- —Tagline
Solid Snake VS Sam Fisher is the 48th episode of Death Battle, featuring Solid Snake and Otacon from the Metal Gear series and Sam Fisher and Grim from the Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell series in a battle between stealthy video game agents. Snake was voiced by Christopher Sabat, Otacon was voiced by Brad Venable, Sam was voiced by Ben Reynolds, and Grim was voiced by Whitney Rodgers.
Interlude
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Wiz: They are the government's best-kept secrets. Masters of stealth, trained to kill in a hundred different ways from the shadows or face to face.
Boomstick: Solid Snake, the legendary soldier of Metal Gear.
Wiz: Sam Fisher, Splinter Cell's ultimate predator.
Boomstick: He's Wiz and I'm Boomstick.
Wiz: And it's our job to analyze their weapons, armor, and skills to find out who would win... a Death Battle.
Solid Snake
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Main Menu Introduction by Maki Kirioka, Kazuki Muraoka
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Wiz: His name was simply "David", and he had one clear purpose in life: become the successor to the greatest soldier who ever lived.
Boomstick: Why? Because he was cloned from him. Strap in ladies and gentlemen, this origin's a doozy!
Wiz: As a secret government project, David was created using eggs donated by a Japanese scientist and grown in the womb of a femme fatale spy along with seven other would-be brothers.
Boomstick: She was almost the original Octomom, except they scrambled six of them to somehow empower the remaining two.
Wiz: According to prophecy, one of these twins would bring ruin to the world, while the other would save it. So that kind of works out.
Boomstick: Born to be a soldier, he joined the Green Berets as a teenager and later joined the CIA, the U.S. Army, and finally the hi-tech Black Ops group called FOXHOUND. Here, his deadly stealth techniques earned him his legendary code name: Solid Snake.
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Metal Gear Solid Main Theme by Maki Kirioka, Kazuki Muraoka
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Wiz: While serving under this Special Forces unit, he received training from the very man he was cloned from: Big Boss.
Boomstick: But on his very first mission from FOXHOUND, war itself changed. After infiltrating the military nation Outer Heaven to rescue a fellow agent, Snake uncovered plans for the creation of a gigantic, walking weapon that can airmail a nuke to anywhere in the world. It was called "Metal Gear".
Wiz: Despite being a FOXHOUND rookie, Snake destroyed the Metal Gear and discovered that Big Boss himself was apparently leading the enemy. After killing his own father, supposedly, Snake had had enough and entered early retirement.
Boomstick: But since he had singlehandedly destroyed a walking nuke shooter and the greatest soldier who ever lived, Snake became the next soldier of legend. Anytime a new Metal Gear showed up, Snake was pulled back into the fray, when all he really wanted to do was get drunk in Alaska and dogsled race with his 50 huskies. Talk about living the dream...
Col. Campbell: The Iditarod? The longest sled race in the world? When did you become a dog musher?
Wiz: Turns out Big Boss wasn't quite as dead as people thought. Even after Snake burned him alive with nothing but a lighter and a can of hairspray—
Boomstick: History's greatest soldier, everyone!
Wiz: These Metal Gears kept showing up. Soon, Snake was an expert at destroying these robotic behemoths.
Boomstick: He even piloted a Metal Gear to destroy another Metal Gear that was designed to kill Metal Gears! Whoa...
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Metal Gear Solid 2 Main Theme by Harry Gregson-Williams
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Wiz: But Snake did not earn his reputation as the icon of stealth by going in guns blazing. Although he knows how to use almost any weapon he finds, he keeps his load light by entering missions with only the bare essentials.
Boomstick: Snake carries a Ruger Mark II pistol with tranquilizer darts, perfect for silent takedowns. But, if he wants to get lethal, he whips out his 1911 Operator, one of my favorite handguns ever, and he's got a stun knife, which is like if a taser and a knife had a baby, all three of which he incorporates into his specialized fighting style: CQC, a brutal mix of hand-to-hand combat and gunplay taught to him by Big Boss himself.
