
They arent included in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroess ∽eja Vu recap of the series because of this, which some fans take as a sign that Kojima doesnt want the games to be canon.
Despite being officially counted as canon, there are many fans who dont count Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance as canon entries due to Hideo Kojimas lack of involvement with those games as well. The overwhelming majority of fans dont count Metal Gear Survive as canon, due to it being made after Hideo Kojima left the series, not to mention how extremely different it is from every other Metal Gear game. There are even multiple common approaches to this: The majority of this comes down to how much a fan is attached to Hideo Kojimas own specific vision of the series. Fanon Discontinuity: Its surprisingly rare for fans to accept every single installment of the series as canon. The plan for Metal Gear Solid 2 states that Raiden was designed to appeal to a female audience. Yes, even the strong male bonding is verbatim action movie. Estrogen Brigade: The series is extremely popular with women considering it's basically a crazy Rated M for Manly action movie in video game form. Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Lots of people who aren't too fond of the gameplay still absolutely love this series because of the setting and story.
From "poisonous Zanzibar Hamsters" to guns with infinite ammo Hand Waved by the magazine being shaped like an infinity symbol, to a Super Soldier who's covered in bees.
The entire franchise is covered in a thick layer of crazy awesome. Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker takes the crazy awesomeness to even greater heights with a tank-shaped cardboard box (with a working gun turret), an ambulance-shaped box (complete with siren) that can heal people dragged into it, and a "Love Box" that has room for two. Metal Gear Solid 4 upped the ante with the drum barrel which had much of the same functionality plus it could be used to literally barrel over multiple enemies. A badass soldier with a strange affection and reliance on cardboard boxes is this. To simplify, there are the fans that are still sticking by the series and then there are those that feel the series should've just ended with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and that anything released afterwards is unnecessary. Similar to other franchises, the fandom seems to have its divisions regarding the sequels and prequels. Heck, there are even some who wonder if Raikov was actually related to Raiden due to their likeness. Some fan have debated as to what Ivan Raidenovitch Raikov's actual fate was, as well as whether recruiting him in Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops is canon.