Electric Jesus

It's interesting that you say Yuri is already under Sam's control. I'm certain they won't leave out the iconic boss. If Ultimis are going to meet Yuri, then Classified is going to take place before "Five" but AFTER the events of the ascension radios. Jason Blundell said in one of his recent E3 interviews that the negative space in the timeline is just as important as the space that's filled in. I don't think anyone really believed that Ultimis flew a lunar lander directly from a theater in Berlin all the way to ascension. That's like 3000 miles. See, they could in principle go back and add inbetweenie maps for a lot of the story. Shangri-La to Area 51 anybody?

That's nicely put. The Der Riese clock thing is a bit of a long shot, but it's just always how I've looked at things. Let me try to explain. So obviously in our story, the characters arrive at Der Riese, do some stuff, and then teleport to Kino. But here's the problem. There's a million routes the player can take through the map, so you have to ask if any player-driven actions can be considered "canon," you know? like, did the characters arrive at Der Riese, shoot some zombies, repair some boards, hit the box, then leave? Or alternately, did our heroes camp in the spawn til round 20, go down a couple times, buy hella perks and then leave? Get what I'm saying? There's infinite "paths" the player can take, so is any one of those paths like "the real one" that they took? Consequently, my idea has always been that literally every playthrough of a map is a different fracture. Since a lot of what they "actually" did isn't set in stone, I imagined that every path the player can take is an equally valid potential route the characters took in-canon. This is true on every map, but I always thought the der riese clock specifically was a hint at this, because it seems to me that it's saying "literally only the first 3 seconds of your game are set-in-stone story-wise. The characters spawned in, and that's it. That's all that's "confirmed." after that, you're just loose in the soup of a million divergent paths they could have taken before they get to Kino, the next set-in-stone "confirmed" event. This is all kinda a side-effect of zombies having a semi-linear story but completely nonlinear sandbox-y gameplay. This is just my attemp to reconcile those, and Blundell has stated that there's nothing that is ONLY a gameplay feature. Everything is accounted for in the story. I hope i articulated that well enough. I'll get back to you on that second question.

To give you an example to explain, I read a short-story that grappled with Quantum Immortality. The main character grows old and watches his wife die of old age, so he tries to kill himself, but fails every time. He comes to realize that he is basically immortal, because his mind just continues in the timeline where the gun jammed, the rope snapped, he vomited up the poison, etc. he ends up being like 120 years old, unable to die. That honestly might have been what was going to happen to each of the O4 before Primis went off-script and killed them, but then again thats just one manifestation of this theory. There are multiple ways that "immortality" can play out, but in short, to answer your question @anonymous from any given person's perspective, they will never experience themself dying, or their consciousness ceasing. Well, the only characters whose souls are relevant to the main story are Ultimis, so we have no idea what the soul-status of any other character is (except mini-Maxis, who was stated as having no soul.) We have no idea which Pablo was the "real" one, and chances are it's not even necessarily the test-subject version of him, just statistically. Like, the Takeo soul from Zetsubou is probably in an entirely different universe than Gorod, so each person's soul kinda has "its own universe" because there are just so many universes and not enough souls to fill them all up. To be fair, this is kinda obvious and dumb, but it might be the case that the path the souls took to immortality was just the path to Monty's house. I mean hell, that sounds like a successful attempt at achieving quantum immortality, getting to basically God's house, turned into a child, and watched after forever. These souls definitely played the long con. One thing i can't really answer now is how souls "work" in this universe. For instance, when they first introduced the soulbox mechanic in zombies, I was like "alright alright, but this is a sci-fi game. That's just their way of visualizing you like, harvesting the 115's energy from the zombie's body." But then they made the existence of souls canon, which makes this really troubling. Still, I think I have an answer. It might seem like the zombies have souls, since when you kill them, sometimes a wisp of light will leave and fill up a chest / tube. I argue that this is NOT a soul. We know that the summoning key can handle souls, and it's the most powerful artefact in existence. I doubt those random chests on the ground in Origins were meticulously harvesting and preserving the souls of each zombie you killed. Richtofen says they "draw energy from matter, living OR dead." That makes me think that the whole soulbox thing / powering up the MPD is more of an energy-mass equivalence thing. Also, Monty describes this "energy" in more detail in Revelations. He talks about the "spark of life," which the Apothicons are harvesting. Hell, the first creature to have its "soul" enter the MPD is a rat that Schuster killed. If rats have souls, all bets are off. I suspect that all living things have the spark of life, but not a soul necessarily, and they are 2 different things.