Wiz: Preferring to remain unseen, these weapons wouldn't do Snake much good without other tools to keep him hidden from his enemies. Snake's outfitted with his OctoCamo, a smart camouflage which can match the color, texture, and temperature of Snake's surroundings.
Boomstick: Not even the Gekko bots with their infrared and night vision tracking can find Snake in this camo. Plus, he's always aware of his surroundings, thanks to his high-tech eyepatch: the Solid Eye.
Wiz: He's not actually missing an eye. It's more like a monocle from the future, with infrared, night vision, and radar. Snake's also been injected with nanomachines, which energize his body, and his Codec, an internal radio system. The Codec allows two-way communication which is 100% silent, almost like telepathy.
Ames: We have little time, so I'll be brief. How about switching to nano communications first? Silence beats talk when it comes to safety.
Through the view of a camera, Revolver Ocelot hears nothing between Snake and Ames, much to his annoyance.
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Metal Gear Saga by Harry Gregson-Williams
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Boomstick: Feeding him info from the other side of the Codec is his best friend, Otacon, a pathetic cowering nerd with horrible bladder control. But he's also really good at hacking computer systems, so I guess he gets by. Give him enough time and Otacon can hack into any top-secret facility.
Wiz: Apart from Big Boss, Snake has defeated cybernetic ninjas, psychics, his own twin, and of course, several giant Metal Gears.
Boomstick: He can wield a railgun as powerful as a tank with his bare hands, and once blew up an actual tank using nothing but a couple of grenades.
Wiz: And once, he powered through a sealed hallway while being bombarded with microwaves and survived.
Boomstick: Who throws microwaves at people? Come on!
Wiz: No, Boomstick, it's more like he was inside a giant microwave.
Boomstick: My god... Think of the size of Hot Pocket you could make with that!
Wiz: Under the effects of microwaves, a normal man's skin would deteriorate within about two to three seconds. Snake lasted more than three minutes.
Boomstick: And any guy that can last three minutes is a goddamn stallion. Now I know why they call him "Solid". But seriously, this guy is built Tonka tough, though he's hardly perfect. His OctoCamo provides only light protection against knives and other weapons. And even though he's in peak physical condition, one well-placed bullet will put him down as easily as any other man.
Wiz: Also, cloning and nanomachines don't mix. By the time he was 35 years old, they caused Snake to begin aging rapidly and even suffer heart issues and seizures.
Boomstick: Old and wrinkly or not, you can count on Solid Snake to see every single mission through... and be a badass the whole time! There's a reason he's known as the man who makes the impossible possible.
Snake: I'm no hero. Never was. Never will be.
Meryl: You haven't changed at all, Snake.
Sam Fisher
Wiz: Samuel Leo Fisher was born in Towson, Maryland in 1957.
Boomstick: Woah, he's older than I thought!
Wiz: Orphaned at a young age, he spent his youth at a military boarding school. His goal was to join the CIA and follow in the footsteps of his late father.
Boomstick: Sam's career in government work was an impressive one, joining both the CIA and the Navy SEALS. During this time he found he had a particular knack for espionage... and ladies. See, on one of his missions, he fired off a few rounds into the wrong target and knocked her up. So he married her, they had a daughter named Sarah, and Sam Fisher lived happily ever after... No wait, he got divorced after three years, and his ex died of ovarian cancer.
Wiz: Left with no other family but his daughter, Sam retired at just 47 years old. This time, he'd spend the rest of his days in peace...
Both Wiz and Boomstick laugh.
Wiz: As if! We all know how it goes.
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Splinter Cell Main Menu Theme by Michael Richard Plowman
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Wiz: Sam was too good to leave the agent's life forever, and was recruited by Third Echelon, a top-secret sub-branch of the NSA. Third Echelon wanted Sam for their new Black Ops unit, focused on infiltrating impenetrable locations, extracting information, and escaping even the most impossible scenarios. They called it the Splinter Cell Program.
Boomstick: Oh yeah, let me come out of retirement and do that: the completely impossible!
Sam has a guard in a chokehold.
Sam: Talk, but talk quietly.
Guard: I'll tell ya anything, I'm the biggest coward you've ever met!
Sam: That's quite a claim.
Guard: I've already wet myself!
