RichKiller

Although Die Rise itself had very little story, it introduced concepts which have been used since Origins to begin solidifying the Aether storyline. While examples vary, I want to bring in two of the unexplained examples: Now, since this post has inspired me to finally have a look into the Mahjong game, I thought I'll be sharing this: Mahjong has different types of tiles. There are those who are referred to as "Honor Tiles", which consist of the four winds, as well 3 dragons. So since the Easter Egg revolves around the dragons, this seems to be a good reason as for why picking this game to be used in the Easter Egg (beyond it being a a traditional Chinese game).

I love the John Dee references: Pretty sure that's the inspiration for the ring of skulls in the void bow: A Painting of John Dee, Astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, Contains a Hidden Ring of Skulls WWW.SMITHSONIANMAG.COM The life and work of John Dee contained a strange mix of science and magic Wish we had more information about the denizens to know what's going on there:

And by the way, I haven't seen anyone making the following connection: Seems like Woods has Fluffy as his tattoo coming with 115 and "the fires of hell".

It's cool too see what were the old plans for group 601. That being said, I don't think the mystery of group 601 is done. Let me explain: Black ops 1, used notes on the ground to tease stuff, for example the Moon Illuminati note, and the Death Ray note (Der Eisendrache!) Black ops 3 had similar notes on the ground, but they contained group 601: (burnt version of the above:) Note, you can see clearly the group 601 logo, even updated to remove the SS logo part of it. More than that, group 601 here comes together with the Origins Zeppelin and planes, tying the two together. Some may hurry to ignore this, but then I remind you that in the same type of papers on the ground, Treyarch has put the credits into the same type of notes: So as said, I don't we are done with the new plans for Group 601.

My educated guess is that he was on one of Ascension Rockets, as we know monkeys were sent to space, specifically the Silverback himself by his uniform. He may as well escape with the "main" Ascension Rocket itself (Don't overthink what happens when you destroy the rocket lol).

Dead Ops Arcade, by the very least its first iteration, is canon to Aether. Besides a magazine showcasing up in Five, it was recently confirmed that Silverback was in Ascension: https://www.treyarch.com/game-intel/2020/12/Dead_Ops_Arcade_is_Back I personally don't think Silverback has made it to Kino (at least when you open up the power). Turning out the power leads to the spawn of the Nova 6 crawlers and the ceiling gets slightly ruined, the same ceiling that the Nova 6 crawlers come from.

I think it's pretty clear that the arrival of the souls are cleared as Dimension 2210 Richtofen and Corrupted and Cleansed Samantha. Also, whenever bringing up Sam's room I think it is important to bring up the bloody attic, on which it is based, and which brings up the question regards the safety of the children in there. I'm also not sure if it's safe to say that Der Riese Sam plays with the Ultimis dolls, especially with the context that The Giant provides on the hide and seek game. If the book is in the attic though, it is possible it got to Samantha's hands, no? I guess it depends on where the timeline of Revelations stands in comparison to the children's timeline.

I think there is plenty of evidence for Samantha and Richtofen being controllers. Here are a few quotes on that matter, there are much more.

I'm gonna hang on the big bang theory here. As you probably know, many earths / galaxies is a representation of the multiverse theory, where you have different earths showing different possible universes. It's a very simple way to communicate this idea to people who can't begin to imagine space beyond 3D. We do have a reference to big bang theory, in terms of Moon's easter egg, exploding the earth. As you probably know as well, the big bang theory says the world was born in a catastrophic explosion, which is interesting considering you do explode the earth. So the question is whether this explosion gives raise to new universes. Glady we do have a brief cipher, telling us that the many universes were born by mixing "all the dimensions with life, giving each one its unique balance." and that this event (that we haven't experienced yet) was possible due to the summoning key. There are rather quite interesting quotes regarding fixing the universe and the different fragements in DE, a tiny few appear in this thread, which is overall very connected to this topic: One of the more interesting quotes is the following: This quote is super interesting. We know Ultimis broke the earth and lead to the catastrophic events Maxis hopes to prevent: Primis Richtofen, trying to fix the universe, gets mad at Ultimis, which have broken the universe. He hopes to bring order to the universe "piece by piece". Eventually that results in the universe convergence, one universe is destroyed by the other. The paradox must be resolved, the loop must be closed, and the multiverse must come to an end. Eventually we have two canonical events: the mixing of life with the dimensions (most likely with the souls of the main four) and Ultimis fracturing the earth. So how do they connect? Good question that requires further discussion. One option is that one events directly leads to another, which seems somewhat likely. This is an option I will not discuss right now. I want to talk about one option that I find less likely, or by the very least, happens in combination to the above. It can almost stand alone and is easy to explain. People around the forums are already familiar with the Black Egg on Moon: During the final steps of the easter eggs, players duplicate the Egg used in the Easter egg (the one that slightly looks like the summoning key) by sending the Egg into a black hole, then each copy goes inside one of the rockets: The Black Egg is referred to as "An egg of the devil", and in Staflight 2 (where the Black Egg is inspired from), the black egg is necessary to destroy the planet of the final level. People have speculated that this egg is alive, as the egg seems to speak. For example, in the following quote, the egg seems to say "Hello": black_egg_accelerate.wav It is possible that the life within the black egg was unleashed with the explosion of the earth, eventually creating the multiverse. So that's it for the Big bang theory for now. Are Nacht and the forest forest the same? Not sure. The frozen forest a super important location, especially for souls as previously discussed. I believe there's a consensus that it is located within the Aether first and foremost (and it may be located in another location, as it often happens in Aether). I will not be surprised with the mixing live and the dimensions happened in the forest, the trees of life if you will. Bringing Nacht, I have lately seen the claim around that Nacht is not a worthy place in Aether to revisit. I disagree with that statement and here is way: The plane crash had some significance in the story. By the timeline, the plane gets crashed, and therefore hits German Army trucks that transport stuff between group 35 facilities. This is further interesting when you recall that comic pages showing that in a corrected universe the plane simply does not crash, arguably when Ultimis Richtofen is not around. The overall crashing of the plane happens in June 4th, which is a reoccurring date that appears in several important dates, such as Origins itself. I think Nacht in Aether could be rather interesting overall.

