Kill_All_Monkeys

I'm thinking it's more of a time loop. Think the Treyarch emblem. Left incline was WAW, top loop was Kino (first instance of time travel), the right decline is Kino-Buried, and the bottom right loopback the Maxis ending of Buried, making Origins the bottom segment, which brings us back, on the bottom-left loop, to WAW and (voila) Der Riese aka, The Giant. Just a thought. I understand the connection to the Treyarch loop, while it's a novel idea, I'm not quite convinced of its legitimacy yet. That is partially due to the fact yet that I don't really understand how it could fit.

Good to see you getting back in the mix, MMX! Multidimensional, yes. By its very nature. Multiverse, however...there is not yet any evidence of such. One could argue that it is multidimensional but only in the sense that it appears to take place in a different reality than the campaign/mp portions of the game. Beyond that, there is a very strong emphasis on time travel. This can allow for splintering of timelines but alternate dimension wise I don't really believe so beyond the Aether, Agartha, and Earth.

That is clearly very similar to what @Nightmare Voyager is describing here, and the fracture part at the end does also support the idea of the timelines now forking instead of converging. Maybe we are one to something here, because if movies have taught me anything. There are no coincidences.

The flickering would be cool, but maybe they could have a different while still similar effect to show the connection but be more relevant to the theme, like a shadow sweeping over them from time to time, turning the machine into a silhouette for a second.

Of all the things to spend money on for zombies, this would be far from the top of my list of preferences. If it's for marketing purposes I would've loved stuff like collectible items or paraphernalia far more. Not some ride on the opposite side of the country from me.

Exactly. Samantha is already at the Moon and Maxis is trapped in a cave as far as we know in timeline Omega so that means Sam could make Shadows of Evil happen in multiple timelines. But because of the Shadow Man, Morg City, the cursed mark etc, I am edging towards it following the Giant. I'm assuming because the curse was never brought up or otherwise even hinted at with the N4 crew, I'm guessing the time altering events of Origins and The Giant are partially what led to it. Maybe the reason why The Giant is a bonus map is because it actually just serves as the backstory for the curse mark/shadow man as in where they came from or what kicked it off. You know whats funny? Thats what I think too. I think the Shadow Man never came into play because he never saw the perfect opportunity too until this happened. Exactly

Exactly. Samantha is already at the Moon and Maxis is trapped in a cave as far as we know in timeline Omega so that means Sam could make Shadows of Evil happen in multiple timelines. But because of the Shadow Man, Morg City, the cursed mark etc, I am edging towards it following the Giant. I'm assuming because the curse was never brought up or otherwise even hinted at with the N4 crew, I'm guessing the time altering events of Origins and The Giant are partially what led to it. Maybe the reason why The Giant is a bonus map is because it actually just serves as the backstory for the curse mark/shadow man as in where they came from or what kicked it off.

Given that The Giant is a bonus map, it's actually really hard to say whether or not SoE and its subsequent maps in BO3 will follow Origins or not like The Giant.

When I was describing the branches I was just referring to the specific part of the branch between purple dot 1 and purple dot 2. I understand what you mean by everything we have experienced up to Buried is the entire Alpha branch and Omega starts with Origins and everything after is The Giant and whatever comes with that, I was also just trying to tie them together as they happen concurrently starting from the same point for each. What I'm curious about is which branch SoE would fit into?

So if I'm understanding this correctly, I'm going to try to lay it out a little bit more to get a better grasp on this. Let's say the very first purple dot on the helix is Origins, and everything else up until this exact point in time has been one linear line as no one from the Aether or Agartha, as far as we know, has ever gone back further than this. The very event causing the splinter being Samantha coming back to change things. The two new resulting branches would be as follows: The Red branch, or timeline Alpha, leading up to the next purple point, is business as usual and is everything leading up to what we played back in W@W. The Blue branch, or timeline Omega, is what we experience in BO2 in the map Origins, and only Origins. All this leads up to purple dot number 2, which is not Der Riese as experienced in the game W@W, but rather the point in which Rictofen traps Maxis and Samantha in the teleporter and send them on their merry way. This is the next convergence point as this event is happening in both timelines, and even with the differences between the two it still occurs. From this, it would go as follows. The Red branch/timeline Alpha from this purple dot would then be the events of W@W up through what we experienced in Der Riese. The Blue branch/timeline Omega would be the events of The Giant that we will discover upon release of BO3. Presumably after this point and unless we get more visits to old maps, the timelines would begin differing so much that it might turn into a fork instead of a Helix. This depends on whether or not there are certain things that happened in any of the previous games that will happen no matter what the events of Origins from BO2 or The Giant dictate were, or weren't enough to change.

