M.C Escher and Die Rise

[Miteiteyo]

Hi there! (Basically just copy-pasting this now since I've been rewriting it couple of times now. AND YES; I know there's alot of people theories out there now, but hey, I feel confident about this!)

So, to start things off I just want to say that I'm new to the actuall zombies community and this will be my first post. I normally just sit in the shadows and watch everyone elses process of the easter eggs and achievements. But after the trailer and the different breakdown videos of the new Die Rise map I felt obligated to make my own kind of effort, for all of us, to perhaps come a bit closer to the finish already.

And I saw that there's a thread already about the trailer and the discussion, but I wanted to focus a bit more on M.C Escher since I firmly believe that you will be able to find a lot of influences in zombies from this guy.

I will post something I wrote to Spiderbite over at NGTzombies, since they're pretty much the only thing I watch about zombies, some other channels involving the easter eggs.

...and please be gentle with me, I wrote this a couple of hours after I saw the breakdown video and wanted to dig deeper about Escher himself and this was during nighttime. So it's a bit all over the place and it will be a kind of make or break for me since this is the first time I'm reaching out to the community.

Anyhow, here you go;

So I thought I'd contribute with some of my own thoughts and theory concidering Die Rise. I think it's about time I jump inside the community instead of thinking of it by myself. So, what triggered me to do this was NGTzombies breakdown of the trailer and the details about Marlton, or to be exact, the lack of details about Marlton. Where the hell is he?

Some people think that Marlton, during Die Rise, been turned into a Zombie. While that could be true, the zombie games tend to try something new every once in a while. But something tells me that this won't exactly be true, not only due to the fact that the picture of the zombie doesn't have any beard and Marlton clearly do. What I instead have been concidering the last two, three hours of diving deeper into M.C Eschers life and work. Which have been a complete mindfuck since he's famous for all the dimensions, planes and things that normally makes me just wanna turn my back and never look back. But I took a shot and found some interesting stuff to maybe help the community somewhere, or this may already be known.

And please, bear in mind that this won't be a completely logical theory and instead more like guidelines or perhaps even call them coincidences, but by now we all know that you can't call it coincidences when its inside of a zombie map.

So, after Tranzit and the Tower of babel-easter egg, Treyarch now says during this trailer that the new map, Die Rise, is influenced by the art of M.C Escher. A man who painted art through the perspectives of impossible constructions, explorations of infinity, architecture, and tessellations.

You can easily see the influence of the impossible constructions during the trailer in the big red room, with stairs upsidedown if I'm not mistaken and what basically made me focus alot on Marlton is the fact that year 1958 Escher released a book called Regular "Division of the Plane" in which he emphasizes, "Mathematicians have opened the gate leading to an extensive domain."

One important thing I want to point out is that this qoutation must not be used entierly, but since Tranzit and now Die Rise is influenced by the life of Escher, this surely makes me pumped up for the DLC and this early on in the Blops 2-franchise we do not know the complete story that will occur in zombies. Will we stop Richtofen? Will we save earth?

There are some other interesting points with Escher. After reading about him as a person, he never does any major traveling except for one during an expedition with Adria Shipping Company in the Mediterranean, but nothing tells us about him being in China. So one of the larger questions is, why China? Why did they pick China of all the places?

Well, maybe this DLC will give us some heads up about the bigger picture. To begin, the DLC is called Revolution and if you look up other synonyms for Revolution (thesaurus.com/browse/revolution?s=t) you will find on the forth row Metamorphosis (thesaurus.com/browse/metamorphosis) which itself have synonyms for transformation, alteration, change. And just so happends to be, M.C Escher have three pieces of work called Metamorphosis I, II and III. Them all having the same art, its just expanding bigger with each piece. One thing I found interesting about these pieces is the first one.

Metamorphosis is a work with tessellations, which is the process of creating a two-dimensional plane using the repetition of a geometric shape with no overlaps and no gaps. (Taken from Wikipedia) So the painting (Metamorphosis I) starts with a City and evolves into blocks and then what seems to look like leafs and then into the shape of multiply boys and then into one lone individual, and if you look even closer, perhaps a asian boy?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Escher,_Metamorphosis_I.jpg (The Metamorphosis picture)

and if you ain't 100% sure if it could be an asian boy, perhaps this could help;

tessellations.org/eschergallery1.htm

Marlton as a character is described, by the Call of duty wiki, as a stereotypical nerd. With his Watch-calculator, using Jargon (advanced ang larger vocabulary) and even think very highly of himself. Somehow I can't stop compare him to Richtofen, being a mathematician and even a scientist as Richtofen. They both think very highly of themselves and many quotes from Marlton feel kind of Richtofeny.

"Now, I am become death, destroyer of worlds!"

"You see, to any underdeveloped mind, science is indistinguishable from magic."

"Portable wind generator, courtesy of your resident genius!"

"And then Marlton said, 'Let there be light!' Aaaaaah! And, of course, with light comes heat and energy."

So my conclusion to all of this is that the easter eggs and acvhievements most likely will have something to do with M.C Eschers work. Like Ascending and descending, Waterfall, House of stairs, Convex and Concave and Relativity.

