Solidus Snake

Solidus Snake, commonly referred to as Solidus and also known as George Sears and Solid Snake, was the 43rd President of the United States, and a product of the Les Enfants Terribles project, making him the "third son" (and perfect clone) of Big Boss. After secretly instigating the events on Shadow Moses Island, he became directly involved in the Big Shell Incident, where he was revealed to be the adoptive father of Raiden.

Background
Solidus Snake was the third "Son of Big Boss", created by the Patriots in 1972, as part of the Les Enfants Terribles project. The initial phase of the project produced genetically diverse twin clones, one expressing Big Boss's supposedly "superior" genetic traits, and the other his "inferior" traits. The creation of the original clones led to Big Boss's departure from the Patriots. Thus, the organization required a perfect clone in order to retain a figurehead for their organization in the image of Big Boss. Years later, Solidus's DNA would act as the key to the Patriots' master AI, to which Big Boss's genetic code was the key.

As neither of the Twin Snakes were genetically identical to Big Boss, Solidus was created with the same "perfect balance" of dominant and recessive soldier genes that Big Boss possessed. As a result, Solidus was genetically (and almost physically) identical to Big Boss, a fact that he took much pride in. The egg-donor and surrogate mother used in this phase of the project are unknown. Solidus was later known as George Sears.

The accelerated aging written into each clone's genes was apparently designed to be faster in Solidus's case, thus producing the required figurehead for the Patriots (a United States President in the image of Big Boss) in a relatively short space of time as well as providing the same fail-safe of limited life-span should the clone fall into enemy hands or turn against the organization. As a result, Solidus appeared considerably older than his cloned brothers, despite being created afterwards.

Early life and career
Solidus fought in the Liberian Civil War during the late 1980s and early 1990s as a teenager. Because he wanted to see whether he truly was someone elses creation, he killed a young boy's parents during that time, adopted the boy, named him Jack, and trained him to be a ruthless killer from as early as the age of six. As the boy's godfather, Jack served as part of Solidus's Small Boy Unit and proved to be one of his best child soldiers; his amazing record of kills gained him platoon leadership of the unit when he was just ten years old, as well as the nicknames "White Devil" and "Jack the Ripper." After the war ended, Jack suddenly disappeared from a relief center, leaving Solidus to wonder what happened to him for some time.

Years later, Solidus became known as George Sears. In 2001, the Patriots entrusted Solidus with the Presidency of the United States, becoming the 43rd U.S. President. While he was in office, he created the Dead Cell unit, a U.S. Navy special forces unit. The Sears administration was characterized by its stance on nuclear disarmament and anti-eugenic policies. When the NMD program was about to fail in 2000 due to the complete failures of the trials during that year, he reportedly pushed for it to be completed, resulting in a success.

In the year 2005, acting outside the orders of the Patriots, "George Sears" orchestrated the terrorist uprising known as the Shadow Moses Incident in total secrecy. He thus ordered his agent, Revolver Ocelot, to persuade FOXHOUND's squad leader, Liquid Snake, into hijacking the newly developed Metal Gear REX. His intentions were to have Ocelot steal the data on REX and the experimental nuclear warhead with which it was to be armed. Solidus hoped to use this as a tool against the Patriots, whom he had come to loathe. The Patriots countered his plan by using Solid Snake as a vector for the FOXDIE virus, in order to eliminate FOXHOUND and leave Metal Gear REX undamaged for retrieval. In the meantime, he was also attempting to negotiate with Russia about lowering the ceiling of the nuclear stockpiles via START III in order to get them to agree to a revision to the ABM treaty.

An unplanned factor, however, came when Secretary of Defense Jim Houseman issued an order to commence a nuclear air-raid on Shadow Moses after REX was destroyed by Snake, and Sears arrested Houseman for going out of line, rescinding the orders as well.

Post-Shadow Moses
The existence of Metal Gear REX and the Genome Army were both exposed to the public during the aftermath of the incident, through the release of Nastasha Romanenko's In the Darkness of Shadow Moses: The Unofficial Truth. Sears was forced to resign from the presidency in humiliation and went into hiding when he learned that his superiors were planning to eliminate him as punishment. Meanwhile, Ocelot leaked the data he had retrieved on Metal Gear REX onto the black market, where its specifications spread worldwide.

During his time undergound, Solidus made preparations for open rebellion against the Patriots. He and Ocelot allied themselves with Sergei Gurlukovich and his private army of Russian mercenaries, as well as the rogue anti-terrorist unit Dead Cell, which Solidus had set up during his presidency.

