Metal Gear Forums

• The final mission is entitled "Truth" as are the damning tapes that support the twist.  With the myriad 1984 references, "Truth" means anything but. 
  
•  The mission itself opens with a quote attributed to Nietzsche (that may not actually be his own apparently) that "There are no facts, only interpretations."  The finale itself does not commit to being factual, we are told this explicitly.   
  
• During the Paz subplot, Venom hallucinates no fewer than three people and converses with them, has a vivid "memory" of something that he later realizes was untrue, spends time in a location that does not exist, and then listens to an audio cassette that does not exist, of a recording a person that ceased to exist, and admits that the entire thing is in his head.  Venom Snake is an unreliable narrator for virtually anything and everything that happens in this game.
  
• In the Devil's House, there is an optional codec call when looking at the cassette players.  Ocelot - the king of self-hypnosis and doublethink - immediately speculates that their function is for hypnotic mind control.  (The term I used earlier in the thread was auto-censored for some reason.  Is B.W. now considered offensive?  If so, I apologize, I was unaware there were any such connotations connected to the term!)
  
• The story is concerned with vengeance primarily.  For Miller, first it's Skull Face, then Huey, and ultimately, Big Boss himself.  Mantis obeys the most vengeful person around - with Liquid being the strongest.  This motivates him for decades... and arguably, even after his own death.  Skull Face's motivations are well established in this regard.  Code Talker had his regrets, and made things right, but was also seeking to avenge the injustices against the Dine people.  Quiet sought revenge for her severe burns and need for parasite treatment, but ultimately fell for Venom (unless you execute her - she actually isn't needed to complete the main story!)  Volgin persists to seek revenge on Big Boss, relenting only when he seemingly ceases to recognize Venom as the same man.  One can argue that's recognizing that he's the Medic, but in this interpretation, I think it means that Venom has become too different from Naked Snake....
  
• But who is Venom out to get?  It should be Skull Face... yet, the player has the option to not pull the trigger when he's down for the count.  Indeed, if this happens, Miller will angrily prompt Venom to start acting as his missing arm - and Venom obliges.  And he spares Huey as well, even if he is responsible for the deaths at both the original Mother Base, as well as those he had to euthanize in the outbreak, plus Strangelove.  In the deleted mission, Venom even laments for accidentally 'killing' Eli, absolute monster that the little bastard was.  In this revenge story that so often references Moby Dick - who is Venom's White Whale?
  
• I believe it is himself.  If the player engages in unethical or overly violent tactics (or builds another nuclear weapon!) he will perceive himself as a demon - shrapnel horn extended, covered in blood that cannot be washed off (Sins of the Father lyrics reference this).  If you zoom in on the glass in the ACC, he sees his avatar's reflection, not his own.  And of course, the famous shattering the mirror end cutscene.  I believe that he blames himself for all that went wrong.  His friendship with Zero.  Keeping the nuke at Mother Base is what brought Skull Face's raid - whether Huey made the call or not, this was the 'original sin'.  The parasitic deaths of everyone on Mother Base result in 'heroism point' losses, even if it isn't Big Boss's fault.  He still blames himself - gameplay and story overlap here.  He pulls the trigger, or fails to develop a cure.  The conflict zones and the Private Forces he encounters - the existence of other merc groups like his own, all perpetuating conflicts that he is now profiting from.  The very ideology of Outer Heaven is all around him, yet Big Boss's belief that war being the natural and ideal state for soldiers provides no rewarding sense of self-satisfaction.  
  
• As such, I believe The Phantom Pain is ultimately what was originally promised - the tale of Big Boss's descent into madness and evil.  And it is represented by the mirror scene bookends.  The tape, like Paz's and those in the Devil's House as speculated by Ocelot - represent him accepting a 'new' truth, overwriting the old.  To bring about his vision of a soldier's paradise, a war without end, he needs an enemy that can never be defeated.  He declares war on his own Big Brother cult of personality.  The idealized Big Boss does not exist.  There is only a broken man, a self described gun.  One who can never, ever contend with the legacy that has been made of his life.  A perfect catalyst for a war without end.
  

There exist many interpretations of that movie's ending.  However, one of the most prevalent is that about half of the movie's narrative - everything that takes place from the point De Niro's character escapes the opium den to the very end - is all part of his drug-induced dreams of what may yet to pass.  Why am I harping on this in particular?  Well, among other details that the character envisions about life thirty years on, if true, include utterly unpredictable real life events, including the Vietnam War and high profile assassinations of 1968.  That's a bridge too far for those who reject the 'dream' narrative.  I think it's the same with MGSV's closing timeline.  Why would the entire series be covered, from 1984 through Big Boss's final demise in 2014 if it were anything but canonical truth?  I think that's the same deal - a hallucinatory series of events that (mostly) aligns with the series's established history, modified to account for Venom believing he and Big Boss are not the same person anymore.  Did I mention Once Upon a Time in America came out in the year 1984?  Food for thought, perhaps?