Balloon Solid Snake

About

Balloon Solid Snake is a balloon figure representing the fictional character Solid Snake^[1] from the Metal Gear^[2] franchise. After being shared on Konami’s Facebook page in early 2013, it gained notabitlity for its rather disturbing look and difficult to spot resemblance to Solid Snake.

Origin

The photo of the balloon figure was first shared on Konami’s Facebook profile on January 3rd, 2013.^[3] According to the description, the balloon figure was created by balloon artist Bruce Carr^[3] for the birthday of a friend. Bruce Carr, who makes these balloon creations for a living, also advertises his balloon services through his website noordinaryballoonman.com^[5] on which he offers his services to make balloon creations for events.

Spread

A screencap was first posted in a now archived thread on 4chan’s /v/ (video games) board on the same day.^[6] The thread contained numerous comments on the balloon character’s disturbing look and was quickly featured in various image macros and photoshops. A post on the r/gaming sub-Reddit from the same day managed to get over 9,500 upvotes and nearly 7,500 downvotes within 3 days^[11] and a template on Tumblr achieved over 4,000 notes within 12 hours after being posted.^[13] The photo was also shared on the videogame review website Hardcoregamer on the same day.^[10]

The next day, on January 4th, the photo of the balloon character was posted on various image sharing and news sites such as Dorkly,^[7] Geekologie^[8] and Kotaku.^[9] On January 6th, videogame blog Kotaku started a photoshop contest^[12] for the character, which resulted in nearly 30 creations on the first day alone.

Notable Examples

External References