| “ | This is a no-smoking flight! | „ |
| ~ Sunny catching Snake smoking |
Sunny Emmerich is a supporting protagonist in Metal Gear Solid 4 and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. She is the adopted daughter of Hal " Otacon" Emmerich and the biological daughter of Olga Gurlukovich. Due to experiments carried out by the Patriots, she is a child prodigy in computer programming, helping to build Metal Gear Mks 2 and 3 and even building a Mach 23 speed aircraft.
She is voiced by Christina Puccelli.
Biography
Olga gave birth to Sunny at a hospital run by the Patriots, who immediately took the child from her. Her only contact with the baby from then on was a monthly photograph, sent by the Patriots. They later injected Sunny with life-monitoring nanomachines designed to end her life should a listed operative fail or die during their mission. The Patriots used this to force Olga to assist Raiden during the Big Shell Incident: if Raiden died during the incident, then Sunny would have been killed by her nanomachines. Olga eventually gave her life to protect Raiden, and the child whom she never got to raise. After Raiden accomplished his mission, Solid Snake decided to rescue Sunny himself, telling Raiden to stay put and that keeping himself alive would ensure the child's safety.
Sunny was later rescued by Raiden. After escaping, Raiden covertly left Sunny in the care of Solid Snake and Otacon, who raised her aboard the Nomad. Having been used by the Patriots as a computer programmer, she became a child prodigy, helping to build both Metal Gear Mk. II and the worm cluster (known as FOXALIVE), which in the end shut down the Patriots' AIs. She enjoyed making eggs for Snake and Otacon; which she used as a kind of fortune telling, calling it her "Sunny Side Up" fortune telling. If the eggs turned out well, the group's current mission would be a success. Unfortunately, she wasn't actually very good at making eggs, and they burned more often than not. It is unknown how often her cooking's predictions came true.
Sunny had been in hiding most of her life, having little to no social skills and no experience of the outside world beyond computers. Somewhat fittingly, Otacon acted as a surrogate father, and she inherited some of his mannerisms. She had a very pronounced stutter that slowly faded away after befriending Naomi Hunter. She was also very protective of Raiden and Snake, often chastising the latter for his smoking habit. During the Twin Suns mission, after Raiden recovered enough to return to battle, Sunny requested that, if Raiden finds Naomi, he tell her that "I cooked them right." After the AIs were shut down, Otacon discovered that she managed to program FOXALIVE to shut down the AIs, yet at the same time keep regulation of the societal essentials intact, although he was ultimately unsure of what Sunny's motives were for choosing that specific method.
After the Patriots were destroyed, Sunny found her first "outside" friend, a local boy, at the wedding of Meryl Silverburgh and Johnny Sasaki. The boy didn't speak English, but she had fun playing with him anyway, and gave him the Metal Gear Mk. III as a present. In the end, Sunny decided to accompany Otacon in witnessing the final days of Solid Snake.
Personality
Early on, Sunny was shy and spoke with a stutter. Having previously been held hostage by the Patriots, she hadn't made friends with anyone outside of Philanthropy and computers; in fact, computers were the closest to what she could call a family, although she did desire to find out about what her mother was like. However, throughout the mission, she started to overcome her shyness after meeting Naomi. She also may have had a very low self esteem, as she would become hurt at some comments made towards her, even if they weren't necessarily meant to be insulting or critical. This was especially evident when she tried to serve eggs to Otacon and an unconscious Snake after the events of the failed assassination mission in the Middle East. After Snake regained consciousness and noticed her eggs, he remarked, "I don't remember the sun being so flat," to which Sunny became visibly hurt. However, by 2018, Sunny was a lot more positive. Raiden remarked to Boris that she was "a lot more sunnier than she used to be" in her early life. She even teased Raiden when commenting how she was surprised that the Mach 23 aircraft worked well.
Sunny had a great amount of care and loyalty for Snake and Raiden, especially since the latter had saved her from the Patriots. This was evident by her scolding Snake for smoking on the Nomad, and during the briefing before the Eastern European mission, even taking away and disposing of the last cigarette before Snake could get the chance to smoke it. She also prevented Snake from taking Raiden with him to Shadow Moses Island as he was still recovering from his injuries, and even cradled Raiden in her arms when he collapsed while talking to Snake.
Sunny would usually sing while she cooked her eggs, prior to Snake's mission briefings aboard the Nomad. In the Middle East briefing she sang digits from Pi, and in the South America briefing, she sang the numbers of the Fibonacci Sequence. Prior to the briefing on Eastern Europe, she sang elements from the periodic table (albeit mispronouncing the element Erbium as "Ebrium"), and for Shadow Moses, she sang the names of stations along the Nose Japanese private railway. During the mission aboard Outer Haven, Sunny cooked eggs around the time of Snake's passage through the microwave hallway, jumping up and down when they became ready.