Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5085906-20130627191357/@comment-192.160.117.141-20140330183915

Y'know, it occurs to me: We've mostly been ignoring that Punished Snake's new eye scar matches Zero's as the usual MGS "woooooo callback" schtick. But, what if it's supposed to symbolize that Punished Snake is actually Zero?

I know, I know. But then we'd at least have a motive: Zero is obsessed with making copies of Big Boss. We do know that by Peace Walker he'd basically disappeared, and we know that AI research was already happening, and we know that Zero is eventually replaced by the Patriot AIs. That could just have happened earlier than we thought: Around the time of Ground Zeroes, Zero is replaced as the leader of the Patriots by one or more of what eventually become the Patriot AIs, so that Zero himself can replace Big Boss.

It's not super out there technology-wise. We do know that perfect disguises can be made: It's Decoy Octopus's whole thing. We know that it's possible to overwrite your personality with someone else's: Ocelot does just that after 2009 (with "nanomachine therapy", which sounds pretty advanced, but a nine year coma is involved here somehow so maybe they had the technique in 1975, but it was way shittier). (That similarity would actually make this a callback too, which is like one billion plausibility points in the MGS series.)

There are little things too. Ocelot is saying stuff like "let the legend come back to life", which could have a double meaning (Ocelot drops double meanings pretty much constantly - remember "the man with the same [genetic?]code[name?] as the [big?] boss"). Skull Face hates both Big Boss and Zero for some reason, so he's a bad guy no matter what. The name "Cypher" would be great for a weird conversation about "being a person who doesn't exist" or something like that. And "From FOX, two phantoms were born" the similarity between Big Boss and Zero will be significant somehow.

Finally, there's the name: Zero attempting to replace his friend Big Boss is a completely perfect explanation for the name "Phantom Pain". We don't really have any explanation for what the unusually pluralized "Ground Zeroes" is supposed to mean, but I guess if you squint it could be relevant if the implication is "more than one Zero".

It would raise a ton of questions, of course: Where's the real Big Boss? Does Zero stop impersonating Big Boss before the end of the game, or were there ever actually two Big Bosses around at the same time? At Outer Heaven? FOXHOUND? Is he Ishmael, or is Ishmael the real Big Boss? And if he's the real Big Boss, why would he be helping his doppelganger in the hospital (though, we don't actually know why Ishmael does anything)? And what's Zero doing being good at CQC all of a sudden?

Granted, I don't think this is more plausible than "Punished Snake is seriously just Big Boss". But I think it's at least more plausible than "Punished Snake is Gray Fox, Solidus Snake, Decoy Octopus, or Chico".