Headscratchers / Metal Gear Solid V

aka: Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain

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• Whatever happened to the guard dogs near the multiple holding cages as shown in the intro of GZ? Did the soldiers take them out for a walk or something...?
  • They were probably only brought out for Skull Face's visit. He isn't precisely someone with a trusting aura.
• I didn't play through the game yet so I didn't read this whole section, but I assuuuume it's been covered: Why does Ocelot greet Big Boss with practically ZERO familiarity? We all had to suffer his hammed up false familiarity with Big Boss is MGS3, and then, now, in MGSV it's a perfunctory "My name is Revolver Ocelot" with a nod like he just taught Double-B that water is wet and the knowledge will take him far. W. T. F. I realize most sequels, follow-ups, whatever, shell out the hammy openings, but it should have been "Snake, it's me, Revolver Ocelot" or "Big Boss" because technically RO has been in the loop and knows he addresses Big Boss. I'm very foaming beside myself with this, not to mention the crap ass appearance (not entrance) of Revolver. Spoiler: Are we to assume RO has already begun wiping his psyche and really is greeting BB for the first time?
  • Ocelot and Big Boss, along with EVA, Sigint, Para-medic, and Zero, have formed a group together before this, called "The Patriots", and this was before Peace Walker. So, Ocelot knew Snake quite well before the events of Phantom Pain, not to mention that behind the scenes, The Boss has told Ocelot about Snake during Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and had to play along withe "false familiarity".
  • Also, since Snake is literally suffering brain damage from that "horn" in his forehead, Ocelot can presumably pass off his introduction as a way of jogging "Big Boss's" memories, in case he "forgot" him. That and the fact that it's likely been a while since they last met, so he might not be instantly recognizable.
    • Ah, excellent. I was caught up in what I described as a "hammy" intro. It was just the exact wording that roped me in: "I'm Revolver Ocelot." It's like you say, Big Boss was probably displaying tells that triggered Ocelot to know instinctively that things weren't processing the same . . .

• How on earth did Big Boss, Miller and the Medic end up in a hospital after the attack on the MSF base by Skull Face when their base was right in the middle of the ocean, far away from any country or island (making it difficult to locate and quite far from any nearest hospital really let alone city) and the helicopter crash would have probably rendered them unconscious or at least too injured to actually remain afloat out in the ocean?
  • Judging by the cutscenes depicting the aftermath, the Medic and Miller were both functional, and were able to haul the injured BB into an emergency raft. Other survivors likely found them, or others returning from missions to their now-gone base. That or since the tapes reveal Zero had BB and the Medic hidden in the Cyprus hospital, agents loyal to him might have scooped them out of the water, with the attack being orchestrated by Skull Face's faction

• In Mission 18 "Blood Runs Deep", Miller wants you to eliminate the prisoners so they don't talk about... well, anything about Diamond Dogs. As soon as Big Boss discovers that the prisoners are children, why does Miller act like it's okay to follow through with the execution (if we can assume Miller knew that Snake wasn't going to kill the kids anyway)? How did he even know that these kids in particular were the prisoners that had information about D.Ds and yet not know who they were in the first place?
  • You aren't eliminating the kids for Diamond Dogs, you've been hired to do it by their former general to tidy up loose ends. Miller figures it out because there is literally one prison in the spot where the targets area.

• Why does Quiet shoot you if you use the anime Paz cardboard box?
  • Is this during or after her boss battle?
  • After the boss fight. I just tried using the box to fool some mooks, then she shot me for God knows why.
  • Quiet likes the Big Boss. Quiet sees Big Boss using a box bearing the image of another girl he knows. Quiet gets angry and jealous, can't say a thing, instead shoots Big Boss. It's supposed to be a silly detail, nothing more.
  • (Original Poster) I don't mind, I think it's pretty funny. I just wish I had known that before trying to capture those A+ mooks.

• Why does Skull face wears a domino mask? To protect his identity, so nobody could discern a man with most his face burned down like a skull from another?
  • To hide the fact that he too is infected with the parasite, which manifests itself as dark patches around the eyes - like Quiet's. That it fits his cowboy theme is probably a plus.

• Is it ever explained why in TPP The Eye and The Finger have reversed roles? In Ground Zeroes the black guy was the Eye and the white guy was The Finger. In TPP they are the opposite.
  • I haven't played it in a while, but doesn't Kaz suggest that they alternate between the roles with one playing spotter and one playing shooter?
  • That's how Marine scout sniper teams operated in Vietnam (and today). You have a two-man team who alternate being the sniper and the spotter, equally adept at both roles, who're supposed to trade off at set periods.
    • So it's more a case of them switching handles/codenames between operations, in addition to them trading roles.
    • Or, the handle/codename is associated with the role, not the person. So if it were real life, radioing for 'The Eye' will always get you the spotter, no matter which one that happens to be.
    • But if you extract both of them in that mission, Kaz will mention that Glaz wears sunglasses to hide his fake eye after stabbing his own out and Palitz wears a prosthetic finger after chopping his off, suggesting they felt guilt over their actions. Switching codenames only serves to make that self-mutilation moot.

• At the beginning of the game, the assassin throws her knife at Ishmael and it hits him in the shoulder. He just yanks it out and carries on as usual. The weird thing is there is no blood on him, and getting freaking stabbed in the shoulder doesn't slow him down at all. Minutes later, he gets torched by the Man on Fire and even though he puts it out quickly, his flimsy hospital gown has absolutely no damage on it. Later on, when the attack helicopter opens fire on your ambulance, Ishmael suddenly falls unconscious at the wheel, but there's no blood on him so he didn't take a bullet. What's going on here?
  • Isn't it obvious? We're talking about someone that went through all of Operation Snake Eater and all the damage and injury that entailed, he just used the Cure menu.

• By the end of the game, it is revealed that Ishmael is actually the real Big Boss. That's all fine and dandy, but if you look closely during the hospital sequence you'll notice Big Boss is clean shaven whilst disguised as Ishmael. How is it possible that only minutes later Big Boss suddenly has his trademark beard again when secretly meeting up with Ocelot?
  • Either Ahab is so out of it he can't see the beard, or the bandages are in fact an entire mask like the one Hideo was wearing to officially announce the game.
  • Not only does Ishmael lack a beard, he also has both of his eyes uncovered and seemingly undamaged. Either Big Boss had his eyes covered for the escape in a mask, or Ishmael isn't actually Big Boss.
    • maybe he had the damaged eye replaced with a cosmetic prosthesis during the timeskip? its an Option for DD, so its not completely out of the question, and would help in blending in.
  • This troper likes to believe the answer is a combination of Venom's hallucinations caused by his head injury and the hypnosis he was subject to during his coma to convince himself he is the real Big Boss. He is hallucinating a generic, two-eyed, bald-faced man concealed by bandages while likely also thinking "This Big Boss-class soldier can't possibly be Big Boss, because I am Big Boss", further reinforcing the validity of his hallucinations.
  • He was subject to hypnosis severe enough to more or less destroy his memory of himself. A further hypnotic suggestion implanted to distort the appearance of Big Boss (to protect the illusion in case he even sees him by mistake) doesn't seem like much of a stretch, especially coupled with the hallucinations mentioned above.

• In the prologue, why doesn't Ishmael just carry Ahab? And the dialogue about actual button controls just kills immersion.
  • That would probably be a good way to get them both killed, and your opinion about immersion isn't really a headscratcher.^note This is a series where a character will point to their bandana and explain that they have infinite ammo, talking about buttons on the controller is pretty tame in comparison.
  • Ishmael is spending that time checking corners to make sure it's safe to move. Likewise the only way you'll both escape is if you're strong enough to move on your own which might take longer to happen if he's carrying you.
  • There's also the fact that Punished Snake has to believe that he's Big Boss, and by extension the player does. Would Big Boss let himself be carried by someone else? No, of course not. If Punished Snake let himself be carried, he might realise it's something the real Big Boss wouldn't do, break the hypnotising, and the entire plan would fail.
  • Fourth-wall breaking dialogue has been around since at least the first Metal Gear Solid.^note e.g. "Press the Action button to climb the ladder" or "Can you see where his number of remaining bullets is displayed on the screen?" If anything, trying to avoid it at this point would be worse, because it wouldn't fit with the rest of the series.

• Why are the soldiers in the prologue so stupid? Seriously, they can't see two non-blood soaked men among piles of others, let alone while they are actually moving around under beds? Even Quiet makes some stupid moves for the sake of the plot.
  • They likely just assumed the bullet wounds didn't fully penetrate at that range. Super Best Friends also brought up the point that when the two groups are double tapping corpses, they meet up when they both reach you and give each other thumbs up. They very likely could have both assumed that the other group already checked the center.
    • So it's a coincidence that both groups closing in on both Ismael and Ahab assumed the other group checked that they were all dead (even though they can clearly see that no blood is on either of them)?
    • Pretty much, if you rewatch the scene you can see that they both reach you at the same time, then give each other a thumbs up. They're both saying "My side's all clear" and they're both assuming that that includes the both of you. Though I'd say the point that Ahab clearly can't stop moving is even more jarring than the lack of blood.
  • Okay, the hallway of dead bodies part is explained, but what about parts where Ahab and Ishamel are under the beds? Did the solders seriously not see them, or did they just assume our protagonists were dead? Didn't stop them from double-tapping other victims before, though.
    • They're wearing full-face gas masks, which doesn't give a lot of peripheral vision.

• During the game we learn that a certain psychic child is able to control Sahelanthropus with his powers. If the psychic child is in fact the same character as Mantis from Metal Gear Solid 1 (as we are led to believe), why did he not utilise his abilities to control REX at Shadow Moses? Even if Mantis was dead by the time Ocelot and Liquid manipulate Solid Snake into activating it for them, the entire premise of their plan was ALREADY based upon relying on Solid to activate REX. Why rely on an elaborate gambit roulette when you already have someone with such a convinient ability on your side? To add to the confusion, Liquid already knows of (and has already taken advantage of) Mantis's said abilities. Unless it's explained why Mantis is not using this ability by the time of the Shadow Moses incident, Kojima has inadvertantly punched a gaping plot hole into the narrative of MGS 1.
  • Foxhound were all manipulated into their role during Shadow Moses at the behest of Ocelot, ostensibly doing it for George Sears/Solidus Snake, supposedly really doing it for the Patriots, but actually doing it to clean up shop and take down the Patriots. Given Foxhound's medical staff included Naomi 'I'm going to alter your nanomachines to kill you' Hunter and resulted in a project like that of the Cyborg Ninja, maybe Foxhound underwent extensive therapy/manipulation to limit the damage they would cause.
  • REX also is fully designed to use a cockpit with a pilot while Sahelanthropus had AI functions with the cockpit as a secondary feature. You could infer that Mantis was able to control it through the mind like AI but couldn't control REX's more manual systems easily.
  • The dialogue between Huey and Skull Face seemed to imply that it was specifically designed to be controlled that way. Note how much Huey protests about the lack of control options and Skull Face just blows him off. It seems the cockpit was designed to be secondary.

