Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-86.46.22.35-20130403153709/@comment-72.192.64.32-20130810010945

1.64.167.24 wrote: That's why I was saying Ishmael is more likely to be an actual person than not. The shot he gave Big Boss took a while to be effective, not that it didnt work at all. As to why he didnt seem to help him, I explained with Emma and EVA's play already, he doesn't have to take care of Big Boss each and every minute. In addition, the ambulance drive is perhaps even better prove.

The fact that Big Boss just woke up from the coma and the presence of Psycho Mantis only provide an opened door for Kojima to slip in some hallucination (e.g. the Volgin ghost), but it doesn't mean everything he saw is hallucination. Besides, Big Boss can see ghosts back in MGS3 (The Sorrow and Joy). Perhaps that Volgin ghost is one of a kind too... Anyway, it's just a tralier and Kojima can be misguiding us by sticking things in the wrong order. Psycho Mantis has shown that he has the ability to manipulate fire and generate fiery apparitions with his mind in past games.Pyrokinesis. Thus is can be assumed that every flaming apparition is created by Psycho Mantis,especially considering that every time one of these specters show up, it's either immediately after Mantis makes an appearance (the elevator scene) or Mantis is seen interacting with them (the flaming winged unicorn chase, the flaming whale attacking the chopper). As the post above me states, the "shot" that Big Boss "took" wouldn't help Big Boss at all, it's heart medicine, and nowhere is it stated that Big Boss had heart trouble. The only reason Digoxin is referenced in that scene is because it's derived from the Foxglove flower. Because of the fact that the medicine that's supposedly in the syringe wouldn't help Big Boss, and it doesn't seem to do anything at all but give Big Boss the idea that he's been given medicine to help him, supports the idea that Ishmael is a facet of Big Boss' psyche that was formed by trauma, and is his damaged minds way of encouraging Big Boss to press forward despite his weakness.