Plot hole #2: Foxhound and Raiden
This one’s pretty straightforward: Raiden belongs to Foxhound, but it doesn’t take long for us to learn that Foxhound was disbanded years ago and no longer exists. Raiden ignores this even after he’s told, but then later it’s confirmed again by Revolver Ocelot.
He admits that he’s never actually met the Colonel, and Rose says the same thing in a different conversation. The obvious question is how could he be in Foxhound if it’s not real. Does the group exist in some form, just not even on an unofficial, classified level? Didn’t he meet anyone who worked for them? Did he think Foxhound was just one guy with zero experience, taking orders from one guy who he’s never met?
I wonder. Maybe they just call their members at home and tell them, “Hey, you feeling up for a mission?” If that’s the case, maybe it’s pretty normal for them to never actually meet. That makes sense, right? But still, after they give you the call, where’s their headquarters? Who gave Raiden his ninja suit? Who injected him all full of nanomachines? Where did he go for all that special VR training? Or for that matter, how is it that he just shows up 20 miles off the shore of Manhattan? Did he just walk over to the coast in his fancy suit, put on his flippers and skull mask, and start swimming? That’s not very sneaky.
Solidus : Yes... The man in the Sneaking Suit.
Ocelot : You know more about those suits then I do.
Solidus : But FOXHOUND was disbanded 4 years ago. So it must be -- the
Patriots.
What exactly was Raiden doing before his mission started? We know that in MGS1 Solid Snake was taken from his home in Alaska and brought on board the Discovery submarine to be briefed, but here we’re left with a gaping hole in the story. It wouldn’t be such a problem if we were allowed to assume that Foxhound did exist and things were done according to their standard modus operandi; but instead we get this obvious plot hole, which is completely ignored by the game–almost as if it doesn’t matter. Raiden just seems to wake up in the middle of New York harbor with no recent past and no questions asked.