Board Thread:Metal Gear Solid V/@comment-58.172.124.48-20141005022154/@comment-82.43.169.214-20141009212651

There seems to be a lot of Lord of the Flies references and images in Eli's subplot such as the Pigs head and the Conch Shell. If you'll remember Lord of the Flies was about a group of british boys stranded on an island and trying to survive, so in that respect Liquid stranded in Africa isn't a huge stretch/retcon as his British origins are still left intact. We always knew he had learnt many different languages and was interested in different cultures, so he's been around.

To be honest, to me it's kind of refreshing actually that Kojima is inventing new backstory for Liquid rather than just recycling what we already knew. The only reason people assumed Eli was in Afghanistan is because of the fact the E3 2013 trailer was very Afghanistan focused (with bits and pieces of Africa) and people were taken his connection to Arabic and the Middle East out of context.

Remember Liquid studied several languages and Arabic was just the one he took the most interest in, and his involvement in Iraq came when he joined the SAS and participated in the Gulf War as a young adult. This was all long after he was twelve, so Kojima has a clean slate to work with here and we'll still probably get some nods and radio conversations about Eli aspiring to join the SAS when he gets older, and his deloyment into Iraq and him joining FOXHOUND will likely all be mentioned in the Phantom Pain's ending timeline so it's all good. Nothing is being contradicted here like with Null and Gray Fox.

I mean even with the location not being what most assumed it was, we got an even bigger piece of evidence to replace it in the form of "Liquid" literally being spelled out in japanese on the back of his shirt in the E3 2014 trailer. What more can you ask for than Kojima outright admitting he's Liquid on twitter to realize it's him?