In 2009, Solidus Snake and his forces, calling themselves the Sons of Liberty, initiated an armed takeover of the Big Shell offshore cleanup facility, located in the Manhattan Bay. Assuming the identity of Solid Snake, his presumed dead brother, Solidus intended to take control of a new and highly advanced warship known as Arsenal Gear, which was being developed in secret at the facility. He also kidnapped the then-current President, James Johnson, who had been on an inspection tour at the time, though he would later aid Solidus of his own free will, before ultimately disagreeing with his intended goal.

Special forces operative Raiden was unknowingly sent by the Patriots to infiltrate the Big Shell and stop the terrorists. Solidus encountered Raiden on a connecting bridge as he attempted to rescue President Johnson. Identifying him as "a messenger from the Patriots," Solidus was certain that he knew Raiden from somewhere. After declaring that he was Solid Snake, Iroquois Pliskin (the alias of the real Solid Snake) attacked him from a Kasatka helicopter, and in an exchange of heated dialogue between the two, Raiden learned of their true identities. Solidus evaded Snake's machinegun fire with his armor and exoskeleton-enhanced speed and strength. Eventually knocked from the bridge by Snake's grenade launcher, Solidus landed on a waiting Harrier jump jet, piloted by his Dead Cell subordinate, Vamp. Entering the Harrier's copilot seat, Solidus engaged the Kasatka, though Raiden was able to shoot the jet down with Stinger missiles. Hurtling down towards the ocean, the Harrier was caught within the jaws of the terrorists' Metal Gear RAY before it could crash. Solidus, having lost his left eye in the battle, ordered Vamp to escape, before sealing the cockpit and allowing RAY to carry him and the crippled aircraft away underwater.

Raiden was later captured by Solidus, who finally realized that he was his own adopted son, Jack. Realizing that Raiden's memory of him may have been altered by the Patriots, Solidus revealed their connection, and his past as a child soldier, something that Raiden did not want to remember.

It was initially believed that Solidus planned to expose the existence of the Patriots by using Arsenal Gear to detonate a nuclear warhead over the skies of New York City. The high-altitude blast would create a gigantic electromagnetic pulse and bring Wall Street to a halt, toppling the Patriots' power over the business community in Manhattan, and spurring the world into a panic. He would then free Manhattan from its digital yoke and establish a liberated zone in its place. Solidus later revealed that he was in fact going to give Arsenal to Dead Cell after extracting the identities of the Patriots from the onboard AI, GW. Dead Cell were intended to draw the Patriots' attentions whilst Solidus would hunt the twelve individuals down, killing them off one by one. However, Solidus's plan never came to fruition due to the corruption of GW by a worm cluster, and the actions of Revolver Ocelot, who was actually a Patriot spy that had helped to orchestrate the entire incident. Solidus was chosen to be involved because his relationship with Raiden resembled that of Solid Snake and Big Boss.

The discovery that Revolver Ocelot was an agent for the Patriots, and that Raiden was being manipulated by them as well, forced Solidus's back to the wall. When Ocelot (possessed by Liquid's personality) crashed Arsenal Gear into Manhattan, Solidus and Raiden were thrown from the top of Arsenal onto the roof top of Federal Hall, where Solidus told Raiden his true intents and desires. Solidus, unable to father children and pass on his legacy, wished to be immortalized by history, but knowing the Patriots indomitable control of information they wouldn’t allow this. He explained his reason for the Big Shell takeover and his plan to kill off the Patriots, finishing off by declaring that only one monstrosity will have the privilege to live on. He also admitted to Raiden shortly after this that he was the one who killed his parents, mainly because he wanted to see if the both of them were of someone else's creation, even going as far as to compare their situation with Liquid, Snake, and Big Boss's situation.

Solidus revealed that he needed to kill Raiden because his final lead on the Patriots' identities lied inside the nanomachines within Raiden's brain and the pattern of nerves they created. Solidus and Raiden clashed blades in a duel that would ultimately result in Solidus's defeat at the hands of his former protégé, falling from the rooftop of Federal Hall with a significant portion of his spine severed from an elegant maneuver by Raiden. Solidus crawled towards the statue of George Washington, reaching up to the first President of the United States as he let out his last breath.

After "death"
As a result of his injuries, Solidus was left brain-dead. After his remains were retrieved by the Patriots, they passed to EVA, where they were used as spare parts for transplant surgery on Big Boss. Life support equipment was used to maintain the body's metabolic processes, keeping it alive and functional, and providing optimal opportunities for transplantation. Taking on the name "Big Mama," EVA formed the anti-Patriots resistance group, the Paradise Lost Army, and used Solidus's remaining head and chest as a dummy version of Big Boss's body.

In 2014, Solidus's remains served as a decoy. Liquid Ocelot used the biomort's DNA to access the Sons of the Patriots System, after having stolen it from the Paradise Lost Army in Eastern Europe. Solidus, being an identical clone of Big Boss, provided DNA that was equally capable of tapping into the system. Vamp later threw the corpse into a boat fuel fire, sparked by a gunshot from Liquid, and Solidus's remains were incinerated. Big Mama, in an exhausted and hallucinatory state, threw herself into the fire in order to save "Big Boss," but was unable to prevent the biomort's loss, with Big Mama and Solid Snake having been convinced that the body of Big Boss had finally been destroyed.

