The Patriots

The Patriots, also known as the La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo, were a secret organization that controlled the United States of America. The group was formed to fulfill the ideal of a unified world, envisioned by the legenday soldier known as The Boss, and later sought to control the entire world to ensure this.

The beginning of the Patriots
The Patriots were originally formed in 1970 as the reorganized version of The American Philosophers, using funds contained within the Philosophers' Legacy. The Legacy was stolen from the DCI at the climax of Gene's rebellion by former triple Philosophers' agent Ocelot (under Zero's orders). Before killing the DCI, Ocelot proclaimed that [him and Zero] were going to "end the Philosophers and carry on the spirit of the true patriot", explaining that it was, "all part of our plan to make the world [The Boss] envisioned a reality". After Ocelot's intense speech, he executed the DCI in a way that looked like a suicide. Zero later contacted Ocelot and invited him to form part of his new organization, the Patriots. Ocelot agreed under the condition that Big Boss (Naked Snake) joined the organization as well.

Afterwards, Zero recruited Big Boss and Ocelot, along with two FOX comrades (Sigint and Para-Medic) and former Chinese Philosophers' agent EVA. The group then began plans to reunite the world by governing it from behind the scenes. Zero used his influence to turn Big Boss into a messiah-like figure for the world to follow, though Big Boss grew to resent this puppet-like role. The views of the two men also began to differ, in regards to the interpretation of The Boss's will: Zero took the concept to mean control of the entire world by a group, to ensure unification; Big Boss believed that The Boss wanted a world where soldiers were not used as tools by the government.

In 1972, Big Boss was gravely wounded from a battle and fell into a coma. Afraid of losing the Patriots' idol, Zero carried out a secret project known as "Les Enfants Terribles", in which Para-Medic would use Big Boss's DNA to create a number of clones. With EVA serving as the surrogate mother, Solid Snake and Liquid Snake were born (a third son would be born at a later date). However, this proved to be the final straw between Big Boss and Zero, and the former left the organization with a determination to oppose them and later formed his own mercenary group in an attempt to carry out his vision of The Boss's dying wish.

After Big Boss left, EVA and Ocelot chose to remain with the group but began to drift away (although the former remained a spy for them to keep an eye on the organization for EVA). Zero, Para-Medic, and Sigint stayed with the organization and became power hungry. Para-Medic became a morally corrupt medic as the head of FOXHOUND's medical staff and chief geneticist, organizing and developing the Patriots' genetic research programs. Sigint would abuse his position in ARPA by accepting bribes and would participate in the development of the Patriots' AIs.

Peace Walker Incident
Main Article

In 1974, the Patriots, referring to themselves as Cipher, recruited Pacifica Ocean and Vladimir Zadornov as agents. First, they had Zadornov provide the money and technology for Hot Coldman's Peace Walker Project (GW-Pupa-5000, TJ-Chrysalis-6000, TR-Cocoon-7000, and AL-Aurelia-8000) and the training for the Peace Sentinels. Cipher also contacted Kazuhira Miller with a business proposal to help expand the Militaires Sans Frontieres and to have Big Boss participate in their project without his knowledge. Lastly, they ordered Pacifica to modify Metal Gear ZEKE when the time came, and then hijack it and offer Big Boss the chance to rejoin them (the true purpose of the Peace Walker project), and should he refuse, frame the MSF for being an extremist cult by using ZEKE to launch a nuclear warhead at the United States. Miller later alerted Cipher that she made modifications to it, although he was left unaware of her framing MSF if Big Boss refused. Ultimately, this plot failed when Big Boss damaged Metal Gear ZEKE and prevented Pacifica from launching a nuke. However, Cipher planned to use "the sons" as an insurance policy in case they failed to both bring Big Boss back to their group and frame the MSF.

Aftermath
In the 1990s, Big Boss attempted coups d'etat against Zero, first in 1995, and then in 1999. However, he was defeated both times by Solid Snake (his own "son"); Zero's insurance policy having paid off. Zero then had Big Boss placed into a nanomachine-induced coma, to imprison both his physical body and consciousness, and preserve him as the Patriots' icon. Infuriated by this, EVA and Ocelot secretly defected from the organization and schemed on how to destroy Zero and the other members who remained loyal to him. Meanwhile, Dr. Clark (Para-Medic) oversaw the gene research program which would eventually bear the Next-Generation Special Forces: genetically-enhanced soldiers, implanted with Big Boss's "soldier genes".

