Metal Gear Solid Snake actor reveals how they ended up doing a Ford advert in character

By Hope Bellingham
published

The producers of the advert were apparently "big" Snake fans

Metal Gear Solid Ford Focus SE advert
(Image credit: Ford / Konami)

Snake's voice actor has revealed the story behind that Metal Gear Solid-inspired Ford Focus SE advert. 

Back in 2016, David Hayter (who has played Solid Snake since 1998) worked with Ford to advertise the company's new car, the Ford Focus SE. The advert features Snake talking to Colonel Campbell about the car and its exciting features. Now, six years later, the advert has reemerged online and we now have more context on how it came about. 

Thanks to a tweet from retro gaming site Time Extention, we've not only been reminded of the advert but also got some valuable inside information from Solid Snake himself. Replying to Time Extention's tweet, David Hayter explained: "Here's the story, I did a commercial for Ford as a [voice-over] actor, and the Producers were big Snake fans." 

The story continues: "So they said, 'hey, if we got permission from Konami to use Snake in an ad, would you do it?' 'Sure.' I said, certain it would never happen," Hayter explains, "then it did. Then I was stuck." Hayter isn't the only one to remember this voice-over job either, as the official Ford account replied to the actor with a simple: "A timeless briefing from Colonel Campbell!" 

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Hayter isn't alone when it comes to reminiscing about Metal Gear Solid lately. A couple of weeks ago none other than Hideo Kojima looked back on Metal Gear Solid 3's development revealing that the events of 9/11 altered the game's close contact tactics, and that a mocap actor unintentionally took a beating whilst filming one of the games iconic fight scenes. 

Nothing's been confirmed yet, but here's everything on our Metal Gear Solid 6 wishlist. 

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.