This analysis delves into the intricate lore of Metal Gear Solid V, focusing on the mysterious characters of the Man on Fire and the Third Boy, and exploring Ocelot's complex role and motivations as a triple agent within the overarching narrative of Cipher and the Patriots.
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Welcome back to the tapes of MGSV, the
only series on YouTube setting out to
analyze the Phantom Paints mini tapes
one track at a time. So, in this
episode, I thought I might as well begin
to do something that'll take several
episodes to flesh out completely. We're
going to begin to dive into the lore
behind The Man on Fire. We may as well
get our feet wet in this sooner rather
Because The Man on Fire and the Third
Boy, when you think about it, are some
of the most important characters in the
Phantom Pain that we know absolutely
nothing or next to nothing about.
All we have to go on beyond the Man on
Fire briefings themselves are the
informants report, a three-part briefing
given to us by Ocelot in chapter 2 of
the game. We'll have to save most of our
conversation about these characters, the
man on fire and the third boy until
then. In that tape though, Ocelot will
tell us supposedly the origin story for
The Man on Fire and the Third Boy, who
of course operate as a kind of pair.
Basically, and this you already know,
The Man on Fire is the brain deadad
biomort of Yevginny Vulgan from Metal
Gear Solid 3. So, that's a call back to
a game that took place chronologically
in the past from the Phantom Pain.
Meanwhile, the third boy is the child
version of the character Psycho Mantis
from MGS1, which takes place in the
future. Together, they along with
Skullface help make MGS5 the missing
link to unite the entire series.
So, even though we're going to hear more
details about how these two freaks of
nature came to be, let alone came to be
here in Cyprus much later on, even now I
can tell you there are some aspects to
that briefing that are going to be
rather hard to believe, which will
actually leave these two key characters
still shrouded in mystery even by the
very end. All we can do for now is just
to begin to describe these spooky
characters and how they first manifest
in the Phantom Pain.
Perhaps a good place to begin with these
characters is well how abruptly they
both appear. In the prologue/epilog
depicting the events in Cypress, the man
on fire and the third boy operate on a
number of levels and we've already sort
of started to discuss them. We could
call them the levels of of story the
story of the phantom pain
of foreshadowing foreshadowing events to
come in the series and of callbacks to
Naomi, I just had some kind of
hallucination. Is it from the nanom machines?
machines?
>> No, Snake. The nanom machines are
functioning properly.
>> So, what was it?
>> It must have been psychometric
interference coming from Psycho Mantis,
Foxhound psychic. Think of it as a
mental feedback loop.
>> So, that was Mantis.
>> And this is kind of happening
simultaneously in throughout this scene actually.
actually.
But the thing to keep in mind about the
prologue, not only when it comes to the
man on fire and the third boy, but to
the entire thing, it's not only that we
are playing as a character, Venom Stake,
who's just woken up from a 9-year
but we're also playing as a character
who's been brainwashed with his own dreams,
whose dreams and whose memories, both
real and artificial, have all blurred
together. and a character who's
remembering these events with his
imperfect, drugged up, flawed human
memory. That's right. This whole mission
is actually subtly playing out as a
flashback, a memory. So that alongside
the brain damage and mind control help
explain the unreliable narrative that
So, what can we say about the man on
fire or the third boy at such an early
point? They show up, scare the hell out
of us, and provide alongside XOF the
sense of living through a state of
emergency in a very literal way. It
reminds me of a quote from George Orwell
in his essay, The Lion and the Unicorn.
quote, "Even war when it comes or before
it comes is represented not as a war,
but as an act of self-defense against a
homicidal maniac." End quote.
Well, the homicidal maniac, the man on
fire, and his accomplice, the third boy
are just too convenient for my money.
They show up in a way that completely
helps us, though you'd never know it
from how horrifically the whole incident
plays out. It's only thanks to the man
on fire and the third boy that we're
able to slip out at all. And the man on
fire is really the first person, when
you think about it, so to speak, who's
fooled by the body swap ruse. Let's discuss.
discuss.
In Cyprus, we see XOF killing people
pretty indiscriminately. That's because
they've been tipped off presumably that
they won't recognize Big Boss by his
face. They also seem to know which bed
the real snake is in, given Quiet's line
about you being the patient in the other
bed. Notice she seems to realize you
aren't big boss by calling you that the
patient in the other bed.
I should point out in older videos I
highlighted the ambiguity of her
phrasing and it's true. It's it's not
100% clear what she means. That being
said, over the years I've learned that
it's pretty easy to overthink this game.
And even though there's always a smoke
screen usually that you have to wade
through, what makes the most sense in
this scene is that she is in fact
talking about you since this is just
But quiet you later put together has
been set up. She doesn't have intel that
the real big boss is already awake. That
big boss, not Venom Snake, woke up
first. That leaves her open to Big
Boss's sneak attack. And as we see, it's
these events which necessitate, as we're
told in the ending timeline, parasite
therapy, and therefore Quiet's
transformation from XOF assassin to XOF experiment.
experiment.
And she's not the only one set up to
fail here, just as Miller's unit is in
the events that precede the first
mission, which he'll later explain.
