Another LONG Theory about the Zombie Timeline.

[Cheesegrater28]

Wanted to post and work on my theory about the timeline of zombies. I’ve mentioned different parts of it a few times on here, so sorry for repeating myself, but wanted to put it all in one spot. Mostly so I can try to organize it outside of my own head, and so I can get feedback on things that might be right, and more importantly, the things that are off and wrong. I’m known to overlook things and have brain farts. But it’s something I’ve been obsessed about ever since Origins, needing a way to make everything fit a little better in the story and still have the old story matter. I’ll probably add things to this, but right now I mostly wanted to touch on my main theory about how the Aether and Argatha are the keys to keeping everything relevant. So right now, my ever changing timeline spans three dimensions and looks like this:

 

 

The loops of the timeline show how some people are reliving moments over and over, but that time continues for everyone else. So time doesn’t repeat and even places don’t really reset. Just the characters and events they are placed in. I’ll explain toward the bottom but right now it might help to think of it like the déjà vu “I’m driving” scene from Nightmare on Elm Street 4. Two people are stuck in a loop while Time is still moving forward for poor Debbie. (Video might be too graphic for some)

 

“The Aether is Mine”

 

One of the most important questions of CoD Zombies is, Exactly what is the Aether? The game’s story touches on it in several instances and we can relate the real world theories of the Aether to the game, but what do we know exactly about it from the game?

 

The biggest two things we know about the Aether are that the MPD somehow grants control over the Aether, and that we’ve been in the Aether when we teleport. We know the second thing because of Der Riese. Written on the wall relatively close to each of the transporters are the words “Return through Aether”. This might have a deeper meaning like Der Riese is somewhere other than our own world or dimension, and we need to return to our world through the Aether, but if we ignore that deeper meaning and focus on the direct reference of it, we can understand the Aether a little better. If we use the teleporters, we will return to the starting room, presumably by traveling through the Aether.

 

So every time we travel through the teleporters, we are briefly moved through this blue spiral place. A place where images pop up. Images of physical things like zombies, hell hounds, Richtofen, and so on. And also images of non physical things. We see the messages of “Help” “Ascend from the Darkness” and we even see images of a periodic table. It’s as if we are traveling through someone’s mind rather than a physical place.

 

 

We got to experience more of these images on Kino, but more importantly, Kino also briefly took us to physical rooms while we teleported. Two of these rooms being Sam’s room. A regular version and a darker version.  Her regular room came with the original 4 as action figures being played with. As if in her mind, this has all been a game to her, hence the points, drops, and other helpful things she gives us while her main goal is still to kill us. Then the darker room with the smashed windows, red glow, and pile of teddy bears laying on the ground with a giant red eyed Teddy Bear standing over it. On Moon, Sam tells us that she isn’t alone in the MPD and something worse is in there with her. So is this giant Teddy bear a symbol of what’s in the MPD with her? Maybe. But the main thing we can take away (or at least I do) from these rooms is that, much like the images we see while teleporting, they probably aren’t real. Even the dentist/torture room and Pentagon room. They are places that are like dreams in Samantha’s head. We step into her little dream about her playing with us, and then we step into her nightmare of how she is with some “evil” being. The other two rooms could be her visions of the actual places she’s seen. Who knows what she has been up to between Der Riese and Kino. We know the Pentagon was involved in making teleporters also, so maybe they got her attention, or the thing in the MPDs.  

 

Now if those rooms are just projections of Sams mind within the Aether, then something else important about them is the film reels that we pull out. Film Reels that show Maxis’ experiments. But the films contain messages in them, like the numbers 935. Again, this could be because these aren’t really Maxis’ videos, but Sam’s vision of them. She possibly saw these slide shows and conjured these reels in her head, which the Old 4 pulled out. That’s why the slides are weird, like the 935 logo turning into an  eyeball. They contain real info mixed with Sam’s increasingly distorted memory of it. But the key thing is that objects can be pulled out of the Aether by anyone and made real.

 

Then the other major thing we know about the Aether is that the MPD controls it. From within there, Sam can manifest multiple monstrous versions of her dog Fluffy to kill us, even though the thing in the MPD sent one back already with Richtofen’s help. And either Sam, or the other being in the MPD, can manifest the drops for us to pick up. We also know that Sam controls the zombies, but apparently not completely. This is proven when Richtofen enters the MPD. Even when he is in there, he doesn’t have complete control, which is why he needs the new four to build his towers.

 

Now why all this talk of the Aether and things long known about it. Because it’s my theory, and many others, that Mob of the Dead and Origins might take place in the Aether, or at least an alternate afterlife dimension. We know that the MotD characters died in 1933-34, but it is unclear what happened to the old group after Moon. Maybe they died or maybe they teleported into the Aether and got stuck. Who knows. But Origins shares a lot of things in common with MotD. Could be because the same development team made those maps but I think there is more to the similarities than that. And the main reason why I think they happen in the Aether is because just like Sam’s red bedroom, both of these maps seem more like someone’s nightmare rather than a reality. And the previous person we knew in the game who was stuck in a “horrible place” was Gersch, who was sent to another dimension by his own device.

