Blood & Gore: There is a moderate amount of blood in this game, mostly in the form of splattering/puffs when your character or enemies are shot, hit or stabbed. Also, blood lingers in puddles and stains the characters' clothes. However, it can be turned off at the title screen, under options, which will disable it for gameplay and cutscenes, but some static blood on floors and walls will remain.

Specific scenes of blood & gore:

One scene depicts a group of soldiers being attacked by a swarm of hornets, showing one soldier's heavily swollen and disfigured face, as he drops dead. Later on, you find the villain who controls the hornets; he, too, is heavily disfigured from the years of taming them. After you defeat him, he explodes (for future reference, all of the early bosses self-destruct after you defeat them).

Volgin (one of the main villains) has a heavily scared face. It looks like the scar marks are from some sort of burn damage. They probably result from him trying to perfect his electric powers in the past.

A later boss is a derranged freak of a man in a space suit, who uses a superpowered flamethrower. After you defeat him, he bursts into flames, showing a somewhat detailed view of his suit and face decomposing under the fire.

Volgin is shown violently hitting a metal barrel, but something or someone must be in it because the barrel starts leaking blood. He then knocks the barrel into the air revealing a dead and bloody body. You soon find out that this was a failed attempt at interrogation.

Another scene shows Snake (the main character) come across a supposed ghost, while walking down a river. You find out that he is a so-called spirit-medium soldier. He is a genuine freak, levitating around and shedding a tear of blood from his eye. He takes it upon himself to teach the main character a lesson by leading him through the river, while showing the main character all of the enemies the main character supposedly killed. You see several ghostly figures representing dead enemies walk towards you from up river. Some have disfigured looks like broken necks, slit throats and so on. You also hear them screaming things they said before they died. Also if the spirit-medium soldier hits you with his powers, you will see a brief, slightly disturbing image of his distorted and pathetic face flash on screen.

After you defeat Volgin (one of the last bosses), he coughs up quite a bit of blood on the floor. When you defeat him for the second time, he is bloody with his old scars broken open. He then perishes by, well, let just say it's not nice to fool with Mother Nature.

Snake and Eva (the main female character) crash in a motorcycle. She lands on a log's sharp branch, piercing her all the way through the abdomen. There is blood visibly trickling down her mouth and soaked into her clothes at the site of the wound. She then proceeds to painfully pull herself off the branch with appropriate sound effects.

The Boss (main female villain and the last boss) in the game pulls open the top of her jumpsuit to reveal a scar running from the top of her chest to the bottom of her navel. After you defeat her, the scar slithers out of her body like a snake, and, in fact, ends up being one.

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Intense violence: this game is pretty much as violent as it can get, without crossing the line of a somewhat mild horror genre. Also it has some very bizarre almost mythological story elements, as in most characters have supernatual-like powers, ranging from controlling hornets with the mind to being a human lightning rod. Add all this and a load of complicated politics and theology, and you have Metal Gear Solid.