Alright, so at one point Monty says that Richtofen went around collecting the souls, because they were the key to "closing off the other dimensions." I suspect that doing this was supposed to wipe out EVERY version of the O4 EXCEPT for the children. All the splinters were supposed to re-collapse into one "real" main timeline again, but Primis were persistent so they found a way to survive and piggyback on that with the blood. Now, they don't really explain the mechanics behind the blood vials very thoroughly, but generally we know that Primis drank the blood from a closed-off dimension, and that paradox stopped them from disappearing. A bit of a shaky explanation, we don't really know what their specific plans for the kids are, other than just keeping them safe. That's one of the main mysteries where we have nothing to go on. Monty does say that The House is a "Fresh Start," so it might literally just be that Monty wanted to get all their souls in the same place so he could start over the universe. Prior to that, everyone's souls got scattered across hella dimensions, so if Monty could re-consolidate all the souls and bring them together to start over, that might be a move.

*cracks knuckles* Alrighty. I've kinda been sitting on this for a while, but here goes. There's a theory that I'm fairly certain is canon, although it's never been referred to explicitly in-game, and I haven't heard any talk of it in the theory community, so sit down and get ready for the crash course. It more or less reconciles the Multiverse theory with the presence and mechanics of Souls in zombies. First thing's first, let's make sure we get the theory's foundation in Multiverse theory. Multiverse So first of all, the multiverse theory (or some variation) is more or less explicitly canon. Multiverse has been used a lot of different ways in the history of fiction, so let's articulate exactly what the situation is in zombies. Monty's monologue about the metaphorical hammer describes the universe splintering into "a million" distinct universes, but his use of "million" could just be his informal way of saying "infinite." We know that there are alternate universes with completely different histories and character biographies (Origins timeline vs Original) but even within certain maps, there are known mutually exclusive timelines of events. Remember all the Black Ops 3 music videos? They tended to show the characters dying / failing their mission. Bam, alternate universe. That trend has actually been around as far back as the Der Riese trailer, and I suspected back then that it was a nod to the multiverse actually. Remember the classic Der Riese clock, and how it would always tick three seconds, then reset? I always thought it was kinda suggesting that every playthrough of a map is a different "universe" or potential chain of events. Meaning that on Der Riese, only the first three seconds after you spawn in are actually "canon," because everything after that is just the infinite branching timelines of all the potential paths the player can take. So we're embracing the full-on Einsteinian many worlds model of a multiverse here, where deciding to put on your red shirt instead of your blue shirt splits you off into an alternate universe, of which there are infinitely many. Alright, now embracing this alone leaves you with some problematic questions. If multiverse is true, why is the particular story we're shown important at all, if literally any cascade of events is equally "real?" How do souls work in conjunction with this fact? Why are the Ultimis souls special? Quantum Immortality Ok, so let's just start with what the theory states. There's a branching multiverse, and everyone in it has a "soul" or consciousness. HOWEVER, only ONE of the infinite versions of each person actually has their soul. Everyone's soul follows the path that makes that individual immortal. What this means is that from my perspective, I've never died, and in fact I never