• So, at the beginning of the MGSV trailer with "Not Your Kind Of People", there's a bit where we see Big Boss go into a coma with Miller next to him. As the doctors fail to completely resuscitate him, Miller (obviously in despair) glances at the camera (i.e. us) and says "What about him?", and the doctors all begin to look towards the viewer's direction. Was that scene supposed to be from the point of view of a character? Because the rest of trailer has similar scenes, but those are from the point of view of Big Boss himself.
  • It's probably Ishmael's point of view, considering he says he'd been watching Big Boss for his whole comatose period.
  • According to Hideo himself, it's Hideo himself. Since it's easy enough to recruit in Peace Walker he's no doubt on Mother Base during XOF's assault, and you can bet that Kaz and Snake are going to be rescuing the god of their world. Now to be a bit more serious here, both Ishmael and Big Boss share the same VO (Kiether Sutherland), so he might actually be a hallucination. I hate to be that guy but this isn't technically a headscratcher since the answer will be obvious once the game comes out (unless it's not).
  • In actuality, it's the Medic from Ground Zeroes. This sequence is part of the "Truth: The Man Who Sold The World" flashback/true ending, and explains why the Medic was transformed into Big Boss at the beginning of Phantom Pain.

• Can somebody please set the record straight on the whole David Hayter deal? Some sources aren't clear, one says he took it poorly and lashed out at Konami; another says he took it with good humor; and another says he's acting suspicious about it (leading to some to theorize that it's all a troll).
  • Hayter actually tweeted before the reveal of Sutherland as the new Big Boss voice, joking that he hoped he didn't lose his voice. Therefore, once has to imagine that any surprise he's expressed over losing the Big Boss role must be taken with a pinch of salt. Plus, the New Coke references seem to suggest that he, Kojima, and presumably Sutherland are in on something that we're not, right now. At this point, could anyone really see Kojima letting go of Hayter, either?
  • There really is no way to set the record straight since the only two people who would know for sure are Kojima and Hayter.
  • Apparently his "bridge-burning attack" on Konami is that he threatened not to buy MGSV; which sounds rather silly for a threat. Even if he's not going to be in the game, it's most likely he's not bitter about it at all. Which is good.
  • At any rate, at this point it's pretty safe to say that we're not going to know for sure if he's in the game or not until it actually comes out.
  • Kind of hard to imagine that Kojima wouldn't be willing to let Hayter go, since his most recent MGS works (Peace Walker and the two digital graphic novels) weren't really met with a lot of positive criticism, yeah sure the game was fine and the novels were decent enough, but it was Hayter's voice that made all three a joke for a lot of people, and even Hayter himself said that that's the only Snake voice he's able to do (which is clear by the digital graphic novels since they're supposed to be MGS1/2 era Snake yet he's speaking with his Peace Walker era voice) so it's pretty much time to let someone else have a go at it, though IMO, Big Boss should've had his own voice actor from the start.
    • I've never actually heard anyone having much of an issue with Snake's voice in Peace Walker (quite the opposite, in fact; Hayter seems to have toned down the Snake's slight dumbass tendencies) and MGS4 shows that he's not wholly inflexible.
    • Were you around when Peace Walker came out? Because his voice was one of the main complaints people had with it. If not then it's not a surprise you've never heard of people having an issue with it, quite a few people who did have an issue with it ended up backpedaling the second it was announced that Hayter wouldn't be voicing Big Boss anymore to the point where they outright denied having any sort of negative criticism of his Peace Walker performance. Make no mistake, a lot of the people saying his performance in Peace Walker was great are only doing so because he's no longer voicing Big Boss. It's the same situation with Resident Evil Code Veronica, first it was outright hated by a lot of people, now it's praised as being "The last great true RE game." by those very same people. And think about it, if Hayter was still Big Boss's voice actor, would any of the Big Boss body double theories exist? No because 99.9% of them exist because of the fact Hayter is no longer voicing him, nobody would've thought twice about Hayter voicing both Big Boss and Ishmael but with Sutherland doing it, all of a sudden there's a body double conspiracy going on with one of them being Decoy Octopus and the real Big Boss coming in later voiced by Hayter. (which wouldn't make any sense since Octopus copies everything up to and including the voice, so even if he was body doubling Big Boss, the real one would still be voiced by Sutherland) And how did MGS4 show he wasn't completely inflexible? All he really did was reuse his MGS3 voice and added a more phlegm in throat sound, which isn't exactly that difficult to do even for someone who's not a voice actor. To tell the truth a lot of people play up Hayter's abilities as a voice actor simply because "He voices the main playable character so he's got to be great right?" when he's really not all that great of a voice actor at all, especially compared to every other member of the cast, in a franchise full of A-list voice actors, Hayter was the black sheep.
    • The black sheep that somehow still stayed on the boat ride for this long. Especially noteworthy seeing as how most (like 99%) of VAs for PS1-era games are replaced by the time they reach the next generation. Also, if David was never really that good, then a lot of people must of had low standards during the PS2 and PS3 era, because I am sure there are people who legitimately thought David is really good at what he did, at least for MGS 3 and 4, where he clearly gave his full effort and had more experience since the OG MGS. I don't know, I just think David is a pretty good VA (at least for his most well known role), and maybe I'm crazy. Though his MGS PW work was more ehh.
  • Hayter and Kojima are well known for tricking and pranking their fanbase, both for good humor and to keep people off guard for whatever twists and plans they have. While no one can obviously tell you what to expect, go in with the assumption Hayter is still involved somehow, and we will see him again.
    • This does appear increasingly unlikely given a recent interview where an aggravated Hayter declared Kojima "could go fuck himself" over what has happened with the game. He even goes as far as to state that he hopes the removal of Kojima from Konami's board of directors will result in him getting further work in their announced Metal Gear follow-ups after MGSV. Hayter also denied that the discovered sound clips in Ground Zeroes that seem to be his voice are something he knows nothing about. So either Hayter and Kojima are pulling no punches here in playing the trolling game, or he's definitely not involved.
    • Link please?
    • The interview can be found detailed here; while the part with Hayter stating Kojima 'can go fuck himself' is suggested to be joking, Hayter makes it clear that he had no involvement with MGSV and that he hopes he'll get more work now Kojima is gone; sure hope he likes pachinko.
    • After reading through David's twitter (David seems to be trying to start a #Performance Matters campaign thing and referenced how Birdman felt too close to home for him the first time he saw it), I think this whole Konami "no more AAA" games thing can probably cause 1 or 2 things to happen to David. 1, he has a Creator Breakdown in some form, knowing that he's only known as Snake, and will probably never will be Snake again. Or 2, he moves on from Metal Gear, knowing that he's probably done with the role for good, but takes it with stride. Whether he's successful with #Performance Matters is up in the air really. But a different question, how major is the animosity between David and Kojima, if there is any at all (and really, there seems to be some level of animosity)?

• During the Extra Ops missions (Deja Vu or Jamais Vu) you find titles of other Metal Gear games, and a rifle with a light that removes the paint. What does it mean!? What's it all for!?
  • Um, it's an Easter Egg? I fail to see how this is a headscratcher.
• Why exactly did they go through the trouble of removing Paz's organs when they placed the bomb in her? Was it to hasten her death or would there simply not be room for it otherwise? And if so, why not just put a smaller bomb inside her? Deliberate cruelty?
  • Yes, yes, and yes.
    • So what about the additional one in her anus or vagina? That one couldn't possibly have been as big as the one in her stomach. Why not just go with that plan from the start? Skull Face notes it likely wouldn't be noticed, and he was right.
    • A double-blind. They don't find the stomach bomb, it goes off, kills Snake, mission accomplished. Snake finds first bomb, most likely assumes that's that and doesn't look for second bomb, which goes off, mission also accomplished. Hell, he probably intended the first bomb to be discovered, since it even has a peace symbol on it, mocking whoever found it.

• The XOF patches. Why dump them around the place where they can be found if you're appearing to be a black ops unit that doesn't exist?
  • It's subtle, but there's some Gameplay and Story Segregation there - the cutscene where they're released shows the patches flying in roughly the same direction, falling into the ocean near the cliff Big Boss climbs. Their status as collectibles doesn't seem to tie in to the story - Miller even lampshades it the first few times you pick one up, berating Snake for not focusing on the mission. Alternatively, it could be Gameplay and Story Integration as part of Skull Face's mysterious Xanatos Gambit involving Big Boss and Chiper.
    • Well to be fair to Skull Face they were headed off to go destroy Mother Base, those patches having a resemblance to Big Boss's old unit would tip them off that something strange was about to happen. But of course that would raise an even bigger question of why a completely unofficial unit would even have identifying tags to begin with, especially if they don't want to hold onto them. One would want to assume that Skull Face dropped them off in his own facility so that Big Boss would find them, and that perhaps Big Boss finding and holding onto them has some significance.

• Chico has screws drilled into his heels to prevent him from walking, but he later manages to walk around on the helicopter. Unless, of course the medic on board managed to fix him up.
  • He's clearly still struggling to stand up and walk around, as evidenced by Snake having to carry him around.
    • He also looks way smaller than he is in those instances, suggesting that he is walking on his knees.
    • The above troper is correct; on several scenes you do see him on his knees, and the way he moves around is consistent with that.

• What is the emphasis on some of these missions being "top secret"? It even gets to the point that in a few of them Kaz points out that stealth should be emphasized because it's a "top secret black op". But why? Unless Big Boss still works for the US Government they have no one to report to or answer to, so why do they need to keep things quiet? In fact since they're an unofficial unit no one would even know where to come looking for them if they were to be noticed in a mission.
  • The undercover operative mission is stated to have been given to MSF by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff who Big Boss spoke with at the end of Peace Walker and that the MSF got a few U.S. government contracts thanks to preventing the nuclear launch. Since he's ordering Snake into a base staffed by U.S. Marines, it's understandable that he'd want as few of them killed as possible.
  • Big Boss is still wearing two patches (MSF and FOX) that would identify exactly who he is, and while MSF is an independent organisation infiltrating a military base would put you on the top of the U.S. military's shit list.
  • There's also the fact that the main mission and a few of the side ops are rescue missions. You never know what the enemy will do to any of the prisoners at the first sign of trouble in any situation. They have to go in thinking that if they are detected, their target will be killed. For gameplay reasons they aren't, but it can be easily seen once you rescue Paz. On one playthrough I was out of ammo for my sidearm and carrying her, so I was trying to run and what did they do? Instead of shooting me they shot her and mission failed. Even answering to no one, and even if the operative is a legendary soldier who can handle himself, none of that matters if the very reason you went on a mission in the first place is eliminated because that's morale breaker, a time waster, and a waste of resources. Stealth is best in these situations and the "top secret" part is just to help nail it in since it rarely shows up in gameplay.

