Legendary movie director John Carpenter has revealed that he gave Hideo Kojima his blessing to use the character of Snake Plissken as inspiration for Metal Gear Solid’s gruff hero, Solid Snake.
The character of Plissken featured in Carpenter’s Escape from New York and later turned up in the sequel Escape from LA years later. New York’s storyline featured Plissken attempting to locate the president of the United States on Manhattan Island, which has been revamped in to a high security prison.
Many comparisons have been observed between Plissken and Snake over the years, and Solid Snake even adopted the alias of Plissken during the plant chapter of MGS2: Sons of Liberty.
"[Hideo Kojima] has written me and asked me for my blessing on the game and I wrote him back [to say] how about it?" said Carpenter, during an interview with the folks at CVG. "He’s a very nice man."
Carpenter is currently involved with the production of horror sequel F.E.A.R. 3.