will, and this is true of everyone actually. You might think "but wait, I see people die all the time! Clearly not everybody is immortal." Well, their consciousness already diverged from your timeline, because your immortality became mutually exclusive with theirs. Their "soul" is still conscious, but it split off from your timeline and is carrying on in a timeline where they're still alive. Any other version of them is just a "philosophical zombie," or an empty shell more or less. It talks and behaves exactly like all the others, but incidentally the consciousness is a passenger in a different iteration of that person. So from your perspective you'll live forever, and from mine I'll live forever, and same for everyone. From my perspective I can pick up a gun and point it at my head and pull the trigger repeatedly, and for me every bullet will be a dud, and I'll live forever. You on the other hand might witness me blow my brains out, but that will just be the shadow of me that died in your immortality timeline, while the "real" me is still sitting there with the zombie version of you. And that's true for everyone. Alrighty, now let's apply this to the Zombies story. The entirety of the Black Ops 3 season was spent seeking out a very specific iteration of each character in order to obtain their soul. I believe that these versions of the characters were in fact the ONLY versions of them that had souls at all, and that those were their quantum-immortal selves. If you think about it, although 1.0 Dempsey and Takeo were in pretty rough shape in BO3, literally none of them would have died if Primis hadn't intervened. After they complete their mission, Primis have to perform an elaborate loophole with the blood vials to continue existing alongside the children, or the "real" versions of them that actually have souls. It might be kinda trippy to consider that Primis don't have souls in their bodies, especially since they are the ones driving events, reacting emotionally, etc. but yup, no souls. They aren't actually conscious but act exactly like how they would if they were. They have the same personalities, and consequently the same drive for self-preservation, so when they were scooped up by cosmic forces outside their comprehension, they naturally found a way to perpetuate their own existence, soul or not. Ok, other than the fact that this theory fills some gaps, you might still be thinking there isn't a huge body of evidence in its favor. There IS good philosophical precedent for this theory, but I think they sprinkled deliberate clues in. Looking back on some monty quotes from Revelations, I'm almost certain he was trying to tease at Quantum Immortality without coming right out and saying it. "Just so we're clear, I'm absolutely NOT talking about death. That's a whole other can of worms. Speaking of which... You know how people say when you cut a worm in half, both parts go on living? Well, they do! ...kind of. For a bit. But then one of them dies, not sure if it's the ass or the head, but that's the problem with worms. They're a bit short on distinguishing features. Uh, what was the point I was making again?" We can figure that the universe started out in one piece with linear time, and inhabitants that each had a soul. When the universe split, only the longest-living version of each person got the soul, because they're effectively the "highest-value permutation." I've also got an additional theory to tack onto this. Monty goes on to say eventually that even the Keepers were fractured across the dimensions, and presumably Monty himself. I suspect that the Shadowman is specifically an alternate version of Monty. Anyway that's all for now, I'm fairly certain that this Multiverse + Quantum immortality model is what we're working with in Zombies. The story of BO3 was a massive attempt to subvert all of that, so who knows where we're going next. Thoughts?

So i got my first tattoo ;)

Der Riese IRL just passed over.

