The United Nations officially establishes the University for Peace in Costa Rica.

The M1 Abrams tank is developed.

John Searle disproved the viability of the Turing test.

1981
January 20th: The Iran Hostage Crisis ends. Iran releases 52 Americans who had been held hostage since November 4, 1979 (for 444 days), after the U.S. Embassy in Tehran had been taken over. The release happened minutes after the new U.S. President Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.

March 30th: U.S. President Ronald Reagan is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt.

April 12th: The U.S. launches the first Columbia space shuttle.

June 7th: Operation Opera: Israeli bombers strike at an under construction nuclear reactor in Iraq.

July 10th: The movie Escape from New York is released.

October 6: Egyptian President Anwar Sadat is assassinated.

The Contras are formed in Nicaragua. Their goal is to overthrow the FSLN government. They are backed by the U.S. CIA and the Argentine intelligence.

Operation Opera: Israeli bombers strike nuclear reactor under construction in Iraq.

1982
March 19th - June 14th: The Falklands War is fought between the United Kingdom and Argentina.

June: The Second Chadian Civil War ends.

1983
March 23rd: U.S. President Ronald Reagan announces the SDI.

April 18th: A suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

June 27th: The MSX is formally announced to the public.

October 23: Two suicide bombers attack separate buildings housing United States and French military forces.

October 25th - December 15th: The Invasion of Grenada.

November 17th: Costa Rican President Luis Alberto Monge refuses to allow the construction of U.S. military bases in his country, declaring permanent neutrality in Costa Rica.

September 23rd: A Soviet nuclear false alarm occurs when the nuclear early warning system of the Soviet Union twice reports the launch of American Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles from bases in the United States. These missile attack warnings are correctly identified as a false alarm by a Lieutenant Colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces.

1984
Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov dies.

Big Boss awakens.

February 26th: Venom Snake awakens from his nine year coma at Dhekelia SBA Memorial hospital on the outskirts of Xylotympou, Cyprus. A civilian airliner containing "The Third Boy" crashes in the mountains of Ukraine.

March 1st: Venom Snake, after undergoing various exercises for motor functions and giving his name and birthday, proceeds to learn that he had been in a coma for nine years. However, the shock of this discovery results in him having an episode and forcing the doctor and nurse to drug him to pacify him.

March 5th: Venom Snake is briefed on his medical condition: he had various shrapnel, including matter made of human bone, in his body: specifically, several near his heart, and several, including a large shard, near his head. Although most were removed, the rest were too embedded to remove without endangering his life, although the horn portion itself was non-lethal as it is. However, he had another episode after discovering his left forearm had been amputated, forcing the nurse and doctor to put him to sleep again.

March 10th: Kazuhira Miller, after being captured by the Soviets via the XOF's Parasite Unit, began being transferred to the Pakistani border by the Soviet squad keeping him detained.

March 11th: The British Air Force Hospital in Cyprus is attacked by various forces as they were planning to alter Venom Snake's appearance, including XOF, in order to kill Big Boss. Venom Snake escapes with the help of Ishmael and later Ocelot. They then depart for Afghanistan to rescue Kazuhira Miller from Soviet forces via whaling ship.

Quiet suffers full body burns at the hospital in Cyprus, and undergoes parasite therapy to survive.

March 18th: Venom Snake and Ocelot arrive at Port Qasim, after a brief layover at Port Said, where they take an oil tanker named Karachi the rest of the way. They then use a chopper to arrive at Peshawar, take a jeep, and then go on horseback the remaining distance to Afghanistan, crossing the Khyber Pass.

March 21st: Venom Snake and Ocelot arrive at the rough destination Miller is located at: Northern Kabul.

Venom Snake, under the guise of Big Big Boss, leads a new army (Diamond Dogs) to eliminate Skull Face in his attempt to wipe the English language from the face of the earth using vocal cord parasites.

Skull Face almost unleashes Metal Gear Sahelanthropus. Venom Snake and Diamond Dogs stop him and Skull Face dies.

Huey Emmerich, after multiple betrayals that led to the death of many Diamond Dogs soldiers, is banished from Mother Base.

Eli, a child soldier extracted by Venom Snake from Africa, escapes Mother Base thanks to his special bond with The Third Child.

Ocelot begins to prepare his grand stratagem to take down Cipher/the Patriots.

The USS Missouri is modernized and placed back in action.

