Screaming Mantis

Screaming Mantis was the leader and psychological warfare specialist of the Beauty and the Beast Unit. She, along with the other members, suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, alongside emotional instability as well as experiencing uncontrollable emotional fits. In her case, she frequently had uncontrollable urges to scream.

Early years
Screaming Mantis was born in a war torn village in South America. When she was just a child, her village was attacked and eventually burned to the ground. Hunted by enemy death squads, she was separated from her family. She took haven inside the basement of a building, which she would soon discover was actually a makeshift torture chamber. However, given the constant military presence outside in the village, she wasn't able to leave the corpse-littered room, and to make things worse, she was eventually locked into the basement. The constant screams of tortured villagers haunted her every day and night. After weeks locked in the cellar, keeping herself hydrated by drinking the dirty water that had pooled up on the floor, she began to hallucinate. She saw a single black praying mantis, who would teach her how to block her ears from the screams. She learned from the mantis that to survive, she would have to eat the corpses that littered the floor, however, she only ate the male corpses, much like the female mantis devours her mates. The starvation and dehydration had done irreparable damage to her mind. She survived for several weeks and somehow got back to the surface.

Later, forces led by Liquid Ocelot somehow acquired the woman. They subjected her to gene therapy and drug induced nanotherapy, building up her psyche for their ultimate plan. Eventually, Mantis's psyche was torn out of her own mind, and was replaced with what remained of Psycho Mantis, the psychological warfare specialist of the FOXHOUND unit that Solid Snake fought in 2005.

Liquid placed Screaming Mantis in charge of the Beauty and the Beast Unit, using his brainwashing techniques to further drive the unit's goal to utterly destroy Solid Snake. Although she was their leader, Mantis was the only member who hadn't killed anyone prior to adopting her "Beast" persona. In 2014, Mantis and the rest of the unit fought against rebel soldiers in the Middle East. On one occasion observed by Solid Snake, Mantis utilized her ability to control a person's nanomachines, allowing her to lift a rebel soldier off the ground and fire his assault rifle at his own comrades, killing them. She then violently contorted his body, breaking his limbs and spine. Then, suddenly, with a wave of her arm, the Beauty and the Beast Unit withdrew, leaving Snake in awe at their power and ferocity. Snake also seemed to think that she was Psycho Mantis when first witnessing her.

During the final assault of Outer Haven, Snake finally came face to face with the Beauty and the Beast's leader. After disposing of a large unit of FROGS inside Outer Haven's command center, Screaming Mantis appeared before Snake, using her Psycho Mantis doll to take control of Meryl Silverburgh and point her Desert Eagle at Snake. She also remarked that it had been "a long time" since they encountered each other, resulting in Snake asking if she was Psycho Mantis, before Screaming Mantis corrected Solid Snake and addressed Psycho Mantis as being "another me." Snake was able to quickly subdue Meryl by suppressing her nanomachines, while Mantis took control of the FROGS scattered around the room using her Psycho Mantis and Sorrow dolls.

Snake was able to see through Mantis's techniques, and also injected himself with a nanomachine suppressor. After knocking her dolls free of their strings, Snake was able to snatch them up and use them against her. Despite her bond with Psycho Mantis and her strong mental force, she was unable to suppress her nanomachines, and Snake ironically used the Psycho Mantis doll to destroy her.

Defeated, Mantis's power suit flew forcefully away from her body, with her arm blades narrowly missing Snake's head and sticking into the core of the command center. Screaming Beauty fell from the shell, landing on the ground with a hard thud. She instantly began panicking, screaming at the voices in her head, telling them to leave her alone. She begged at her inner demons to have mercy before collapsing once again, then moving in on Snake, telling him to release her from her torment. After she was defeated, she elegantly assumed the fetal position.

Psycho Mantis's rebirth
Suddenly, Screaming Mantis's armor reformed itself and began floating before Snake. Above the armor materialized the disembodied spirit of Psycho Mantis. Unable to believe his eyes, Snake stepped back in shock, back to the Outer Haven command core. Psycho Mantis, eager to prove himself once again as the world's greatest psychic and telekineticist, attempted to impress Snake with his abilities, but this time, nine years later, he failed miserably. Psycho Mantis's body began spasming uncontrollably and the armored pieces of Screaming Mantis fired off in multiple directions as the spirit of the once great psychokineticist disappeared, defeated for good. Snake then heard a mysterious voice in his head: "The spirit of the warrior will always be with you." Looking up to the upper balcony of Outer Haven, Snake spotted a ghostly man in a black raincoat, smiling down on him.

Personality
Because of her traumatic past, Screaming Mantis frequently had an uncontrollable urge to scream. In addition, because she was partially fused with nanomachines containing portions of Psycho Mantis' psyche, which also included Mantis' memories, she also interacted with Solid Snake as if she had encountered him before.

Abilities
As their leader, Screaming Mantis was the most powerful of the Beauty and the Beast Corps. Using Psycho Mantis's mind control, she was able to keep the other members of the Unit under control, as well as regulate their bodies and abilities. She possessed a level of telekinesis similar to Psycho Mantis, being able to hover and manipulate the trajectory of thrown knives, and also had the ability to rapidly transport in combination with melee attacks. Her primary arsenal of powers came from the dolls held by her synthetic arms, modelled after Psycho Mantis and The Sorrow. The Psycho Mantis doll allowed her to manipulate the living, and The Sorrow doll allowed her to control the dead (according to Otacon, the manner in which she controlled the dead soldiers is similar to how a frog's corpse can still react to electricity).