I'm a very "spiritual" person even though I'm pretty much part of the neo-atheist movement. (Ironic right? Electric jesus?) I like what Sam Harris said, something to the effect of "you can be deeply spiritual, and even become a mystic, and have transcendent experiences, without ever pre-supposing anything on insufficient evidence." I don't really "believe" anything until i think there's enough evidence to form an opinion, and I don't think any specific religion or set of beliefs in metaphysics has provided any evidence that makes it more plausible than the others. I do concede that i wasn't around 2000 years ago, so if there really was an intervening god performing miracles, I could have just missed it. But as a scientist (physics major) Occam's razor doesn't really give me any other choice than to proceed without that hypothesis. This might be more unique to me, since I've been pretty crippled with mental illness and all that jazz, but I've also ruminated on topics like Solipsism pretty extensively. You know, How your senses are unreliable, so the only thing you can be certain actually exists is your own consciousness. Everyone else could all be in your head. You could literally be a brain in a vat being fed sensory input, or even worse, your concept of a brain and the physical operations from which consciousness allegedly arise are just fabrications too. I used to worry, same with death, but then i figured fuck it. I'm faced with 2 ends of a philosophical spectrum here. On one end, the world as it is presented to me is base reality. Consciousness is just a product of biology, when you're dead that's it, and we're just a disinteresting species that arose on one of trillions of planets in a universe that started spinning through purely natural processes. If that's the case, well I didn't really mind not being alive before i was born (or before i was old enough to generate memories and be conscious frankly) so i doubt i'll mind when i'm dead. It might be scary in the final moments, but that will pass. If that's the case I only regret that I had such a narrow window in which to experience the universe. Alternately, there could be some grand scheme, and I'll wake up from the matrix, or ascend to meet god, or what the fuck ever. But at the end of the day, This is the world as presented to me, so i'll play by its rules for the time being. I could always blow my brains out to hasten the "moment of truth," but where's the fun in that? Might as well get my fill of this life in the off chance it's all there is. That being said, the world as presented to me seems to suggest that Science has the most compelling origin story of life and the universe. THat doesn't rule out some branch of science that permits an afterlife that we have yet to discover though. Look up Carl Sagan's piece on tesseracts and the 4th dimension. Objects (or entities) that exist in higher physical or temporal dimensions than ourselves behave a lot like how ghosts are often described. have fun sleeping tonight. Welcome to my hell.

Oh boy the thread for me. I haven't typed this anywhere before but a very close long-time friend killed herself a few days ago and I never got a chance to tell her that I loved her. I mean I'm sure she knew, but still. We'd been really tight since like my freshman year of highschool, over the years we talked a lil less because she got mixed up with some abusive assholes who didn't let her have platonic male friends. When she finally broke free she moved in with her dad again, and her and i started hanging out semi-frequently, having a really awesome time. It was funny, we spent like 3 years knowing each other only through social media, and when I knew her in high school, she had really short hair, so i got to see it grow out over the years just through her profile pics. Then like a week before I saw her for the first time in years, she cut it all off again lmao. Despite her unthinkably troubling past, she was really consistently happy and borderline giddy all the times I was with her. She was an intrinsically curious and playful person who loved animals and nature. The purest heart and most free spirit I've ever encountered. She hated not living on her own, so I basically offered to give her rides any time she needed any for any reason, cuz I could tell she really wanted to breathe. She really appreciated it and seemed super optimistic about life going forward, like her job prospects and long-term plans. Her and I talked through really unpleasant events in each other's lives, and probably saved each other repeatedly. Whenever she felt tired or sick I let her crash in my bed all the time while I just played zombies or whatever downstairs lmao. I remember less than a week ago, her waking up and asking what I was playing (It was Shangri-La) and I made a mental note to play with her sometime. Saturday I hit her up and was going to ask her to hang out the next day but she was with friends so I was like "i'll be polite and message her when she's home." Well, i never heard from her again. She killed herself in the park in which I spent my childhood, rather unexpectedly, after a few seemingly minor unprecedented psychotic episodes. I've been crying and collapsing on the ground and unable to go to work for days. I'm turning into Nikolai 1.0. It's just so fucking stupid man, she was so level headed. This was out of nowhere. It just goes to show, as Monty said, there are just some things you can't change. A momentary lapse of judgement can cause irreversible change for everyone. There's not much more to say on the matter really, although I still find myself editing this post. Saying my goodbyes to her in 6 hours. Love you Rose. PS Never had much of a family. Had to make do with what I had. Everyone here, + Rose, and others over the years, filled that gap nicely. Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. Love u guys <3