The Olympic Games are held in Los Angeles.

The Soviet bloc decides to boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, alongside other affiliated countries, as retaliation for the Western boycott of the Moscow Olympics.

Eli establishes his "Kingdom of the Flies" in Africa.

1985
February 20th: The movie Brazil is released.

Mikhail Gorbachev takes office.

March: Mikhail Gorbachev's new administration ushers the Soviet Union into the Détente-2 era. Gorbachev begins political reforms as part of the Perestroika movement.

East-West relations enter a second détente, and the post-Cold War period begins.

1986
Perestroika is formed, which is later cited as one of the causes of the fall of the USSR.

January: USSR General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev proposes the elimination of intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe with the eventual elimination of all nuclear weapons by the end of the century.

January 24th: The Voyager II space probe has the first ever encounter with Uranus.

January 28th: The U.S. space shuttle program stalls due to the Challenger explosion.

February: U.S. President Ronald Reagan proposes a limit of 140 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) in Europe and concurrent proportionate reductions in Asia.

February 19th: The Soviet Union launches the Mir space station into orbit.

March: The U.S. proposes the Human Genome Project, igniting a global research effort.

April 26th: The Chernobyl accident. The fallout showers the Romanenko family with radiation. Nastasha Romanenko vows the world to be free from nuclear weapons.

October: The Soviet Union begins a phased withdrawal of its troops from Afghanistan.

1987
January: The Lord's Resistance Army insurgency begins in Uganda. Sometime during this civil war, Drebin 893 is kidnapped by the guerrilla forces and forced to fight as a child soldier in the conflict.

February: The Soyuz TM-2 successfully docks with Mir.

May: USSR residential force in Afghanistan begins retreat.

October: The U.S. and USSR come to a consensus on a Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles through extended negotiations.

December 8th: The INF Treaty is signed in Washington, D.C. by the U.S. and USSR.

Meryl Silverburgh is born.

Kevin Washington is born.

1988
February: During the Winter Olympics in Canada, Frank Jaeger (under the alias "Frank Hunter") meets Czech figure skater Gustava Heffner. They later fail in an attempt to elope, after Gustava is denied asylum in the West.

February 23rd - September 6th: During the Iran-Iraq War, Saddam Hussein launches the Al-Anfal Campaign, a genocidal military campaign against the Kurds in Northern Iraq. During the campaign, Sniper Wolf's family is killed.

May 27th - June 1st: The INF Treaty is ratified by the U.S. and USSR, and enters into force.

June: Arinamin V is developed by Takeda Chemical Industries, Ltd, the precursor to Regain 24.

August: U.S. space shuttle launches recommence.

August 20th: Iraq and Iran sign a ceasefire, ending the Iran-Iraq War.

December 21st: The Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland.

START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) is approved by both the U.S. and USSR.

1989
SNF (Short-range Nuclear Force) total abandonment commences.

The separation between negotiations over START and SDI is prevailed to the public.

The USSR armed forces, including 500,000 personnel, 6 tank divisions and other troops, are cut.

February 2nd: The last USSR armored column leaves Kabul, ending 9 years of military occupation.

February 15th: The USSR announces that all of its troops have left Afghanistan.

Afghanistan plunges into Civil War.

August 25th: Voyager II passes the planet Neptune and begins its trip out of the Solar System.

September 22nd - 23rd: The U.S.-USSR sign a Memorandum of Understanding on Chemical Weapons at the Wyoming foreign minister meeting.

November 9th: The Berlin Wall falls; East and West Germany are reunited.

Democracy movements become widespread in various communist Eastern European areas.

Asylum-seeker and refugee flow into capitalist society increases.

December 2nd - 3rd: The U.S. and USSR agree to complete an agreement on CFE (Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe) by the end of 1990 at the Malta Conference.

December 20th, 1989 - January 31st, 1990: The United States invades Panama, codenamed "Operation Just Cause." Sundowner is involved in this invasion.

December: The First Liberian Civil War begins. Jack (Raiden) participates in the war as a child soldier.

General Electric starts the Land Warrior project with the intention of reducing the weight of several combat equipment.

Late 1980s
Solidus Snake kills Jack's (Raiden's) parents and adopts him. Solidus trains Jack as a child soldier.

Big Boss establishes the mercenary nation-state and fortress of Outer Heaven in South Africa.