Monsoon

About

Monsoon is one of the primary antagonists in Platinum Games’ hack and slash action game Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Monsoon’s in-game opinion regarding memes as a unit for carrying cultural ideas or practices lead to fans associating him with internet memes.

Origin

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance was first released on February 19th, 2013. During the campaign, in which the player takes control of the cyborg Raiden, the player eventually has to fight Monsoon.^[1] Prior to this battle, during a conversation between Monsoon and Raiden, Monsoon shares his view on memes, explaining to him that he finds them the only thing that mattered besides war and even going as far as calling them “the DNA of the soul.” Although Monsoon talks about memes as the essence of a culture or a person,^[2]^[5] fans quickly associated the speech with internet memes.

Spread

Although other characters in the game also mention memes, it was Monsoon’s speech that made him stand out the most. On February 3rd, 2014, Tumblr user Suddenlywolf posted a collection of quotes made by Monsoon as an image (shown below, left), which managed to gain more than 29,000 notes over the following year.^[3] On March 3rd, 2014, Youtuber Turkish Phantom posted an edited video showing Raiden’s reply after Monsoon’s defeat and describing Raiden as “the hero we need” (shown below, right), which managed to gain over 15,000 views in the following year and more than 440 likes (against 10 dislikes). The character also became a common recurrence in ironic meme threads on 4chan.^[6]^[7]