Punished Snake

About

Punished Snake is a fan-given nickname for the Metal Gear franchise character Big Boss in the 2015 open-world action-adventure stealth video game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. The character inspired many photoshopped parodies following his reveal in an extended trailer released at the 2013 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).

Origin

During E3 on June 10th, 2013, Konami released an extended trailer for the game The Phantom Pain at a Microsoft panel discussion. Near the end of the trailer, the character Big Boss from previous games in the franchise is introduced with the alias "Punished Snake." On the following day, the trailer was uploaded to the Konami YouTube channel, where it gathered upwards of 1.9 million views over the next two years (shown below).

Spread

On May 19th, 2014, YouTuber Terak JK uploaded a parody video for the Telltale Games adventure game series Walking Dead mimicking The Phantom Pain trailer titled "Punished Kenny" (shown below).

As of August 2015, the keywords "Punished Snake" yields over 5,000 results on 4chan archive.^[2] On 4chan's /v/ (video games) board, the board-tan "Rage Guy" was depicted as Big Boss and named "Punished /v/" following the rise of the GamerGate movement.

Various Examples

On DeviantArt, the keywords "Punished Snake"^[1] yields over 500 results with various fanarts and cosplays of Big Boss.

Search Interest

External References