• Has there ever been a justified reason as to why Big Boss has his knife back instead of the stun rod?
  • Might boil down to censorship issues. Peace Walker was heavily bowdlerized in Japan because it was on a handheld (and thus "for kids") - most notably changing the electric torture scene to Snake being tickled with "laughing rods" - and some of those censors made it into international releases as well. It's possible that the stun rod was one of those censors, and that for all intents and purposes, Snake has been using a knife (or knife-like object) all along.
  • Personally, the whole use of the stun rod to begin with was a headscratcher for me, as in Snake Eater (and even, to a lesser extent, Portable Ops), the knife was integral to CQC (to the point where you couldn't use CQC when captured due to not having a knife). Going back to the knife makes a lot more sense especially when threatening someone with a stun rod in the same way as with a knife by use of the game mechanics, as it's a good way to electrocute yourself as well.

• Regarding the CQC, would some of the slams Big Boss uses really be that effective in knocking an opponent out? I know slams and suplexes can be very incapacitating due to internal injuries to the brain and other organs. But a lot Big Boss's CQC take-downs resemble either particularly forceful tripping/sweeping maneuvers or even shoves. While I can buy these incapacitating an opponent in a "too injured/in pain to fight effectively" kind of way, I can't really see them knocking an opponent unconscious so that he is unable to call or radio for help, particularly as many of these attacks don't even seem to target the opponents head.
  • The wind could be knocked out of them, temporarily cutting off oxygen to the brain, knocking them out. Big Boss is probably well aware how to do this reliably without damaging the head, thus reducing the risk of brain damage from blunt force trauma.
  • Taking them out via CQC throws doesn't put them down for that long all things considered, so it's less them being knocked out and more they're knocked silly and unable to move until they regain their senses. That doesn't explain why they go completely still, but it would explain why some they're unable to take any kind of action.

• The whole "No anaesthetic surgery" scene could have been avoided if Big Boss just put a tranq round in Paz's head before the medic operated on her. Unless, canonically Big Boss used up all his tranq rounds during the mission.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation. Tranq rounds would not work like a magic "light's off" switch and you'd have to factor in things like Paz being smaller than the guards, being in worse health, and a whole heap of other things that make a soldier trying to play medic a terrible, terrible idea. Plus tranquilisers and anasthetics are not interchangeable, any medic worth his salt would see Big Boss pulling out his gun and immeditely get in the way and tell him what a stupid idea that is. And to add some Fridge Horror to it all if she had been Tranqed then she would have never regained consciousness before the bomb went off, killing Big Boss and ending the entire series.
  • It strikes me as silly though that the medic would say that there was no time for anesthetic. Yes, the bomb could go off at any time, but field anesthetic is designed to be applied very rapidly and in an idiot-proof manner: small squeezable tubes of morphine (or similar pain-mitigating medical opiate) with a hypodermic needle on the end. The medic had forceps, suture, and other tools, they almost certainly had some drugs with them. The few seconds it takes to apply the anesthetic would seem to be a good trade off to prevent the patient thrashing when trying to remove something that could be set to explode if not delicately handled...
    • Even so, it wasn't worth the risk, and it's not like every chopper comes prepared with idiot-proof morphine injectors.
    • A medical graduate analyzes it here and explains how they simply did not have a proper setup for applying an IV anesthesia, and that an inhaled anesthetic is impractical on a helicopter. As for tranquilizers, feasabilty and safety would depend on what type of tranquilizer Snake was using. Since a tranquilizer does not relieve pain or relax muscles, the combination of certain tranquilizers and the invasive surgery could send her body into severe shock. Plus, she likely already had tranquilizers and other compounds in her system, and there could be dangerous dosage issues because of that.

• A dumb/minor one. What would Raiden do with/need the XOF patches for?
  • He knows how the FOX/XOF showdown ends and goes down in history, so he's looking to grab some historic merchandise and then sell them for massive profits in his own time.
  • Jamais Vu takes place in an alternate timeline, so presumably it makes sense in a completely different version of Metal Gear's convoluted story that we don't get to see.

• Okay, I was rewatching the trailers a couple of minutes ago, and I'm still baffled with the horn/rock on the side of Big Boss' forehead. What the flying fuck is it doing there? And why won't he take it out?
  • It's shrapnel, presumably from the helicopter we see incoming immediately in Ground Zeroes' ending or from the subsequent crash which will presumably be part of Phantom Pain's prologue. Chances are it can't be removed without damaging his skull further - although it's clearly removed by the time of Metal Gear/Metal Gear 2 - and it's stated that the shrapnel has essentially contributed to the bag-of-spilling nature of Big Boss losing some of his skills, particularly that of language, implying it could have caused brain damage.
  • Oh, so it's shrapnel. Is it also meant to symbolize Big Boss' descent into darkness? Considering that, at some angle, the really do resemble Devil horns.
    • "Kaz... I'm already a demon." along with those shots of Big Boss doused in blood and looking like he's spewing smoke in the 'Nuclear' trailer are your answer. So.. Yeah, pretty much. However much you consider Big Boss to be the lesser of two evils when he - much like his own children - has been prodded into the role he occupies is a real YMMV, but.. Absolutely. This game ends with Big Boss as the Villain Protagonist, and I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a neat Call-Forward to the Outer Heaven of the 90's, complete with old, white-haired, trench-coated Big Boss, for he epilogue.
  • At the beginning of the game the doctor intends to provide plastic surgery for Big Boss for him to look like a different person. Now that would have to involve at least shaving down the shrapnel enough for it to not protrude since changing his face would be pointless with such an obvious distinguishing mark. So obviously they can take care of that shrapnel safely. Now the question is, why haven't they done that at any point during the previous nine years?

• I know the issue of Big Boss being a villain is a contentious issue among fans, but as far as the ambiguity goes why is MGS V being cited as an example? About the only morally ambiguous thing I see Big Boss doing in the game is the torture of people he wants information from. Wanting revenge by itself can't be why he's seen as evil, because losing 9 years of his life, his left arm, and the lives of his soldiers should be a perfectly valid reason for hunting down the bastards who did that to him; I'd challenge anyone to not want justice after having that done to them. And if it's the methods he uses to achieve that aim, then what method does he use to get revenge on Cipher and XOF that is so unforgivable? If we're talking serious war crimes of the kind you'd equate with Stalin and Hitler, I honestly cannot imagine Big Boss doing that; sorry, even at his worst, I can't see him acting like that. And more to the point, if his pragmatic cruelty to defeat an even greater evil is wrong on all levels, what should Big Boss have done?
  • You have to consider how far is acceptable or right to go in terms of pursuing revenge. We know one of Kojima's reference points is Moby Dick, which at it's core is the story of a life consumed by revenge. So YMMV heavily on how far is acceptable for Big Boss to go in pursuit of revenge, but one of the key ideas of Metal Gear seems to be that revenge is wrongheaded and foolish - be it through the example provided by the Boss, who goes to her grave to save the world and never considers revenge against those who wronged her, or Solid Snake; Snake, while bitter, increasingly old and dealt a worse hand than Big Boss himself, never pursues self interest or revenge, and pushes himself to the breaking point not for his ideology or anyone else's, but to save the world and give them choice and freedom. Big Boss establishes Outer Heaven as a rejection of the control of the Patriots, and his old mentor's ideology of pacifism - and partly because he thinks she rejected him. There's a difference between the pursuit of justice against those who have wronged you, and a man who becomes the same evil as his enemies - which must happen, and that we haven't seen yet, as Big Boss needs to become the embittered old man who endorses the use of child soldiers as per Metal Gear 2.
  • Now that the game's released it's also clear that a lot of people were just assuming that Big Boss would do something horribly evil in the course of the game, when in reality the game was actually Venom's story, not the story of Big Boss' descent that was advertised.

• How can Skull Face quote Big Boss so readily? It's one thing to have a general psyche profile of an agent, and even to have a brief overview of the mission they went on, but to have specific quotes of what the man said would require pin point accuracy on his spies/double agents. Most troubling of all is the quotes that Big Boss directed to Chico, said in a shack isolated in the middle of the wilderness with no one else around for miles. Only two people on Earth could possibly have heard Big Boss say those words, Chico and Big Boss himself. How the hell does Skull Face know?
  • You've answered your own question. While not tortured as thoroughly or horribly as Paz - just about - Skull Face still tortured Chico extensively... And Chico, as per Peace Walker, has a habit of caving in and talking under pressure. That's why he was so afraid of Big Boss when he's approached in his cage - he thinks Big Boss is there to kill him because he's essentially betrayed that second life Big Boss gave him in that shack in Costa Rica. So Chico spilled - just like Paz did, as per the finale of Ground Zeroes.
    • But what about the Extra Ops missions? In one of them Big Boss can extract a Mother Base POW, and he talks about how Cipher's multi-national spy ring interrogated him but never broke him; however Skull Face was the only one who came close to breaking him because he quoted Big Boss's words to him. Chronologically those Extra Ops missions take place BEFORE Ground Zeroes. Or are they not meant to be canon?
    • I think the Extra Ops missions have to be approached with a grain of salt (much like some of the missions in Peace Walker, where canon was debatable for a number of missions), given they involve repeated assaults and infiltrations of the same base over and over, which would make the mission of finding Chico and Paz impossible. I'm also pretty sure Skull Face had Chico for a prolonged period, meaning he could have gotten what he needed out of Chico and then continued interrogating other POW's. Again, he was clearly done with Chico after a point, and Skull Face's final visit to his cage before leaving was basically one final turning of the screw to make him think Paz was dead. So.. Yeah. Either the approach is 'non-canon' or 'Skull Face was performing multiple interrogations at once'.
    • They're outright stated to be "Pseudo-Historical Recreations", making them Broad Strokes. Some of them may have happened in different locations or had different outcomes.
    • Furthermore, Chico is just a kid who has had zero training to resist interrogation, let alone torture. There's a whole order of difference between a scared kid in over his head, and an adult MSF operative who has specialized training in how to withstand pain.
  • The Phantom Pain explains that Skull Face has such in depth knowledge of Big Boss because XOF used to be a covert support unit for FOX, so Skull Face was basically Big Boss' shadow for years.
  • There are also numerous instances of characters quoting eachother on accident in all of Metal Gear. It may simply be a parallel in the writing, not a deliberate quote on Skull Face's part.