Sam: Well... then you've made the Top Ten.
Boomstick: Well luckily, like other agents of stealth, Sam Fisher didn't have to work alone.
Wiz: His support comes from Anna Grímsdóttir, or Grim, who communicates with Sam through subdermal implants in his ear.
Boomstick: Ewww!
Wiz: It's just a tiny earpiece which operates by directly vibrating the bones of his inner ear, so only Sam can hear her.
Boomstick: So she's vibrating his bones, eh?
Wiz: What is with you today?
Boomstick: I don't know...
Wiz: Grim is a world-class hacker who started as Third Echelon's lead programmer, and might be aging backwards... but that's irrelevant. Together, they are a formidable team, although Sam and Grim have very different approaches to a mission and can sometimes butt heads. While Grim is very by-the-books, Fisher prefers to follow his instincts. For better or worse, he will completely abandon a well-laid plan over a mere hunch. Surprisingly, this works out better than you'd think.
Boomstick: See? You don't always have to plan out every little detail about every little thing!
Wiz: I thought we agreed never to discuss that trip!
Boomstick: I just wanted a churro, but no, it wasn't in the schedule! Bet it was delicious...
Wiz: Oh, shut up, Boomstick.
Boomstick: I'll kill you.
Wiz: Grim directs Sam's movements, keeping him invisible on the field, along with the latest in stealth gear.
Boomstick: He sports the Mark VIII Tactical Operations suit, a light-diffusing black armor that's layered with Kevlar and RhinoPlate to help protect against bullets.
Wiz: Along with a layer of Gor-Tex, a material that suppresses his heat signature to make him invisible to night vision.
Boomstick: Speaking of night vision, Sam... has that, and more! His Multi-Vision Goggles come equipped with thermal vision, sonar, a zoom function, and even footprint tracking, to ensure that Fisher can see you even if you can't see him. In fact, he's so stealthy, that while he can track footprints left behind by others, his own trail is completely undetectable, even by him! I'd say that he's the stealthiest man ever if it weren't for the THREE GIANT GREEN LIGHTS COMING OFF HIS HEAD! Come on, dude!
Wiz: Common misconception. As obvious as they may appear, those lights are actually invisible to a normal human eye.
Boomstick: Really? Well, that's too bad for his enemies, because Sam excels at killing efficiently. While lurking in the shadows, he takes aim with his favorite pistol, the semi-automatic Five-SeveN, a compact firearm that's perfect for silent, quick kills.
Wiz: And if someone manages to spot him – unlikely as it may be – Fisher is more then prepared to take them head-on with his SC-20K Modular Assault Weapons System.
Boomstick: This beaut is like the Swiss Army knife of guns. It has an assault rifle mode, shotgun mode, sniper rifle, oh, she can be whatever you want her to be...
Wiz: Um, Boomstick...
Boomstick: What! Yeah, ahum... As versatile as she is, that's nothing compared to the amount of things she fires. Aside from bullets, the 20K can launch gas and EMP grenades, sticky shockers, rubber bullets, and even cameras which attach to the wall.
Wiz: After their titanium spikes anchor them in place, Fisher can use his built-in communications device, the OPSAT, to monitor them. These cameras have night, thermal, and electromagnetic field vision.
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Splinter Cell Convinction Main Theme by Amon Tobin, Kaveh Cohen
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Boomstick: Sam's got so many ways to take on his opponents, it's hard to count all the impressive stuff he's done. He's carried out more than a dozen missions, went all Liam Neeson and recused his daughter from kidnappers, and has even infiltrated the CIA itself, which... probably isn't easy.
Wiz: He has single-handedly prevented a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, foiled terrorist plans to destroy the world's oil supply... all of it, and when he discovered that Third Echelon was corrupt from within, he took it down by teaming up with Grim to create... Fourth Echelon.
Boomstick: In combat, he's insanely fast and accurate on the quick draw. Even when surrounded, he can put four bullets in four skulls in 3.2 seconds. He can literally take a life in the blink of an eye. Despite his age, nature hasn't slowed Sam down at all. I don't know about you, but I'll be thinking twice before stepping into any shadows.
