Ever come across a TikTok or meme about Metal Gear with Duran Duran’s “Invisible” playing in the background? A lot of people believe it’s a song associated with Hideo Kojima’s beloved Metal Gear Solid series, when in reality, it’s not.
This collective gaslighting has been ongoing for about two years and has become a regular feature in popular Metal Gear Solid discourse, especially in fan-made short-form video content. It first started gaining traction when Solid Snake appeared in Fortnite. Fans began editing clips of his performance in the multiversal battle royale with “Invisible” playing over them.
According to Know Your Meme, it all began when Reddit user u/Steel_ball_runn posted a meme on the Metal Gear Solid subreddit. Remarkably, people were still commenting on that post a year later—some even calling it prophetic, saying it changed the course of Metal Gear meme culture. To this day, many still trace the origins of the meme back to that single post.
Ironically, “Invisible” by Duran Duran contains themes that could fit the Metal Gear Solid mythos. While on the surface it sounds like a song about a failing relationship, it can also be interpreted through the lens of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain—a story about deception, identity, and a central character who isn’t quite who they seem to be. A phantom. An invisible man.
Even Duran Duran has acknowledged this strange connection. About a year ago, they responded to a TikTok by Drip Snake, simply calling it “Amazing.”
I want to reiterate: this song has never appeared in any Metal Gear Solid game. Ever. And while I’m pretty sure Hideo Kojima is aware of this meme, he’s probably just as baffled as the rest of us, watching the internet get collectively gaslit into thinking the track belongs in the series.
Yet, through all of this, few people have fact-checked whether the song is in the game. It just feels like it belongs. It’s '80s-coded, and it would’ve fit in Kojima’s music selection—back when the games featured iconic tracks from the likes of Midge Ure and Tears for Fears.
click to enlargeNow, it seems the world is slowly embracing this advanced stage of gaslighting. “Invisible” may not exist in Metal Gear, but it has given rise to some fantastic shitposts that have made Kojima’s tactical espionage series feel fresh again. And with Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater on the horizon, we’re probably going to see even more of this, whether we like it or not. At this point, we might as well keep gaslighting ourselves into believing it’s canon.
As for me, I just think it's funny.
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