• In the E3 trailer, we see a woman who appears to be Paz. Assuming that really is Paz, how is she still alive, or specifically, how the fuck did she survive the end of Ground Zeroes, you know, considering that a bomb blew up inside her body?
  • Not sure this should even be on here since this is a question that can be answered by the game.
  • The game reveals that she's just a hallucination.

• Why do the Diamond Dogs need to recruit a Russian translator when Ocelot was already an officer in Spetsnaz?
  • Word of Giantbomb says the game has Ocelot explaining the special skills needed to be an interpreter and that he doesn't have them. The difference between an interpreter and translator is the big distinction here. Ocelot could probably translate Russian to English roughly but they need someone who can convey the right nuances.
  • Because being a translator is a full-time role and Ocelot has other duties to perform for Diamond Dogs.
  • Considering that he's on the other end of the radio to offer advice, surely he could translate while he's there.
    • Even a professional translator needs to be very concentrated to do a real-time translation of a restrained and potentially confused person. Ocelot, being busy giving Snake advice, training men and maybe, even, doing paperwork, probably doesn't have the time to translate what every single soldier Snake interrogates on the field says.
  • Fluency in the language does not automatically mean one is a good interpreter. An interpreter needs to be an expert in multiple languages and be able to do context sensitive translations: for example, in Malaysia, trying to order cold water with "air sejuk" (cold water) gets you blank looks, you need to order "ais kosong" (empty ice). "Air sejuk" is the "correct" translation, but it's not the term used locally.
  • Ocelot confirms from the very first mission in Afghanistan that while he speaks Russian, there's a major difference between speaking it and acting as an interpreter for another person.
  • For the same reason that speaking english doesn't automatically makes a person qualified to teach english. As someone who speaks 2 languages (Spanish and English) this troper can verify that being fluent in a language doesn't qualify you to act as translator. Translating for yourself is easy, translating for someone else in real time is most certainly not. Ocelot speaks russian, fair enough, but he's never had the training or practice or experience required to act as an interpreter and translator in real time. He could easily translate a document in russian for Big Boss without breaking a sweat, but translating a conversation happening right now is a much taller order. Notice how when you're securing a translator, the game makes a point to refer to them as language specialists as opposed to just a soldier that happens to speak 2 languages. They're not the same thing.

• Coming from a series of games featuring, in no particular order, a psychic s&m adept, a bisexual vampire flamenco dancer, and more recently, a François Hollande lookalike who hulk out to fight a cyborg ninja, you'd think I'd be a little more accepting of weird stuff just happening in this installment.
  • But how the fuck did Paz manage to stand up and make a few steps to perform her heroic sacrifice?
    • First she fall into the ocean, from quite high I may add, stay for, what, hours, days? Following that she's hauled to the club med from hell, get the living shit tortured out of her literally mentally and physically for days, by a guy who is pretty much the anthropomorphic personification of torture in its purest form. Seriously, Skullface make Ocelot look like Fluttershy in comparison. While said torture is going on, a good chunk of her vital organs are removed, to make place for a decoy bomb ya see, and she's stitched close with something that a drunk veterinarian wouldn't manage if he tried to, and then she's reopened without anesthetic in a hurry to remove said decoy bomb. It's a major miracle she didn't die halfway trough that ordeal, never mind how she also survived being carried by Snake like a sack of rotten potatoes. Her abdomen, by this point, could not have been more fucked up if she had catch an anti tank rocket with her belly, never mind the rest of her body. And after all of that, she literally bolt upright faster than most people can manage after a good night sleep. Shit, she even makes Liquid "indestructible" Snake look like a pansy who died of a paper cut.
    • Nanomachines, son.

• How is the Old Save Bonus from Ground Zeroes going to work in The Phantom Pain if Mother Base is destroyed? Where are all those extra prisoners and Marines I'm extracting being taken to if not Mother Base? Are they being held somewhere for safe keeping for 9 years until it can be reconstructed?
  • Same hospital that was willing to keep Big Boss for nine years?
  • Both Ocelot and Kaz appear to have done some work in maintaining whatever resources and personnel were left following the destruction of Mother Base in '75; given Big Boss was seemingly never one for the administrative/thinking role in MSF, and this simply makes it less jarring in terms of him getting right back into the game in '84. It's simple to assume that the marines and other prisoners got airlifted out either on the same flight as Big Boss (and simply survived the likely crash) or got to Mother Base and survived it being destroyed following a prior flight.
  • Since they thought the IAEA was inspecting them, they probably brought them to another location (the old shack on the Baranquilla coast maybe) as it would probably look a tad suspicious bringing unconscious marines on board during a nuclear inspection.
  • As the game explains, there were a number of MSF personnel who happened to be off base when Mother Base was attacked, and they all either went their own ways or eventually joined up with Diamond Dogs.

• Why is Snake still using binoculars? Seems like a monocular would be a smarter choice from at least a space-saving perspective.
  • Perhaps the electronics in the binos (assuming that they are electronic, given the analyser upgrade that will become available for them) require them to be that big.
  • Or the right lens tube has been replaced with a directional microphone. Would explain why you can zoom in on people and hear what they're saying; normal binoculars lack that function since both tubes are used, but when you're only using one tube, why not find something useful to do with the unused tube?

• Why is Eli kept on Mother Base with total freedom of movement when he does nothing but cause problems, bully the African kids and regularly attack Snake and Diamond Dog staff?
  • It's explicitly stated in the audio tapes that Miller is a Friend to All Children, and therefore throws his weight around to allow Eli to get away with things that should have gotten him thrown overboard a dozen times over in a misguided attempt to treat Eli well.
  • In addition, Ocelot keeps insisting that Eli be isolated. It's only until definitive proof of Eli's crimes are discovered that Miller finally relents.

• If this man-made parasite was meant to eliminate every person that does not speak English, why should the people that speak English still not talk? Are they actually in danger even though it's been implied that they would survive?
  • Well first of all, the parasite isn't man-made, as explained in the briefing tapes and mentioned off-hand in several cutscenes. Second, Skull Face's plan was the exact opposite of what you described. The parasites were originally weaponized by Cipher as "ethnic cleanser" weapons to target non-english languages, but when Skull Face pulled off his coup and XOF took over, he revised the project to do the opposite, for various reasons mostly centered around a hatred for imperialism and the like. He used other languages as a testing ground and, presumably, as a deterrent against future opponents, while his end goal was to create an english-killing strain. Basically, whereas Cipher wanted to wipe out other languages and unite the world with english, Skull Face wanted to wipe out english and unite the world with an eternal arms race that he would hold a monopoly on.
    • And as for why English speakers still shouldn't speak even if they are infected with a non-English parasite, it's best to just not speak at all rather than risk accidentally activating them. This isn't brought up, but think about the loanwords. English speakers use foreign words quite often with most not realizing that the word isn't even English. Ninja, kindergarten, bazaar, detente, etc. Use those words and you'll easily activate the Japanese, German, Persian, and French strains respectively. Along with that is the fact that words can be misspoken and sound like other words, words that the parasites probably know. Finally, there's a risk of mutations, you never know when the offspring of a non-English speaking strain could be born mutated to be English speaking strains.

• What exactly is the point of, what has to be incredibly loud, music constantly blaring in Quiet's room on the medical platform? From a gameplay perspective I guess it does show all the tracks you can find a cassette of in game since all of the music is also on the cassettes, but from about from an in-universe reason for it all? Miller and/or Ocelot using the loud music to torture Quiet, sort of like the FBI did at Waco?
  • Or, maybe Quiet just likes to listen to music? She doesn't have much to do sitting around in that cell, after all.
    • That loud, though? It's so loud I can hear it quite clearly from pretty much anywhere on the medical platform.
  • I figured it was the soldiers' way of aggravating her. They can't directly interfere with Quiet so why not be really passive-aggressive about it via the magic of really loud music? That she doesn't seem to mind it, content to work on her tan, makes the situation extra hilarious.
  • Information deprivation, the same reason her cell is located beneath ground level on the medical platform. Especially when she was first captured, she was under suspicion of being a spy and was placed in what was essentially solitary confinement. She needed sunlight, so throwing her in the brig wasn't a viable option. Her cell was located below ground level so she couldn't observe the daily activity on Mother Base (an understandable risk given her visual acuity), and loud music played so she couldn't overhear anything said nearby; you can watch soldiers nearby carry on conversations near her cell, and Miller's paranoid enough not to expect the soldiers to always remember not to discuss sensitive information nearby.

• Why did Code Talker simply not tell Diamond Dogs that Quiet can speak perfectly fine in Navajo? It would have prevented quite a few problems?
  • Probably because he respected Quiet's request to keep it a secret. His loyalty is to his fellow Navajo first.
    • This, except that Quiet ISN'T a Navajo just because she can speak the language. Code Talker really just respects the choice, Navajo or not.

• Since Quiet can apparently phase herself out of handcuffs (which means she can't actually be constrained), why didn't she do so during Mission 45 "A Quiet Exit" where she was supposedly drowned by a soldier, but got her powers back as a result?
  • It wasn't the drowning which gave her her powers back. The soldier removed her trousers, which made her able to breath again. Basically during that entire time she was being suffocated and panicking as a result. So before the drowning she simply didn't think to, and afterwards she was in such a blind rage all she was really thinking about was killing.
    • That does not mean she needed her cuffs cut off. She could have phased out of them by then. I consider it an oversight.
    • It's likely that the reason she would not phase out of her handcuffs is because she actually couldn't due to still wearing a soldier's jacket. Although, if she could perform all those stunts, she should be able to phase out of the cuffs, especially since she did phase-dodging with the jacket still on.
  • How in the hell did the soviet soldier capture quiet, the super strong, super fast, invisible, teleporting, ghost sniper?
    • I believe your team speculates that she must have let herself be caught.

• What was the deal with the cutscene where Code Talker mumbles "Eyes on Kazuhira. A message from the parasites." in an overly dramatic fashion, only for it to never be mentioned again?
  • He's using his parasites to see what's going on around the base, including Miller's activities. It's just a small thing to demonstrate how different he is from the other parasite users.
  • It's possible that it's part of an unfinished plotline. Possibly also foreshadowing that Miller knows Venom Snake's true identity.
  • Considering that one of the things he mumbles is "left leg brace is acting up" it's probably foreshadowing that Huey is betraying the Diamond Dogs
  • It's because by that time Skullface has been killed so Miller's drive for revenge has become directionless. It's when he starts telling the whole base to keep on the look out for spies and making the entire organization overly paranoid. Part of the point of the second parasite outbreak is that Miller had created so much paranoia, what could have been a quick medical containment turned into an absolute bloodbath as soon as people started acting funny.

