The 'V' in Metal Gear Solid V. 

Man sat in a dark room for 16 days to figure this out.

I never even considered that the box art V was foreshadowing 2 phantoms lol. That’s some excellent attention to detail.

I like that the letter V on the cover art looks like a explanation mark too lol

Things make even more sense when you look at Ground Zeroes as something that was originally intended to be a flashback that takes place in the middle of Phantom Pain. A flashback that Venom is having.This pretty much makes sense of all the little discrepancies in Ground Zeroes, like Kaz saying "I can't believe we ever bought that cover story", something that makes no sense unless maybe the person having the flashback is remembering a different version of the story.

3:42 implanted/altered memories to be exact. Ground Zero’s is like the Tanker mission in mgs2, it’s not what actually happened but how the character (Venom/Raiden) experienced it. For Venom implanted memories, for Raiden VR.

how weird would it be if they made another mgs game and it was called mgs5

the V is V venom, you're supposed to think its 5 but the V is symbolic about how you're supposed to think its the 5th game but it really isnt, the same how you're supposed to think venom is the real snake only once you know venom isn't real is when the game becomes metal gear solid V and is no longer metal gear solid 5

Kojima titled it V because Rocky 5 characterizeditself as 'V' and Koji loves the 80's

5 = Peace Walker

Looks also like the 2 finger peace sign, which was part of peace walkers story too.

I dare you to find me any footage of Kojima pronouncing the title as "v" instead of "five".

“There are no facts, only interpretations.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Play Deja Vu and you'll hear Miller calls it 5. It's still MGS5 with a V for both Venom and the 5th installment. Ground Zeroes is Big Boss' "memories" that Venom is experiencing through hynogogia.

V has come

And, as we discussed in live, this explains also why the voice of Snake in GZ is the same of the PP one. Nice catch.

Now I don't know if I'm overthinking it but the groundzero's boxart V is above the helicopter where Venom is and in the phantom pain it's in the dead center where Venom is again.

Wasn’t it released as Metal Gear Solid Five in Japan tho? The MGS wiki says it was released as “Metaru Gia Soriddo Faibu: Fantomu Pein”. I agree the V absolutely stands for Venom but I’m pretty sure it’s a double entendre

I'm sorry to tell you this but I'm afraid that this has been a well known theory for ... 9 years lol (Edit) Roman numerals has also been explained by Kojima many times (It's V for 5, V for Venom, It's because it's a easier sell, it's because Kojima was jelly of GTA V which he admitted)

In the first trailer announcement for the game in 2013, Kojima mentioned it as MGS 5, so your information is incorrect. The letter V here also symbolizes the number 5. “Kojima kill two birds with one stone”. V symbolizes 5 and also symbolizes Venom Snake.

Yes and no. It's both. It is 'V', but it's also a play on the roman numeral. It's used to indicate that it is both the fifth installment of the the mainline MGS canon installments, as well as a departure, in some degree, from what we know as the main canon story line of Big Boss. There's other Japanese franchises do this too like Street Fighter. Street Fighter (from at least the second game) uses the roman numeral. All the way through to V, which ironically also used the roman numeral. But only with the latest entry using the standard 'Arabic' number we use in the West, A '6', instead of the roman numeral 'VI'. And the reason why? Well, not 100% sure, but there is a theory floating around out there that SF6 also breaks from the main canon taking place in an alternate reality where Gill, the main antagonist of SFIII (the canonical prequel to 6) actually wins and takes over the world. Splitting the narrative. It's also handy because it gives the devs room to experiment with different ideas while not being tied down to the "main" canon.

I'm familiar with the theory that GZ is what Venom experienced. There is one large discrepancy in the game when Kaz says, "I can't believe we bought that cover story" when he's talking about Paz. He knew who she was all along so the "we" makes no sense. It was only Big Boss who bought her cover story. Not Kaz.

I guess that would explain why the camera man is very shy when filming the medic, even though there's no reason for Big Boss to be looking at him like that.

Well for the phantom pain, after seeing the "truth" I thought the V and the double exclamation point symbol was relatively evident, just like the delta of the upcoming "remake" (which correlatively isn't truly one). For ground zeroes it is less evident. To me the only facts and anomalies pointing to a possible Venom "experience" of the actual events are the bonus missions which feature impossible events like the appearance of Kojima, Raiden and other stuff + the (possibly intentional) errors in dialogues and post game timeline description about occuring events in previous games, pointed out by PythonSelkan in their videos. About the latter I'm not enough of a fan and attentive/astute analyzer, but for phantom pain it is absolutely certain to me

I already realised in 2015 that the V symbolises the two different paths of the two Big Bosses. I thought it was pretty obvious but apparently not? But that still doesn't mean that the V doesn't also simultaneously stand for 5. Kojima has always had several meanings for a single thing.

