Board Thread:Metal Gear Solid V/@comment-4913740-20140331092208/@comment-68.7.69.188-20150215111030

I think it's pretty simple actually. Zero wanted big boss back in the US and working with the patriots again, but he knew Big Boss would never come back as long as he had his private army, so he set up the ground zeros mission and put skullface in charge of the xof unit and had them kidnap Paz and Chico to lure Big Boss away from Mother Base so xof could destroy it while keeping Big Boss safe and making it look like it was the work of a rouge militant group.

The peace symbol on the bomb in Paz's stomache was a very extreme way of saying, remember The Boss, the Patriots and your duty to your country and come home. He was meant to see it and it was never going to actually go off.

BUT, Skullface had other plans, he was actually againts Zero and put a second bomb in Paz that he set off for the sole purpose of eliminating Big Boss. And it seemed like it worked beacuse it put him in a coma for nine years.

Then Zero went, "well shit, that didn't go so well," and went ahead without Big Boss, but he never intended to fully abandon him (assuming he even knew he was still alive at the time). Of course at some point Big Boss would've found out he orchestrated the whole thing and the full on cold war between them would begin. But until outer heaven it WAS a cold war, on the surface they would've still been acting like friends, and Zero would've been more than happy to have him back in the us and running Foxhound. In fact until Zero found out about Outer Heaven he probably thought Big Boss was still his bro and happy to be back. That's my theory anyway.