It's no secret that Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima is a fan of John Carpenter's 1981 Kurt Russell vehicle Escape From New York. I mean, the main character in his beloved stealth series is even named after New York's gruff anti-hero and they even share the same mullet, eyepatch, five o'clock shadow and gruff voice. There's yet another reference to Kurt Russell's character in Metal Gear Solid 2 wherein Snake goes by the alias "Iroquois Plissken". The similarities were so close that the company who owns the rights to the film, CanalPlus, wanted to sue Kojima over it.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Carpenter explained that the only reason CanalPlus held back was because he, the other rights holder, told them not to.
"[CanalPlus] wanted to also go after the video game Metal Gear Solid, which is kind of a rip-off of Escape From New York, too, but I told them not to do that," Carpenter said. "I know the director of those games, and he's a nice guy, or at least he's nice to me."
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