So it stands for Venom

I don't see it as a point of separation or divergence. The letter V starts as two separate points that become one at the end. It seems to me that letter V most likely represents the journey of both Ishamel and Ahab into becoming the same person: Big Boss. John/Jack/Ishmael becomes Big Boss after his experiences from MGS3, PW and GZ. Whereas Ahab/Medic becomes Big Boss by the end of MGSV. The game ends with Ishmael telling Ahab that they both have become the same person. Venom Snake doesn't pretend to be Big Boss, but instead Big Boss is just a character that the two of them play.

"V" for Victory - Coldman

why not both?

no, i DONT find this weird... its kojima.

I thought it was pretty obvious that V stands for VENOM

V stands for Visitor. You have to play the JAMAIS VU mission as RAIDEN because it’s a mission about RAIDEN time traveling to the past to help BIG BOSS defeat these body snatchers who are really visitors. The term body snatchers used in the game are technically extraterrestrials 👽 which is a reference to the popular sci-fi movie 🎥 THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. V is a reference to to a popular sci-fi TV 📺 show called “V” which is a show about half man and half lizard 🦎 extraterrestrials 👽 that have the ability to shapeshift using human skin. Skull 💀 FACE is not a human. He is a visitor and he’s even bold enough to show his real appearance as a visitor😎💀🎭👽.

GZ was Ocelots brainwashing memories he implanted in venom. It explains the weird voice lines, the shadows for snake not matching his character model.

Metal gear solid : (V)enom snake V has come to.

V is the \/ mirror the two sides of same coin as venom and snake

It works both ways. Kind of like how the RE games have recently worked Roman numerals into their titles after using standard numbers previously.

When i heard "V has come to" at the start of the game is when i realised V was for Venom and i stopped reading it on the cover as a roman numeral

To quote the great Jake Peralta, "Stuff can be two things!"

Its probably just stands for venom like “metal gear solid : Venom” I thought everyone was thinking that?

_"V has come to."_

“V has come TOO”.. as in also. There are literally two phantoms, not two big bosses… there’s two phantoms and one big boss. Three total acting “big bosses” operating simultaneously.. what do I mean? Who do I mean? Solidus. Aged to be BB’s exact double, active and operating in Africa in the 80’s, along with Venom and The Real Big Boss all at the same time, Solidus was RUTHLESS and a warlord, Big Boss was altruistic and a Charismatic Leader, Venom was left to the player’s decisions to determine if he was honorable or if he slowly became a demon.. this explains the wildly contradicting accounts of Big Boss in Africa leading to metal gear and metal gear 2 where we have a big boss that’s a mentor and one that’s a warlord seemingly dying twice, however one was venom and one was BB with Solidus being prepped for the role of POTUS by the time metal gear solid takes place As far as I’m concerned there’s an on screen confirmation of the “two phantoms” when Venom First encounters Sahelanthropis the camera is following “Big Boss” then he walks into the mist out of the shot and a SECOND “Big Boss” walks into the shot from the same direction as the first, as if walking behind himself, just barely catching a glimpse of himself fading into the mist.. I think this was both Solidus and Venom

V is for victory

When you said “Got it” at the end I was like Yes sir you are correct

V doesn't just refer to Venom. There is a character with a V name in Ground Zeroes that everyone overlooks. I said in a video I did last year that if you count the Metal Gear games released after 4, you get 5 of them... over, I'm afraid, 9 years. Peace Walker, Rising Revengeance, Ground Zeroes, Phantom Pain, and Survive, 2009-2018.

Consider the fact that in Ground Zeroes, Miller says dialogue that contradicts what he already knows. Example: In Ground Zeroes when Miller and Snake are reminiscing about Paz, Miller says "I can't believe we ever bought that cover story." And yet, at the end of Peace Walker, Miller tells Boss that he KNEW Paz was a double agent. For the plan in Phantom Pain to kick off, and make all the world's eyes on Venom Snake, HE'S going to need to trust Miller, and in order to do that, the mission details and memories hypnotically suggested in V's brain during the nine-year coma have to be altered... Ground Zeroes is part of the hypnotic suggestion Venom Snake undergoes, and Kojima played you like a damned fiddle.

Whoa that quote "V has come to"

5:15 I love how aggressively they threw all of that tone away as if they didn’t even want to make the game. Them treating Paz like such garbage has to have some meaning.

I'd like to imagine it's red for the robot and it's V FOR VICTORY!