• Why does Kaz have white pupils by the end of the game? His eyes were fine when you rescue him (you can see this for yourself by laying him on the floor after rescuing him in the first mission and using your binoculars) and it is never explained why or how this may have happened at all in game.
  • The gameplay model might just be an oversight as his eyes are messed up elsewhere. It's eye injuries he received during his imprisonment, though can't quite remember where it's explained.

• Whatever happened to Metal Gear ZEKE? Did Skullface just leave a nuclear equipped superweapon sitting on the ocean floor? I'm surprised this was never brought up in the audio tapes.
  • It was probably left there, or parts may have been refitted for Sahelanthropus. That Huey explicitly mentions the Hybrid Pod tech taken from the Basilisk/Peace Walker suggests that Strangelove had that recovered while he pursued the bipedal technology seemingly from the ground up, meaning ZEKE may have been worthless. After all, it isn't particularly special in the grand scheme of things.
  • Depends on how long it sits there. More than a few months in salt water and it would be worthless.

• Wait a sec... if Quiet can actually talk despite having burnt lungs and needed to breathe through her skin... why, just why can she actually talk? Don't tell me the parasites helped restore her lungs (by then, at least). If that were the case, she wouldn't need to breathe through her skin.
  • Humans don't need to use their lungs to speak. The alternatives use different parts of the throat and the tongue to create vocalizations, the only real need is air, which could easily be transferred to the throat even without lungs, even as simple as just trapping air in the mouth.
    • Oh, I get it. She can basically absorb air through her skin and transfer it to her throat. Man, parasites are weird.
  • Her lungs are damaged, but they're still there. That means that while she can inhale air, she cannot use the oxygen. Just like a heavy smoker can have a big lung capacity, but still can suffocate himself while running.

• Ok, so Time Paradoxes when certain characters get killed are pretty much a mainstay of the prequel games due to said characters having a role in games taking place after. So if Ishmael dies you get a Time Paradox, due to him being the real Big Boss. If you take too long rescuing Miller, you get a Time Paradox for obvious reasons. Then if you kill Eli you also get one since he is Liquid. But why don't you get one when Venom Snake dies? He may not be the original Big Boss, but he is still the Big Boss you fight at the end of the first Metal Gear.
  • It's to make the revelation a little less obvious. While those other examples do exist you generally need to go out of your way to get that sort of result, whereas allowing Venom to die is something that can occur multiple times in a very short period.
    • But if Venom Snake does die, having a Time Paradox like Naked Snake does when he dies would actually help hide the reveal because people will just chalk it up to being Big Boss
    • But then it wouldn't be foreshadowing.
  • Fridge brilliance? If Venom Snake dies, then Big Boss just happens to somehow survive the Outer Heaven incident, just as history pre-MGSV says he did.

• During Quiet's interrogation, Ocelot asks "Ready to talk?" and yet shortly after, he insists that she can't talk due to the risk of spreading the parasite. And yet also, he confirms she can't talk anyway due to burnt lungs. Does Ocelot have Alzheimer's?
  • It's figurative.
    • What do you mean "it's figurative"? Was he trying to be funny? If so, he could have ruined the entire Mother Base.
  • He could be making a point that he, the best interrogator in the world, couldn't get her to break her silence, then started rattling off all the reasons why that's not a bad thing.
  • He only said they can't let her talk because Kaz pulled the bag off her head, which was supposed to be a barrier. By the end of the interrogation he was ready to accept that she really was incapable of speech, or at least that's what she wanted them to think.
    • He probably meant via writing. All she'd have to do to confirm while she was tied up is nod.

• How does knocking a soldier out and transporting him to your base makes him loyal to you ? Is there some kind of brainwashing going on ?
  • Much like the recruits who join as volunteers, lots of soldiers are stated to be drawn to Big Boss as the legendary soldier of the 20th Century, who established the world's first Private Military Force alongside Miller. If you've been kidnapped by that man, whose personnel offer you a better life at Mother Base alongside plenty of other soldiers, chances are you'd leave your exploitative government/army bosses and side with Big Boss. In the instances that recruits are not-so-willing, Kaz and Ocelot occasionally detail that interrogation and imprisonment are employed, hence a number of recruits ending up in the brig.
    • "Hey you should join our experienced mercenary band where you get treated with respect by troops loyal to one another, conditions far better than the crumbling Communist country/Third-World hellhole you currently live, good pay, the best tech we can buy, and its led by the best soldier of the 20th century." Would you say no?
    • "Hey, I know we basically kidnapped you, but would you like to join our brand new army to serve a guy that killed his mentor/mother figure because his governement said so, is American, and who you had (and still has) orders to kill ? Oh, there's a strong probability you will have to fight/kill your old comrades/friends." Would anybody says yes?
    • Yes, any person with half a brain would say yes! Seriously, do you not know your history? The Soviet Union and the African dictatorships were some of the worst dictators on the face of the planet and treated their soldiers as disposable fodder. Also, Big Boss was a hero for killing his mentor as far as the world knows. As far as anyone knows, the Boss was going to start World War 3 with Russia and Big Boss killing her prevented it. So again, why would you say no to a group that will treat you like an actual human being led by a legendary soldier who only killed his mom to save the world from a potential nuclear holocaust and probably won't continue to try to kill you as long as you play ball (and will probably let you recruit your old friends and comrades if you are good enough to extract them)?
    • Big Boss is a living legend among soldiers in the Metal Gear universe, and the people he extracts are from the Soviet military and African militias - both are notoriously awful employers. This is literally a once-in-a-lifetime moment for the people who get whisked away, they're not going to piss all over it and go back to living as a conscript or warlord's toy.
    • Because everybody's gay for Big Boss. Seriously though, who'd refuse the offer to serve someone as renowned as he is?
    • Because he killed his mentor/mother figure because his governement told him to? Because you're kidnapping people and possibly making them fight their former friend? But honestly, considering Ocelot and Miller brainwashed you into thinking you're Big Boss, I wouldn't be surprised if Ocelot had a hypnose/brainwashing room somewhere on the base.
    • ^ He killed the person who was previously considered the best soldier on the planet and earned the reputation as the greatest soldier of the 20th century, and his exploits since Snake Eater up to the fall of MSF made him into a living legend, and he's asking random enemy soldier "Hey, do you want to come work with me?" Combine that with the fact that by every objective measure Diamond Dogs has better conditions than any enemy force you can kidnap soldiers from and you have an offer that anyone who was not a super patriot would be unlikely to refuse. Miller had nothing to do with the brainwashing, the stringer at the end makes it clear that he had no idea about Venom until he was awake and felt so betrayed by Big Boss he swore to help his son destroy him and everything he built, while Ocelot brainwashed himself into forgetting all about the brainwashing. It's doubtful any further brainwashing was used.
  • If you're captured by the enemy in combat you're probably going to assume that they will either torture or kill you, so being greeted with "want to join our cool club where everyone's friends?" is a vastly better deal in comparison. Even if they're left in the brig, they might hear or see the other soldiers doing fun things (this isn't portrayed in Phantom Pain, but Peace Walker states that the MSF soldiers were partying and doing activities all the time when not on missions; even Phantom Pain has the dog that everyone loves) and be persuaded. Even if you're not sure about Big Boss, many other soldiers on Mother Base have also been taken from your same force and so you can relate to them.
  • I mean, Ocelot hypnotized himself into blocking out his memories of the real Big Boss and even into acting like Liquid Snake, so brainwashing isn't totally ruled out.

• Why are the soldiers you play as besides for Venom always treated as "Boss" by Ocelot and Miller? Clearly the random soldier you're playing as is not Big Boss.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation.
    • Well, technically speaking, you never were Big Boss. You were always some random soldier.

• Why can't Quiet simply write as a way to communicate to people since she can't (or won't) talk?
  • Ocelot speculated that she might be dyslexic. While not impossible for dyslexic people to learn to read and write, Quiet might be functionally illiterate.
  • It's also people that she might just be really stubborn and not wanting to give anything to the Diamond Dogs. If she was to start writing things down they might begin to push her more, other forms of torture, etc etc. She's playing cards very close to her chest.
  • If I recall correctly, there's either a tape or a cutscene which mentions a particular strain of Chinese-aligned parasites that not only made it so that the affected had to stop speaking their language, but also messed with the brain in order to make them unable to read or write the triggered language as well. I assumed this was inserted to explain why Quiet doesn't just read or write to communicate: the parasites have made her illiterate in English.
    • But that can't be the case because she spells out an initialism in bullets at one point.
    • There is a big difference in spelling out three letters and being illiterate. She could have been spying on the preparations, saw those three letters over and over again, figured out their meaning and decided to use that as a message. Not likely but not impossible.
    • Another troper has suggested on the Fridge Brilliance page that she might be refusing to write at this stage in order to maintain the illusion that she is simply incapable of communication rather than choosing not to engage in it. If she'd written, there was always the possibility Ocelot might've tried torturing her even harder in an attempt to get her to talk (which it would've been more strongly evident she may decide to), and if she did break, the English strain would break loose.
  • It's still a pretty bad plan considering she keeps it up even as a different parasite strain gets out. She wants to stop the parasite so strongly that she's willing to shove a knife into a soldier's teeth but she's not willing enough to look at Snake and point at the throat for what they should look for. By all means, there's little reason she wasn't shot on sight at that point either since she was threatening the life of a soldier which was one of the lines she was NOT supposed to cross to stay peacefully.

• During Quiet's extraction to Mother Base, as soon as she woke up, why did she keep the handcuff on her? Was she deciding on whether to come in peacefully or not?
  • Given she phases back into the cuffs upon seeing the escort Miller arranges to prevent her from setting foot on Mother Base - and then promptly goes on to aggressively display her abilities, I have to imagine she's of two minds about what she's doing, but does things largely to express her loyalty to Snake.
  • She's conveying that she's co-operating by openly showing that she can get out at any time but is choosing to go and stay where they tell her to.