Lambert: Fisher, it's starting to look like war is unavoidable. JCOS is asking all sources for current Division level intelligence.
Sam: So, besides stopping World War III, is there anything else I can do for you this evening?
Prelude
Wiz: Alright, the combatants are set. Let's end this debate once and for all!
Boomstick: IT'S TIME FOR A STEALTH BATTLEEE!!!
Death Battle
Secret Zanzibar Research FacilityStatus: AbandonedTarget: Data files on Meta patients #05, #09, #13 and experimental human enhancement drug.Location: North Zanzibar forest0400 Hours July 10, 2018
In a North Zanzibar forest on July 10, 2018, there is a secret research facility containing data that has information on meta-human testing. Solid Snake arrives in a helicopter and drops out on facility grounds as he receives a call from Otacon.
Otacon: OK Snake, I've finished uploading the building schematics to your Solid Eye. The intel we need is inside. Should be a piece of cake, but... there's one heat signature inside.
Snake: Just one?
Otacon: Yeah. Maybe everyone's out for a late-night dinner?
Snake: Thanks, Otacon. Piece of cake.
Snake then enters the building. Meanwhile, Sam Fisher is finishing uploading the data both he and Snake were sent out to retrieve, having taken down a few guards beforehand. Sam hears Snake's helicopter leave the area. He immediately contacts his associate Grim for a sitrep.
Sam: Grim, we haven't had the chopper planned, have we?
In the skies above the facility is the mobile HQ of Fourth Echelon, the C-147B Paladin. Grim is riding within it, monitoring Sam's progress as she updates him.
Grim: No, the Paladin is your EVAC plan. Why?
Sam: Hmmm, we got a party crasher.
Sam removes the flash drive and leaves the computer as Grim looks at her map.
Grim: Your new friend won't last long, there's only one way into that room.
Sam: Don't lecture me, he's mine.
Sam and Snake slowly sneak up to each other on opposite sides of the wall.
Otacon: Snake, he's in the room...!
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Gotta Get The Cash by Akemi Kimura
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The two soldiers come out from cover to point their guns around the corner, only to meet each other point blank with surprise. They both hide behind their side of the wall before Sam comes back and tries to shoot Snake. Snake counters him with CQC and knocks Sam's gun out of his hand before delivering some punches.
With some distance gained, Snake pulls his 1911 Operator out and takes aim at Sam before noticing the computer he was using. Realizing his opponent was after valuable info, Sam pulls out another pistol to shoot the computer and destroy it.
Snake: Where's the data?
Sam: Wouldn't you like to know?
Sam and Snake exchange more punches and bullets before Sam kicks Snake out of the room and takes out his SC-20K. Snake flees as Sam fires at the walls in front of him with his assault rifle mode in an attempt to hit the agent, but Snake dodges all of the bullets with acrobatic finesse. Sam then comes around the corner and sees a cardboard box sneaking around. He then hides at the next corner.
Sam: Grim, did you get that?
Grim: Sam, are you alright?
Sam: I'm fine. He's after the data.
Grim: Just our luck. I'll bring the plane in for you.
Sam: Don't. This guy's gonna be a problem if I don't take care of him now.
Grim: But it's more important that–
Sam: No!
Sam shoots two cameras into the ceiling to monitor his enemy.
Sam: Trust me, Grim.
Snake calls Otacon on his Codec.
Snake: I'm not alone. Somebody beat me to the intel and destroyed the source. Think he's with Praying Mantis? Raven Sword?
Otacon: If they're operating out here, it couldn't possibly be anyone we're familiar with. I'll start scanning radio frequencies to see if I can find any comm lines, but Snake... Until we know what you're up against, I suggest you keep yourself out of sight.
Snake: I already got it covered.
Otacon: Please tell me it's not a cardboard box.
The Codec ends. Snake is in the men's restroom with the cardboard box.
Snake: Do I need to go over this again? The cardboard box is a very important tool for infiltration missions. It's ideal for fooling the enemy.
In the dark hallway, Fisher has his Multi-Vision Goggles on as he tracks Snake's footprints into the restroom. He encounters the box and shoots a camera into the wall behind it as Snake's Codec starts again.