Yeah i hope it will come back in The Giant and acts the same as it should and hasnt been nerfed down or anything. I think the only way we will see the good old WWs again is if there maps get re-made again. But the Thundergun, Wunderwaffe and Winters Howl are not map exclusive WWs like the others are said to be, so they can be brought back. And also am I the only one who is sick of monkeys (pretty sure they were in every BO2 map)? Bring back my gersch device pleaseeee *looks at name* I was in the boat of no more monkeys a long time ago. And oh my god I forgot about how much I loved the Gersch Device, I was so happy to see it back in Moon. Honestly Black Ops just simply had the best assortment of WW's. Thundergun and the DG2 were simply just classics, really never got better than those. The Winter's Howl got a lot of heat but I enjoyed using it from time to time. Having some new and useful special grenades added in DLC maps was awesome. The Scavenger may not have been a OHK after a while, but was honestly still quite a literal blast to use, and the VR11 had the neat little invincible insta kill thing goin on. The babymaker was funny as hell to use, and could still wipe out a whole train too. And the Wave Gun came very close to being my favorite. Shoutout to the QED to being perhaps the most ingenious feature in zombies yet, too. /WW appreciation, back to topic

Regardless of what it status was before the end of BO2, I'm very much looking forward to having it back in The Giant and maybe future maps.

Yeah I think it's inaccurate to describe some of these maps as alternate dimensions or timelines. The only real alternate dimensions that exist in this world would be the main one we all reside in, the Aether, and Agartha. I believe many of the maps, if not all, to be literal pockets of time. The being in charge in the Aether chooses a point in which the next 20 seconds or so basically happens on repeat, and gives them full power as the overseer (infinite zombies, power ups, reviving people, e.t.c.). These pockets would then exist parallel to our universe, similar to an alternate dimension, but not really a whole new dimension on their own. Now one could say then if Sam didn't want Rictofen to take control from her, she could then conceivably just keep them within any of the maps before Moon. But, as we are shown in MotD, there is in fact a way to break the cycle. And this leads me to believe that when Rictofen touched the MPD and began hearing the voices in his head, guiding him to enter the MPD himself, they most likely informed him of how to break the cycle and come back to our reality. This probably became a relatively easy process for him after a while, thus why there wasn't ever any real emphasis put on it before MotD. And it would have been a long and complicated process in MotD because the 4 inmates would have had literally no idea as to what was going on and how to break the cycle, until the end of course.

I don't know if I would mix it with the Ray Gun persay, but other weapons I would certainly be interested in adding melee attachments to them, maybe even as part of some new form of weapon customization in zombies?

Hahaha! Now I feel like a jerk. Excuse my legalism. Tis' is all good.

I know omnipotent isn't the right term for those in the Aether, it was just the first word that came to mind in my poor attempt at subtle humor.

@NaBrZHunter I must say, you know you've made something truly great when people are still discussing it years after its prime time. It's part of the beauty of zombies, how we can be given so much and know so little. Quite brilliant really. In regards to the whole Agartha dilema, I totally forgot about zombie Rictofen in Buried. Maybe I'm grasping at straws here, but even with Maxis wanting to probably torture Rictofen for as long as possible, he would at some point start focusing on other things, like destroying the world if I remember right. So presumably Rictofen would eventually die and not get revived, thus dying and after his soul was tied to the Aether for quite a while, qualifies him for a trip to Agartha. Which would then jive with the ending Origins cutscene being some sort of representation of Agartha through the eyes of Samantha as well as why we don't see Maxis, who would be the one in the Aether at this point, and only hear his voice through the radio thing, sending down the orders to Rictofen and Samantha. There's not a whole lot supporting this idea right now but it's a possible explanation for what the hell was going on in Origins, omnipotent being wise anyway.

To add on even further to this, let's say you have one friend with you ready to play and you need two more people. There should be a way to look for say, 2 people to join you for a 4 person game. I mean I know one could look for a 3 person game and ask if their friend could join, but you never know when someone would be picky about having a certain number of players in a match.

It begins! Back to on topic, the first missing piece vital to this theory is how in the sam hell did Samantha get into Agartha from Moon. That was always one of my biggest disappointments in BO2, something I thought Nuketown Zombies had huge potential to explore because of the little EE on round 25. What happened to everyone left on the Moon after the events of that map unfold in BO? I am led to assume they were eventually killed, unless they escaped through NML (which would explain why we get to see how messed up Earth is there once we help Maxis launch the rockets). But let's just assume the O3 + Sam were killed on the Moon after the fact. Given Sam's connection to the Aether for so long, and that it was only her soul in Rictofen's body, maybe once the body she was in died her soul traveled to wherever things in the Aether die (if they can) go, that being Agartha. There's also been some debate on what the intentions are of Maxis and Rictofen in the new game, but I haven't seen much regarding what Sam wants. If there is anything that can be clearly taken from the ending scene in Origins, it's that we are led to believe she will be following her father's plan. However I believe that Sam, once again given her tenure in the Aether, could perhaps desire to be the one back in control of everything. Much like how Rictofen went mad with his obsession for power after contact with the MPD, Sam could very well be going through the same affliction and just hides it much better. Another possible angle from this though, is maybe after all 3 have presumably experienced this "far more terrible" thing that also resides in the Aether which could possibly have a connection with the new Shadow Man, that they are actually trying to stop him/them from whatever it is they want to achieve. This appears to be the plan judging from the comments made by the NO4 in The Giant trailer. Only time will tell.