• Didn't Skullface's resulting "death" prior to his debut happen because of being burnt alive? The same thing happened to Quiet in the prologue of Phantom Pain, right? So they both should have burnt lungs, unable to breathe except through the skin, right? If so... then why is Quiet beautiful and Skullface is ugly? Since they both went through parasite therapy, they both should either look fine or still look bad. I bet it's because Quiet is a woman that she gets the special treatment for all the male gamers... while female gamers are dying to get the XOF uniform unlock.
  • While 'fanservice' is the clear answer when it comes to how Quiet looks, it could be the point at which they underwent the treatment; Skull Face was burned horribly in the factory fire he details from his childhood in the hidden tape from Ground Zeroes, and his appearance is the result of whatever grafts and surgery the doctors could do at the time to keep him alive, which the parasites couldn't undo. Quiet, on the other hand, seems to have an entirely different strain to Skull Face, who doesn't display her abilities at all; I'd also question how much of her appearance is real, given the instances in which we can see musculature and the like when she's actively employing her stealth abilities; but 'fanservice' is probably the key answer here.
  • Because no one would like to see Stefanie Joosten as a bikini-clad zombie. Well, maybe a few people.
  • I'd say it actually has more to do with timing. We don't know the exact birth date of Skull Face, but his home village was destroyed by Allied bombing, which means he was born during or before WWII, and the same incident is what burned him so badly. So 1945 at the very very latest. He was treated with only the medical care available at the time, having absolutely no contact with the parasites until at least 1964, during or after Operation Snake Eater. After the mission, Code Talker studied The End and found the live specimens of the parasite. So at least 19 years passed between then, and Skull Face didn't get infected with the parasites until approximately 1975, at least 30 years after his initial death. The parasites didn't save him from that, they just kept him alive after he started his coup. After about three decades, all of his skin would be scar tissue, and thus all they could be replaced with is scar tissue. Quiet was subjected to treatment nearly immediately after her burns, and thus spared her of the severe scarring that Skull Face had.
  • And re: fanservice: not all players are straight.

• When exactly did the Medic become Venom Snake? The Truth mission shows that the transition wasn't made until two days before the XOF attack on the hospital. However, when Zero visits the hospital in the truth tapes it's clear that he's already made the Medic into his own Big Boss. Was the Medic seeing his own face in response to the Doctor saying "This is how you lived to this day" just symbolic to show that he's remembering his true identity?
  • From the timeline, it would be anywhere between February 16th, 1984, to sometime before March 11th of the same year. Seeing his true self in the reflection is symbolic of him remembering his true identity. Play the prologue, and you'll see Big Boss' face when the doctor says that's how he lived, but in the Truth mission he is remembering it quite clearly and so his true face is shown in the mirror during the flashback of the same moment. Also, Zero said he made the Medic into his own Big Boss already meaning that he had already started the hypnotherapy and thus considered himself to be Big Boss, the surgery was just the final piece to make it pretty much complete.
    • But Zero needed to be told which Snake was Jack when he visited back in 1978, which means they must have already looked alike.
    • They could still both have a Bandaged Face at that point, especially given that Ishmael still wears his bandages during the hospital escape.

• Why did Quiet refuse the Wolbachia treatment, anyway? Code Talker's suggestion that she still desired revenge is absurd, especially when considering she told him she'd never speak English and activate the parasite, in addition to her relationship with Venom Snake deepening to the point of romantic attraction and her sacrificing herself to save his life. I get that she knows it's highly probable that Kaz would have her tortured relentlessly for information after inoculation, but it's never really covered by the narrative.
  • It's directly stated that she still might want revenge.
  • Don't try to make sense of Quiet's bipolar characterization. This is the woman who had no qualms about strangling an innocent Nurse and Doctor to death and then was willing to jump into a pit of poisonous gas to try to get a necklace for some kids.
    • That isn't 'bipolar', that's development. I can't comment on the main question, but by the time she jumps into the gas tank to retrieve the necklace, she's been around Snake and Diamond Dogs for a sufficient period and taken on a number of missions; she knows that despite Kaz's ranting about revenge, the Dogs are something of a family and are fighting for a better world. That she killed innocents earlier merely plays into the idea posited by the Boss, that today's friend can become tomorrow's enemy, and vice versa.
  • She can't undergo the Wolbachia treatment because, unlike everyone else on the base, she needs the parasites to stay alive. Her lungs and many of her other vital organs were severely damaged when she was set on fire in the prologue, and the parasites are what is keeping them functioning. It's simultaneously her greatest curse and her only lifeline.

• Silly question: Is the mocap actor for hospital Snake chosen because he has one arm, is skinny enough to look like an atrophied Snake, or both?
  • Painsakingly created body from the fox engine. Likely after tons of research on unhealthy bodies.

• Why do people immediately believe that Venom is not Big Boss? There are auditory and visual hallucinations throughout the game, it's silly to accept something just because it's called "The Truth".
  • Occam's Razor. By the end of the game there's a fair amount of evidence to suggest that he's not Big Boss (just check the foreshadowing entry on the main page), and next to none to suggest that this is incorrect beyond the possibility that it's just a hallucination (There is no real indication of or reason to believe that the final mission is a hallucination, unlike the other ones Venom experiences in the game).

• A butterfly seems to be a very recurring symbol in the series but is there any significance with the Morpho species?
  • Morpho butterflies symbolize seeking peace. Guess what the running theme in the series is again?

• Why is there just a random tank of chlorine gas on Mother Base? If it's there for a purpose, like disinfecting things, then surely they'd have to release the gas at some point and could get the necklace then. It seemed the kid was really impatient to get that necklace.
  • The tank may have been involved in the processing of the raw materials we collect as players. As for the necklace, the materials it's made from may have been destroyed by spending too long in the tank.

• Why was Big Boss in a coma too? The only two reasons I can think of is because it was noted in the trailer and because Zero needed to visit him while he was sleeping so they'd still have animosity by Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
  • Because he was in a helicopter crash that killed almost everyone on the helicopter. The only two people confirmed to have walked away from the crash okay are Miller and Mosquito.
    • Actually, if you think about it, even with the prisoners you can extract at the same time, the only casualty is Chico. Big Boss has survived similar accidents and barely been phased, so the coma is a bad plot point to make most of Kojima's Big Boss stories happen 10 years apart.
    • ^ He basically took a helicopter to the face, that's not something he's survived previously. He's also literally behind Venom Snake who takes the shrapnel for him but otherwise the two would have similar injuries.

• Continuing on from that, both characters woke up within a couple weeks of each other judging by the timeline but Ishmael mentions he's been watching over your for nine years, but how could he, if he's been asleep just like you. And where did the "Get well soon. - "Vic" Boss" picture come from if they've both been asleep?
  • The photo actually says "Good Luck" so it might not have too much relevance.
  • Additionally, it's explained in tapes that he actually woke up a while before Venom Snake.

• Why didn't Quiet try to learn any other language while she was in Mother Base? Some of the recruits feared her, but some others were fond of her. Learning Spanish, Swahili or Chinese would have saved lives... and would allow us to hear her voice more often.
  • It was Pequod who didn't know other languages. Besides, with how the rest of Mother Base were basically trying to imprison her, on Miller's orders, in the medical platform, she wasn't going to get friendly with them anytime soon. There's also the bit where she goes berserk on one of the recruits who was infected with the parasite.
  • Because of the way the parasites work, and the shared nature of words across languages - English, for instance, has a lot gleaned from French - wouldn't she have run the risk of potentially triggering the parasites anyway if she said a word or two that sounded like it was English?
    • Not according to Code Talker. The parasites were able to distinguish between two very similar languages in his tests and we not triggered by the use of loan words. She could talk in French and be fine even if she used every word that has been wholesale borrowed by the English language.

• What the hell is up with the parasites? They're even more ridiculous than FOXDIE. So each different strain responds to different languages, and when they hear their host speaking that language, they start reproducing, which kills the host, yes? So what if I'm infected with the French strain and say that I'm having deja vu? Do I die? What about accents and individual pronunciation? How does a parasite know, presumably solely from the vibrations and movements of the throat muscles, that "CARR-sool" and "CAH-sool" are both English? What if I am, say, infected with the German strain, and say the word chef - which in German, means boss - do the parasites start reproducing? The entire thing feels entirely contrived and ridiculous, and for this troper at least, it breaks the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
  • You've pretty much stated how they work; the parasites are bred in different strains to target languages - hence the run-down hellhole Skull Face is running where the hosts are being played tapes - the intent is to train and rear them to recognise languages. Skull Face's key strain in the game is designed to recognise English and as essentially the biggest bridge language/langua franca in the world, it shares numerous words from other languages; so with that in mind, if you were infected with the Italian strain but spoke English predominantly, and then happened to make say, a menu order in an Italian restaurant, then that would active the parasites. They can be bred to recognise different dialects/accents/regional changes, too; Skull Face himself is infected with a strain which means he can never speak his own language again.
  • The above troper is mostly wrong. Code Talker states in one of his tapes that the parasites wouldn't react to individual words so loan words to other languages wouldn't trigger, the English strain parasites wouldn't react to the word chef if the speaker was talking in German, the parasites need sustained exposure to start copulating. The parasites were so accurate that they could tell the difference between two incredibly similar languages. The reason why the above troper is only mostly wrong is that Code Talker also stated that there was nothing to stop the parasites mutating so they could infect similar languages.

• How did Skull Face plan to spread his parasites throughout the world? At first I thought he was going to do some parasite missile with Sahelanthropus for COMPLETE GLOBAL SATURATION, but Sally's purpose had nothing to do with the parasites, but to cause a new age of nuclear proliferation so he could find buyers for his nukes. I can imagine spreading enough parasites throughout the world in order to destroy English would be a difficult task, so how exactly did he plan to manage that?
  • During the Phantom Pain Skull Face is Cipher and has an incredible amount of power, such as being able to threaten the entire existence of Code Talker's tribe with complete ease. All he has to do is use his control over the organisation to start dispersing the virus at major population centres and locations (such as airports and shopping centres). The vocal cord parasites take some time to copulate and for their larva to hatch and start feeding on the host, and as shown from the Mother Base outbreak it spreads incredibly rapidly similar to the way FOXDIE spreads. If he had the right people infected with the parasites (such as the people at the front desk, flight attendants etc.) then by the time people realise what's going on every hospital in the English speaking world is infested with vocal cord parasites. This wouldn't wipe out every English speaker in the world, but the fear of the parasites would stop it from being used as a Lingua Franca and from being spoken as a common language.
  • Skull Face's plan was to proliferate Metal Gears until every country was nuclear capable and conventional war became impossible. The next step was to start selling the various strains of the Vocal Cord Parasite and let someone else handle the logistics of spreading them until every language but English had been wiped out. After that, he would be able to go to the world's leaders and say "I have an English language strain of the parasite too, do as I say or I wipe out mankind."
  • The above troper is wrong. Cipher's initial intention was to erase every language except English so they can control words and the flow of information, not to mention ensure domination of English-centric culture and values, a form of imperialism which grated on Skull Face. So he did the opposite, create the English strains, a liberator "to free the world from Zero." Sans lingua franca, his sale of readily-available nukes will ensure a chain of retaliation makes every country recognize their neighbor. And the spread wouldn't be too hard. Since the parasites are triggered by speech, keep English-infected hostages gagged, release them in major cities across the USA and the world. Before people can realise what's up, it's a 9/11 meets COVID situation, where people will be afraid to talk to each other in English. The world will abandon English in terror. Mission Complete.

