Psycho Mantis

Psycho Mantis
Metal Gear character
Official artwork of Psycho Mantis as he appears in Metal Gear Solid.
First appearance	Metal Gear Solid (1998)
Voiced by	Doug Stone (English) Kazuyuki Sogabe (Japanese)
In-universe information
Gender	Male

Psycho Mantis is a fictional boss in Konami's Metal Gear video game series. Psycho Mantis first appears in Metal Gear Solid, where he is one of the many antagonists who helps main antagonist Liquid Snake in his attempt to capture Shadow Moses Island. Psycho Mantis is a psychic, and has numerous psychic powers he uses throughout the game. Psycho Mantis attempts to stop protagonist Solid Snake, though he is killed in the process. Psycho Mantis goes on to reappear in several later games in the series.

Despite his small first appearance, the scene where Psycho Mantis reveals himself to Solid Snake has been praised by critics, with the fourth wall breaking narratives being the subject of significant analysis in regards to not only how the scene involves immersion, but also in other aspects, such as how it shows the relationship between Snake and the player. Psycho Mantis's fourth-wall breaking scene has been considered one of the most iconic moments in video gaming history.

Appearances

Psycho Mantis first appears in Metal Gear Solid, where he is encountered midway through the game. Psycho Mantis uses his psychic powers to mind control protagonist Solid Snake's ally Meryl Silverburgh, having her offer confessions of love to Snake to lower his guard. Snake is unfazed, and after knocking Meryl out, Psycho Mantis reveals himself. Psycho Mantis then seeks to prove his psychic powers to Snake, and in doing so initiates a series of fourth wall breaking demonstrations. He first reads Metal Gear Solid's metadata about the player's actions in order to make a judge of their personality, before then reading the system's memory card to read what other games the player is a fan of. If the player has a DualShock vibrating controller, Mantis will instruct the player to place it on the ground, at which point he will activate the controller's rumble effect. He then causes the console to appear to disconnect before transitioning into battle, in which he can seemingly read all of the player's movements. Following advice from in-game hints, players can shift their controller from the first controller port to the second controller port, which will render Mantis unable to read their movements. An additional method of defeating him exists, requiring Snake to die multiple times to Mantis before attacking busts scattered throughout the room, which contain Mantis's gas mask on them. Destroying them reveals the sight of Mantis's true face, which will confuse him and make him unable to read Snake's mind. Mantis is killed by Snake during the battle.

Psycho Mantis's boss fight could be defeated by switching controller ports on the PlayStation console, and he would additionally manipulate the DualShock controller in his introductory cutscene.

When Mantis was a child, his mother had died in childbirth while giving birth to him, and his father hated him for it. After Mantis discovered it while reading his mind, Mantis burned his village to the ground out of fear. Mantis later joined the KGB, and after that, the CIA, using his psychic powers to delve into suspects' minds. After delving too deep into the mind of a serial killer, Mantis went insane and became a nomad who offered his services to high paying clients. According to Mantis, he joined with Liquid Snake, the game's main antagonist, to conquer Shadow Moses Island, the game's main location, in order to "kill as many people as he could" as he had grown disgusted with the human race.

Mantis briefly re-appears in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, where his ghost appears to control the deceased body of the boss enemy Screaming Mantis. Mantis attempts to perform the same show of his mental powers as in the original game, but finds his efforts thwarted due to the lack of a memory card in the PlayStation 3. If the player is using a DualShock vibrating controller, he will become excited by the fact he can still control the controller. Following the display, Mantis is sent back to the realm of the dead by The Sorrow. Psycho Mantis additionally appears as a cameo in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes in a cameo appearance.

A younger version of Psycho Mantis appears in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, where he is a child under the name Tretij Rebenok. Mantis escapes from a hospital at the start of the game alongside Colonel Volgin, being influenced by Volgin's rage due to his psychic powers. Both later join the XOF, headed by antagonist Skull Face. Skull Face uses Rebenok to control the Sahelanthropus, a Metal Gear robot. Rebenok is later influenced by the rage of protagonist Venom Snake's ally Eli, and switches allegiances to Eli, allowing Eli to gain control of Sahelanthropus.

Development

Psycho Mantis's powers were inspired by a psychic from the 1978 film The Fury, with Hideo Kojima telling the motion designer to watch the film as reference. Kojima stated that when developing Mantis, he wished to harness the concept of masters telling their students to clear their minds, with the only method he could think of to reflect this being to switch the controller ports, though some younger members of the staff disagreed with Kojima's decision. Psycho Mantis has been portrayed by Doug Stone in English and by Kazuyuki Sogabe in Japanese.

The scene with Mantis was adapted in several different ways in later adaptations of the game. In PC ports of the game, the player must use the keyboard to trick Mantis, while later PlayStation console ports require players to go to the settings and switch their controller connection to Player 2. The novel adaptation of the game additionally changed the scene from the usual boss fight to a deep dive into Snake's character, with hallucinations being used against Snake to provide insights into his character. The comic adaptation of the game had Mantis appear on a cliffhanger, threatening to use his powers to make Meryl shoot herself, before seemingly being defeated by Snake's ally Master Miller. Miller is revealed to be an illusion of Mantis's, and Snake proceeds to defeat Mantis in battle. Additionally, in Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol.1, which contains a remake of Metal Gear Solid, an option exists to allow players to curate their save data, allowing them to select what games Mantis will reference during his boss battle.