I don't get why they never put the tomahawk into either of the two maps after MotD. If it was to just have something in MotD that was unique apart from the wonder weapon then I can appreciate that and won't begrudge them for that (not fixing the stupid glitch preventing me from playing it on PS3 I will however). But it was so fun to use. Even just for Origins as well, especially after seeing that throwing axe in the intro cutscene. Maybe that's just me being biased but still, they reworked the Mark II into all the other maps and given that the Retriever appeared to be received rather well it was just kind of surprising is all. Especially after all the begging for the tomahawk to be put into zombies somehow leading up to that.

The gumballs really come across as just a new gimmick like the buildables from BO2 that they want to introduce to these new zombie maps. Seeing as SoE appears to be the one map that will be somewhat separate from all the others that will come out for BO3, I would be surprised if they include them in any of the other future maps. That is unless they turn out to be super popular, in which case I'm sure Treyarch would then just code it in before release. Like the buildables I'm sure some gumballs will be way more useful than others and eventually people will only go for a select few and ignore or not even use the rest. From what we know so far about their effects, they do seem a tad op and while I appreciate the idea of adding new features to zombies, I do have a slight fear that it will make zombies easier and we'll all of the sudden get a bunch of new "pros" who will think got really really good at zombies and be super annoying about it when playing with them. Maybe I'm just being overly skeptical or thinking too deep into it, but the current population of (mostly kids) people who try to lead a match thinking they know everything and get mad at you if you don't do exactly as they say or buy everything for them so they can "set up" and carry us through a match is bad enough. I don't need more of that, or an influx of new people like that joining this forum thinking they know better than us. That being said, hopefully I'm wrong and the gumballs will just be a fun new gimmick for SoE and all will be well.

The statement about doing stuff right under Maxis' nose I believe is reference to the fact that they were moving stuff through the teleporter without Maxis realizing the capabilities of the teleporter at the time, I recall one of the Moon radios having Rictofen mention how they had been using the teleporter for a while now and Maxis had no idea it was even close to being that functional. So in my humble opinion, Eagle's Nest was in fact located someplace that wasn't Der Riese. The two known spots left up for debate are SNN and CotD. I believe it must first be said that there is a possibility Eagle's Nest is actually somewhere we never visited. The only shred of evidence supporting this is the fact that the O3 began recovering their memories over time, and seeing the place where they were tortured and experimented on would certainly bring back some painful memories I think. And while we've not gotten a whole lot of exposition from the O4 as a whole, none of them ever mention anything about how they remember being tortured at (insert map here). Personally I believe it's CotD, as the above somewhat also supports this. When the O4 teleported to CotD following their Ascension shennanigans, they never actually see any part of the base other then the room they were locked in, which they eventually get teleported directly out of back in time to Shangri La. And I doubt hardly any, if any at all, experiments took place in the teleporter room. The other big connection being CotD is the map where we also find the radios detailing some of the experiments themselves. Now while this is not concrete proof, almost every map we've gotten radios on, they were recorded at the very place the map takes place in. In regards to which map takes place first between SNN and Der Riese, I don't beleive we'll ever find an answer in any of the old maps as Treyarch probably did not have the story fully mapped out at that point. And whatever outline they did have has most certainly changed by now. I would also like to point out that while I accept the possibility of the comic page from Kino not necessarily being in chronological order, being an avid comic reader myself who has looked a lot into how comics are made, generally when comics are formatted in that manner it means the panels chronologically happen from left to right, top to bottom. There is always a certain unforseen variable when it comes to Treyarch but I have no reason to believe for the moment that they would mess with that format.

I forgot about the spork and 1 inch punch, or the falcon PAWNCH as I liked to call it, why can't we get more of that? Or the Hell's Retriever/Redeemer? I loved how they incorporated the tomahawk into zombies. I went out of my way to get it an upgrade it every match, I would go whole rounds using just that. I don't remember if the same people who made MotD made Origins too but if they did, they were definitely on to something.

Honestly I would just like a little more variety when it comes to melee weapons. We've had the bowie knife for forever now, the sickle was cool and I don't know why we didn't see more variations like that. If we can't have multiple melee weapons in every map, at least have whatever the special melee weapon is pertain to what the map is or where it's at. It's not a big difference but it would be a nice extra little detail added. Maybe bowie knife/galvaknuckle variations can be unlocked through the new ranking system?

Takeo's sword being shown before a map is released and teased as being usable is almost like chasing the dragon (don't do drugs kids), we'll never catch it. That being said, we are clearly going to be able to use a sword in SoE so who knows, maybe Takeo's mythical could be next. Or in this case concurrent if they did in fact put it in The Giant.