Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-8245466-20130723023229

In an attempt to provide a best guess for what might happen during MGS V and who Those Who Don't Exist really are, I've looked at all Cipher related research prior to MGS V and afterwards, and this is what I've found. Most is based on observations made from the MGS games, some is speculation.

During Operation Snake Eater, Para-Medic, (later the leader of Cipher's genetic experiments) makes the first mention of soldier genes to Big Boss and how she'd like to study his. During MGS PO, both Ocelot and Zero, and Gene, make further mention of soldier genes. It is at this point revealed that the CIA had the top secret Perfect Soldier project. While the Perfect Soldier, Null, was never genetically experimented on, it is worth noting that when Ocelot discussess recovered battlefield data for the Perfect Soldier project, Zero mentions soldier genes. This seems to indicate that what they were interested in was battlefield data from the Perfect Soldier project, and how the DNA of the Perfect Soldier might be used in soldier gene research.

Null was the only subject to survive the Perfect Soldier project, and was considered "a lost number," conveniently given the same code name as Cipher- Zero. If, as evidence seems to show, the Perfect Soldier project was continued secretly by Cipher, more soldiers might survive the project if their genome's were altered to be similair to Null's. A unit of Perfect Soldiers would be "Those Who Don't Exist"; referring both to their surviving the project and to the fact that Perfect Soldier's have their memories, their identities, erased.

Preperations for Null required up to 12 hours of care by the psychic Elisa. A unit of four Perfect Soldiers would require a much more powerful psychic, perhaps the most powerful practicioner of psychokinesis in the world- Psycho Mantis.

Those Who Don't Exist appear to have some sort of exoskeleton grafted over their bodies, or atleast the addition of cybernetic limbs, as well as appearing incredibly pale and death-like. This could be because they've had all the blood drained from their bodies, replaced with the artificial white blood that cyborgs use.

Now comes the speculation- if Project Omega really was teaser related material leaked from a legitimate source, as I believe it was, what Cipher could be doing is experimenting on soldiers who have both sustained real injuries in battle accompanied with loss of limbs, as well as soldiers who have sustained traumatic brain injuries or have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. These soldier's would have their limbs replaced with cybernetic ones, their bodies further modified, and their already damaged psyches wiped and reconditioned under the power of Psycho Mantis. Perhaps they were MSF soldiers killed in the attack, then revived by Cipher just like Gray Fox would be a decade later, and experimented on just like him.

The project probably didn't go as well as planned. After the fall of Zanzibar Land, why was Gray Fox recovered along with Big Boss? Why was he selected for the genome experiments? Because he was Null, the Perfect Soldier, and he was already the basis for the experiments that led to Those Who Don't Exist. So they decided to look towards Big Boss, the world's greatest soldier, and his genetics to combine with Null, the Perfect Soldier, to eventually succeed in creating the Genome Army.

The entire purpose of the Genome Army was to produce a candidate suitable for the S3 plan; a soldier who had been modified and conditioned not only on the genetic level, but psychologically as well. That soldier was Raiden, the test subject for the S3 plan which ultimately produced Cipher's ultimate weapon: the Sons of the Patriots system 