Myth: Snake dyes his hair
Fact: No he fucking does not.
By Ravi Singh, Posted on August 08, 2006
I’m hearing all sorts of random shit regarding Solid Snake being naturally blond (he sure acts like one, though) and dying his hair for all of his known missions. Sorry, he’s just a pineapple (brunet on the outside, blond on the inside).
People are claiming this blond myth to be true because of the following reasons:
1) The briefing in Metal Gear Solid. His hair actually does look rather bright.
2) Liquid Snake. He’s blond. And we find out that he’s actually the dominant one… but brown is a dominant trait… so while it would make sense scientifically for all Snakes to be blond or Liquid having brown hair, it doesn’t for the dominant one to be blond and the recessive one to be a brunet.
3) Pliskin. Originally, Solid Snake was going to have blond hair when he pretended to be Iroquois Pliskin.
Now, here’s why all of the above are deemed obsolete…
1) I have black hair. Yet, in certain lighting it looks like I have light brown or even reddish hair. The reason for this is that in certain lighting, hair color tends to change slightly. Snake’s hair doesn’t necessarily look blond… it could be light brown. Especially if I was on a low-quality video with interrogation lights beaming on me.
In Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (which I’d hate to use to prove a point but I must in this case) Snake has brown hair during the briefing. Sure, he’s also wearing a nice pair of boxers, but that’s because they didn’t know how to make him naked and not look like Raiden in the process (see my myth article on that issue if you don’t understand what I mean here). They could have easily have him in blond for that segment, but no, they kept him a brunet.
2) Kojima himself stated that the reason why the Snakes have different hair colors is to separate them apart. In a sense – he goofed. And anyone who’s taken Biology knows that the whole “I AM THE DOMINANT ONE AND YOU SUCK!” genetics is bullshit and very fictional.
3) Ever heard of bleaching one’s hair? It would make sense for Snake to bleach his hair when he’s disguising himself as a fictional Navy SEAL. However, Kojima and Shinkawa got a lot of negative feedback on the matter and decided to keep him a brunet even in disguise.
Now people also state, in regards to number two, that Snake dyes his hair so he would not be mistaken as Liquid Snake. He DID cut his hair in Metal Gear Solid because of this.
However, while he does request a pair of scissors in the Metal Gear Solid briefing and cuts his hair, he doesn’t ask for any hair dye. Why would they have Grecian 5 in a submarine anyways? Yes, he looks exactly like Liquid, but this isn’t just because the hair – even after cutting it and the fact that it’s brown, Meryl still mixes him up for Liquid when the lovely couple first meet.
Also, Snake knew nothing about Liquid before Colonel Campbell informs him of him in the briefing. So why the hell would he dye his hair before, during the Outer Heaven and Zanzibar Land missions? He has brown hair there too.
Okay, so the first Metal Gear has a fuckload of brown in it. Hell, his character sprite has BLACK hair, to be exact, while the picture of him using the transmitter is all brown besides his eyes. But you cannot deny that the artwork of Snake used for the boxart used brown for his hair and that he’s definitely a brunet in Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake. If you deny that, you are an idiot. Or colorblind in denial.
And why would he dye his mullet in Sons of Liberty? OR FUCKING DYE IT when he’s disguising himself as Pliskin? I can understand not dying your hair to help a disguise because you just don’t feel like it, but dying your hair so that your hair color is the same as yours is normally, while you’re trying to pretend to be someone else makes little sense to me. It’s like if Adolf Hitler managed to stay alive after WWII by shaving off that retarded mustache and decided to disguise himself as some random Austrian guy by… growing out his trademark mustache. Ok, so maybe Snake’s hair color isn’t necessarily a trademark of his, but you always picture Snake with brown hair, right? So he shouldn’t dye it brown when he could just leave it blond and look like some random tough-as-nails guy… unless he ISN’T naturally a blond.
So there you have it. He’s a brunet. I’d say Big Boss is as well, but we don’t really know that for sure, do we?