Diamond dogs were lured into a massacre
by chasing skulls in the mist. Like that
blood bath, the atrocity at the hospital
on Cyprus is a setup evidently meant to
test some of Skullface's new toys.
That's right. Skullface doesn't give a
damn about his own men anymore than
we'll see cause does deep down. By the
end, everyone in MGS will sort of carry
on Skullface's meme as some worse
version of themselves thanks to his
poisonous influence. Well, his and zeros.
>> Snake, I wanted to ask you about the man
on fire. What do you remember from the
hospital? Anything we can use?
>> Well, he took off the moment the
sprinklers started up.
>> Sprinklers? The fire system?
>> And when he got sprayed with water from
the burst pipe, it slowed him down.
>> When we escaped on horseback, he
wouldn't cross the river either. And
then it started to rain and he disappeared.
disappeared.
>> Water against fire. Is it that simple? I
mean, it makes sense. It's just hard to
believe it would work on a guy like that.
that.
>> It seems XOF are lured to the hospital
in the prologue in order to really help
field test the man on fire and the third
boy. And this is around the same time
that Miller walks his Diamond Dogs team
near the zero line in Afghanistan into a
massacre with the Skulls that
conveniently leaves him and him alone as
the sole survivor.
This foreshadows that Venom Snake is
actually quite useful to Skullface as a
major vector for spreading his meme,
Skullface's dream for the future, which
as he tells us just before dying, will
live on embedded in the system long
So, one thing to point out about the
prologue is what we're discussing,
whether we're talking about what happens
to Miller or what happens to us. What
we're discussing are field tests of the
newest weapons in Cipher's Arsenal.
Field tests for Metal Gears would of
course provide the background for the
plots of future games like MGS1 and 2.
But here's what's super easy to miss.
It's only because XOF get in between the
vengeance weapon literally man on fire
and his quarry big boss that such a
confusion and chaos is created so that
the real big boss can get away and the
fake one us can draw all his attention
All we're really told now about the man
on fire with this tape is that there's a
fail safe built into this weapon, just
like there will be, or so we're told, in
Skullface's nuclear enrichment archae,
which he intends to use to proliferate
nukes on the black market. In the man on
fire's case, this fail safe follows the
simple logic of Pokémon. He's fire, so
he can be dispelled with water. It's
that simple because again, it's supposed
to be idiot proof. It's a fail safe in
case this dangerous weapon should ever
go rogue. The man on fire on a symbolic
level, we could say, is a metaphor for
all the anger and vengefulness that this
new system for global control known as
the patriots will exploit in order to
transform war and maintain their
supremacy into the 21st century.
He is the grand summation of all the
little narratives of revenge that the
But like I said, more will that will
have to wait. For now, let's move on to
the next tapes. Ocelots's Briefing 2 and
Afghanistan today 1. We'll unlock these
after completing the first proper
mission in the game, Phantom Limbs.
Ocelots Briefing 2 could be analyzed
from a few different angles, as so many
of these tapes could be. But since we're
focusing primarily in this series on
lore, I won't go too much into how this
tape corrects a translation error from
MGS1 or how this speaks to how MGS5 in
general is interested in the conflict
between the English-speaking world's
version of Metal Gear Solid and the
Japanese one. Instead, we'll just zero
in on a few key points about what Ocelot says.
says.
>> Ocelot, I hear they started calling you
Shalasha in Afghanistan.
What's that about?
You know the term sharashka? It's slang
for a suspicious, hastily thrown
together organization. The word became
associated with a type of forced labor
facility in the Soviet Goolog system.
OKB scientists and engineers who'd been
convicted of crimes were sent to a
sharashka for forced R&D. The Sherashkas
were supervised by Lenti Berea of the
NKVD, the secret police, under the
official name Fourth Special Department.
Forest Research, that's not very
different from what we do here.
>> Diamond Dogs is different. Everyone here
believes in you. Regardless of where
they came from or why they're here, they
revere you and they're fighting because
it was their choice.
>> And if it wasn't, they'd leave.
>> Who knows? That's our reality here.
Whether it's real or not, if there's
another truth, I don't want to know it.
All that matters is that's the concept
that's taken shape in their heads. The
traces of a group ideology, our
superructure, to put it in Marxist
terms. All right, go on. All right. So,
anyway, at some point, the enemy started
calling me Sharashka. This was after the
war in Afghanistan broke out. While I
was keeping an eye on you and that
hospital, I was also heading up
interrogations here. The men I broke
gave up their comrades and families
everything they wanted to protect the
most. No real cause for it. I just let
myself get caught up in the old Russian
pride. And suddenly I received the honor
of becoming special interrogation
advisor to the forced labor camps. But
the more men I interrogated, the more
people saw me as just that, the
interrogator. It helped cover my real
objective of keeping you safe. You went
that far for me. Far enough to keep you
alive. I ended up being pretty well
known among the Afghan guerillas. Some
of them would have seen me on the
battlefield. And that's how I got the
second half of the name. Shashka. It's a
sword, a type of saber from the
Caucasus. Russian draons and cosacs
carried them into battle. Now the
Russian Empire had a general by the name
of Fjord Arurovich Keller. His bravery
earned him the nickname Russia's
greatest Shashka. Someone must have
known about that because somewhere along
the line Shashka got stuck on the end of
Sharashka. The gorillas were using the
name amongst themselves and by the time
I got to hearing about it, pronunciation
had wound up as Shalashka.
