Top 5 Henchmen Who Were Smarter Than Their Villains

3. Ocelot 

Yes, Ocelot, or Revolver Ocelot, or Adamska, or Liquid Ocelot, is primarily featured in the Metal Gear Solid videogame series, but graphic novels exist for two of those so far, and Ocelot is the most undermining non-aircraft themed henchman since the coalition of the mole people, so he makes the list.

In literally every single one of his appearances in the Metal Gear Solid series, spanning the 1960s to 2015, Ocelot has been the stealthiest of individuals in a stealth-reliant world. He will appear as some sort of starter boss—no powers amongst individuals who can break the fourth wall of videogames and run on water – you will whoop him accordingly, and yet, the dude still manages to stick around. Seriously, it is only when you enter the most climatic of final fights with this SOB who refuses to die that you realize that he has been the lynchpin for nearly every event for this convoluted miasma of a videogame series about stealth actions and absurdly long cut-scenes.

For the record, the next five paragraphs or so have more spoilers in them than the parking lot for a Fast and Furious sextet drive-in marathon, so proceed with caution, as a lot of these events occur in post credit “Duhn Duhn Duhh!” exposition.

In Metal Gear Solid we are introduced to Revolver Ocelot, who works under the employ of Liquid Snake and his FOXHOUND fighting force of freaks as they take over Shadow Moses Island. Liquid plans to commandeer the walking nuclear platform Metal Gear REX to begin his new world order, and Revolver Ocelot is his right hand man. Incidentally, Revolver Ocelot’s right hand is chopped off by a cybernetic ninja, but this doesn’t stop the former Spetsnaz agent, as he tortures the hell out of as many people he can throughout the course of the game, potential ambidexterity be damned.

So Revolver Ocelot, or Shalashaska as he was known in the Soviet Union, has made it pretty clear that he is a douche. He rebounds bullets all over your face, tortures the hell out of your junk, the real “solid snake” of the game —threatening to torture your girlfriend Meryl if you can’t handle said junk-torture — and kills a DARPA chief with similar torture techniques to obtain the launch codes for Metal Gear REX.

He also really loves revolvers, delivering “odd” lines such as, “There’s nothing like the feeling of slamming a long silver bullet into a well greased chamber.”

Phasing right over that, by the end of Metal Gear Solid you, Solid Snake, have killed every member of FOXHOUND and are ready to ride off into the sunset with either Meryl or your best bro Otacon tightly grasping your torso.

But WAIT — in a post credits phone call, Ocelot reveals that he never planned to give the launch codes to Liquid and FOXHOUND at all, as he has been secretly working for the President of the United States this entire time. Twist!

So the cowboy themed lackey was actually a double agent. By the start of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, we can assume that Ocelot is just working for the President and CIA right? Well yes, but no. Ocelot works for the President, but the President is actually Solidus Snake, who has his own cabal of extra-able warriors known as DEAD CELL to help take over the world with the commandeered Metal Gear RAY in the newly formed Sons of Liberty terrorist cell.

Of course you can’t commandeer an amphibious bipedal tank without two hands, so Ocelot is seen sporting a replacement arm, which apparently used to belong to his former boss, Liquid Snake. Now, and I’m still not entirely sure on the “science” behind it, Liquid’s personality somehow takes over Ocelot’s body time and again, meaning that Ocelot is in a way a henchman to his own body. Even when he is doing his own thing and making a name for himself, Ocelot’s former boss is still literally jerking him around.

So Ocelot has got his own Metal Gear, his own cell of theatrical terrorists with borderline superpowers, and a former U.S. President/Spy for a boss. But CONTINUE WAITING — Ocelot betrays Solidus and is in actuality working for The Patriots, an illuminati analogue that has been controlling the world for years, with Ocelot’s ultimate goal to help re-create the events of Metal Gear Solid in an attempt to create a legendary soldier out of the bleached blonde protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2, Raiden, because pull-ups aren’t sufficient enough, apparently.

Thus far, Ocelot has been a double agent for Solidus Snake while working for Liquid Snake, simultaneously serving as a triple agent for the Patriots as his former boss begins to micromanage his brain. Surely, this can’t get more convoluted, right?

Let’s go back in time to the 1960s for a second in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Here, In Snake Eater, Ocelot is a major in the Spetsnaz GRU, wherein he has his own “Ocelot Unit” under the employ for Col. Volgin, a defective Stalinist who seeks to seize control of the Soviet Union and kick-start the cold war.

No, they aren’t actually made up of Ocelots. I was disappointed too.

Ocelot tries to kill you, Naked Snake, on at least three separate occasions—one involving a motorcycle chase — as well as a game of Russian roulette with one bullet in three pistols. He tries to kill you, and even discovers his affinity for sadism, however there is a sort of amicability behind it all, even when he tries to snipe you out of a plane with a handgun.

Of course when the credits roll, there is yet another post credits phone call twist regarding Ocelot. He has been working for the Patriots the entire time—not the big shocker, as we knew this from Metal Gear Solid 2 — but he was a Patriot spy while simultaneously working as a spy for both the CIA and KGB! He is Matt Damon in The Departed but with more guys who can control honeybees with their minds.

So apparently, Ocelot’s real name is Adamska, or codename ADAM, and he was supposed to help Snake out for the entire game, but a Chinese sleeper agent beat him to the punch, pretending to be Snake’s contact. Not wanting to blow his cover(s) while blowing the cover of the Chinese spy, Ocelot instead decides to just get really close to killing Snake, but not actually succeeding at it, while simultaneously serving on both sides of military “intelligence” during the Cold War.

Just to recap: in the most espionage, and cloak-and-dagger-filled war in American history, Ocelot or Adam or Adamska or Revolver Ocelot or Liquid Ocelot or Shalashaska managed to trick both sides into thinking he was working for them whilst evading detection in the very work he was hired to do; work under a Colonel who had a penchant for electrocuting interrogation suspects in oil drums; uncover a Chinese spy who was sleeping with said Colonel; and convince you that he is badass while juggling three revolvers.

I don’t even need to go into Metal Gear Solid 4 at this point—and that’s not just because Ocelot finally gets to be upper management—the guy has appeared in four games and has managed to pull off the twistiest of twists since M. Night Shyamalan dancing to Chubby Checker’s greatest hits. At every opportunity Ocelot presents himself as a vanilla one-trick pony, when in reality he is the pale horse of stealth-action-based destruction.