And now we need to also understand why the MGS3 remake is MGS delta, which, while having three points etc. as a symbol, is actually the 4th letter of the Greek alphabet

METAL GEAR SOLID 5 PEACE WALKER. ...V has come, too.

This is also why I suspect a future MGS title (probably a remake of MG2 on MSX) will be called “MGS5.” GZ+TPP are the “phantom” 5th MGS title, while a remake of Metal Gear 2 would be the “real” MGS5.

I _knew_ I wasn't misremembering.

I litrilly figured this out last week. Cool to see others came to the same conclusion.

Even better, if you turn the physical copy upside down, it looks like a capital A

Your theory would also explain why David would not have voiced in either of the games i still think this whole thing is a big mind game kojima planned all those years ago Fr∆gile in death stranding there's no way its a coincidence 😮😅

Yes, and this is very obvious, for those who already have a mature view on the themes covered in the work. For example, Boss's symbolic death and the doctor's reincarnation as a prophet, is the theory of Freud. Freud then theorizes that Christianity remembers, even if in a hidden way, the murder of Moses in the death of Christ and his redemption. All titles in the series are scientific analogies about father, son and primordial sin; Gene e meme; identity and history.

Oh no. Not me. We never lost control

V for Vendetta

It's like an unwritten rule that you get to the 5th game in the series, it uses a V -- because............. it's just cool. And it's an easy nod to Venomous Snake. Konami already cut a chunk of material and interfered, they can call the game whatever they like, things like this are not 100% controlled by Kojima. Including box art with the iconic exclamation point. Just normal graphic design exploration with a logical conclusion.

I agree I think he went with the V instead of 5 because it has more than one meaning. Like it meaning Venom, but also looking like the roman numeral for 5.

V as Venom, start a new game in TPP and you can hear : V has come to. At least it's the simpliest conclusion I made. Kojima even said on a tweet few years ago it was V and not 5 so yeah all makes sense.

Yeah I also thought about Snake splitting into two separate entities, it just makes sense that the V, especially the one with the dot, would symbolize two branching paths and not just "V" for "Venom" - because what story would be there behind such a simple meaning? None, so why even put such an emphasis on it.

If Kojima simply called it Metal gear solid *5* This dude wouldn't have make money out of this

Kojima said years back on his twitter that V stands for vengeance and venom but also can be interpreted as 5 but for him it’s V not 5 The true “5” was peace walker and the original Solid Rising though as a spin off title as kojima said peace walker in his heart and to the franchise is the true “5”

The V means 5 and also V for venom, its not that fucking deep

V is for Venom Snake. Edit - I posted that before you said it. I love metal gear solid, I'm excited for Delta.

I’m interested what more do you got?

I already know where you are going with this. 3:31 Yes, some of the inconsistencies in the dialogue and certain details for Ground Zeroes and its lore make people think it is just Venom Snake’s implanted memories… but the discrepancies arise more due to the English translation as opposed to the actual writing itself. Even Peace Walker itself had some translation issues. In both cases, a lot of it came from Kazuhira “Benedict” Miller’s dialogue of all things- some of the most important dialogue here.

“don’t you find it weird that kojima used a roman numeral symbol instead of an arabic numeral symbol like his previous games?” No, because it’s kojima. weird is kinda his thing

If Kojima stayed, we'd have gotten the real mgs5 and maybe 6.

There is definately something to this.. There are many hints in Ground Zeroes that it is in fact not the real Big Boss we are playing as. I remember one comment by Miller. Something about the rain and how he cant believe they ever trusted Paz and "the Professor" - when it he himself clearly admitted to knowing who they really were at the end of Peace Walker. And our "Big Boss" was just silent in response... Always seemed off. Then there is this whole silly thing with those side missions and the one were the game engine glitches out for a second lol

Peace walker was effectively MGS 5

Can’t wait for the next video of this!

V for VISITOR 😎🎭👽

congrats! your reward for figuring this out is mission 51

ground zeros was just suppose to be the opening chapter to the game. the reason it was sold separately and made its own “game” was konami wanted money and the actual game wasn’t does so they forced ground zeros to be released so they could recoup some of the money kojima and his team had burned through. not only did they spends years making their own engine they then took tooks making the game. so the V’s looking different might not be as big of a deal as you think. i think what you said is why it’s called V and not 5 each side represents one of the big bosses. and thats it. i don’t think there’s a bigger reason.

It's suppose to be V as in the code that Zero gives for ahab waking up "V has come to" like "Venom has come to" Interesting enough, kojima was pretty annoyed that the Japanese torture scene in peace walker was censored. It is silly because Japan were fine with past games having them but not PW. I guess they changed laws or something,

Metal Gear Solid Venom goes hard

I always thought it was V for Victory.