• So the final cutscene of Mission 46 is supposed to take place in 1995, during Metal Gear. So why hasn't Venom Snake appeared to have aged any?
  • It's implicitly 1984 still, since Venom's still wearing the same outfit you last left him in. According to the MG wiki, Outer Haven was founded by Boss in the late 80s. MG 1 takes place ten years down the line.
    • Actually it's implicitly 1995 because the opening scene at the beginning of the game says that the setting of that scene is Outer Heaven and Venom Snake has the tape for Operation Intrude N313 tape. It's either a case of Creator's Apathy or PropRecycling. And probably also because they wanted to use pieces of that scene in trailers (which they did) but not give away the fact that that specific scene was actually part of the ending.

• Is there an in-universe explanation for how Sahelanthropus escaped Mother Base? It wasn't towed away by helicopters, it kind of...flew away, using some kind of anti-gravity to make it hover over the water.
  • I think it was being flown away by Young Mantis, he was the one making it run in the boss fight, and considering his feet rarely touch the ground, it stands to reason that he can make other things float.

• Is there a gameplay or story reason Venom Snake can't equip the Ground Zeroes helicopter, the HP-48 Krokodil as his ACC? It makes multiple appearances as an enemy helicopter in Phantom Pain, but no option to switch from the Blackhawk (excuse me, Blackfoot) to the Krokodil exists, despite it being a superior gunship and having an all-around menacing design.
  • It might've been out of budget. Plus the cabin isn't as roomy as the Blackfoot, which was definitely meant to be more passenger-friendly.
  • The Blackfoot/Blackhawk is an American helicopter, while the Krokodil is based off the Soviet-made Mi-24 and Mi-28. Considering how Diamond Dogs is actively carrying out attacks against Soviet troops in Afghanistan, it makes sense that the US is more willing to sell helicopters to them than the Soviets would be.

• Why was everyone more forgiving towards Strangelove over Huey? Considering she was a former Cipher employee, apathetic to Big Boss's cause, left the base when Huey told her to (wouldn't that make her an accomplice?); I would have suspected her of being the mole.
  • It boils down to Huey having obviously murdered her, and this coming to light when everybody on Mother Base openly hated his guts already.
    • But what about before the trial? Miller talked about her request to Amanda like it was just a side note.
  • Strangelove didn't know about the attack nor Huey's betrayal. The only way she could be an accomplice is if she directly contributed to XOF's assault.

• What is the ultimate fate of Sahelanthropus? It's last seen in the cut Episode 51, being towed away in pieces by Diamond Dogs. Did it become the blueprint for TX-55 Metal Gear, which weirdly is a quarter of its size, or was it destroyed? Its never mentioned again, not even by Otacon, who seemingly used it as a subconscious blueprint to design REX.
  • According to an unfinished mission, Eli and his pals steal it and head to some island. Snake takes it down, then it gets destroyed by napalm.

• Why did Diamond Dogs suddenly left for South Africa and rebrand themselves as Outer Heaven? They seem to have a good thing going for them at Seychelles.
  • They didn't. That was a separate organization set up by the real Boss. Maybe they merged, IDK.

• Regarding Quiet, if she needs to be naked because she's basically a plant now: 1) Why isn't she green? 2) Why was The End fine with wearing a ghillie suit? Being way older than her and (probably) the parasites being the only thing keeping him alive, wouldn't he need to be completly naked too?
  • She wouldn't have needed it if Ishmael hadn't burned her lungs, forcing her to breathe through her skin. The End's suit is apparently some sort of custom camo (based on what you get when you hold him up), which Quiet obviously doesn't doesn't have access to.
  • But doesn't photosynthesis require a total exposure to the sun?
    • Well, look at the top of her cage. It's open to the sky, and thus the sun. She even sunbathes.
  • IIRC, The End was fine wearing a ghillie suit because the 'foliage' on it was actually connected to his body in some way.

• I apologise if this is obvious but I often find Kojima's plots to be hard to follow. In 4 it was stated that the reason why Big Boss was in his coma is because of the injuries he sustained at Solid Snake's hands in Zanzibar. But now it is revealed that this WASN'T Big Boss, so how did Zero ever put him into that nanomachine induced coma? Or was that just a smokescreen, and Big Boss has been perfectly fine up until he turned up in the graveyard?
  • Big Boss is in a coma because of injuries sustained in Zanzibar. Venom Snake was the Big Boss who died in Outer Heaven, not Zanzibar Land.

• How did they get Colonel Volgin to a coma ward? Only 10-15 minutes would have passed between him getting struck by lightning and Groznyj Grad being nuked, so wouldn't he have been fried when they took the seemingly prudent course of action and taking him to the base's infirmary?
  • Why do you think Volgin's corpse looks or looked the way it does after meeting with Venom Snake while being "controlled" by "The Boy in the Mask"? Also, there was a whole search & rescue thing after the nuke, and they happened to find Volgin who was technically not dead due to the innate power of lightning keeping his body "alive".

• Why infect Quiet with the English strain of the vocal parasite? Given the scope of the operation in the Devil's House, Cipher or Skull Face has their hands on countless vocal parasite language variants they want to make her go through the parasite therapy, yet Skull Face (the only one with the English strains on person) infects Quiet with it. Given how rare the strain is (only 3 were made), why would he risk such an asset on a person? What good will it do to strip away a person's only method of communicating in the battlefield? Assuming that he never knew that Quiet will willingly defect to the Diamond Dogs.

• Sahelanthropus... Despite the whole cockpit thing, what the hell is up with it being in the 80s? that thing in terms of the titual bipedal "metal gear" is waaayyyy more advanced in concept than anything produced in the entire series, even the weaponary, it can stand up on two legs, without any balancing design, like RE Xs' squatting t-rex design and digitigrade legs, it seems to be an anarchonism in the MGS universe, 3 peace walker, TPP, all had things like the shagohod, peace walker, Sahelanthropus, etc that were much better than REX, by a long long way. what is up with that?
  • Sahelanthropus has several things working for it: Cipher's budget, metallic archaea for its weapons, and the Third Child for its mobility. Every other Metal Gear is a conventional machine, so naturally they'd be less impressive (by comparison).
  • What made Shagohod better than Metal Gear REX? It had little mobility, and needed a runway to launch its payload. Its defensive capabilities were practically nonexistent. It was a neat design, but hardly superior to any true Metal Gear.
  • The Shagohod was pretty much easily destroyed and needed Volgin's electric powers to prolong it's lifespan. Peace Walker and the other AI Weapons needed the help of a complicated Boss AI system to help it. Finally, Sahelanthropus practically didn't work unless The Third Boy was controlling it.
  • I meant that in terms of linear progression, in chronological order, the designs made sense, tech at the time etc (It's implied and outright shown that tech advanced at a slightly faster rate in the MGS universe than ours) then they made Sahelanthropus, remember the only flaw in its design was the late change from AI to pilot, apparently everything else worked great until Skull Face told Huey to add a stonking great MG REX head onto it, messing up it's balance, it wetn from crawlers to chicken walkers but apparently inbetween they made a humanoid one, and never really refined that design.

• How did Eli go from hating Snake's guts to sharing his dream of Outer Heaven? Did his opinion of Big Boss change after he learned about the Venom Snake ruse? Did they just share a common enemy, with Eli/Liquid not caring for Big Boss as a person? Or did he just change his mind as he grew up?
  • Go watch Liquid's speech from Metal Gear Solid again; he actively declares he still hates Big Boss for how he treated him, implying he - like Solid Snake - never learned about Venom. As such, his embracing Outer Heaven is intended to surpass Big Boss' success with the concept... Despite the fact he fails miserably.

• What exactly was Miller thinking asking Quiet to give the name of the person who infected her with the English parasite when 90% of the main cast and 100% of everyone else are named/codenamed with English verbs and nouns?
  • Miller's own words, "All I need is a name, that won't trigger anything", and he's right. There hasn't been evidence in the game that proved that only one word in a given language would be enough to trigger the parasites to procreate. There have been only those who have consistently spoken a language for more than a minute at least, to make the parasites a threat.

• So a major part of the MGS series is about the Snake family line basically being hardcore badasses, naked,liquid, solid and solidus all generally kicked ass in their primes and beyond, naked snake in particular was this legendary badass to the max, to the point almost any soldier he meets instantly hero worships him and will join his army in a second if slammed to the floor hard enough, inspires loyalty to willingly be shot dead due to parasite infection and will go on to face his own son for an epic showdown, and basically kickstart a line of awesome wait... Venom snake isn't Naked snake? so apparently Big Boss isn't a badass genetically, any old shmoe can become him if basically mindwiped and told. Do you see how this kind of messes up the whole "Snake family are genetically predisposed to being the best soldiers in the universe thing that gets touted in almost every other game? except 2.
  • Venom Snake's achievements don't do anything to damper Naked Snake's abilities. Yes he was a big badass as the player was going through MGSV, but there's nothing that says that the real Big Boss isn't doing even more amazing things on his own missions. Plus, while there have been a variety of other characters that don't come from Snake's genetics that have performed just as amazing stunts as him, they also stay tend to stay dead when you kill them, unlike Snake himself. Without the meta-textual existence of the player, the Snakes may not be the be the best soldier on the battlefield, but he's the one that gets the job done and lives to fight another day, which is cause for admiration in itself.
  • I thought the entire point that the first Metal Gear Solid tried to hammer home is that genetics does not define a person.
• It feels like the Paz subplot is entirely dependent on the idea that Snake never once mentioned Paz to either Miller or Ocelot during the months he was going over to the medical platform to see her. He clearly cares for her and yet somehow, the subject is never broached, which would have immediately revealed that Paz was dead the whole time and Snake was Hallucinating pretty much everything, including the audio tapes, relating to her. There doesn't seem to be any plausible explanation for this either.
  • Snake never mentions much of anything because he barely talks.

• Have they ever addressed why you can't just use the helicopter to take you from one LZ to another? Seems like a very useful thing to do and doesn't sound like it would make the game too easy.
  • Well it’s not like they couldn’t do it since you can do exactly that to get around Mother Base. They likely decided not to because 1) There are already various means to get around such as vehicles, D-Horse, D-Walker, the cardboard box delivery systems, and good old-fashioned sprinting, and 2) Having the ability to travel between L Zs in the field by chopper would likely expose to chopper to longer periods of enemy fire. It offers more freedom of choice but isn’t catered towards the encouraged method of scouting out areas before infiltrating stealthily

• Why is mother base constructed in such a bad design? I don't mean it looks crap, i mean the several mile long highways to each module, its handwaved as if motherbase gets attacked again or something they can cut off the attackers, but they are in the middle of the ocean, anyone attacking will have helis, and even then,those modules can't get backup very quickly, a little closer wouldn't hurt, I initially assumed that when you added another module of the same type it would appear on the highway, but they are circled round the main module of that type. I personally would of loved it to look like an offshore city rather than the spindly /thing they made it.
  • Kaz explains that the spacious architecture was to make it less vulnerable to attacks like the one XOF commenced on MSF.

