8 famous video game characters with weird origins

destructoid.com:

Developers love to present players with characters that feature bonkers origin stories in their games, but sometimes the in-development tales that led to the creation of these characters are even wilder.

Here’s a list of famous video game characters whose true origin stories I’m willing to bet that you’d never guess — I sure know I wouldn’t.

In the Metal Gear Solid series, Solid Snake would feature an original look for the first game, but then become heavily inspired by Snake Plissken from John Carpenter’s Escape From New York. You might know that one considering how Snake actually goes undercover as “Pliskin” in Metal Gear Solid 2, but did you know that the character began life because of a different character?

In the Metal Gear series, Solid Snake’s design was heavily inspired by Kyle Reese from Terminator, down to his pose for promotional materials.

I find it very interesting that even though both Reese and Plissken are iconic characters, Solid Snake has arguably grown to overshadow both of his fathers in terms of popularity.

Ermac, the red ninja from the Mortal Kombat series, wasn’t meant to be a thing.

It all began when one fan sent Electronic Gaming Monthly a Polaroid of a red ninja in the game. EGM believed in this video game equivalent of a bigfoot sighting and published it without further inquiry. The incident created rumors so strong that the good developers decided to just make it real.

But where did the photo come from? Welp, the fan just doctored a photo of Scorpion to make his armor red.

Also, Ermac is short for “Error Macro”, a term used in one of the game’s diagnostics menus. Sorry if you thought it had some sexy and mysterious meaning.

If Ermac resulted from fans pressuring the MK devs into making a