@PINNAZ JDelgado is one of the astronaut names in Moon

I don't know if it means anything but thought it's worth sharing. It's from the DICE presentation.

In any discussion about the comic pages I think it's important to also bring the loading screens from the comics and the Dice presentation (can be found in here). https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qvQwSXxhzURSFDE8XvDA_hh1_5QEgZHi Unlike what some people think, these new comic books do not replace the older pages: Original nuketown loading screen: Die Rise styled loading screen: In order to delve into the loading screens, you have to delve into Samantha. We know that the comic book is directed to Samantha: "Have fun with papa in Poland. Mommy will miss you but she has work to do in Dresden" This entry is weird because we know that Samantha's mother has died: One option is that Samantha sees Sophia as her mother, with the absence of the real one. However, in BO1 moon, Samantha brings up her mother quite a few times. It is possible that Samantha has interacted with her mother within the Aether. The importance of mothers is no stranger to zombies. In Tranzit, upon being revived, Stuhlinger says the following: There is also the following AO document, indicating further to the importance of the mother figures: "Mother" is also the key for the Rezonv cipher from ZnS (Eluding to the "motherland", but the choice here is interesting because they could have chosen "Motherland" as the key). It is also brought up in all of the BoTD ciphers (Sal, Billy and Finn): Back to the loading screens and Samantha, It's safe to say Samantha has interacted with some sort of a mother figure, possibly within the Aether itself. Samantha's interaction from the Aether comes from the house. The house is perfectly designed for Samantha: Fluffy is alive, she can play with toys all day long, and she is also with her father (with a plan to make their heroes and stories real). Furthermore, Samantha had interesting interactions with Keepers, as shown from the DE paintings. You can see here an animal (perhaps fluffy), a bird and the flowers with red eyes, while the sun has black eyes (perhaps it has red eyes as well). (For the first time I just noticed there are also frozen mountains in the background). Similarly in the following painting all figures have red eyes. It's important not to underestimate these drawing as Samantha is aware of ZnS and GK, as well as the house: Samantha gains access to interesting information, highlighted in the loading screens. The keeper portal is revisited yet again, with Samantha seeing Monty's gobblegum machines (Monty has its own factory where he makes perks, chocolate, elixir based gobblegums... He even brings Samantha and young Richtofen toys to play with) So Samantha sees events from the future, and we can see how Monty and the keepers interact with her and show her things. Not going to do a full analysis here, but Origins Samantha is also sided with Monty and the keepers while the Apothicons fight her. So just repeating everything said here The comic book is directed to Samantha, specifically by a mother figure. After leaving the Aether in Moon, Samantha mentions her mother, looking for her and reflecting on past memories Monty and the keepers interacts with (DE) Samantha. (DE) Samantha sees events of the future. In the house, Samantha lives the live she wanted, with her dad, fluffy, and Monty's toys. (Origins) Samantha is sided with the keepers. All of this is me trying to say that @RadZakpak's idea about the Kronorium is not far fetched, the loading screens could be the Kronorium. However it doesn't have to be it and it wouldn't take less or more from the point. The point here is that the comic book is just a part of the childish and somewhat ideal experience Samantha is being walked through. Samantha doesn't necessarily has fun all the time, but when she does, there's one man trying to be there for her, Monty. Sadly Anon, I truly struggle to see the difference in the artstyle (for example, the Die Rise loading screen is quite colorful), and if there is such one, it probably comes from technical changes.