Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-25090680-20160918142941/@comment-2112031-20161006161418

Weedle McHairybug wrote:

The Wikia Editor wrote: I suggest you play it the way you personally think will most benefit your enjoyment. I would personally suggest chronological order, mostly because MGS V is a rather disappointing conclusion to the series, with MGS 4 being much more appropriate as a finale and MGR being a pretty decent continuation.

There are plenty of retcons here and there, but most of them are retcons about stuff that was only mentioned in manuals (e.g. Big Boss losing his eye in the late 1980s, Gray Fox being the last person to have the "Fox" codename, as opposed to being the only one).

The only one that really jumped out at me was when Liquid Ocelot stated that Big Boss was in his late 50s when his sons were created, but was later stated to have been 37 at the time. I personally chalk that one up to Liquid not knowing Big Boss' actual age due to deliberate misinformation. Eh, the manuals, at least for MG2, were literally required for completing the game (in the latter case, it's because of the manual being the only source to look up how to translate Madnar's tap code frequency, that and Roy Campbell's third and final frequency), so it's still pretty big. And I'm pretty sure they effectively retconned Master Miller's name despite Miller explicitly stating his name was "McDonnell Miller" in Metal Gear Solid with Snake not even being remotely suspicious. There were also other egregious retcons to the entries as well, several which actually originated from the games. I think it's arguable whether the stuff in the manuals getting retconned is "big". It was just there for the sake of giving the characters backstories, it was never mentioned nor became relevant in-game. Changing the small details (e.g. when Big Boss lost his eye) doesn't change or affect anything that happened in the game, or later games for that matter.

There's no real explanation for why Miller uses a different name in his later life, there are plenty of reasons we can think of (as mentioned by the person above), so it's not a big deal.