So half goolog, half hero sword is a
perfect fit. But you see how rumors and
ideas about people can get out of hand
fast. Once you create a character and
put it out there in public mind, it
warps and twists with every baseless
rumor. And before you know it, all
people see are phantoms. In my case, it
works out just fine. I'm plenty used to
working under aliases.
In this easy to overlook tape, OAD
explains how he gained the Nom Degare of
Shalasha fighting for the Soviets in Afghanistan.
The idea that we're going to develop a
little bit in this video is that Ocelot
is not yet fully in league with the
Patriots, but he is heading a major wing
of a project that was first established
by Zero. And by the end of the events of
Phantom Pain, Ocelot seems poised to
worm his way as a mole, so to speak,
Something created to maintain world
balance independent of the struggles for
supremacy, for personal profit, the
cycles of revenge between countries.
It'll be an army, all right, but more.
Big Boss is building a nation.
But until it's complete, we support the
other Big Boss. The Phantom carries on
his legend, his meme.
That is Big Boss's plan.
So that's the way it is.
Sooner or later, there will be only one
boss. There's only room for one boss.
His sons are faded to face each other
someday, too.
If the day ever comes that you go back
to Cipher, I'll the other son, and then
you and I will be enemies, too.
Fine by me.
I'll be ready for the new age.
Until then,
we better get used to coexisting.
>> That line about the safest place from a
whale being inside its own belly in the
very first tape foreshadows Ocelot's
role as a triple agent, as the one who
will work covertly inside the whale
against his own organization for years,
only to one day actually become the one
most responsible for destroying it.
There are other indicators of Ocelot's
distance from the Patriots during the
events of MGS5 as well. Of all the
people on Mother Base with connections
to the Patriots, I'd say the one who
seems the most implicated is actually
Huey. He has a lot of ties, after all,
to Dr. Clark and DARPA and so on, which
is what makes him the perfect person to
accuse of masterminding, whether that's
true, halftru, or straight up a lie. the
laboratory experiment in reverse
evolution that leads to the tragic
events of the mission shining lights
even in death.
But we can't say that Ocelot has nothing
to do with the Patriots. Why? Well, the
missions that we're sent on as we get
closer to the end of chapter 1 get more
and more in line with Cipher's will. And
as I already sort of explained in
greater detail in my what even happens
in MGS5 series in in at least a few of
those missions, the odds are very high
that we're just doing a mission for a
cutout of the Patriots.
Cipher are the ones who want to know
about Skullface's secret plan, all the
things that he's done in their name and
with their unlimited funds.
Ocelot can maintain plausible
deniability by working as a senior staff
member of Diamond Dogs. But don't forget
that he is still somewhat connected to Cipher.
And don't forget also his role as a
higher up in the Soviet military during
this war that we're seeing. As he tells
Grukovich in MGS2, Ocelot abandons the
Soviet Union by the end of the Cold War.
Usually when we look at Oscelott's
actions, they seem to be in pursuit of
betraying the Soviet Union, not serving
it. That's what makes it interesting to
hear that he balks at the use of French
due to the history there involving
France and its controversial influence
Ocelot even uses Marxist lingo like
So we can see he's very much a character
in transition.
But as always, that's Ocelot, a man of
contradictions. One minute he's a
nationalist, the next he's talking like
a died in the wool communist, and the
next he's an internationalist. It just
depends on who he's currently trying to
deceive, which version of Ocelot he's
decided or required to be that day.
And we'll see this same pattern play out
again, not just with the Soviet Union,
but the second major globally active
cabal that Ocelot will work for in order
to betray the Patriots. If you add up
everything we're given by the Phantom
Pain, it seems even Ocelot gets inspired
by Skullface's way of thinking by the
end. And even as I've said in prior
videos, it seems as though Ocelot will
start impersonating aspects of
Skullface's personality with his
grandstanding and so on. Uh the closer
we get to the events of MGS4,
I want to suggest that Ocelot, out of
deference to Big Boss, Big Boss being
the one that he's really loyal to, is
working as the leader of what can only
be called the Zero faction within
Cipher. I know this is confusing, but
bear with me. He is the one that Zero
has entrusted with Zero's plan for
creating a mental doppelganger of Big
Boss. This is a plan that Big Boss goes
along with.
And this mirrors the way that Zero at
one point in the story chose Anderson as
the one to create his proxy AI system to
control and police the globe's norms,
the Patriots. Zero is not afraid of
delegating major projects.
And that's what happened at the
Zero's not afraid of delegating projects clearly.
clearly.
That, as we'll see, kind of comes back
to bite him in the ass. But the betrayal
of Zero by Skullface and with him I'm
going to be arguing Anderson and the
Patriots comes after he created the
venom snake body swap ruse in secret
following the events of ground zero. We
know this because when Zero and Oscot
talk during the Truth Records, that's
before Zero's been attacked by Skullface
and his so-called gift. So, the plot to
create Venom Snake originated before
Zero's betrayal.