 

 

“Fetch me their souls.”

 

Now lets talk about death in the game. One thing we know for sure about death is that it’s not the end in the zombies world. Maxis is shot in the head and then ends up in the computer system on Moon decades later. The MotD crew died in 1933-34, but are somehow reliving a loop over and over past Ferguson retiring in 1942. Afterlife mode, Tombstone, and Who’s who are all things that affect a character after they die. So what does it all mean? Well for one thing, the soul in the game is a real thing. Players have outside the body experiences on MotD and Die Rise. And there are ghosts on Buried. But two things important about the soul in the game are that they can be used as a physical form of energy, as the MPD is powered by them, and that the soul retains someone’s identity. Richtofen and Samantha simply switch bodies. And later, Richtofen either ends up in Stu’s body with him, or in the bodies of zombies. So souls, whether they are animal or human, exist in the CoD world.

 

“A Gateway to Argatha.”

 

Now let’s talk about Argatha. Its referenced a few times in the a story, but it’s never really given any detail. Maxis wants to go there, Sam is trapped there, we need to release the souls of the ancients to get there. A lot of non descriptive details. But one detail we are given about Argatha in the game, was that Shangri La was supposed to be a gateway to there. So after Die Rise and MotD came out and we had the loop cycles introduced to us as real things, this made me think of Brock and Gary since they were the first characters we knew of that were stuck in a loop. Even after we help them reach the end of their journey, they restart back at the beginning of them finding Shangri La. And we never talk to them unless it’s during the eclipse. So this paired with the BO2 loops made me rethink that map.

 

What if Shangri La is a gateway to Argatha? What if when we activate the eclipse, we aren’t going back in time, but rather entering Argatha like we are supposed to? I know the achievement mentions time travel, but that could just be because Richtofen explains it in the game as them time traveling. That’s how he perceives things. Doesn’t mean he knows what’s going on. So what if this dark sunless place with a giant meteor frozen in place is Argatha? I can’t really say what Argatha is or who lives there, but it seems to be a place not unlike the Aether.  Brock and Gary entered this place and are now stuck reliving a loop over and over till they do the right steps, much like the Weasel did, who was aided by someone to get out.

 

Now what’s the significance of this being Argatha? Well firstly, it shows that Argatha isn’t a magical place inside the Earth, but rather a dimension linked to Earths that is always under an eclipse. If you entered it and saw the sun was blocked, you might think you are in a magical place inside the Earth where the light can’t get to you. A Black Sun. "Schwarze Sonne" as it was written on Der Riese. We also see the symbol for Black Sun on the Shangri La loading screen with the eclipse. So what if the loading screen isn’t showing Shangri La being destroyed. What if it is showing Shangri La being created. Richtofen ends up in the jungle after he was teleported to Moon. Something was taking control over him and needed him to help it. So what if it took him to Shangri La and helped him enter the gateway to Argatha. Then it showed him its power within the Aether and created this place for him. Not unlike how something created the prison for the MotD inmates after they died. Shangri La might have been there already, but this power transformed it for Richtofen within Argatha, and then pulled it back out into our world with him. That’s how his name ended up on the pyramid and why Brock could tell something was wrong about it. And that power is what Richtofen is talking about when he returns to Dr Schuster and why he needs to get into the MPD. The power to not only control the dead, but shape the world as he wants to.

 

Then in Origins, we again see the Black Sun symbol on the “Argathian Knights”. The glowing knights that look human, but on closer inspection, can be seen that they are something else. They are guarding things and trying to stop us. They attack the generators on purpose to slow us down. They are not like mindless zombies that are trying to eat us, but something with a plan. And we also know that they aren’t from the same place where Origins takes place. Even when we go to the crazy place, they teleport in from somewhere else. So what if these creatures are Argathian Knights, or at least from there, and they are trying to stop us from entering Argatha, as Sam wants us to do. This then explains where the final cutscene takes place. We are told if we do these steps we will enter Argatha and help free her from there. We also have creatures with the Black Sun symbol trying to stop us from doing the steps. So once the steps are completed, doesn’t it make sense that we enter Argatha. The cutscene is still weird and I have come up with a few explanations, none of which are solid, but the important thing is, once we enter, we are greeted with the “Black Sun” eclipse outside the window. Then we also hear sirens as if something is attacking, possibly us since we are entering a place that didn’t want us.