However, both require the target to have nanomachines. The dolls allowed for an unprecedented degree of control over the victim, as demonstrated in the Middle East when Screaming Mantis was able to cause a soldier's head and arms to contort backwards and break. Aboard Outer Haven, she attempted to control Johnny Sasaki using the Psycho Mantis doll, but was unable to, as it was later revealed that he had no nanomachines. Likewise, her abilities to control people will be nullified if the target in question is capable of suppressing their nanomachines, as evidenced by Solid Snake being immune to Screaming Mantis's attacks due to his injecting himself with a nanomachine suppressor prior to the battle. In addition, she, alongside the other members of the unit, also was capable of setting foes on fire by touch.

Behind the scenes
Screaming Mantis's beauty form is modeled after actress Scarlett Chorvat.

The Beauty and the Beast Unit is a tribute to the bosses of the previous Metal Gear Solid games in the series; the name of each member of the unit is derived from the name of a member of FOXHOUND (from Metal Gear Solid), their weapons are a derivative of Dead Cell members' weapons (from Metal Gear Solid 2), and their emotions similar to the Cobra Unit member codenames (from Metal Gear Solid 3): In the case of Screaming Mantis, her name is taken from Psycho Mantis, the knives of Vamp and a mixture of emotions from The Fear and The Pain. She also does things like the "Blackout" technique, mirroring the Psycho Mantis fight. The Blackout technique, like Psycho Mantis, also has a green text on the upper right corner that says "Hideo", only this time around, it says "Hideo2". On some very rare cases, Screaming Mantis may "restart" the game, showing the Konami logo and then the Kojima Productions logo backwards. After a while the player can continue the fight as if nothing happened. To a degree, she also resembles the "Zone of the Enders" Boss Inhert, in that this boss used the same technique. Owing to her connection to Psycho Mantis, her main and battle themes are a remix of Mantis' Hymn, which had been Psycho Mantis's theme.

Appropriately, as leader of the Beauty and Beast Unit, Screaming Mantis displayed all of the white energy that rained down on the other members during their defeats. As she "changed" from her beast form to her beauty form, she is showered with white flower petals as she hears laughing (like Laughing Octopus), white snow as she hears crying and howling (like Crying Wolf), and finally, white feathers rain down on her while hearing bird caws when she leaped up (like Raging Raven).

Screaming Mantis is not the first character to utilize marionette puppets as a battle tactic. This tactic belongs to Marionette Owl of Black Chamber in Metal Gear: Ghost Babel.

The dolls that Mantis uses represent two characters from past Metal Gear Soild games. The Mantis Doll represents Psycho Mantis, and the Sorrow Doll represents The Sorrow. Their powers also represent the characters. The Sorrow Doll controls dead corpses (even though the actual Sorrow just evokes the spirits of the dead), while the Mantis Doll controls living people. This allows the player to do the same things that Psycho Mantis and The Sorrow could do.

Other than the obvious references to Psycho Mantis, her fighting style and usage of scythe-like weapons also mirrored the recurring Castlevania boss Death. The Castlevania series, like the Metal Gear series, was developed by Konami.

While unconfirmed, the events that Drebin describes as being part of Mantis's past share similarities to the Argentinian Dirty War.

Screaming Mantis is the only member of the BB Corps to not be shown directly leading the PMC bearing a similar name to her (in this case, Praying Mantis). However, her connection to the group as field commander is nonetheless implied by her wearing a Praying Mantis standard issue combat vest in her beast form.

Screaming Mantis later appeared in Versus Battle.

"STRENGTHS: Can Channel The Sorrow & Psycho Mantis WEAKNESSES: Stealth Hurt by Screaming Outbursts FEATURED FACT: Forced to cannibalize corpses to survive as a child, she is genetically modified and implanted with nanomachines and the mind of Psycho Mantis FEATURED GAME: METAL GEAR SOLID: THE LEGACY COLLECTION"

- Screaming Mantis's bio on Versus Battle

Gameplay

 * Screaming Mantis manipulates Meryl just as Psycho Mantis does in Metal Gear Solid, by forcing her to shoot Old Snake directly. The player can knock Meryl out, similar to Metal Gear Solid, or inject her with the Syringe, temporarily disabling her nanomachines, in order to fight Screaming Mantis more easily.
 * As with the rest of the Beauty and the Beast Unit, her FaceCamo can be unlocked if the player defeats her "Beauty" Form using non-lethal means.
 * If the player kills Screaming Mantis via lethal means, an extra few seconds are added where she is covered with a blue flame similar to the FROGS when they are killed.
 * Unlike the other BB Corps members, her doll can be collected in the corridor which the player enters the area through during the "Beauty" stage regardless of how they dealt with her "Beast" form, due to the nature in which the player must fight her "Beast" form.
 * Occasionally when Snake (and reportedly other characters injected by nanomachines) dies, strings can be seen on his arms and legs similar to when Screaming Mantis takes control of someone. The exact meaning of this is heavily debated. The most likely reason for this is because Snake himself is controlled by the player not unlike how Mantis controls others.
 * Shooting off The Sorrow doll will allow the player to shake dead bodies to get items from that body.
 * A costume available to download for LittleBigPlanet allows the Sackboys to dress up as Screaming Mantis.
 * If the player changes their controller to controller port 2, they will get a call from Otacon about how that won't work to defeat her.

Appearances

 * Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots
 * Metal Gear Solid: Social Ops (trading card)