So, why do I say I think that Skullface
and Anderson colluded together to strike
at Zero in that infamous tape in the
Truth Records? Well, I'll tell you right
now that one of the reasons I believe we
can conclude that Skullface and Anderson
worked together to get at zero is the
specific prop that Skullface will use as
literally poisoned bait. It's a perfect
replica of a pin the boss used to have,
which commemorated the death of a former
SAS trainee who was lost to the sands of
Egypt during a training exercise back
during the North Africa campaign of
World War II. If you remember from MGS3,
Anderson, aka Sigant, is a master craftsman.
craftsman.
I made it myself. Pretty good work,
don't you think? A while back, they were
planning to disguise someone as this one
grew officer and send them in to steal
some secret documents. I created the
mask for that operation. Somebody uh
some kind of master craftsman created
this fake pin. And I think it makes
sense that that was Anderson
based on this way that Ocelot starts one
of the tapes in the truth records in a
very weird way by coming out and
basically saying it was Anderson or
rather the system that Anderson created.
>> Boss, it was Anderson after all. That's
right, the man who went by Sigen during
Operation Snake Eater. Following Zero's
disappearance, he's taken over command
of Cipher. Well, to be precise, the AI
he oversees has.
And I think that Anderson giving
Skullface this this replica is similar
to the way that Paws helped Skullface
with intel on where Zero can be found.
Skullface wouldn't have been able to do
it without a little help from his friends.
friends.
And see, all of this is why after he's
attacked Zero doesn't know who he can
trust because he's built this whole
system, the Patriots, and now it seems
that it's turned against him. So, out of
paranoia, he triggers a blackout, and
this is in 1977. He gets out of Hell's
Kitchen, where he's staying, and he
actually comes and visits us in Cyprus.
It's his only way to be sure the
Patriots and their surveillance system
isn't tracking him. It's implied that he
actually uses members of the SAS to make
this daring, shall I say, great escape.
All of this is also substantiated again
by the way Oselot talks about Anderson's
role in the Attack on Zero, which
admittedly is something that he says in
a rather roundabout subtle way,
but I want to reiterate, it was before
this betrayal by Skullface, and I'm
sorry I'm spending so much time on this,
but it's an important point. It's before
the betrayal that, as I said last
episode, Ocelot and just a minute ago,
Ocelot was chosen by Zero to oversee
this body swap ruse inside a haven, so
to speak, within the Patriots own
system, namely this military hospital in
Dellia, dating back to Zero's time
fighting the Nazis in World War II. He
calls it an old foxhole of his. Zero
trusts Ocelot more than anyone else to
oversee the venom snake ruse. So Ocelot
is clearly very well connected within
Cipher, or at least he was before this
before Cipher sort of begat the Patriots.
Patriots.
And I think one of the reasons Zero
trusts Ocelot so much is because he
knows that Ocelot has a personal stake
in the fate of Big Boss due to
everything Big Boss meant and
represented to the boss, Ocelot's mother.
mother.
And frankly, it seems as though Zero
essentially replaced Ca with Ocelot,
only leaving Ca around for his
usefulness and stirring up the troops
with his dramatic speeches and as a
momento for Venom Snake to remember the
days of MSF by Ca was once Ciphers, that
is to say Zer's man inside Big Boss's
organization. Essentially, there is
Cipher before Zero leaves and Cipher
after Zero leaves. During that time in
during the events of Peace Walker, we
see Ka was once Ciphers man inside Big
Boss's organization, but his loyalties
only went as far as business. And I
think this is actually something that
pissed off Zero. It's one of the reasons
why he he passes uh cause over for
Ocelot is he knows that he can only
trust cause to the extent that the
arrangement will benefit Ca monetarily.
And again, Ocelot being the boss's son
just has more personally at stake in
Cipher and Big Boss, as they're both
sort of
interpretations of his mother's will in
some way. Now, it's by deviating from
her will, as far as Ocelot understands
it, that the Patriots will make enemies
of Ocelot, just as they do with
Skullface. Skullface decides to rebel
against Cipher once he finds out they
intend to use English as the global
lingua franca and their method of mind
control and norm policing.
Even though he kind of gives them the
idea to do this, but we'll talk about
this later. In Ocelot's case, the
decision to rebel, we'll be told, comes
from the patriots evolution into a
system that feeds on war, that turns war
into a new kind of business. By the end,
Ocelot and Big Boss, in other words,
turned their nose up at this capitalist
and technological revolution in warfare,
this RMA or revolution in military
affairs, with its high techch, low
inensity mercenary and contractor
outsourced version of war. As Ocelot
explains, the Patriots are just a system
built out of Zer's rules and laws, out
of his will for the future. And without
him, the patriots, the system he made
begins to decay, begins to become
decadent and corrupt, begins to
transform as it monetizes war and makes
war a new pillar of the global economy.
