| This article is about a non-canonical topic in the Metal Gear series. |
Colonel Vermon CaTaffy was the leader of Outer Heaven.
Biography
Originally a tranquil shepherd boy, CaTaffy grew up on the remote banks of the Sam Sam River in outer Mongolia with his 27 sisters. However, he became fascinated with, and turned to, terrorism at a very young age, and eventually became the leader of Outer Heaven, a small nation in South Africa, after years of pillaging innocent people across the globe. Upon becoming the leader of Outer Heaven, CaTaffy imposed a sole-leader tyranny (himself being the leader) and acted as a radical dictator, where he ruled with bombs and bullets. Within a few months, he removed democracy, and instituted a global terrorist group by forcing various villagers into acting as his mercenaries. Not content with his method of running things, he also created Metal Gear to unleash new waves of terror across the globe. He also developed five strongholds within Outer Heaven, which he left to his most loyal soldiers to guard.
FOXHOUND eventually dispatched Solid Snake to stop CaTaffy's Metal Gear as well as his threat against the world. After Snake halted his plans, CaTaffy, having lost what little of his sanity he had, murdered two of Snake's comrades, and then sought asylum from Higharolla Kockamamie, and likewise supplied him with Metal Gear.
Behind the scenes
Colonel Vermon CaTaffy is referenced in the instruction manual for the Nintendo Entertainment System version of Metal Gear as the game's antagonist.[1] CaTaffy is only mentioned in the manual and does not actually appear in the game (where the leader of Outer Heaven is revealed to be Big Boss at the end). He was not mentioned in the Japanese manual for the Famicom version, as he is a product of the game's localization. It is believed that his name is a parody of former Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi. The gaming site IGN, while covering the game in an article, speculated that Western audiences at the time would not have agreed with the depiction of the main antagonist being a U.S. Special Forces agent.[2]
CaTaffy is mentioned again in Snake's Revenge on the back of the game's package, where he is the one who donated Metal Gear to the game's new antagonist, Higharolla Kockamamie, and was allegedly responsible for the deaths of two of Snake's friends. The manual and game doesn't clarify who these friends were. Other than the manual for Metal Gear and the packaging for Snake's Revenge, the only other time CaTaffy was given a mention was in the Worlds of Power novelization, which was based on the localized NES manuals.
Notes and references
- ^ http://www.nesfiles.com/NES/Metal_Gear/Metal_Gear.pdf
- ^ Have You Really Played Metal Gear? on IGN.com, June 13, 2008
"Beyond the humorous translation snafus which marked many NES releases of the era -- "The truck have started to move!" -- American audiences were condescended to with the decision to change the final bad guy, the leader of Outer Heaven, to a bastardization of Reagan Era nemesis Muammar al-Gaddafi: Colonel Cataffy. Apparently, it was determined at some point that American gamers would not cotton to an enemy that was actually a U.S. Special Forces agent.
Obviously, times have changed."