God, I love these stupid The Phantom Pain tricks

Russian soldiers hate them!

So, Chris Carter already provided a handy list of quick tips alongside his review of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. These are essential, life saving tips that will let you complete missions easier and build the legend of Big Boss. But how ’bout some stupid shit?

Continuing the proud tradition of the Metal Gear series, The Phantom Pain is full of small, silly tricks of dubious practical value for you to mess around with. Some of these tips could be fairly useful if properly employed, while others are just for shits and giggles. Either way, they’re the secret spice that gives Metal Gear games their unique flavor.

Saving time:

• It’s a smart idea to return to Mother Base every once and awhile for a shower. Not only does it wash the blood and stinky murder mess off Snake, but it refreshes his max HP and reaction time when spotted. But if you don’t want to make a trip to Mother Base, there is another way to get a quick refresher while in the field! Find a shallow pool of water, get prone, and roll around left and right. After a few spins, Snake will be clean and refreshed.

• If you’re anything like me, you probably need to resupply your silencers and C4 packs at least once or twice a mission, but you’re also shitty, impatient, and hate waiting the minute or two a supply drop takes. Fortunately, you can skip that wait and go straight back to sabotage and murder. Simply call a supply drop directly on top of Snake’s position, whip out your Phantom Cigar, take a single time bending puff, and seconds later you’ll be hit out of the time skip by a supply crate landing on your head.

• I wish I knew about this one sooner — If you’re looking to extract, and have the fulton upgrade that lets you steal cargo, check and see if there are any large supply containers in the area. Hop on top, slap on the fulton, and look for the button prompt to grab on. You’ll be sucked out of the combat zone along with the cargo. No waiting for Pequod to bring in the chopper.

Fun with the cardboard box:

• As you probably know, the cardboard box is ridiculously elaborate in The Phantom Pain. But, aside from using it as a method of quick travel, slapping distracting pin-up girls on the side, and generally sneaking around, it has a few undocumented uses. For example, you can also use it as a ghetto sled! Find a nice big hill, stand up with the box on, take a quick run, and hit the dive button. Snake will belly slide down the hill wearing the box. It looks stupid as hell, but it’s actually a pretty great way to quickly infiltrate an outpost after scouting it out at the top of a hill!

• Did you know that the cardboard box also confers a very small amount of armor? Getting shot while wearing it will flash the armor/vehicle hit warning instead of direct damage to Snake. Obviously it can’t take much punishment for you, but if you’re on the brink of death and can’t afford to hide and wait for your health to regen, it might just make the difference!

• The box will also soak up the effects of a stun grenade. Toss it front of you, put on the box, and Snake won’t even blink when it goes off. It may look dumb, but you can use this to incapacitate groups of enemies at short range — just the thing if they’re just about to creep up on your position.

‘Useless’ equipment:

• The water pistol seems like a stupid gag item, and it mostly is. However, there are some not so obvious uses for it. You can silently disable electronics with the water pistol, super handy if you’re out of C4 or don’t want to raise a ruckus while you take out enemy coms equipment. But who the hell is going to wander into a war zone with just a squirt gun?

• The water pistol can also extinguish fire pits and other pesky light sources, which is actually surprisingly handy during a night op.

• Speaking of electronics, did you know you can use power lines to zap fools? Shooting out a line so the live wire touches a trooper will fry them, you know, if you wanted to make it look like an accident. Snake should be able to take out an insurance policy on individual troops before each mission, that would be a fun way to fund Mother Base.

• There are other ways to kill guys while making it look like an accident. You probably know that you can hold guys up and tell them to lie down with their hands on their heads, but have you ever tried it in some shallow water? The poor bastards will lie down as instructed and if you don’t fulton them away or otherwise reposition them, they’ll drown! Yay, humor murder!

• Ever wonder what you’re supposed to do with those small 10-15 second sound clips you sometimes find while looking for ’80s synth pop? Turns out, lots of things! If you turn the speaker on so enemies can hear, there a few tricks you can pull. Turn on the farting/pooping soundtrack while hiding in an outhouse to turn away suspicious guards, while playing one of the lullabies will put nearby soldiers to sleep. I’m sure there are more secret uses for these tapes, so experiment with them!

The more I play The Phantom Pain, the more I’m impressed by the attention to detail and thought that went into every part of it. I’m sure this list just scratches the surface of the weird little tricks to be found. If you’ve discovered anything interesting, useful, or just plain stupid, be sure to share in the comments!