Due to his increasing age and bitterness over Big Boss's betayal, Zero became skeptical that his human subordinates would be able to successfully carry out his will. With his immense amount of money (and Sigint's assistance), he commissioned the creation of four computer AIs (TJ, TR, AL, and GW) with a fifth head AI that would control the world, even after his eventual death. These AIs 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. After the AIs were created, Zero went into hiding.

By the 21st Century, the Patriots had achieved immense political power, effectively controlling the American state as a totalitarian regime. The organization would select who would serve as the President of the United States and would stage Presidential elections in order to please the American public, tricking them into believing they had a small level of control.

In 2002, DARPA Chief Donald Anderson (Sigint) was heavily bribed by ArmsTech President Kenneth Baker to back the Metal Gear REX program and fund its development covertly, and to overcome a global trend of military downsizing. A weapon like REX would cause an immediate rift in the global power structure. REX was capable of launching a nuclear warhead without the need for a rocket propulsion system, making it undetectable by radar. It could give any country in the world a first-strike capability that other nations would find hard to counter. This also exploited a specific loophole that existed in anti-nuke treaties, since weapons fired from a rail gun were not technically ballistic, so limitations on ballistic weaponry did not apply.

In 2003, EVA and Ocelot enlisted the assistance of Dr. Naomi Hunter and Gray Fox in order to have Dr. Clark killed. Gray Fox was able to exact revenge on Clark for all the years of torment he had suffered during her gene therapy experiments. Naomi later helped to cover up the incident by claiming that she had died in a lab explosion.

In 2005, DARPA Chief Donald Anderson and ArmsTech President Kenneth Baker were both present at the nuclear disposal facility housing Metal Gear REX. The aim was to conduct test experiments of Metal Gear REX's nuclear launch capabilities (firing it's railgun) in a VR (Virtual Reality) environment and retrieve the nuclear test data to the Pentagon on an optical disc.

Acting against the Patriots, U.S. President George Sears directly instigated the Shadow Moses Incident by having his agent Revolver Ocelot incite Liquid Snake into using the FOXHOUND unit (Psycho Mantis, Sniper Wolf, Vulcan Raven, Decoy Octopus, and the Genome Army) to steal Metal Gear REX. During a torture session, Ocelot killed Donald Anderson and covered it up as an accident, succesfully eliminating another founding Patriot member.

The Patriots themselves were also directly involved in the incident, with the creation of the FOXDIE virus, the development and recovery of the Metal Gear REX project, as well as (through the Pentagon) sending in Meryl Silverburgh onto Shadow Moses Island to force Colonel Roy Campbell (Meryl's "uncle") to cooperate in the mission. The Patriots countered Sears's plan by using Solid Snake to try to rescue Donald Anderson, and use him as a vector for FOXDIE and leave REX (along with the bodies of the Genome Soldiers) undamaged for retrieval. In order to have full command and control over the operation, the Patriots utilized two of their agents: the Secretary of Defense Jim Houseman (in charge of the entire Shadow Moses operation through AWACS and who gave the order for Naomi Hunter to inject FOXDIE into Solid Snake) and DIA operative Richard Ames (who essentially forced his ex-spouse Nastasha Romanenko into providing mission support for Snake and was in charge of the FOXDIE program).

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.

Post-Shadow Moses
In June 2007, journalist Gary McGolden was supposedly captured by agents of the Patriots, after travelling to Shadow Moses Island while investigating the truth behind the 2005 incident. According to his article, he was interrogated within a weather station, but was subsequently rescued by an "invisible saviour".

By 2007, the U.S. Marines had initiated a project to build a new type of Metal Gear, in order to counteract the increasing number of Metal Gear REX derivatives being built after its specifications were leaked onto the black market. This new Metal Gear was codenamed Metal Gear RAY, though its development did not fall in line with the Patriots' plans, and the organization decided to reclaim RAY for their own.

In August 2007, the Patriots leaked information on RAY's development to the anti-Metal Gear NGO Philanthropy, in order to lure out Solid Snake and Otacon. Patriot agent Revolver Ocelot took over the tanker in which RAY was being transported with the help of Sergei Gurlukovich and his mercenary army, but Ocelot later betrayed Gurlukovich, sank the dummy tanker, and stole the RAY prototype, framing Snake and Otacon in the process. For the Patriots, the incident was a success.