Ocelot, just like Big Boss, is fighting
for outer heaven, a new nation,
which they hope to build in order to one
day overthrow the patriots rule and free
soldiers from the tyranny of their
masters. Together, Ocelot and Big Boss
in this sense go against Ca and his
paradigm that he helped create for
Cipher of this new kind of business
which we'll remember Ca innovated for
Cipher in Peace Walker and then the
Phantom Pain.
But the days of Cause being in Cipher,
that is to say Zero's good graces are
over by MGS5. by the events of ground
zero as we see just like big boss cause
but that's not to say cause is not just
as forsaken by the real big boss the
real big boss disposes of cause no
differently in the phantom pain using
him right alongside zero as a pawn
nakedly as a means of pissing cause off
enough that he'll fulfill his role with sincerity
sincerity
so that's where cause stands
At the start of the Phantom Pain, he's
living out his own personal hell.
Trapped as Zero and Big Boss's pawn,
cast out of Big Boss and Ocelot's
paradise, outer heaven, given no choice
but to play out his role in this epic
that they're orchestrating until it's
his time to die, which of course happens
by the events of MGS1. Ocelot,
meanwhile, as I said, is working with
Zero and Big Boss's authorization to
carry out one of Zero's last operations,
the Venom Snake Ruse. And by doing so,
Oselot, I think, is beginning to work
his way back into the Patriots good
graces, so that one day he can destroy them.
them.
and Skullface through the nine years
that we are in our that Big Boss is in
his coma and that Venom Snake is being hypnotized.
hypnotized.
In that time, Skullface goes from being
exiled to Africa, then teaming up with
Anderson to strike at zero, and then he
teams up with the Patriots, Anderson's
AI system, in order to use them to fund
Skullface's pet projects like the Archa
and the vocal cord parasites.
the patriots brings it back to life uh
as um a long abandoned project by the
philosophers and he he motivates them to
create the devil's house which is where
they are trying to manufacture vocal
cord parasites for every language but
English right all of this is a ruse to
throw the patriots off his true goal
which is to create a secret strain of
English vocal cord parasite which
Skullface lures the Patriots into
under the premise that it won't be for
the English language. It'll be for every
language but English and that it will
help their misguided utopia be built
around English as a as its one true
mother tongue.
So Skullface is sort of like he's
helping make everyone uh be dependent on
English in order to take English away so
that he can replace it with his lingua
franca which is not a language at all
So when did this partnership between
Skullface and the Patriots begin? With
the attack on Zero. And we'll discuss
more of this as we get to the truth tapes.
It all sort of makes sense with what
we're given considering Skullface goes
from being exiled in Africa to back
being a major player in the Patriots
which we know he is because he promises
code talker that he'll do something
about the downwinders problem which
involves the da nation and you know
using them um and the fact that their
land sits on uh some of the biggest
deposits of natural uranium in in the
United States. But I'll talk more about
that in a second.
So you, Venom Snake, are sort of like
Zeros and Big Boss's will for revenge
made flesh.
Yet Big Boss and Zero while temporarily
allied against the patriots also seek to
eventually defeat one another as there
can only be room for one boss, one mass
And that's what's interesting is that
throughout the process from Metal Gear
Solid 3 to the Phantom Pain, we see
Cipher and then the Patriots infiltrate,
worm their way into both superpowers and
take them both over until it becomes
hard to tell them apart almost
to that point. In one mission soon over
the fence, we'll learn that Venom
Snake's prosthetic hand was actually
Soviet made.
But before there can be some big
showdown between Big Boss and Zero or
something like that, all three factions,
big bosses, zero such that it is, and
Anderson's aka the Patriots, they all
collude together in the events of the
Phantom Pain to neutralize the threat of
Skullface and his mysterious plan once
they realize he has a plan, which is the
thing that they need us to go and learn
the details of before killing Skullface
by the events of the mission that bears his
his
All of this is obscured in the prologue,
however, by Skullface essentially
setting up his own unit, XOF, to get
ambushed and massacred by the man on
fire and the third boy. To come back to
them for a second, I'd argue the man on
fire, the third boy, and the Skulls are
all byproducts of Skullface's working
relationship with the Patriots and their
vast sums, as well as his access to code
talkers, discoveries, and science.
He goes from being exiled to Africa to
back in a major position of influence
following the attack on Zero in 1976. We
know he has this influence because he
uses it as leverage to convince Code
Talker to help him create strains of
weaponized microorganisms without the
Patriots direct knowledge. At the start
of the Phantom Pain, all of the
different factions within Cipher have
their own motivations. In other words,
even Skullface for colluding together to
support the fiction that you are
actually Big Boss, the legendary
mercenary, come back to life.
And that's something that will take the
entire game for us to figure out is that
what the Patriots, Big Boss, and Zero
don't realize apparently is that
Skullface has his own uses for Venom
Snake, too. and the whole ruse that gave
us Venom Snake, helping create and
sustain the fiction that we are the real
Big Boss serves everyone's interests,
which is why we're able to sustain it
for so long. But it seems through us and
specifically our formative relationship
with Eli aka Liquid Snake, Skullface
will have the brunt of his revenge.
Because as I've talked about in a
previous video, he will sort of help
through Venom Snake in a way help shape
Liquid Snake
and make Liquid Snake just another copy
of Skullface in a weird way. This
revenge obsessed weapon that learns to
walk upright.
And that's to say nothing of Skullface's
parting gift to the Patriots, which is
the real Cudigra, the idea that he gives
them for a Metal Gear weapon system,
by proving the possibility for the
creation of such a system like Sahalanthropus.
Sahalanthropus.
Skullface, in other words, will exploit
our status as big boss's face on the
world stage, just as he meant to exploit
Sahalanthropus as a poster boy for the
age of nuclear proliferation,
retaliation, and loss that Skullface
hopes to usher in. Remember in MGS1 we
served as a vector for the virus Fox
die? Well, in MGS5, I'd argue we are a
vector again for the kind of illness
that Skullface with his dying breaths
wills into the future for the Patriots
and their Englishoriented information
age dystopia.
But Skullface will never stop pretending
that we are Big Boss, if he is
pretending at all. He may actually even
believe it. The man on fire, as I said,
certainly does. And that's what's really
interesting is it almost seems like the
man on fire is chasing big boss's
mentality and that he can somehow sense
it and that that mentality has been
transplanted somehow from the real big
boss to you. Something like that is
going on. But like with so much else in
this game, we will never know the full story.
story.
And the same goes for Skullface, you
know, like so much else. It's just hard
to say for sure anything really. When it
comes to Big Boss and Ocelot and their
plan for us, Venom Snake, based on
Zero's doppelganger ruse, we are meant
to one day remember that we aren't
actually Big Boss. This revelation is
the turning point that begins and ends
the entirety of the Phantom Pain as a
flashback sequence in that Outer Heaven
bathroom. And the seeds for this big
reveal are already being sewn as early
as Ocelot's briefing too. Especially in
the part where Ocelot introduces the
theme that today in the information age
as during the dark ages, fiction matters
to people's sense of reality far more
than facts. But with that, now I want to
discuss some real world facts. The use
of forced labor Ocelot alludes to during
Here's some historical context for the
themes and subject matter of MGSV.
to begin with. And I know this is lazy.
I'm just going to quote from Google AI's
response because I think it already does
a pretty good job of explaining this
point, the basics of it. And this video
is already quite long and labor
intensive to produce. So, let's just
let's just hear what Google AI has to
say about the use of uh forced labor
during the Afghan war.
While the extensive Soviet goolog system
of forced labor camps was officially
abolished in 1960, the Soviet military
and the Afghan communist government they
supported were accused of operating
detention centers in Afghanistan where
prisoners were subjected to torture and
forced labor during the Soviet Afghan
war. Key points regarding forced labor
during this war. Soviet forces utilized
local Afghan labor to expand and
maintain airfields and other facilities
such as the Bagram airfield detention
center. Reports from human rights
organizations documented systematic
human rights violations by both Soviet
and Afghan government forces. These
included summary arrests, massacres,
torture, and forced displacement of the
civilian population which drove millions
into refugee camps in Pakistan and Iran.
This is something Ocelot will mention in
one of the tapes about Afghanistan.
The Soviets were not signitories to the
Geneva Conventions concerning the
treatment of prisoners of war during
this period and their general approach
to prisoners in past conflicts had
involved harsh conditions and forced
labor. Mujahedin rebels were also
accused of wartime atrocities. However,
although the formal goolog system was
dissolved in the 1950s, the legal
practice of sentencing convicts to
corrective labor colonies continued in
the Soviet Union well into the 1980s.
The primary victims of the conflict were
the Afghan people who endured a brutal
war, widespread destruction of villages,
and mass migration rather than a
centrally organized gulog system in
Afghanistan itself. the detention
centers that did exist were sites of
severe mistreatment and abuse. End quote.
quote.
So the practice of forced labor, in
other words, was brought back from the
dead during the revitalized cold war of
the 1980s in Afghanistan.
Uh even if not quite to the same degree
as it had exist as the goolog system had
existed under Stalin.
the concept of specialized forced labor
in special laboratory prisons known as
Sherashkas, which Ocelot references, and
his name is evidently a sort of a
corruption, a translation error of goes
back to the immediate post-war period.
When it comes to Shiraashkas, one of the
most important books for phantom pain
I've never really mentioned on this
channel before is called The First
Soulhan
Alexander Soulhen.
It's the one work most closely
associated in the West at least with the
term Sharashka. And like MGS5, it deals
with not just totalitarianism, but also
subjects like psychological war, the
nature of freedom, and how the Cold War
was changing the nature of humanity. As
Ocelot and Big Boss say in the tape,
what we see on Mother Base is
essentially a reborn version of a Sharashka.
Sharashka.
See, Sherask weren't normal prison
camps. They were full of specialists
like Mother Base. And despite being
purged by a paranoid Joseph Stalin after
the war from civilian society, given
their importance as technicians and
experts to the state, a lot of the
members of the Sherashkas were treated
well, relatively speaking. What makes
this novel interesting is how the Soviet
system it depicts is one of such
contradictions and mental gymnastics.
The specialists are researching how to
develop a means of recognizing the exact
fingerprint, so to speak, of the human
voice as a project for the KGB. The
prisoners of the novel are allowed many
amenities forbidden to less important
convicts. Their imprisonment is much
more invisible. Their resistance,
therefore, much more difficult to
sustain. Even though the Soviet system
has exiled them, it needs them, too. So
the prisoners or Ze are allowed to live
and work within the Sherashka as a kind
of haven, albeit one where escape is
impossible. Within the context of MGS5,
these elements from the novel seem to
foreshadow how under capitalism, a
similar kind of imprisonment, arguably
similar lack of liberty can also play
out in even less recognizable form. As
code talker will later say,
to play its game of wealth, you only had
to abide by one rule, English. By
exploiting people's desires, English has
become a leash that people gladly wear
around their necks, it would seem.
Rulers and language Skullface object
Skullface Objective 3. All of this
foreshadows the major themes of MGS5 as
a game about what can only be called an
English-speaking version of
totalitarianism of global one party
rule. Much as we could also describe
another major influence and reference
point for the Phantom Pain Orwell's
novel 1984, the first circle might
remind you of 1984. Actually, both have
elements of a of a spy novel, and both
are about how liberty dies in
totalitarian societies. All of this
applies to MGS5 as well. Sharashkas are
on the more friendly side of state
imprisonment under the Soviet gulag
system. Most prisoners were forced to do
manual labor in harsh remote places like
Siberia in Gulux. And as I mentioned
just a moment ago, courtesy of Google
AI, this practice of forced labor and
torture was brought back to life like so
much else from the Stalin era during the 1980s.
The war was all but a state secret in
the Soviet Union for years.
Information control, after all, had
become, by the 1980s, a major pastime
for regimes the world over, East and
Rather than a war, the Russians called
their occupation of Afghanistan
brotherly assistance. It took time for
the truth about the grueling conflict to
become better known to the Soviet
people. But by the end of the 1980s,
this contributed to the downfall of
trust in Russian communism,
which by that point had degenerated into
the kind of criminal organization and
all but name that we know Russia as
today. On this point, I really recommend
another book called The Vori, Russia's
Super Mafia by Mark Galott. It charts
the symbiotic relationship between
organized crime and the leaders of
Russia. going back to the Bolevik
Revolution and lasting all the way to
today where some say the Russian mob has
become an informal wing of the Kremlin
itself. By the end of the Cold War, the
Russian mafia would have a hand in
reshaping its country altogether.
According to Galiotti, even Russian
President and Kleptocrat Vladimir Putin
sometimes talks in mobster slaying to
maintain his tough guy credentials. What
we're seeing in Ukraine, after all, is
Putin trying to make the Ukrainian
You could say today in the 21st century,
arguably organized crime and so-called
straight society have merged in ways
that we haven't even begun to really
notice. In the Metal Gear universe, this
hollowing out of first the Soviet state
and its gradual corruption and
self-destruction are of course a major
part of the world events that we see
transpire through Big Boss's perspective
from MGS3 to Peace Walker to the Phantom
Pain. This is followed by what we see
occurs to the American Empire, which is
yet again
a period of decadence followed by a
major downfall. All of which we'll see
depicted by the events of MGS4.
But these events, such that they are
inspired by real history, were all just
an evolution in the nature of capitalism
alongside the other transformations of
the digital age. By the end of the
1980s, it would come for the Soviet
system. By late 2001, it would begin to
come for American society, too. The 21st
century is one world, a global village,
and this state of affairs is something
foreshadowed in Oscot's briefing, too,
and also foreshadowed in his nature as a
man working all sides of the Cold War,
as a global conflict.
a true triple agent. When we're
introduced to Ocelot's character by the
events of MGS1, it's implied he's led
the vanguard in a miniature revolution
and war, fighting in lowintensity
conflict battle zones like in
Afghanistan, Mosmbique, Eratraa, and
Chad. It was there and in other places,
Ocelot made his legend as a world famous
Soviet soldier while also working to
redefine warfare as we know it. MGS5 is
filling us in on the origins for the
moniker Shallashaska, which originates
from MGS1, which we're told here is a
mistransation explained in universe by
combining in double think style two
concepts simultaneously. As Big Boss
says, half Gulog, half hero's sword.
This speaks to Ocelot's character
fundamentally as he is half the keeper
of the Patriots prison, half the one who
will be used as a weapon against them
and sacrifice himself to defeat them in
the events of MGS4. This speaks to
Ocelot's character fundamentally,
but this double quality also of course
speaks to Ocelot's own double think, his
self-braining or in Orwellian
terminology, his reality control.
The most important part of the tape
though is the following passage. But you
see how rumors and ideas about people
can get out of hand fast. Once you
create a character and put it out there
in the public mind, it warps and twists
with every baseless rumor. And before
you know it, all people see are
phantoms. In my case, it works out just
fine. I'm plenty used to working under aliases.
aliases.
This is introducing some major themes
for the game at large,
as well as foreshadowing some of the
most important things story-wise to
come. I should also mention a major
mystery brought up by this tape, which
is what exactly is being done to people
inside Mother Base to convert them into
such loyal followers of Big Boss. It
sounds very shady to say the least, how
Ocelot describes this process, but
exactly what it entails, who can really
say. All we know for sure is that
somehow, either by hypnosis, parasites,
or some other unknown means, diamond
dogs have a way of bringing over
virtually anyone to their side after
enough re-education. Whatever that
re-education entails, I doubt it's
pleasant. The members of Diamond Dogs
have a loyalty that is unnaturally
unquestioning to say the least. Even if
Ocelot claims that they're here by their
own free will,
something that even he doesn't really
seem to take seriously when Big Boss
presses him on it.
But this tape also subtly bridges a
subject that will become seriously
relevant by chapter 2 of MGS5, namely
that of free will and the premise that
having free will is what makes human
beings unique as organisms. This is
something from the rational conventional
so-called western, if you'd like, model
of human beings that MGSV wants to
interrogate and even to some degree
challenge. As we'll see, there's nothing
protecting humans from being
manipulated, controlled, and
predetermined in ways that we have no
problem recognizing as commonplace among
animals and in nature. We put faith in a
humanist picture of ourselves, which
suggests it shouldn't be so easy to
control people's thoughts or manipulate
the masses, controlling and guiding, as
MGS4 puts it, the outside from the inside.
Yet in the MGS universe and its
depiction of a fictionalized version of
our own, human beings aren't special.
We're part of nature just like any other organism.
organism.
And what monotheism doesn't tell you,
what uh Platonic
metaphysics doesn't tell you is that in
reality, the ones who call the shots are
not human beings or even God, but the
microscopic entities and processes
invisible to the naked eye. Those
Those
are what are at the heart of human
behavior and life when you really get
down to it,
at least debatably. As we'll see in a
future video, I'll be arguing that MGS5
works as a radical new kind of postc
colonial science fiction which sets out
to challenge the norms of core
scientific principles and logic with its
depictions of a mysterious multifaceted
world we can only know so much about.
I'll be explaining in that coming video
how a lot of this comes back to the
Japanese artistic sensibility which
prioritizes ambiguity and perception and
sometimes silence over platonic western
Now, let's look at Afghanistan today 1,
which we unlock by beating mission two,
our return to Mother Base. In this
series of tracks were filled in again
exclusively by Ocelot, ostensibly due to
Miller needing time in the medbay to
recover from his treatment at the hands
of the Soviets.
Ocelot tells us all about Afghanistan.
And again, there is double think at play
here, as there usually is when Ocelot's
around. We have to remember this person
who is telling us all this is
moonlighting as a major military figure
within the Soviet Union. At the same
time, he's working with Diamond Dogs and
the CIA to support the Afghans. Ocelot's
true loyalties are always to Big Boss,
but he's going to have to wait before he
can act on those loyalties. Starting
with the events of MGS1. Until that
time, he's sort of a sleeper agent.
Ocelot has to play out his role. All of
this Oscelot hints towards in that
conversation with Miller that we hear at
Afghanistan today gives us a fuller
picture of the basics here in terms of
what the Afghan Soviet conflict even was
and how brutally it was fought. But MGS5
leaves it to us to look into the real
conflict ourselves to find a number of
surprisingly resonant facts with MGS5 at
large, which we've already sort of
touched on with the resurrection
For one, in Afghanistan during this war,
there persists even to this day rumors
of the use of chemical and or biological
weapons by the Soviets on the Afghan forces.
forces.
If you're interested in more about
Afghanistan, I've done a fuller video on
the subject and the subsequent American
war there at the start of the 21st
century. I'll put the link in the
description. On a thematic level,
Afghanistan Today 1 continues to drive
home the game's central themes. In
essence, we're seeing that Cipher or the
Patriots are building a whole world, a
whole global society out of the bitter
cycles of revenge as a mechanism for
mind control and a way of spreading
superstition and rumors and most of all
mercenaries like plagues. All while at
the same time they revolutionize the
world with this digital age.
The Soviet Union is essentially a super
organism. We'll discuss more when we get
to Code Talker attacking itself,
hijacked by the parasites that are the
Patriots and Skullface. I mean, after
all, we'll find out soon in in one
mission that our hand, Big Boss's hand,
Behind the scenes, this ruinous and
tragically misguided war in Afghanistan
is something both Skullface and the
Patriots will use to shield their most
secret experiments, like the creation of
the Patriot AI system in the lab by
Strange Love or the creation of
Sahalanthropus at OKB0.
It's supposed to be a Soviet weapon, but
that's in name only. So, philanthropist
is something created out of the dying
life force of the Soviet Empire. Not to
sustain it, but to usher in the next
age, the age of nuclear proliferation,
metal gears, civil wars, and in
Skullface's master plan, peace through
the death of English as global lingua
franca, and the spread of a kind of
ultimate deterrent that puts all
different sides and factions and states
and peoples, no matter how small, on an
equal playing field.
But more on that. Skullfaces American
Revolution, like so much else, will have
to wait. That's it for this entry, boss.
Next episode, we'll discuss the next
batch of tapes from the Afghanistan
portion of the game. Until next time, boss.
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