People who look at Metal Gear's Solid Snake or Big Boss are likely drawn to three distinct features. First are the characters' rugged and unkempt faces, and second are the out-of-date mullets - relics of the 1980s. Since Solid Snake is a clone of Big Boss, so both share a disinterest in how they look and are more preoccupied with the missions they are given.
The final piece of the puzzle is by far the most iconic. A simple bandana covers the circumference of each character's heads, holding their hair back and preventing unwanted foreign bodies from obscuring their vision. While the bandana may seem like just a normal accessory, it has a wide number of uses and implications in the Metal Gear universe.
Metal Gear's Bandana Has a History
Being the older of the two characters, Big Boss (then known by his codename "Snake") started sporting a bandana during Operation Snake Eater. After seemingly being betrayed by The Boss in the prior Virtuous Mission, his former mentor broke Snake's arm before tossing him off the Dolinovodno bridge. The only thing Snake has to remember the encounter is the bandana he managed to remove from The Boss's person before he fell off the bridge.
Snake (the man who would become Big Boss) wore the bandana during Operation Snake Eater as a reminder of his and The Boss' prior relationship. Not only were they mentor and student, but lovers as well. The bandana's significance changed after he defeated The Boss and took her place as Big Boss. It became a way for Big Boss to remember The Boss and her will (or at the very least how he envisioned it).
A Soldier's Best Friend
While Solid Snake doesn't have such a storied history behind his bandana, his first one was provided as part of his FOXHOUND field uniform, which left him little choice but to wear it. The kerchief grew on him, so much so that he started sporting a bandana in his succeeding missions even if it was no longer part of the regulation uniform. Later on, during the events of Metal Gear Solid, Meryl Silverburgh gives Solid Snake a special bandana embroidered with the infinity symbol and the kanji characters for the word "infinity." Snake would continue to wear this particular bandana during missions until his final appearance in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of The Patriots.
An Indispensable Gameplay Tool
The infinity symbol on Solid Snake's bandana alludes to its unique properties. By completing certain challenges in various Metal Gear games, players can unlock the bandana as an equipable item. It provides infinite ammo to those who wear it, which is a helpful thing to have in survival and sneaking missions. Since resource acquisition and management are important in all Metal Gear games, wearing the Infinity Bandana can drastically cut down the amount of work players have to do. This gives them more time to focus on the main missions, which are arguably the best parts of the franchise.
While games like the original Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake required players to simply complete the game once to earn the Infinity Bandana, subsequent entries introduced other ways of obtaining it. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty tasks players with acquiring all the collectible dog tags that drop from interrogated enemy soldiers. Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots requires a complete no-kill run or paying a hefty 5,000,000 Drebin Points to unlock it. In order to offset the infinite ammo perk, some Metal Gear games limit the player's ability to attain a high score.
There are other variations of Metal Gear's bandana. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater has the Infinity Face Paint instead of the Infinity Bandana, and Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain also brings back the Boss's Bandana. While the Infinity Bandana is present in the latter game and provides the same boon, Boss's Bandana decreases the chance for players to suffer serious injuries.
It's interesting to see how a simple piece of cloth has become synonymous with the Metal Gear series and its iconic characters. Hideo Kojima has always been one to add objects of significance into his games, and the bandana was just one of many pieces of gear that set his characters apart from other pieces of media. It may look tacky in the real world, but it's almost impossible to separate Big Boss and Solid Snake from their trademark bandanas.
Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain is available now on PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.