Big Boss as Che Guevara: The Reason Behind Peace Walker's Characters' Views

With Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker having a much wider release thanks to the HD Collection released for both PS3 and Xbox 360, the online community has generated more buzz concerning the anti-American views carried by the majority of the characters in Peace Walker. Of particular note is that Big Boss is constantly compared to Che Guevara during the game, at some points being mistaken for him. Today, it's not uncommon to see college kids wearing t-shirts with Che Guevara's face on it, the vast majority of said students not having any idea how much of a radical Guevara was.


Even Big Boss expresses admiring Che Guevara and renouncing America, though his reasons for his anti-American views are well-founded thanks to the circumstances of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops, and the existence of the Patriots. Big Boss isn't necessarily anti-American, he's opposed to the Patriots taking a stranglehold on American politics, giving him good reasoning for creating Outer Heaven and becoming a nuclear power: the destruction of the Patriots.


It must be remembered that this game is fictional and depicts an America (and later world) that is run entirely by Zero (and later A.I.s) controlling all actions to achieve the "perfect" result. Nevertheless, Amanda and Chico display clearly anti-American views that are not unfounded in mid-1970s Central America. To the Sandinistas, Che Guevara was their hero and ideal leader before he was killed in Bolivia. Today, finding anyone south of the U.S. border who admires Che Guevara is difficult. With the Cold War over and the "threat" of communism (mostly) gone from Latin America, the very idea that Che Guevara attempted to take a small band of revolutionaries to take over Bolivia is just plain laughable.


To really drive home the point that possibly none of the characters in Peace Walkers are on the "right" side is that none of them are anti-nuke and are more than willing to become a nuclear power. Che Guevara infamously said that if Cuba had possession of the nuclear weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis, they would have fired them at their enemies.


Another point that is lost on some people, it seems, is that Peace Walker is supposed to tell the story of how Big Boss went from a hilariously cheesy 1960s style action movie hero to the villain of Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2. Depicting the fall from grace of a likable character is not easy, but Hideo Kojima perfectly did it, causing the fanbase to not like Big Boss' reasoning to creating Outer Heaven, even if it was to fight the Patriots.