SECOND UPDATE: Marlton, Nuketown, 190438 and China!

Further down into the mysteries I began to encounter the "190438" from Marltons watch-calculator. And like any other time I want to find out something I turn myself to google to begin somewhere. I find some different things that takes my attention. First its something about color. #190438, which is the code for some purple color. So that's a no go, I think. Next up is a Model 1904/38 Rifle, now we're getting somewhere!

But still no, in the end it doesn't really say anythin to me. BUT, the next thing is were I find the big stuff. 190438 is the serialnumber for a substance created by SIGMA-ALDRICH called (S)-(-)-2-Amino-3-phenyl-1-propanol and got a synonym for L-Phenylalaninol. What that is I'm not 100% sure, there's a lot of stuff about it on wikipedia and such, but to be honest, english ain't my first language and there's a lot of enormous and complicated words there for me. Perhaps someone else could follow up about what this substance actually do. Another thing though that I found from searching about this substance is that China seems to be the number one supplier of it.

But to go back to SIGMA-ALDRICH and especially Marlton. But this time it's not about Tranzit, but Nuketown where we find Marlton inside a shelter. Once again I started to look further about stuff after I saw a video from NGTzombies about a theory they found out about the sign that says "Welcome to NUKETOWN!" with a couple of symbols under the text.

imageshack.us/photo/my-images/32/blackops2zombiesbild1.png/

But we're focusing a bit more on one of the signs.

imageshack.us/photo/my-images/820/blackops2zombiesbild2.png/

Where I wanted to come with all of this is SIGMA-ALDRICHs company symbol;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma-Aldrich

It may not be identical, perhaps it may have something to do with copyright or something like that? But to me it's good enough for the two previous pictures and the 190438, L-Phenylalaninol and the fact that Marlton is at the location. So basically S-A is a, quoted from Wikipedia; "a life science and high technology company with over 7,600 employees and operations in 40 countries. Its chemical and biochemical products and kits are used in scientific research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical development, the diagnosis of disease, and as key components in high technology manufacturing."

One thing I talked about with M.C Escher is that this doesn't have to be the EXACT thing, I wouldn't be surprised if this is the exact opposite. But somehow I can sense the inspiration from these things in the game. That seems way more possible.

And yes, I know about the third symbol, the one I'm focusing on, is like the one on the inside of the sign. But the thing that bothers me is that no one can really explain why that exact symbol is there? I can't find anything, please post me something about it if there is some!

But anyway, I feel that this is getting way too big and long and perhaps people won't read this much stuff. But I still believe that this could lead to a couple of cool things for the upcoming map. Perhaps not, but it sure is fun to do some research and feel some accomplishment when you find stuff to link it to.

[Blitz]

Sir, I read the whole. You and I are the type of people that love to get to deep in to Conspiracy. Check out my thread.

http://www.callofdutyzombies.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=27662

As for your logo, check this out.

If you're unaware who Group 601 is, check this out.

[PINNAZ]

Great Post Miteiteyo!

I hope you stay around making great threads.

I thought I'd fix up your images because they are very important to your post, I can't fix your imageshack ones though.

(Use the 'IMG' button above to embed picture files, place the file name inside(you can type them also right click on the image & select 'properties' then copy & paste. It's also a good idea to include the URL under the picture as a reference)

Metamorphosis is a work with tessellations, which is the process of creating a two-dimensional plane using the repetition of a geometric shape with no overlaps and no gaps. (Taken from Wikipedia) So the painting (Metamorphosis I) starts with a City and evolves into blocks and then what seems to look like leafs and then into the shape of multiply boys and then into one lone individual, and if you look even closer, perhaps a asian boy?

(The Metamorphosis picture

and if you ain't 100% sure if it could be an asian boy, perhaps this could help;

tessellations.org/eschergallery1.htm

But to go back to SIGMA-ALDRICH and especially Marlton. But this time it's not about Tranzit, but Nuketown where we find Marlton inside a shelter. Once again I started to look further about stuff after I saw a video from NGTzombies about a theory they found out about the sign that says "Welcome to NUKETOWN!" with a couple of symbols underneath

imageshack.us/photo/my-images/32/blackops2zombiesbild1.png/

But we're focusing a bit more on one of the signs.

imageshack.us/photo/my-images/820/blackops2zombiesbild2.png

Where I wanted to come with all of this is SIGMA-ALDRICHs company symbol;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma-Aldrich

It may not be identical, perhaps it may have something to do with copyright or something like that? But to me it's good enough for the two previous pictures and the 190438, L-Phenylalaninol and the fact that Marlton is at the location. So basically S-A is a, quoted from Wikipedia; "a life science and high technology company with over 7,600 employees and operations in 40 countries. Its chemical and biochemical products and kits are used in scientific research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical development, the diagnosis of disease, and as key components in high technology manufacturing.

I found an interesting picture the other day too. Probably nothing but something looks similar.

(Thanks for the pic Rissole)

Great threads both of you guys!

[Miteiteyo]

my god, the pictures! I love them and it makes me wanna dig even deeper. :DDDdd

oh, btw PINNAZ, that China's great leap forward-thread is just of the charts. Crazy good stuff. :D