I identify with Badger on a spiritual level

My biggest disappointment with Black Ops 3 was how little they explored Samantha as a character. regardless, I kinda interpreted that first line of hers in the OP as being MotD-esque. Consider that in mob, the completion of the easter egg has us playing through the final cycle in the loop, before it's broken. However, we don't know how many times they have been through it before. We can assume from the intro cutscene and Weasel's dialogue that it's been at least several times, but for all we know we could be on the millionth cycle, or more. or less. We really can't know. That all being said, in terms of the loop Sam is referring to, I think we can chuck pretty much all of Waw and BO1 and 2 out the window. I interpreted Monty's quotes on Gorod as meaning that all the events of the world war 2 and subsequent green run timeline were just like the "splinters" or fractured random timelines that resulted from whatever "metaphorical hammer" they broke the universe with in Origins. If we can presume that (which is a lot to assume) then the loop would be like Events depicted in Primis scrap happen, hence there being monuments to primis in origins fast forward to word war 1, then the giant, then up to revelations where it loops back around that's a bit difficult to swallow, since we usually think of a loop as involving the same set of characters, but for Primis to be the same people as the origins 4, there would have to be a lot of time travel post-revelations, and they would have had to lose their memories, so occam's razor demands that the situation is more like the one you see in the third harry potter film. for those who don't know, harry gets into trouble and gets saved by a mysterious stranger. In order to find out who saved him, he goes back in time to witness the events again, but he realizes nobody is coming to save his past-self so he steps in and does the saving himself. So it's like a grandfather paradox all the way down the line, with each version of himself saving the previous version sequentially. The multiverse doesn't really allow for a grandfather paradox to take place, so I guess you'd call it a "rolling loop." so O4 set #1 (abbreviated O41) are at Origins, they do all of their business up until revelations, and then they become the "first" Primis. i say first in quotes because there was already evidence of a previous Primis's existence in O41's journey, so you run into the "chicken or the egg" paradox. Still, O41 gets sent back to become primis, and then they probably live out their lives in ancient times and die of old age or whatever. then, O4 #2 comes along centuries later and finds the evidence of O41, then O42 reaches revelations and becomes the next Primis, and it goes on and on like that forever. So it's like a "rolling loop" in that the same events repeat forever, but it's not always the same "version" of the characters going through the motions like it is in MotD. at least that was my interpretation of it. That being said, Samantha having "outside" knowledge of the loop is really intriguing. She's a lot like Sans from Undertale, since that dude has knowledge of all of the versions of himself and such. It might just be that Monty's perfect world is outside of time or in a higher dimension, and he's clued sam, eddy, and maxis in on the grand scheme of things. If that were the case though, it could be the case that from Monty's perspective, he's just chilling in heaven and once every couple of years he has to defend against the exact same recurring apothicon onslaught. So sam, maxis, monty, and certain richtofens know the exact "chain of events" and are determined to ensure that each individual loop comes full circle. Because in this case, the loop resuming as it does forever results in the apothicons never winning and the universe surviving. Allowing the loop to break (rather than be closed) opens the universe up to the vulnerability that comes with uncertainty, although in the next game we might see them trying to erase the need for the loop in the first place, "destroying" or "eliminating" the loop, and removing the need to keep "closing" or sustaining it. edit: i say that under the assumption that monty and the inhabitants of his world aren't bound by any loop, as that seems in contrast with his nearly-omnipotent nature. edit 2: this is consistent with Blundell's attempts to retcon pretty much the whole Jimmy Z section of the story. Even the addition of the keeper to the new ascension loading screen is giving me that kind of vibe. Don't worry, i'm only smoking 4 blunts at the same time right now.

Never forget. I'm not into dudes but I'd make an exception for @Lenne oh wait you're a girl, phew ;)

Hey yall, just got in a pretty horrific car accident today. I'm the only person who got hurt but i'm alright. My car barrel rolled down a hill and I got all kindsa fucked up. Just felt compelled to bring it up because I got depressed when i realized that if I died, none of you would know. But don't worry, Electric Jesus took the wheel: ;)