Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-86.46.22.35-20130403153709/@comment-5085906-20130821134448

175.159.163.39 wrote: Is it so hard for people to accept that hallucination can be a mix of reality and illusions? Simply because one thing is illusion doesn't mean another is as well. Mantis "sets Snake on fire" prior to their fight in TTS while Meryl is laying next to Snake, and made the people in the photos behind Mantis laugh, etc etc. A few seconds later, we know everything but the fire and the laughing photos is real. Of course, if someone say the Ishmael game play is a dream, then I have nothing to counter it, but on the other hand, no one can yet prove it is a dream either. Hence I occasionally say Mantis complicated things a lot in that scene.

And back to picture 2 discussed in the above posts, why would Ishmael do exactly what Big Boss did in that moment, but was not so at all after that moment, and we should still take that as evidence for Ishmael being Big Boss' reflection in his mind?

For the voice actor of Chico -- he was 12 in MGSPW with a childhood voice and is 22 by MGSTPP. In those days, boys do not have their voices changed as soon as boys nowadays. Present days kids of the developed countries are better fed at an earlier age and thus enter pubity sooner than their parents' generation did. So for Chico to get a changed voice is not uncommon, but at least that opens a possibility (again, it's possibility, NOT certainty) for him to be Ishmael. Of course, I am one of those people suspecting Chico being the third person in the emergency room scene of the trailer (despite Kojima said it was himself). Why can't Kojima hide the injured face of Chico like he kept Johnny's face unseen until MGS4, and not show Ishmael again in later trailers? As to why Ishmael's voice is almost like Big Boss' is something I have no clue on yet, but it won't be the first time the same voice actor plays two roles in a game and has no bioloigical relationship to each other at all (Fox and Anderson shared the same voice actor in original MGS, and this is more common in the Japanese versions).

As to the part on Ishmael = Octopus, again, there is little known of Octopus except he is comparatively older than most if not all MGS1 Foxhound members, he had surgery on his face and (one of) his role is to gather intel. At least the face surgery part is something that we can line the two up.

Of course, Chico = Ishmael does not necessarily means Ishmael = Octopus (vice versa). But for the time being, I see no obvious evidence to counter Chico = Ishmael yet. If anyone figures out that evidence, raise it so we don't have to waste our time. Well, so far we got close to no proof to counter the Chico=Ishmael theory, but you can't say you got enough proof to support it either. Why didn't Ishmael introduce himself to Big Boss upon his awakening? "Hey, I am Chico. The guy you saved in a black site nine years ago". That would have sufficed, really. Or why didn't he come to aid him while he was struggling to move? That clearly indicated Ishmael is nothing but a figment of Snake's imagination, and the fact that he is able to navigate the hospital easily hints Big Boss is familliar with the hospital's layout and has been there before.