Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-86.46.22.35-20130403153709/@comment-1.64.54.37-20130730062818

72.192.64.32 wrote: " At least it is better than saying Ishmael is Big Boss' imagination simply because we don't see him in the trailers after the hospital section."

There are several reasons why the hallucination theory is a valid one.

It isn't just because he dissapears after Big Boss escapes the hospital.

It's because he does absolutely nothing to aid Big Boss in his escape from the hospital. The injection does nothing, he makes Big Boss crawl around instead of helping him to his feet, and he's nowhere to be seen immediately after the ambulance crash. The ambulance he was previously seen driving.

In fact the only thing he does do to aid Big Boss in his escape from the hospital is give him encouragement to press forward.

This video makes it more clear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak59GDjWyvQ While not trying to go for or against the theory that Ishmael is merely hallucination, I just rewind to my MGS3 game play right after EVA was injured from the chase sequence. Unless you knock out EVA and drag her everywhere, basically you don't give her much aid other than food or covering fire. I know things are slightly different in MGS2's Emma sequence, what I was trying to say is it isn't so abnormal that in similar circumstances, one person go ahead a little to clear the path / stay watch for the injured other.

I am not saying Ishmael is definitely not a hallucination. All I was saying was that we cannot conclude he is a hallucination simply because he doesn't appear after a certain point of a trailer. We also got Pyscho Mantis (who can create hallucaination) at that same section of the trailer, but we can't conclude Ishmael is hallucination simply because Mantis is there and Ishmael didn't offer enough help for Big Boss. As to whether one believes Ishmael exists or not, I guess that's just up to how everyone interpret the available information (my personal feeling is that he exists).

On a separate point regarding that Chico=Ishmael=Octopus. I was picking upon the age issue, where Octopus was said to be an older member of the 6 FOXHOUND member. As I said in earlier posts, [older] is only a word in relative terms, despite the fact that Chico is 43 if he is indeed Octopus in MGS1 (which I considered to be of reasonable distance to an old age), he would still be the second oldest member of the team (if the age information of all MGS1 FOXHOUND member on this wiki to be reliable). So Chico=Octopus is still possible, but to say Chico=Ishmael=Octopus still need more information to judge on.