Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6512-20150911195557/@comment-138.51.255.87-20151001215508

The 2nd travel of the Titanic wrote:

I heard too much people saying that PO is non-canon just because Kojima didn't write it himself or because was not included in the Legacy Collection. What kind of evidence is that? It's like saying that Solidus is not a clone of Big Boss because he lost the left eye instead of the right one, or that Liquid is a clone of Miller as they both have blond hair. It makes no sense no matter you see it. In a discussion are used elements, not speculations or just random personal thoughs, because no matter how much we could want one thing to go in a precise way, it will not. So I'm going to bring something that has been said over and over, but apparently is still necessary.

Kojima himself said that the "core" of PO is canon (however he admitted that some informations given by the game contradicts the rest of the series, thus the "core" only he consider it canon). Also, it's present in the same timeline as the canon series (unlike Snake's Revenge, Ghost Babel, the two Acid and Mobile, with openly contradicts the events of the canon timeline, thus comes the "non-canon" definition; just think that GB sets in 2002 and ignores the events of MG2, or Acid and Acid 2 that contradict pretty much everything established about the LET project etc.), and its events are mentioned in MGS3 (although indirectly, in the ending timeline), MGS4, PW and TPP. Plus, Gene's ideology of "Army's Heaven" had a huge part in the inspiration of both the concepts of Outer Heaven and The Patriots. The fact that the events in PO are not referred to all the time like other titled tied-in (eg. MGS references MG2 all the time, MGS2 does the same with MGS, PW with MGS3 and GZ/TPP wth PW) does not mean the game itself is out of canon. There is actualy plenty of evidence that Portable Ops is not canon. Thankfully this information has been compiled and posted on the talk page, so I will just link it here and summarise, rather than repost it entirely. Konami released a timeline that contained only the Core8 games (which excludes MPO and Rising). Kojima also gave an interview where he said that only the Core8 games are a part of the "single Metal Gear saga" of games. This interview was given earlier this year and thus is the most up to date opinion on the topic. Therefore the old interview where he mentioned PoOps is old outdated information and is disregarded. Also in the Ground Zeroes Deja Vu mission there are logos for all the games ever made in the series. Only the Core8 game logos can be erased and will be mentioned by Kaz. All others will be made fun of by Kaz, and he'll say stuff like "Metal Gear something something" and "I don't remember that one.". Lastly, the MGSV guidebook has a detailed timeline of all canon events written by Kojima and Konami. The timeline leaves out MGR and PoOps entirely, even  though there is an entire page dedicated to the early 1970s, there isn't even the slightest mention of MPO or the San Hieronymo Incident. There are hi-res image uploads of those pages found on the talk page.

PoOps is only mentioned in games as a joke. As I said GZ references it by having its logo, but Kaz says that the game is non canon. Also its incredibly lame to say that Big Boss got his idea for Outer Heaven from someone else. I'm glad that the game has since been retconned out of canon and now we know that Big Boss came up with the idea for it himself, rather than stealing it lamely from someone else.

You're right when you say that personal opinions can't change whether or not PoOps is canon, thankfully both Kojima and Konami have agreed that the game is no longer considered part of the canon timeline which simplifies the situation greatly.