«I’m a movie guy.»
Since the series’ earliest days on the humble MSX, one of the big inspirations behind Metal Gear has been John Carpenter’s Escape from New York. Protagonist Solid Snake gets his callsign from Kurt Russell’s character Snake Plissken (a link that would later be solidified when Snake uses the codename Plisken in MGS2), as well as his general bearing and attitude and equipment, while later games will make the Snake connection even more obvious with the addition of a Plissken-style eyepatch.
So Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima is obviously a fan. From Metal Gear Solid onwards Snake would be voiced by David Hayter (until Kiefer Sutherland was cast in MGS: GZ and MGSV: TPP) but that seems to have been a somewhat fraught relationship, with the actor revealing that even before that switch Kojima had been looking to re-cast the role, and tried to go back to where it all began.
«I had to re-audition for Metal Gear 3 to play Naked Snake,» said Hayter in 2016. «They made me re-audition to play Old Snake, and the whole time, they were trying to find somebody else to do it. I heard that Kojima asked one of the producers on Metal Gear 3 to ask Kurt Russell if he would take over for that game. He didn’t want to do it.»
Hayter would go on to voice Naked Snake in MGS3 and take his final bow as Solid Snake in MGS4. But the notion that Russell could’ve voiced a character based so heavily on one of his own characters has always been a piece of catnip trivia for some fans, and in a new interview with GQ the actor was asked about being approached to star in the series.
