Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-17468962-20140610143947/@comment-80.75.99.120-20140811001135

Elliot Saint wrote:

Well, if Big Boss is supposed to be called Venom Snake for the duration of The Phantom Pain, I dont't understand why they came up with the code-name Punished Snake in the first place; something lost in translation or other type of misinterpretation, perhaps? The first slogan for the game, even before it was announced as a Metal Gear Game, was "V has come to"! And now it was revealed in the new trailer from E3 a new slogan: "Venom Awakens"; so I'm assuming V was not only a reference to the "V" in MGSV, but also a reference to Big Boss waking up from his long coma, and being called something starting with the letter V, like Vic Boss or Venom Snake which is more likely due to the new developments. Impossiple to say anything for sure at this point, but if I'de have to quess I'd say either

1. Punished and Venom Snake are both to be used to describe different aspects of Big Boss, Punished reflecting on tragic events he's been/will go through and Venom reflecting on anger, lust for revenge and destructive force building up inside him as result; or

2. They simply started out with he's new "Snake-name" being Punished Snake, but decided Venom Snake was more appropriate to describe Big Bosses character in Phantom Pain.

Either way, I doubt this new name is going to be used as an actual codename in game, but probably more sort of a nickname players can identify Big Boss at this point of his life (Similar to how Solid Snake is "Old Snake" in MGS4 mostly for players to identify him as that, as he is actually being called that only two times in-game-dialogue, both of which were more kind of a passing remark to his aged physical appearance than any kind of official new codename, underlined by the fact Snake himself clearly dislikes being called that).

As for the "V has come to", one can only guess if they had decided on "Venom" at that point, or if there is some other deeper meaning behind the phrase. Personally I think they might have just come up Venom later on and V in the sentence basically just being number 5. The line itself propably takes place in the scene where Big Boss awakens from his coma and nurse might be referencing to him as V either with him being patient number 5, man in the room number 5, or something else relatively meaningles (can't really help that this scenario really makes me think of "V for Vendetta" for more than one reason).