Reception

Despite Psycho Mantis's short amount of screentime in his original appearance, his appearance in the original Metal Gear Solid has been consistently received as one of the most iconic scenes in video games, and as one of the "most celebrated moments" in the history of video games. Nicholas David Bowman, as part of the book 100 Greatest Video Game Characters noted how Psycho Mantis's fourth wall breaking abilities deeply impacted the players in terms of not only Psycho Mantis's battle, but also in his interactions with the player, stating that "Rarely has a game character violated so many assumptions about the rules of engagement—stretching the conflict from the television screen to the player’s own mind." IGN noted that Mantis "attacked players on all fronts," stating that his manipulation of Meryl preyed on the feelings players developed for her at that point in the game, and how his death scene helped make players feel pity for Mantis despite everything that had happened. The number of fourth wall breaks, alongside their quality, was described as making the battle "a bravura performance rather than a mere novelty" that emphasized its uniqueness in comparison to other games that existed. His dissonance from other bosses in the game was noted, as unlike prior bosses, players had to think outside of the box in order to defeat Psycho Mantis.

Andy Kelly of TheGamer praised the battle with Mantis for its inventiveness and ingenuity, highlighting it as one of the scenes that helped make the original Metal Gear Solid an iconic game. He additionally noted that it perfectly encapsulated the feel of the series, and how it was able to effectively utilize its medium as a video game in a way few other pieces of media could. Manon Hume of Game Informer also expressed this sentiment and how it effectively was able to make the player question their control over the game. Brendan Main of The Escapist additionally noted that Mantis's ability to unnerve the player with their save data was an experience that was not replicable outside of Metal Gear Solid itself, causing an uncertainty in the minds of players about their ability to properly control the game. He also notes how Psycho Mantis's death scene emphasizes the fact that Metal Gear Solid is itself a fictional world, and how the choices of Snake in-universe boiled down entirely to player decision and the consequences of the player. Main additionally noted how Mantis reading out games they played helped make the scene more unnerving, and how the scene lost effectiveness with newer players due to the fact that seeing what games someone played became easier to view as games developed. Chad Concelmo of Destructoid additionally noted that Psycho Mantis's manipulation of the fourth wall was revolutionary for the time, and was noted as maintaining that revolutionary feeling. He stated that while the battle itself lacked emotional weight, Mantis's battle was an iconic moment that stuck with players even after the battle was completed.

The book The Encyclopedia of Computer Graphics and Games analyzed how Psycho Mantis's boss fight and ability to dodge controller inputs came at a point where the player was familiar with how Metal Gear Solid worked, and thus made them question the game's own controls and mechanics, stating that "The game defamiliarizes players from the game itself." Mantis's ability to make it appear as if the game had disconnected was noted by the book Hideo Kojima: Progressive Game Design from Metal Gear to Death Stranding as showing how the developers of the game had control not only just over the game, but also the medium the game was being played in, comparing it to similar fourth-wall breaking scenes in the game's sequel, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. His self-awareness was additionally noted as allowing Mantis to cross a "border" between the game's world and the real world, causing a level of uncertainty, with the book Framing Uncertainty: Computer Game Epistemologies stating that "As Psycho Mantis steps, in an orchestrated feint, briefly out of the framework of the onscreen game, levels that are in fact logically and epistemically incompatible coexist for one another within the medium of a game."

Mantis's ability to influence the framework of the game was noted as amplifying the tension of the encounter, with the book Once Upon a Pixel: Storytelling and Worldbuilding in Video Games stating that the ability for Mantis to "close the gap" between Snake and the player of the game made Mantis more terrifying. They additionally noted that the calling of attention to the fact that the boss battle was in a game made it so that players were reminded of the fact that the world of Metal Gear Solid was a video game, and that while they controlled Snake, they themselves would never amount to actually being Snake. This is noted as causing both identification and alienation in players simultaneously. Mantis's actions were analyzed as part of a "circle" or "feedback loop" describing the player's immersion with the game, with Mantis being able to "thrust" the player out of the loop they experienced while playing the game in Snake's shoes. The book Metagames: Games About Games additionally noted how the breaking of the fourth wall emphasized the power of Psycho Mantis as a character, with the battle requiring the player's own input to complete being stated to show how the player too was forced to participate in the fourth wall breaking effect. This was noted as placing the player on a "lower metaleptic level" than Psycho Mantis. The book Performativity in Art, Literature, and Videogames also noted the "feedback loop" caused by the player's involvement with Psycho Mantis's fourth-wall breaking, stating that the battle caused confusion between "human physiological processes and computational processes". Other additionally noted that the interactivity with the console required to defeat Mantis helped serve a metanarrative role in the game, making the game more immersive for players overall due to their interaction with the game itself.

The International Journal of Transmedia Literacy analyzed Psycho Mantis's rhetoric, finding that the shift from Psycho Mantis referring to Snake in his dialogue to referring to the player helped emphasize the player's importance in the narrative of the game, further noting that communication via the disconnection screen further encouraged players to seek out the solution in the real world, as Snake would lose unless the player was able to decode the messages delivered by Psycho Mantis's battle. They also stated that the fight delivers "immersion fractures" that help communicate clues to the player about how to defeat Psycho Mantis, noting how Psycho Mantis's introductory scene helped send clues to the player about how to defeat him through his fourth-wall breaking narrative.

Hideo Kojima, the creator of the Metal Gear series, later stated that Psycho Mantis was his favorite character in the series. A commercial advertising the Ford Focus later aired in 2016, which parodied the scene where Mantis reads Snake's mind. Doug Stone reprised his role as Mantis for the commercial. A statuette of Psycho Mantis was also released in 2018.