Omega Squad Breakdown

So a friend came around asking me if I had any breakdown articles like my big one with Aurelion Sol a year or so ago. I have been honestly out of the game for about half a year (various reasons, but the community basically became too toxic for me to want to invest time in the game for a while), even though I keep up on the news, so I haven't put much thought into explaining champions and their references and, let's face it, nothing's going to compare to me painting an almost pixel perfect portrait of AU when all we had to work off of was a name.

But what the hell, let's do this.

So Omega Squad Teemo when he was first released back in 2015 was very clearly a reference to Metal Gear Solid and specifically Big Boss, if not in appearance then at least in theme. Teemo pulls out a knife and performed Big Boss' famous CQC stance whenever he stealths (though Big Boss never throws his knife like Teemo does; that was more Vamp's thing). It was also at this time that MGSV: The Phantom Pain was on the verge of being released later that year. We just had our fill of Ground Zeroes and got accustomed to the much more serious and darker themes that it established, beginning with Paz's torture and death. The setting of Ground Zeroes was one Camp Omega, and is largely the turning point for Big Boss and his descent into darkness. Omega Squad Teemo is more or less the counterpart to the Phantom Pain-era Big Boss, after dealing with the parasite outbreak. Half of the artwork for MGSV depicting Big Boss has him wearing sandstorm goggles, much like how Teemo is wearing goggles in this skin, and he uses a silenced pistol, much like all of the incarnations of Snake are depicted using up until Peace Walker.

Omega Squad Tristana is the counterpart to Big Boss during the Peace Walker era. You could say that Peace Walker is more or less Big Boss' personal golden age, and is where his idealized persona was established. Tristana even sports an eyepatch on her right eye like him (even though in the group splash in the game's menu it's on her left. This also falls in line with the history of Metal Gear Solid's artwork, when old artwork of Big Boss back during the Metal Gear era on the MSX, his eyepatch was originally on the left side. Solidus would also go on to have an eyepatch on his left in MGS2, making a similar callback).

Big Boss' artwork in Peace Walker had him wearing a beret (making him closely resemble Che Guevara), so Tristana would naturally be wearing a beret as well. Likewise, Tristana wields a huge gun, whereas in Peace Walker, you would normally find yourself ditching silenced pistols in favor of larger weapons like LMGs and rocket launchers because of the Tank/Helicopter/Peace Walker/Metal Gear/Wyvern bosses. It's interesting to note that Tristana's clothes more closely resemble Kazuhira Miller's outfit, and he would go on to adopt Big Boss' beret as well. So you could say that she's Peace Walker-era Big Boss with a dash of Miller.

Omega Squad Twitch is a reference to The Fear from MGS3 and the Skull Unit from MGSV. The Fear used a crossbow (used two crossbows, actually) with poisonous darts (though he used spider venom as opposed to Twitch's sewer filth), and he moved around a lot under the guise of a pseudo-stealth camouflage. For that matter, Teemo and Twitch are mechanically very similar champions, so I guess you could say Omega Squad Teemo is retroactively a reference to The Fear as well. Twitch's gas mask looks very similar to the gas mask worn by several members of the Skull Unit, and coincidentally they are also infected with parasites.

This is where things get weird.

Omega Squad Fizz has no real or direct counterpart. There were no bosses in ANY of the Metal Gears that have you fight them purely underwater, and none of them used a spear. The closest counterparts are Vamp and Metal Gear RAY, but there's a hint of Raiden and Solid Snake in there.

Fizz is a very dodgy character, much like Vamp and his boss fights where he could dodge bullets during certain segments. The Raiden and Solid Snake references come in with his wetsuit. The face closely resembles Raiden when he wore the mask during the infiltration, and of course MGS1 and 2 opened with both characters infiltrating the base from underwater (as did MGs 1 and 2, but Snake wasn't wearing a wetsuit or mask)

Omega Squad Veigar doesn't really have any direct counterparts, either. His closest comparisons are Big Boss and Miller again, the former from Phantom Pain, and the latter from Peace Walker, with a side of Fatman from MGS2 and Zadornov also from Peace Walker. Veigar is listed in the Confidential page as The Artillery. Miller is both your operations director and, while he isn't the one that actually fires the artillery, is the voice that confirms when you order in an artillery strike. In Peace Walker, you activate the artillery beacons with a remote trigger much like Veigar's big red button. Fatman comes in as the explosives expert from MGS2, and Veigar is wearing an EOD Suit that closely resembles Fatman's. Viegar's staff is replaced by a stun rod. In Peace Walker, Big Boss' knife, for ESRB rating reasons (they were trying to keep the game at a T rating), was replaced with the stun rod.

Big Boss has a prosthetic red hand in MGSV, though it was his left hand instead of his right. Coincidentally, Miller would lose his right arm in MGSV, though he had no prosthetic for it. The prosthetic Big Boss wore was similar to the prosthetic hand Zadornov had in Peace Walker, which was his right hand.

So... there you go. More or less a full breakdown of the Omega Squad cast and what they reference. The group splash looks familiar as well, but for the life of me I can't find any Metal Gear posters it supposedly resembles.