• Why are the soviet soldiers listening to western music on cassette tapes? Given that western music was banned in the Soviet Union and that it would be nearly impossible to get a cassette player (and tapes) in a society that went so far to control the media as to regulate the distribution of typewriters.
  • This is set in 1984, the height of the Cold War, as far as I'm aware getting sent to Afghanistan was basically the soviet version of Reassigned to Antarctica, due to the fact that they were trying and failing to prop up a communist government in the country, basically you were as far flung from the core of the union as you could be, the tapes were probably found during sweeps of villages suspected to be rebels, who got support from places like the US, and probably kept the tapes to alleviate boredom, its not like there was anyone important enough to care in those outposts.

• Question Number One: Why don't you use fulton balloons to extract YOURSELF anymore? Semi-justified by the new countermeasures against fulton extraction and dangerous weather conditions, but effectively a wasted solution for when you're unspotted but relatively surrounded by enemies. Especially when you need to escape from the Skulls on your own, who are far more dangerous than fulton extracting in a dust storm!
  • You're still Big Boss, the World's Greatest Soldier. Tieing your life to a balloon is likely seen as unnecessary risk compared to at least trying to flee. Likewise the Skulls always fight in mist which drastically lowers success rate. It'd be pretty uncharacteristic of Big Boss to look at even the Skulls and say "Yeah, I'll flip a coin on a 50% chance of surviving a balloon trip just so I don't have to face them." Likewise, if you NEED to use the fulton to escape the Skulls, you're likely already injured which lowers the chance even further.
  • Technically you were never able to fulton yourself in Peace Walker. It was just the game's way of ending the mission. You do hear Snake fulton himself if you decide to abort the mission.
  • I say because unspotted is always a temporary condition. There's always a chance that Snake can be spotted at any point from the time he attaches the balloon, to getting retrieved by the helicopter. Enemies can and will notice someone attached to a balloon floating away. The fast takeoff after attaching to enemies is a break from reality as can be seen in the Pooyan missions from Peace Walker where the balloons drift up relatively slowly. "Hey, look at that. Shoot it!" "Waaaaaaaaaaaaagh~!" TIME PARADOX.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Besides the obvious, Snake can stand on top of cargo containers and already Fulton himself out of the area. (That, and giving the player additional functionality to hit a button and get ziplined out, as you already have the capability in menus to abort a mission and head back to the ACC instantly, could be seen as a redundant bit of programming.) Additionally, once you get the Wormhole Fulton, the whole issue becomes even more ridiculous, as Snake can functionally transport items out of the battlefield (himself included, while standing on containers) in moments via the same method.
• Why can't Venom Snake understand Russian, when in MGS3 his Russian is noted as superb by a native Russian speaker? Ocelot explains its because of the shrapnel lodged in Snake's head. The real reason is that Venom Snake is not Big Boss. He is the MSF medic that was with Big Boss during Ground Zeros, thus he probably has never been taught to speak Russian! Not to mention that Ocelot himself isn't fond of speaking Russian either, as it reminds him of the pre-Soviet decadent court of the Czars.
• How did Strangelove die inside the Hybrid Pod, claiming it was unable to be opened from the inside, when Snake very clearly gets in and out of AI Pods easily by himself in Peace Walker?
  • Even assuming that Strangelove isn't as physically capable as Big Boss, it's rather possible that it was Huey's tampering.
  • You have to keep in mind that Snake wasn't able to get into the AI pods until AFTER he damaged the hatches on top of them while the weapon they were attached to was disabled. So unless one were to use a weapon to shoot up the hatch beforehand, it's probably impossible for any human to open them up with their bare hands.
    • This still Doesnt Hold water. in peace walker, it is EXPLICITLY shown the AI pods can unlock/open their access hatches themselves.( in the cut-scene IMMEDIATELY before Snake starts ripping out the Mammal pods Memory circuits/ Storage drives) the Pod is shown to still be at LEAST partially functional, at the very worst enough of its software is still loaded for the Boss Simulation to be at least partially functional/Coherent. why wasn't Strangelove able to give it an override order, use a manual override or ASK it to pop the hatch?
    • my reasoning for the point above, is that The most revolutionary feature of the Boss AI, from a Cybernetics/AI science standpoint, was it could not just speak SPONTANEOUSLY instead of just using pre-recorded messages, but react and respond to human/English speech instead of needing orders/ instructions to be programmed in/ or responding simply to pre-programmed trigger phases, like a General giving His/Her soldiers orders.
• At no point does anyone attempt to come up with an alternative way to communicate with Quiet - once she fails to speak English to them, at no point does it occur to Snake, Miller or Ocelot that maybe there are other languages she could speak (Code Talker is the only one to think of this, and even then he doesn't share his knowledge with anyone else, nor does it occur to anyone else) or could be taught. No non-verbal communication methods are mentioned, despite the fact that the iDroid could easily be adapted to work as an assistive communication device, or a sign-language interpreter could be brought in to help her. The most logic-bending element of this is Miller insisting that bringing Quiet out onto the field would be dangerous because she can't communicate with Snake verbally, despite morse code being invented for this exact reason. Why the fresh hell did Quiet have to sacrifice herself in order to save Snake when she could have been given the tools to type "SOS" at them?
  • Probably because there was a sandstorm raging. Quiet could've tried to guide Pequod with Morse code, but there's always a small possibility that Pequod doesn't know Morse code. Unlikely, seeing as he's a trained helicopter pilot, but possible.
  • This is false though, they DID try to communicate with her in other ways. Ocelot explicitly tells you that they even tried to get her to write things down, and she refused that.
    • This still doesn't justify the comment about there apparently being no way for her to communicate on the battlefield (again, there's presumably morse code that they can use, even if it's purely for emergencies) and because of this, it still makes her death incredibly contrived. It's even more contrived considering that they have translators on-base, and apparently none of them can aid Pequod in understanding her when she speaks Navajo - he ends up insisting that she has to speak English, even though the resources back at Mother Base should have prevented that from being necessary.
    • There was clearly radio interference when trying to communicate with Pequod, much less MB, and enemy forces all over. No time to translate, or even to explain who she is (as she says). And as noted elsewhere on this page, she may refuse to explicitly communicate so they can't find any way to force info out of her. And that's assuming Pequod can recognize Navajo and then relay what she said back to base, where they'd have to get a radio to Code Talker. All in the minute or two of the cutscene. It's just not practical.
• Ishmael nearly collides with responding fire engines in Cyprus due to driving on the right side of the road. Just seems like a heat-of-the-moment lack of concern for driving on the middle of the road? Nope, he's an American driving in a left-hand traffic country!
• Using the chopper minigun on Soviet troops in Afghanistan could be considered Hoisted By His Own Petard when you remember that in the real Soviet-Afghan War this same tactic was a Soviet staple, hence why in real life and in-game U.S intelligence concentrated on providing the Mujahadeen with a portable Surface to Air missle launcher (in real life the FIM-92 Stinger, "the Honey Bee" in-game).
• During the opening sequence Quiet reports that she has not yet taken care of the Big Boss, because the patient in the next bed saw her face. She then comes over to shoot the player, rather than Ishmael that was in the next bed. After learning the twist it all makes sense, she was never there to kill the player, but the real Big Boss, the player was the mentioned unfortunate witness in the next bed.
  • You misread the scene. The whole point of that sequence is that Big Boss / Ishmael's identity was an absurdly-guarded secret, and no one in XOF knew he was there, not even Quiet. When she is giving her status update, she is very clearly looking at Venom when she indicates, "Not yet, the patient in the next bed saw my face." If she had wanted Ishmael / Big Boss dead, she would have moved to attack him to begin with, and not waited until the coast was clear / she received direction as to her next move before she proceeded. There is nothing in the "Man Who Sold The World" sequence to indicate that this scene was changed or deliberately misrepresented as part of The Medic's fractured memory.
• What happened to Mantis, after the events of V? He could bring a man back from the dead as a nigh-invincible fire god, summon a flaming whale, control an upright supermech, amongst other things, in MGS1, he can... make some statues fly and read your "mind".
  • He also has almost no will of his own in V, he's basically a parasite feeding off the emotions of the people around him. It's likely that by gaining his own agency, he stopped his mental feeding, which lessened his mental abilities and saw no reason or benefit to feeding again as an adult.
• Something that's always bothered me is why didn't Miller get any comeuppance for the shit he pulled when Venom brings Quiet back to Motherbase. He had two gunships put guns on the chopper, one of the soldiers actually aimed his gun at Snake, and Miller's standing there on the landing pad with a squad of soldiers saying he's not going to let the Boss, who is the commanding officer of Diamond Dogs, land with her on board. It wasn't just insubordination, it was an act of mutiny, and he never got so much as a slap on the wrist for it.
  • Highly unlikely — look at it from his perspective. He has been made aware (either by Venom or Ocelot) that Quiet/the same assassin was part of an XOF strike team that brutally massacred the inhabitants of a hospital in Cyprus, to say nothing of their actions destroying Mother Base nine years earlier. It's then discovered (in the early missions) that the same assassin, presumably thought to have been killed during the hospital raid, is the same "boogeyman" legend that's running around Afghanistan tearing encampments up and causing fear in everyone that encounters them. This is also the same sniper that, just a few minutes earlier (from Miller's perspective) was camped out in the ruins to the north of the region with the apparent purpose of shooting and killing their commanding officer... who has now inexplicably (from their perspective) rescued her, prevented her from shooting herself and brought her back with them. Miller's seniority precedes Venom's when it comes to the base — it is highly unlikely that he or any of the other soldiers that were present would have been initially comfortable with letting such a wild card onto the base. The most unrealistic part of that arrival scene with Quiet at Mother Base is having Miller talk with barely more than a raised voice when the helicopter is still several stories above him and there's numerous noises that should be drowning him out.
• How/When did Venom Snake find out the Truth? The way it's revealed to the audience via flashback and showing a different character, so it's only for the audience. We're shown Venom knows immediately before Metal Gear at the latest. Yet all of Diamond Dogs seem aware of the revelation after the mission.
  • The memory therapy might've had a crack in it that caused Venom to become aware that something was amiss about him. The dialogue between Kaz and Ocelot at the end implies that it's still the 80s by the time the revelation comes to light, so Venom may have found out not too long before then. The allusions to Outer Heaven and MG 1 were probably just some metaphorical time lapse.

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