I thought the full V in GZ was like Big Boss' head, and the little bottom part of the letter in TPP was symbolising the demon horn of Venom, to kinda differentiate the two.

I think the V stands for Vumbo. You know, I Vumbo, you Vumbo, he she me, Vumbo. Vumbo, Vumbo Wing. We'll have the Vumbo, Vumbo, Vumma, Vomboligy? *The STUDY of vumbo?* It's first grade, spongebob.

The whole M.O of metal gear solid “V” is to believe/ feel that something is there when it actually doesn’t exist. Hence the sub title “phantom pain” we believed we were playing as Big Boss the whole time when in reality “Ishmael” is big boss. It’s Kinda deep because we also thought this was a Kohima game through and through in reality he departed halfway through its completion

Is both. you can say it has double meaning but still MGS FIVE also The Phantom Pain still has the V after Metal Gear Solid in the game cover, just like MGS V Ground Zeroes, not just the v shaped exclamation point

Yea. Ground Zeroes game is part of Venom/Player brainwashing therapy to think that we play as Big Boss in MGSV. In one tape we hear that Miller said " Give her the shot already", when Skullface tortured Paz, its clear that before GZ events, Miller and Skullface works together and Miller was not only pissed that Skullface destroy Mother Base, but he was also pissed because Skullface betrayed him. And from PW secret ending we know that Miller works with Cypher. He betrayed Big Boss, and after that Big Boss dont trust him anymore, but Venom and Players need to trust Miller and thats why were GZ events changed for hypnotherapy/brainwashing. "V" has many meanings. Its stands for 5 but also for "V for Victory" Hot Coldman's phrase from Peace Walker, its also important that Venom has same prosthetic arm and V is also symbol for Peace, Paz used it during PW. Awake password phrase for Venom is - "V has come to". And also divided exclamation point as you said - From Ground Zeroes Two Phantoms was born. Its a continuation of Peace Walker themes and many meanings of the Peace symbol.

i still think about what is the correlation of V with Δ for new upcoming remake, the symbolism of reflections is apparent multiple times in V, why name 3 to Δ? also the fact that mgsV is going to be 9 years old soon this year.9 year coma. i wonder if Δ will be release on the same day as V. all speculation of course

Great video, but I'm pretty sure Kojima used the letter V instead of the number 5 for marketing reasons as well. Calling it 5 would probably make people believe they should have played the other numbered titles to undrrstand this game and could have become a problem for the sales. Also, this game has a very different style of gameplay in comparison to other games in the series. It's much closer to a Peace Walker 2 than a sequence of Solid 4 in terms of gameplay. All that would have made the '5' seem weird in the title. It was a very intelligent move to call it 'V' as this also stands for Venom Snake and the "split" of Big Boss character as you very well stated.

Its V for Venom as in Venom Snake. BOOM videos over

Black ops 6 isn't Black ops 6 because Cold War isn't Black ops 5. I know crazy right.

Does it stand for venom snake

I agree with practically everything you said, except I think V stands for both Venom and Virtual, and it's not the memories of Venom that make Ground zeroes, but his VR training for making him experience the events from Big Boss's perspective through simulation. Hence the pseudo-historical recreations in GZ. The whole experience is akin to Raiden 'playing' MGS and the VR missions. The phantom pain may also be a VR recreation, with various hints such as 'the loading room' that is a reference to the matrix where you can load out before the mission. A deep rabbit hole, indeed. Hoping to see the next video.

Solid - Lequed - Vapor

V stands for Venom

Conspiracy theory stuff. The V looks like simply a design choice, and Kojima never referred to this project as Metal Gear “V”, but metal gear 5. I’m willing to go as far as the idea that maybe it’s intended as both, but to say it’s meant to be only 5 and not V is far fetched

if that is your case…, that means, Skullface is alive….🤔. but that is for you to find out

Ground Zeros keith sutherland voice, so it's not Big Boss, is Venom

"V has come to"

Bro i have a question.. Why is it called metal gear "Solid" with whatever number when we aren't even playing the solid snake game.. For example the original game was just called metal gear and metal gear 2 solid snake.. It went ok with the first metal gear solid ps 1 game but after that it didn't made any sense for all of the games after which were called metal gear solid

It doesn't have NOTHING to do with 5... Kojima called it MGS5 all the time. It's a play on the thing yes but it is still a roman numeral 5.

Found the last member of r/NeverBeGameOver

Metal gear solid : Venom

Me when a woman talks to me: