Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain - 10 Fan Theories That Save The Ending

8. Big Boss' Hallucinations Completely Warp The Story

From the very beginning it's made clear that the shrapnel in Venom Snake's skull has the ability to cause the character to suffer anything from hallucinations to forgetting information that he should be privy to (although the latter is actually more of an excuse to hide the fact that the character you're playing isn't actually Big Boss,) and thus pretty much nothing in the game can be taken at face value. This is only exacerbated by the many quotes and references to fiction made in the game that warns you from believing every single thing you see. Hell, it fits right at home in the continuity of the series, as a big theme of Metal Gear Solid 2 was also about subverting player expectations and figuring out what was real and what wasn't. As a result, it's hard to tell what actually did and didn't happen in The Phantom Pain; did Snake really kill those child soldiers? Was the final reveal just a coping mechanism to shift the blame of every horrible thing he did during the game? Did all of those Diamond Dogs really need to be killed in the quarantine zone? It's one of the more ambiguous theories to be featured in this list, but it's one that opens up The Phantom Pain to a whole load of valid interpretations.