Venom Snake's hook arm

A hook arm was the first prosthetic limb that Venom Snake utilized upon awakening from his coma in a Cyprus hospital in 1984. The hook arm replaced his left arm, which had been lost in the aftermath of the Ground Zeroes Incident in 1975. It was first outfitted onto him between February 29 and March 9, 1984, after he had been sedated upon going into shock from the discovery of its amputation. The arm had a primarily yellow forearm, as well as a black plastic hook at the end. As such, due to the arm only being meant to compensate for the arm rather than truly replace it in functions, it was a crude substitute, although it was nonetheless good for gripping to a limited extent.

After escaping from the Hospital and both invading XOF forces and the Man on Fire with the help of Ocelot and Ishmael, Venom Snake, while aboard the modified whaling ship Heiwa Maru en route to Afghanistan, had the arm replaced with a significantly more advanced prosthetic.

Behind the scenes
Venom Snake's hook arm first appeared in the Spike TV Awards teaser for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (at the time called The Phantom Pain and reportedly under the development under the seemingly-unrelated company Moby Dick Studio as a form of misleading advertising). Unlike the bionic arm that Venom Snake gets later in the game, it is not a playable weapon at all.

The arm bears a slight resemblance to Captain Hook's eponymous prosthesis from the story Peter Pan. Coincidentally, Venom Snake's Japanese voice actor, Akio Ōtsuka's father, Chikao Ōtsuka, frequently voiced Hook in various dubs for the Peter Pan story.