Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain/Demon Snake

Demon Snake

Demon Snake is a hidden mechanic and minor story character in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

Demon Snake, a variation of Venom Snake, is signified by the caked-on blood and outstretched shrapnel horn. While most players will see Demon Snake make a minor appearance in the missions "Shining Lights, Even In Death" and "Truth: The Man Who Sold The World", Demon Snake will become your main playable character, should you commit enough violent and careless acts. Upon accruing 50,000 or more Demon Points, Snake and the player's avatar will be semi-permanently caked in blood and have the shrapnel horn be at its max length until performing enough heroic acts to revert Snake to his original appearance. Unlike the Heroism counter in the bottom right of your iDroid, the Demon counter cannot be seen. It is mostly up to the player to determine how many points they may have obtained while playing.

You will accrue Demon Points in the following ways:

• Failed Fulton recovery extraction +20
• Killing animals +20
• Letting a support chopper be destroyed +150
• Killing Diamond Dogs staff members +180
• Letting Buddies get fatally wounded +180
• Killing prisoners with fire +200
• Developing a nuclear weapon +50,000

Due to the development of a nuclear weapon yielding 50,000 Demon points, the player will become Demon Snake regardless of their actions throughout the entire game. Stealing nuclear weapons from another player's FOB will not give you Demon points. You must be the one to develop the weapon to receive any points. You will, however, still lose Demon points for disposing of stolen nuclear weapons.

It is also worth noting that the aforementioned story mission, "Shining Lights, Even In Death", requires the player to kill 29 of their own staff members, resulting in not only a massive loss of Heroism points, but a gain of 5,220 Demon points.

Demon points can be removed through the following methods:

• -10,000 - Getting the Conservation trophy/achievement.
• -30,000 - Disposing of ten nuclear weapons.
• Extracting animals, child soldiers, VIPs, prisoners and staff

The easiest method of reverting back to Venom Snake is by deploying a team on the dispatch mission, "REFUGEE RESCUE", which only becomes available after becoming Demon Snake for the first time. The mission requires S+ staff members and takes 7 days to be completed. Due to it being an online mission, the game does not have to be running to make progress. So long as you are connected to the internet, and the servers are not undergoing maintenance you can complete the mission. The mission offers no rewards, but it will completely reset Snake's Demon points, cleaning him of blood and shrinking the shrapnel horn down to the size that is it at the start of the game.

• Demon Snake has no effect on morale.