Otacon: Snake, this is insane.
Snake: Otacon, I'm not exaggerating when I say the success of my mission hinges on how I use this cardboard box. But in the end, a cardboard box...
Sam shoots the box three times, which also pauses the music. Believing the deed done, Sam kicks over the box to discover that there's no one inside.
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Metal Gear Solid 3 Main Theme by Harry Gregson-Williams
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Snake sneaks up behind him as his OctoCamo suit deactivates.
Snake: ...is only made of paper.
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Laughin' At U by Akemi Kimura
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Snake armlocks Sam's head but Sam elbows him and uses the wall in front of him to flip out of it. They exchange punches and bullets again and Snake throws Sam onto the ground as he loses the flash drive, allowing Snake to pick it up and contact Otacon.
Snake: Otacon, I've got the intel.
Sam gets up and shoots two stray bullets, one of which hits Snake in the stomach, injuring him and allowing Sam to hide around the corner. Snake activates the invisibility on his suit as Grim contacts Sam.
Grim: Sam, I'm sending you a camera feed.
Sam looks at his OPSAT to see what Grim sees; an invisible Solid Snake remaining in his prior location around the corner of Sam.
Grim: Whatever suit he's wearing is powered by electricity.
With this new information in mind, Sam has a counter in mind.
Sam: Perfect.
He primes and throws his EMP grenade into the room, which disables Snake's invisibility. Left with no choice, Snake comes out of cover and points the gun out, but finds no one there as the music abruptly stops. With adrenaline wearing off, he is left to groan and tend to his gunshot wound. Sam, meanwhile, took the time to escape into the vents.
Grim: That was close. You're welcome, by the way.
Sam: I lost the data.
Grim: Oh, wonderful! Well, without his suit, he's not hiding anywhere.
Sam comes out of the vents from the ceiling and approaches a door.
Grim: He's just behind that door. Go get it back, old man.
Sam: This is too easy...
Suddenly, Sam starts hearing loud and ear-piercing static in his earpiece.
Sam: Ugh! What is that?
Grim: I don't know! Somebody's interfering!
As Grim attempts to regain control of her communications, another unknown voice starts speaking to her: Otacon.
Otacon: Hello? Is this thing on?
Grim: Who is this?! Identify yourself!
Otacon: I'm Otacon. I'm impressed, your security's pretty state of the art. Not good enough, though. (whispers) Sorry.
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Divine Identity by Shoji Meguro
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During their conversation, Otacon is seen hacking all of Grim's computers, with her unable to gain control.
Grim: What? How long have you been listening in?
Otacon: Long enough. But right now Ms. Grim, I've got to shut you down.
The technology in the Paladin starts exploding and going haywire as the plane starts going down.
Grim: Ahh! Sam?! Sam, do you copy? SAM?!
On his end, Sam is still dealing with static and no longer able to contact his associate.
Sam: Grim? Are you there? Are you okay?
Suddenly, all the lights in the facility start shutting down, forcing Sam to put on his night vision goggles. He barges into the set of doors he's next to into the next room. As he starts searching around in the dark, Snake stands up behind him, smoking a cigarette and prepared to attack while a voice from the past echoes.
Ocelot: (echoing) You're pretty good...
Snake and Fisher fire off multiple shots at each other in the dark, briefly illuminating the room with their muzzle flashes as they do so. As this happens, Otacon attempts to call out Snake's name for a response.
Otacon: Snake? SNAKE?! SNAAAAAAAAAAKE!
Ocelot: (echoing) Pretty... good.
More loaded ammunition is heard as Sam starts to fire off his SC-20K assault rifle as Snake dodges the bullets. The bullets take out the windows and brings illuminated light into the room. With this, Sam takes off his goggles to regain his bearings, only for Snake sneak up on and suplex him, causing Sam's gun to slide away and his forehead to start bleeding.
Snake pulls out his stun knife while Sam is left to pull out a buccaneer knife. With no more ammo or equipment to rely on, both men, knowing that only one leaves alive, charge at each other for some fast-paced CQC, in which Sam manages to get a good cut on Snake's chest. As Snake groans and deals with the laceration, it's revealed that Sam got his flash drive back during the scuffle.
