Raiden (Real name Jack)His role as the protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2 was a controversial twist, both for the unexpected substitution of the established hero, Solid Snake, and for his androgynous appearance, the latter so much that the ridiculing of his effeminate appearance became a running gag in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and several early Metal Gear Solid 4 promotional videos featured on Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence.
According to the series creator, Hideo Kojima, the decision to make a new character the main protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2 instead of Snake stemmed from the developer's desire to develop Snake from a third-person perspective, as well as to avoid treating Snake like a rookie again.
Kojima had received many pieces of fan mail and one letter stuck out at him from a female which stated she did not want to play a story with an old man. He later took this into consideration, along with his team to design a character that would be more appealing to women. The end result was Raiden (ironically, the concept of an old man being used as the lead character is revisited in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots).
In Sons of Liberty, Raiden is initially introduced in the Big Shell chapter as "Snake", serving as a member of what appears to be a newly-reinstated FOXHOUND. He is then given a new codename, "Raiden". Through encounters with Iroquois Pliskin (Solid Snake under disguise as a Navy SEALS operative) and the Dead Cell terrorist unit holding the "Big Shell" facility, he discovers he is being manipulated by a powerful government-controlling organization known as The Patriots. Later in the game, Solidus Snake reveals information on Raiden's childhood in Metal Gear Solid 2.
According to Solidus, Raiden was originally part of the a civil war (specified to be the Liberian Civil War in The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2) during the late 80s, where he was orphaned. Taken under Solidus' wing (due to Solidus Snake having secretly killed Raiden's birth parents), Raiden is trained to become a child soldier and the leader of Solidus' "Small Boy Unit". By showing aptitude for genocide and mass murder, he was given the nicknames "Jack the Ripper" and "White Devil."
