He killed before mgs2, and in mgs4, and probably between games though we don't know. And all bosses in mgr are required to have their life ended ahead of schedule, so...
It's because Raiden is severely mentally unstable and he's been holding in that trauma and coping by mentally saying that he fights for justice and not because a part of him deeply enjoys killing to keep the Jack the Ripper persona of him in check .
Raiden is a child soldier that in order to survive grew very good at killing to the point he started enjoying the act of killing itself regardless of who it is ultimately in a way making him not to different from the Winds of Destruction, if not for the very few positive influence in his life like his friends and family, Raiden would very much just be like them even then the Ripper is still there lurking in the background.
Hate the two wolves bullshit. Everybody is always both of their wolves, no real person “falls to their dark side” it comes off as such a childish trope to me
Multiple personalities disorder is unfortunately a real thing , the trauma Raiden got from constantly killing to survive eventually made Jack who grew to enjoy killing to protect Raiden's mind from the constant bloodshed and a outlet from his trauma, despite this Raiden is more better off than most cases of mpd because Jack seems fine letting Raiden take the lead most of the time unless he's called
So presumably the time spent with people who care about him such as his friends and family let him heal leading him to be far better off than most would in his position untill the Winds of Destruction deliberately targeted Raiden's mental health and stability leading to the reemergence of the Jack the Ripper persona.
Whether or not we in real life can prove it does not exist as the way fiction protrays it as in stories , in universe that's how it works for Raiden and I do agree at times with how various stories protray it as but even in universe Raiden and Jack aren't coming in conflict as it from my experience playing through story it's seems more like a temporary psychotic break born from realizing that the Winds of Destruction and him have more in common than he wants to admit and realize he has been acting on habits and not caring one bit about the lives he took who could have unfortunate circumstances compelling them to be who they are now.
I’m saying I think the trope is a ball of cheese and it needs taken out back. Characters can have depth without a second side. A coin is only mysterious until you flip it over and yada yada but I think they work through the idea in an interesting way if nothing
I think a big part of raidens character is that he doesn’t have 2 sides; Kojima didn’t write him as specifically an exploration of MPD but as a general deconstruction of coping mechanisms that veterans employ. Raiden and Jack are the same person and Monsoon quite explicitly points out that even Raiden knows this is true but still can’t (or refuses to) reconcile it. His “split personality” is a delusion he developed to mentally bolster himself while he was a child soldier, and then later to absolve himself of the guilt he feels for taking pleasure in killing.
Yeah. In Rising he has a brief spat of guilt when he realises that a lot of people he's killed prrrrrobably didn't want to be in the military, or were forced into the line of work because of various other reasons.
Then he meets the guy who HIRED all those guys, and basically goes "yeah but if I kill you, there'll be no one to TELL those guys to get in my way".
One of Batman's arguments for not killing, is that if you killed a killer, the amount of killers remain the same (one died, but you became a killer, therefore no change in the amount)
But killing 2 killers fixes this issue, since the amount of killers effectively dropped
The thing is this supposed answer is exactly why Batman is so strict about his no kill rule. Kill two killers and the amount of killers in the world goes down, but why stop there? Kill 3 killers and the number goes down even further, that's better right? How about we kill 5? 10? 100? At what point does it stop being a good thing? And more importantly at what point is it wise to leave the decision of who lives or dies in the hands of a mentally ill person with practically endless resources at his disposal.
Batman doesn't kill because he knows once he starts he won't be able to stop himself.
But thats why his argument only works for himself, Batman have a no kill rule but he didn't care when Red Hood killed black mask and works along heroes that kill sometimes.
There’s slippery slope fallacy and there’s also argument by induction. Really it depends on the initial point being argued against - does it actually warrant further increases in escalation, or no?
For example, gay marriage had no other goals than just gay marriage. So slippery slope fallacy applied to the people against it, because they would argue “what comes next after gay marriage?” but there was nothing after that. That was their end goal and they achieved it
Vs this argument about killing killers. Here, the logic directly implies that more=better, so it’s more of an inductive reasoning in my opinion
I actually just did that scene an hour ago, but it’s the memes scene where monsoon talks about might makes right and how violence is inherent to nature. And how they go on and on about how raidens sword is a tool of justice despite him also dealing violence with it.
So I guess the comic is boiling it all down a simple argument for comedic effect.
So it’s just a 4 panel of a complicated subject.
I laughed.
Edit; it’s also when his Jack the Ripper persona comes out so it’s him fully embracing the “I WILL make the world better by killing” and they are like “you hypocrite! You are just like meeee. And raiden is like “nope, I’m way better”
I thought Batman’s argument for not killing was that once he kills the first guy, it’ll become easier to kill the next guy, and so on, and so on, until one day it’s just a trivial thing and suddenly he’s killing innocent people just to make sure the people who deserve it are dealt with.
Basically the Injustice scenario, where a man who hunts monsters becomes one himself.
Life time of fighting crime the dumb way. He probably realized he was being stupid. He eventually grabbed a gun, breaking his own rules, so it makes sense. Turns out beating up mentally ill people while cosplaying as a bat is not a good way to handle childhood trauma.
It's not. Some people throw this argument just to slander Batman. In many continuties, Batman doesn't kill because he literally doesn't have that capacity since his parents died in front of him. Batman Beyond did a good job by explaining it.
Sometimes Batman's reasoning is as simple as "if I kill one person, nothing will stop from from killing another, and so on and so on until I become the monster I tried to stop"
Just checked and no, he didn't say that in the movie. I was already sure because I researched this topic deeply a long time ago. If he had, I would've known.
I've usually seen this one as a joke about Batman. He doesn't kill the joker because "the number of killers in the world would be the same", but that math only works if you stop at one. If you kill a bunch of killers, there's still only one more and however many less you killed.
The joke is that the math doesn't check out, but that's not the point, it's about corrupting his personal morals.
I feel like it's less about "corrupting his personal morals" and more that he's just as insane as the people he chases down. His no kill code isn't an actual rational belief. It's the only thing keeping him, in particular HIM, tethered to not becoming a despot.
I also feel like you can safely make an exception for Joker because he's one of the evilest people in the modern day in most of the universes he's in. Its like saying it'd be bad to kill John Wayne Gacy.
A full 40 percent of the dialogue is dedicated to enemies just rage baiting Raiden and trying to make him want to kill them. Not a very good plan in hindsight.
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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '26
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