Headscratchers / Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes

• Whatever happened to the guard dogs near the multiple holding cages as shown in the intro? Did the soldiers take them out for a walk or something...?
  • They were probably only brought out for Skull Face's visit. He isn't precisely someone with a trusting aura.
• During the Extra Ops missions (Deja Vu or Jamais Vu) you find titles of other Metal Gear games, and a rifle with a light that removes the paint. What does it mean!? What's it all for!?
  • Um, it's an Easter Egg? I fail to see how this is a headscratcher.
• Why exactly did they go through the trouble of removing Paz's organs when they placed the bomb in her? Was it to hasten her death or would there simply not be room for it otherwise? And if so, why not just put a smaller bomb inside her? Deliberate cruelty?
  • Yes, yes, and yes.
    • So what about the additional one in her anus or vagina? That one couldn't possibly have been as big as the one in her stomach. Why not just go with that plan from the start? Skull Face notes it likely wouldn't be noticed, and he was right.
    • A double-blind. They don't find the stomach bomb, it goes off, kills Snake, mission accomplished. Snake finds first bomb, most likely assumes that's that and doesn't look for second bomb, which goes off, mission also accomplished. Hell, he probably intended the first bomb to be discovered, since it even has a peace symbol on it, mocking whoever found it.
• Chico has screws drilled into his heels to prevent him from walking, but he later manages to walk around on the helicopter. Unless, of course the medic on board managed to fix him up.
  • He's clearly still struggling to stand up and walk around, as evidenced by Snake having to carry him around.
    • He also looks way smaller than he is in those instances, suggesting that he is walking on his knees.
    • On several scenes you do see him on his knees, and the way he moves around is consistent with that.
• The whole "No anaesthetic surgery" scene could have been avoided if Big Boss just put a tranq round in Paz's head before the medic operated on her. Unless, canonically Big Boss used up all his tranq rounds during the mission.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation. Tranq rounds would not work like a magic "light's off" switch and you'd have to factor in things like Paz being smaller than the guards, being in worse health, and a whole heap of other things that make a soldier trying to play medic a terrible, terrible idea. Plus tranquilisers and anasthetics are not interchangeable, any medic worth his salt would see Big Boss pulling out his gun and immeditely get in the way and tell him what a stupid idea that is. And to add some Fridge Horror to it all if she had been Tranqed then she would have never regained consciousness before the bomb went off, killing Big Boss and ending the entire series.
  • It strikes me as silly though that the medic would say that there was no time for anesthetic. Yes, the bomb could go off at any time, but field anesthetic is designed to be applied very rapidly and in an idiot-proof manner: small squeezable tubes of morphine (or similar pain-mitigating medical opiate) with a hypodermic needle on the end. The medic had forceps, suture, and other tools, they almost certainly had some drugs with them. The few seconds it takes to apply the anesthetic would seem to be a good trade off to prevent the patient thrashing when trying to remove something that could be set to explode if not delicately handled...
    • Even so, it wasn't worth the risk, and it's not like every chopper comes prepared with idiot-proof morphine injectors.
    • A medical graduate analyzes it here and explains how they simply did not have a proper setup for applying an IV anesthesia, and that an inhaled anesthetic is impractical on a helicopter. As for tranquilizers, feasabilty and safety would depend on what type of tranquilizer Snake was using. Since a tranquilizer does not relieve pain or relax muscles, the combination of certain tranquilizers and the invasive surgery could send her body into severe shock. Plus, she likely already had tranquilizers and other compounds in her system, and there could be dangerous dosage issues because of that.
• It feels like the Paz subplot is entirely dependent on the idea that Snake never once mentioned Paz to either Miller or Ocelot during the months he was going over to the medical platform to see her. He clearly cares for her and yet somehow, the subject is never broached, which would have immediately revealed that Paz was dead the whole time and Snake was Hallucinating pretty much everything, including the audio tapes, relating to her. There doesn't seem to be any plausible explanation for this either.
  • Snake never mentions much of anything because he barely talks.