Sam: Gotcha.
After Sam puts the drive away, both wounded men warily approach each other. This time however, Snake uses his superior skill for some trick moves that leave Sam confused with his movements. Sam ends up making a mistake, which allows Snake to grab the wrist that holds his knife, giving Snake the opportunity to stab Sam painfully in the chest twice.
He then activates his knife's built-in taser to electrocute Sam internally before striking him in the jaw with a high knee, causing the re-collected flash drive to be sent flying into the air. Sam's grievous injuries leave him wobbling and struggling to stand as Snake finishes the fight by stabbing Sam through the head with his own buccaneer knife, killing him instantly.
Snake backs off as blood oozes from the spy's head before he drops onto his knees and falls to the ground dead. The victorious Solid Snake catches the flash drive Sam had as he smokes a cigarette. His mission completed, Snake puffs out smoke as he leaves the facility with only one sentence of reviewing ease.
Snake: Piece of cake.
Snake rides off in his helicopter as the Paladin crashes down into the facility, killing Grim as well.
Results
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Metal Gear Solid 3 Main Theme by Harry Gregson-Williams
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Boomstick: Holy hell!
Wiz: Both Snake and Fisher were experts in their field. Snake may come second to Fisher's skills in silent assassination, but he far exceeds him in close-quarters combat thanks to his specialized training.
Boomstick: Even though Sam was a master of blending into the shadows, Snake's Solid Eye had no trouble tracking him down.
Wiz: What's more, Grim's comm line has a history of being hacked into while Snake's Codec does not.
Boomstick: "But what about Snake's nanomachines and Solid Eye? Wouldn't they be disabled by the EMP blast?"
Wiz: Actually... no. EMPs are comparable to microwaves in how they affect electronics. When Snake was bombarded by microwaves, his Solid Eye survived for two minutes of non-stop radiation, while his nanomachines remained intact throughout the entire experience. A single EMP grenade doesn't quite stack up to a hallway of microwaves.
Boomstick: Even if he did lose his nanomachines somehow, he didn't need them to beat Sam.
Wiz: Overall, Snake has a counter for anything Fisher could throw at him and had the edge in close-quarters combat, leaving this victory pretty straightforward.
Boomstick: Poor Sam. This loss just kinda snuck up on him. Yeah, from the start, it was lights out for Sam.
We cut to the "Winner" card.
Wiz: The winner is Solid Snake.
Trivia
Production
- The core connections between Solid Snake and Sam Fisher are that they are both protagonists of famed stealth video game series who are military elites and master infiltrators who work for American government agencies (FOXHOUND and Third Echelon, respectively). Both were so good at their work that despite entering retirement at early ages for personal reasons (Snake having enough after killing Big Boss, and Sam to take care of his daughter), they were brought back into action to take down greater threats to the world (Metal Gears and multiple terrorist plots, respectively). In addition:
- Both use special forms of high-tech equipment to aid them in combat (the Solid Eye and the SC-20K Modular Assault Weapons System, respectively).
- Both have a unique form of radio communication through which only their partners can speak to them (the Codec and subdermal implants, respectively).
- Both are friends and allies with a world-class hacker who assists them remotely on their missions (Otacon and Grim, respectively).
- Both have been referenced by the other in their games.
- In the Snake vs. Monkey minigame from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Snake asks Colonel Campbell about Sam and Gabe, referring to Sam Fisher and Gabe Logan from Syphon Filter, acknowledging Metal Gear's two biggest competitors in the stealth game genre.
- In the reveal trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots shown during E3 2005, Snake wears Sam's trademark goggles, giving the impression that Sam would be in the game until Snake took off the goggles and revealed himself.
- In Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, Sam makes an appearance in the Operation: Watchman crossover expansion, where he talks to Karen Bowman about a soldier in Army Infiltration who "wore a bandana or something," to which Karen informs Sam that that soldier retired. It's heavily implied that this bandana-wearing soldier is Snake.
