Written, directed, and produced by Hideo Kojima, 1998’s Metal Gear Solid has long been considered by many to be one of the most influential and important video games of all time. The first venture into 3D for the Metal Gear series, the game is attributed with being the title that truly brought Kojima into the spotlight as an innovative and out-of-the box creator. More than 20 years after its original release, Metal Gear Solid players are still uncovering new details about the game.
A week ago, a Twitch streamer who calls herself Boba accidentally came across a glitch in Metal Gear Solid that got speedrunners excited. Just before fighting the Hind D, there is a section where Snake runs up a series of stairs, passing an inaccessible door on the way. Boba somehow glitched through the door, which allowed her to skip more than two minutes of the game. Speedrunners soon figured out how to reliably replicate the glitch and are now calling it the Boba Skip.
On the same day that the Boba Skip was found, another Metal Gear Solid player shared a second discovery about the game on Reddit. While running through the portion of the game where Snake must make his way through a room filled with gas, Reddit user FlamingBuffalo attempted to hide in a cardboard box. When Snake died in the box, an animation played that showed the box first shaking and then falling on its side with Snake’s legs sticking out. The animation is accompanied by the sound of Snake choking and then dying from the gas.
This special death animation only plays when Snake dies from the gas while hiding in the cardboard box. If he is in the same room, hides in the box, and instead gets killed by guards, the animation does not trigger. Undoubtedly, in over two decades since the release of Metal Gear Solid, other people have come across this animation and didn’t realize that they had uncovered something that many players hadn’t found.
It seems that a majority of the commenters on the Reddit post had never seen the animation before, despite having played through the game multiple times. Many praised developer Hideo Kojima’s attention to detail, noting that he took the time to add a death animation to Metal Gear Solid that would rarely be seen. This animation did not carry over to Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, the 2004 remake of the game by Silicon Knights.
Metal Gear Solid is available on PC and the original PlayStation.