The Real Reason Kurt Russell Never Voiced Solid Snake In Metal Gear Solid

Kurt Russell has been the face of countless iconic characters in memorable films like "The Thing," "Backdraft," "Deathproof," and "Tombstone." However, one role that he never played is that of Solid Snake (David Hayter), one of the central characters in the "Metal Gear Solid" video game series. It has long been speculated that the character Solid Snake was heavily inspired by Russell's character from "Escape From New York," Snake Plissken.

During an interview with GQ about his career, Russell was asked about the rumor that he was approached by "Metal Gear Solid" director Hideo Kojima to voice a character in the franchise. While Russell didn't explicitly confirm or deny, he did give some insight into why he never would have taken on such a job. He explained that, in general, he wouldn't feel right riffing on a character that he created for a specific project elsewhere. In the case of Snake Plissken, he wouldn't want to do it without writer-director John Carpenter involved. As Russell said, "That's not written by John. That doesn't smell right. John's not here to do this. I'm not gonna do that." 

Russell went on to add, "Let's go do something new, let's do something fresh, let's go create another iconic character. Rather than saying, 'What can we bleed off this iconic character?'" 

For those who have played the "Metal Gear Solid" games and seen "Escape From New York," the connections between Snake Plissken and Solid Snake are readily apparent. From the character's penchant for smoking cigarettes to his recurring distrust of government representatives and authority figures, there's a lot of Snake in ... erm, Snake. For instance, when Solid Snake is undercover in "Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty," he even uses Plissken as his codename.

As if facts like these don't make it obvious enough, Naked Snake, another series protagonist, would later become Big Boss, and the character even wears an eyepatch. Ditto for Solid Snake himself by the time "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots" came along. Add in the signature gravelly voice and cocky attitude, and it becomes pretty clear that there are major connections between the characters.

While Hideo Kojima was never quite able to wrangle Russell to voice the character, he did eventually land Kiefer Sutherland to be the motion capture performer and voice actor for Venom Snake in "Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain" and its predecessor "Ground Zeroes."