- In a Q&A prior to this episode, Ben Singer and Chad James stated they wanted to do this matchup, but couldn't think of a way to make the animation entertaining since both characters are primarily known for stealth.
- However, Ben revealed on Ask.fm a while after the episode's announcement that it was one they always had planned to do, and it being too difficult was just them joking around.
- This episode had to be temporarily taken down after release due to an error. What exactly the error was is unknown.
- During a panel, it was revealed that the original death idea for Sam Fisher would have involved Solid Snake breaking every bone in his body.
- The episode was the subject of the second episode of the ScrewAttack web show The Industry, "DEATH BATTLE has Too Many Flips!". In it, Shaun Bolen criticizes Torrian Crawford (who animated this episode) for the scene where Snake flips to avoid Sam's bullets and re-animates the battle poorly to try and one-up him.
Easter Eggs
- There are a number of references to the Metal Gear series throughout the fight:
- The alert sound effect plays when Sam and Snake first see each other, complete with the red exclamation mark over the combatants' heads.
- Snake recites his cardboard box speech from Metal Gear Solid 2 when he hides in one partway into the fight.
- Revolver Ocelot's "You're pretty good." voice line from Metal Gear Solid 4 plays before Snake and Sam fight in the dark.
- Otacon yelling Snake's same in increasing distress as they do so is a reference to the game over screens from Metal Gear Solid.
- Three windows can be seen on the top left of the computer screen as Sam retrieves the data from it. The contents of the windows are:
- Top: Gameplay from ScrewAttack's Jump'N'Shoot Attack.
- Middle: The Super Saiyan God Goku tease from the Boba Fett VS Samus Aran (2015) Livestream.
- Bottom: The ending to Chuck Norris VS Segata Sanshiro.
- The inside of Grim's Paladin features a few references, namely a Sentry Turret from Portal and a Jump'N'Shoot Attack arcade machine.
- One of Grim's computers shows footage from Metal Gear Ben, a Metal Gear parody series that ScrewAttack created prior to Death Battle in which Ben Singer was the protagonist.
- Snake's cardboard box has the logo for SGC on it, and the inside contains the scene from Chuck Norris VS Segata Sanshiro where Chuck and Segata put on the "Deal With It" sunglasses.
- The sound effect used when Sam crawls through the vents is the same one used in Five Nights at Freddy's 2.
Errors
- In Snake's analysis, Wiz's statement that the mix of cloning and nanomachines causes accelerated aging is not exactly correct. The accelerated aging (or Werner syndrome) was an intentional flaw developed into the clone project Snake was created in as a fail-safe not only to stop the clones' genetic information from being reproduced or falling into enemy hands, but to prevent the clones from turning against the Patriots of their own will.
- The in-universe date the fight takes place on is July 10, 2018. The canon Snake would be dead at this time, as in 2014, he was only given a year to live due to his worsening conditions in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, as well as being well past his prime.
Other
- This is the 11th episode where Boomstick yells a variation of his pre-fight catchphrase (via saying "IT'S TIME FOR A STEALTH BATTLEEE!!!"), after Akuma VS Shang Tsung, Rogue VS Wonder Woman, Felicia VS Taokaka, Eggman VS Wily, Terminator VS RoboCop, Pokémon Battle Royale, Fulgore VS Sektor, Tigerzord VS Gundam Epyon, Boba Fett VS Samus Aran (2015), and Guts VS Nightmare, and with the next 18 being Hercule Satan VS Dan Hibiki, Bowser VS Ganon, Joker VS Sweet Tooth, Meta VS Carolina, Mega Man Battle Royale, Dragonzord VS Mechagodzilla, Scarlet Witch VS Zatanna, James Bond VS John Wick, Trunks VS Silver, SpongeBob VS Aquaman, Jason Voorhees VS Michael Myers, Sauron VS Lich King, Gogeta VS Vegito, Phoenix VS Raven, Scooby-Doo VS Courage the Cowardly Dog, Galactus VS Unicron, Kratos VS Asura, and Ghost Rider VS Spawn.
- WatchMojo.com ranked this episode at #4 on their "Top 10 Screw Attack: Death Battle Episodes" list.