Solidus Snake's likeness later appeared in the form of Outer Haven's "Mt. Snakemore," at Shadow Moses Island, alongside his brothers, Solid Snake and Liquid Snake, and his father, Big Boss.

Weapons
In terms of small arms, Solidus used a P90 sub-machine gun and also used a daisho (Katana and Wakizashi set); the "Minshuto" (Democrat) and "Kyowato" (Republican) blades. During the Big Shell Incident, Solidus demonstrated a highly dextrous combat ability, both as a marksman and a swordsman, (though he only ever fought while wearing his suit, which would have increased his abilities).

Exoskeleton
The exoskeleton that Solidus wore was developed by the U.S. Army (more specifically via DARPA). It increased the wearer's speed, strength, and agility through the use of the same artificial muscle technology that was initially developed for Metal Gear RAY as well as the Tengu soldiers combat suits. It had two prehensile tentacles or "Snake Arms" which could be used to grab or asphyxiate opponents, inject Phenobarbital B into the system of an opponent, analyze the content of someone's brain for nanomachines and analyze the information on them, and also had the ability to fire small missiles. The snake arms could be ejected to further increase the wearer's speed and agility. The suit was also equipped with an accelerator that allowed the user to make quick movements across terrain, leaving a trail of flames in his path, as well as allow someone skilled with swordplay to deflect a heavy barrage of machine gun fire with relative ease. Raiden's Skull Suit was derived from the same technology. The suit can also withstand chops from an enemy's sword making even cutting the wearer in half unlikely because of sensors stretching between the interior and the surface of the suit comparable to a neural network that, upon detecting an impact, will instantaneously react by automatically contracting and diffusing the damage.

Trivia

 * The solidus (Latin for solid) was originally a gold coin issued by the Romans. The word soldier is ultimately derived from solidus, referring to these coins with which soldiers were paid. Solidus is also the term used by chemists for the line on a pressure/temperature diagram that marks the phase transition between a solid and liquid.
 * Whereas Solid and Liquid used their designations as their personal prefix to their FOXHOUND codenames, the reference to Solidus as "Solidus Snake" was a purely honorary title in reference to his brothers.
 * Solidus is the only clone of the Les Enfants Terribles project to have not participated in the Gulf War.
 * As George Sears, Solidus was the youngest man in history to be elected President of the United States, being only 28 years old at the time, which would have made him constitutionally ineligible (35 years of age is the minimum). However, having been programmed to age rapidly, he possessed a much older appearance.
 * Solidus was foreseen in Elisa and Ursula's prophetic vision in 1970.
 * Solidus' octopus arms look very similiar to Laughing Octopus' tentacles.
 * Despite being brain-dead during Liquid Ocelot's Insurrection, Solidus's body produced spontaneous reflex movements, as observed by Solid Snake as he approached it.
 * Solidus's ultimate goal of destroying the Patriots, was realized at the conclusion of Liquid Ocelot's Insurrection, due to the effects of FOXALIVE.
 * Solidus was apparently created in secret, as Zero only mentions Solid Snake and Liquid Snake in a phone conversation with Kazuhira Miller.

Behind the scenes
Solidus Snake (ソリダス・スネーク) is the primary antagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2. In the Japanese release, Solidus Snake and Solid Snake were both voiced by Akio Otsuka.

In Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 2 Grand Game Plan, Solidus was originally to have faked his death from an assassination attempt, by having a double pose as him. His last name was also originally "Ryan" instead of "Sears". The gameplan also implies that Solidus Snake intended for Nastasha Romanenko to publish her book in his agenda to expose the Patriots to the world.

Metal Gear Solid 2 's script originally had Raiden cut a rope off a flagpole at Federal Hall, after killing Solidus, which would have caused the American flag to fall onto the latter's body, thus, mirroring the draping of the flag over a President's coffin during a state funeral. The visual of an American flag falling from its pole ended up being cut from the final version due to the events of 9/11. The scene, however, was kept in the novelization, which was written many years later.

Raiden's entry for the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database, incorrectly states that it was Solidus who erased most of Raiden's memories, rather than the Patriots. Similarly, in his own entry for the Metal Gear Solid 4 Database, it was incorrectly stated that he was the one who caused Arsenal Gear to crash into Manhattan as a last resort strike at the Patriots.

Gameplay
The "Big Boss" FaceCamo in Metal Gear Solid 4 is actually that of Solidus Snake, as the camo is shown with its right eye intact.

Notes and references
Solidus Snake