The Hallucination of Paz
This may seem a bit odd to players but there’s plenty of context to it. In Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes, Paz is captured and implanted with bombs. The medic fails to remove the second bomb, which causes Paz to jump out of the helicopter to kill herself and help save the rest of the crew. In Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, you’ll come across Paz in the medical bay of Mother Base where she will attempt to open her stitches and dig out the bomb inside of her. The scene is so explicit that it had to be censored in the Japanese version of the game.
It’s obvious that this is a hallucination that Venom Snake is seeing. However, since Venom Snake is actually the medic, who has taken the place of the real Big Boss, this could refer to his guilt in being unable to remove the bomb from Paz’s stomach. After the hallucination ends, Snake finds a butterfly that vanishes when he clutches it in his hands. With butterflies signifying death in Japanese culture, this can be viewed as him finally accepting and looking to move on from Paz’s death. Is that the medic side or the Big Boss side of his personality that accepts this? Questions still linger it seems.
That doesn’t change the whole “WTF” factor of the hallucination though. We thought Kojima had lost his mind with P.T. but it turns out it was only a short respite for The Phantom Pain’s horror.
