A hidden specter within Metal Gear Solid's lore makes Solid Snake and Revolver Ocelot's entwined fates even more tragic. The comic adaptation of Metal Gear Solid 2 reveals that a surprising character was always lingering behind the scenes, watching events unfold.
The Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty comic adaptation from IDW Publishing had the singular advantage of releasing after Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, meaning that many twists in the origin of Big Boss and Revolver Ocelot were now official canon. Snake Eater establishes that Ocelot and Big Boss (the man who would be cloned to create Solid Snake) are brothers of a sort, with Big Boss being trained by legendary warrior the Joy who - along with her teammate the Sorrow - is strongly implied to be the biological parent of Ocelot. Tragically, Joy was not allowed to keep her child, and his safety was used by the secretive Philosophers to control her, even forcing her to kill the Sorrow.
In Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty #4 - from Alex Garner and Ashley Wood - it’s shown that the Sorrow is haunting Revolver Ocelot, still watching over his son as a tragic observer of Ocelot’s fall. Ocelot’s eventual goal is the destruction of the Patriots (a group founded on the Philosophers' legacy), but it's essential to his plan that he essentially gives up his life, losing his own sense of self as he’s subsumed by the personality of Liquid Snake. His goals may be somewhat noble, but this wasn’t what the Sorrow wanted for him. The Sorrow sacrificed his life in the ‘60s so that the Philosophers wouldn't kill Ocelot as a child, but they still had a hold on Ocelot’s life until the very end, and the Sorrow seemingly watched it all, willing his child to break free.
The Sorrow’s continuing presence was later confirmed in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. In this game, the Sorrow returns to help banish the nanomachine-infused psyche of classic Metal Gear Solid boss Psycho Mantis, with the Sorrow this time appearing to Solid Snake. The fact that Sorrow was still working to destroy the Philosophers from beyond the grave adds a final note of triumph to his life, however the comics show that for most of his afterlife, he was forced to watch his son lose his nobility and identity.
Ocelot’s haunting by the Sorrow also reinforces one of the key themes of the entire Metal Gear Solid franchise - endless variations on the relationships between parents and children. Many Metal Gear characters are haunted by some version of their parents, although the Sorrow is easily the most literal example. Solid and Liquid Snake are haunted by their father figure, Big Boss, whether in Liquid’s obsession with being the ‘perfect’ clone of Big Boss, or Snake’s relationship to the mentor he's forced to oppose again and again. Big Boss and Revolver Ocelot are similarly haunted by the Joy, and then spend their lives attempting to destroy the Patriots - a group they brought into being to act as a paternalistic check on war. The Sorrow’s haunting only continues this pattern in the Metal Gear Solid series, but his final fate literalizes the metaphor that lies at the heart of the franchise to uniquely tragic effect.