The Patriots 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 offshore decontamination facility 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' 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.

After the Tanker Incident, it was implied that the Patriots had also staged terrorist attacks, that would later be attributed to SEALs anti-terrorist squad Dead Cell, killing many of their own allies and civilians alike. This was namely done to have Dead Cell go renegade. In late 2008, the Patriots led an extermination campaign against Dead Cell that eliminated all but three members (Fortune, Fatman, and Vamp), as part of the Patriot's master plan.

In April 2009, the Patriots staged their plan by manipulating the information that surrounded the Big Shell 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, Liquid Snake (via a dormant personality within Ocelot) had Arsenal Gear crash into Manhattan in order to recover GW, killing many civilians and destroying national landmarks in the process. The master AI told Raiden to kill the Patriot defecter Solidus Snake, threatening to kill Olga's child and Rosemary and their unborn child if he failed. While goading Raiden to deliver the finishing blow, the master AI also hinted that the Patriots only viewed soldiers and humanity as tools and machines to be discarded after their usefulness had been expended.

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

The War Economy
Originally, Zero intended for 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 that Big Boss describes as "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 (fully controlled by JD) managed to trick and manipulate Meryl Silverburgh and her group (similar to how they tricked Raiden in 2009) and enlisted Drebin 893 (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 JD the other AIs (TJ, TR, and AL) which 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 destroyed and Liquid Ocelot defeated by Snake, there was one more threat that needed to be eliminated: Zero, the man who started the entire fiasco and the main founder of the Patriots. Shortly after JD had been effectively destroyed, Big Boss 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 to Snake (his eldest son) about the full story of what happened in regards to the Patriots, 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

Known AIs

 * JD (John Doe, the master AI)
 * GW (George Washington)
 * TJ (Thomas Jefferson)
 * TR (Theodore Roosevelt)
 * AL (Abraham Lincoln)
 * "Peace Walker Project" AIs
 * GW-Pupa-5000
 * TJ-Chrysalis-6000
 * TR-Cocoon-7000
 * AL-Aurelia-8000 (The Boss's AI)

Agents

 * Revolver Ocelot
 * Raiden (unknowingly)
 * Solidus Snake
 * Jim Houseman
 * Scott Dolph
 * Richard Ames
 * James Johnson
 * Fatman
 * Olga Gurlukovich
 * Drebin
 * Meryl Silverburgh and Rat Patrol 01 (unknowingly)

Cipher agents

 * Vladimir Alexandrovich Zadornov
 * Pacifica Ocean
 * Kazuhira Miller (business associate)

Trivia

 * The Patriots were named after the colonial American Patriots, a group of colonists of the British Thirteen United Colonies, who rebelled against British Empire's control during the American Revolution. It was their leading figures who, in July 1776, declared the United States of America an independent nation.
 * The word Cipher in medieval times meant "zero", derived from the Arabic word ṣifr; also means "empty".
 * The names of the AIs (aside from JD --the master AI-- ) were the initials of the four American Presidents whose likenesses appear on Mt. Rushmore. According to Strangelove, the initials for the AI pod/reptile pods were Coldman's idea.
 * Since 2005, many soldiers have been fitted with nanomachines. As shown in 2007, 2009, and 2014, it was discovered that the Patriots themselves had modified these nanomachines, in that they would force a person to say 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.
 * In cryptography, a cipher is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption — a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure; mirror the nature of The Patriots (an encrypted and hidden organization) ad, later, of the proxy-AI (a series of norms and procedures).
 * In 1964, Major Zero directs Naked Snake to ask "Who are the Patriots?" to identify ADAM or EVA as their contact, the answer to the question is "La Li Lu Le Lo". This shows that either Zero already had some concept of the Patriots in mind before 1964 or simply a nod of events to come.

Behind the Scenes

 * In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Snake tries to contact Colonel Campbell while fighting Luigi, but gets a hold of The Colonel AI instead. The Colonel shuts Snake out by repeating "La li lu le lo", a reference to the Patriots' "codename".
 * "La li lu le lo" are the "missing" vowel sounds in Hiragana; there is no L / R distinction, and the string is usually spoken as "Ra ri ru re ro." The idea of this is that the Patriots alter their name to a phrase that cannot be written down or spoken; obviously, since there are no equivalent "missing" sounds in English, this concept could not be translated.
 * 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 (appearing like The Colonel) 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.