 

So the cutscene might be Argatha, but then where does the Origins map take place. As a stated earlier, I think it’s in the Aether. Just like MotD, Origins is riddled with afterlife themes and dead bodies on display in an unnatural way all around the map. And like the Weasel, something is trying to help us escape the place. And lastly, when we do escape, it’s the same way Al escapes. If the other three inmates kill Al on the bridge, we get the white cutscene with “The cycle continues…” and then the camera pans through the prison like a regular match ending. If we let Al win, then we get “The Cycle is Broken” and then Al’s view looking down as he spirals up into the sky. If we do the Lost Little Girl EE, right before the cutscene, just like Al, the camera goes straight up into the air spinning, except we are looking up, not down. And the music for both endings sounds the same. So it’s pretty much the same ending for the characters escaping.

 

 

But what about how the characters in Origins never let on things like déjà vu or living in a loop or anything about knowing each other? So why have the MotD crew sometimes aware of these things, specifically Al, and then the Origins group has no clue. I think it’s because they haven’t been there as long as the MotD crew. The feelings of déjà vu and their ability to leave notes like Al did hasn’t happened yet. One way of thinking about it is that Al was more like Leonard Shelby with his notes to help while the Origins crew are like Sammy Jankis, just going through the motions J. But one hint we are given about them living a loop is that Samantha states “You don’t even know how long this has been going on. How long we’ve been trapped here.”

 

So if they are living a loop, then why are they in a WWI style map. And I think the answer to that is they are fighting in Maxis’ loop. As the MotD inmates are living in a loop of the night Al died, it might have been Al’s last day, but the other three lived on for a couple of more weeks. So it’s not about last day but rather living in an important moment of their lives and being tortured by it. Maxis, being an older scientist, probably fought along with or aided German troops in WWI. And this might actually be the battle where he and others discovered things that led to his obsession with 115 and Argatha later in life. This is the moment that led to the Giant project and then all the outbreaks. So he is stuck reliving it over and over and then eventually being killed by Richtofen, as he was in real life. And as Al’s journal shows him piecing things together, Maxis’ radios show him piecing together the mysteries of his nightmare. Sam says he never gets as far as we do while doing the EE, so he never reached Argatha, but he eventually learns how to escape from the place and then end up in the machines on Moon and Earth. Then the old crew either dies or teleports and ends up living in this nightmare created for Maxis. So the Maxis drone is still there, but Maxis is long gone. Kind of like how Ferguson is in the MotD nightmare, but in reality he lived on without him. It’s just a shadow of him torturing them. But since this is Maxis nightmare, his shadow helps us in the form of the drone.

 

“Except your fate. Begin Anew!”

 

So if the loops and cycles are a part of these other two dimensions, then why is the New 4 experiencing them in our World? This is because the Moon rockets opened up a rift between our world and the Aether. This is why there are so many weird things happening in the N4 maps, and why all the weird things are happening to the MotD crew. In MotD, modern guns are now in the box and the modern perks start phasing in and out. Electric Cherry is the only perk that’s really there because it was given to them by whoever is in charge of the place. But now that the Rift is open, more perks are there. Same thing is happening on the N4 maps. Nacht is on Tranzit along with some other weird creatures. And the merging might explain the two different times on all the clocks. Then Die Rise is stated to be in Province 22, but we are in Shanghai. Buried’s a haunted western ghost town under an African mine. These oddities are because the Aether is merging with the destroyed planet.

 

This is also why the New 4 are living in loops since that aspect of the Aether is merging with our world. As Die Rise showed, once they die they start again. But not everything resets. Time keeps going. We know this because we can progress our situation on those maps. We can save money and guns and even build the Nav table. Those things don’t reset. Just the characters and their memories reset (along with doors and buildables: things outside of the story elements). Same is true for MotD since Al keeps adding to his notes and journals and reminds himself not to forget.

 

Possible theories and roads that stem from this main theory.

 

Now what does this all mean, if any of it is true? Well for starters, the more I think about this theory, the more some things make sense and other things seem confusing. One thing I’ve been stuck on is considering what other maps take place in our real world and which ones might not. Five is one map that sticks out as possibly occurring in the Aether. It has a black and white intro like MotD, where once everything starts to go wrong, the color kicks back in. Another reason to think this could be an afterlife type map is because of the dates on that map. It seems to occur right before JFK is assassinated, kind of like how MotD is right before they all died. And it also occurs during a storm, again like MotD and Origins which are the two maps I think take place in the Aether. And while I think the map reflects reality, as in the Pentagon was really working on these things and probably had teleporters, the Pack-a-Punch in the meeting room seems out of place. As do JFKs spinning wall of guns. So perhaps this is the afterlife map JFK has been stuck in since he died. This meeting might have really happened in 1963, but there was probably never a zombie outbreak at the Pentagon.

 

If this is what happened, then what year did this map really happen in? Could be 1963-64, and the other three men are shadows like Ferguson was, or it could be after 2009 when McNamara died and he ends up there with the others. Then you also have to wonder when Ascension takes place, since that map occurs during Five, because of the phone calls. And is Ascension taking place in the Aether like Five, since we start out with the screen turning black and white as we are lowered into the map. Maybe we get stuck in the Aether while teleporting. In the beginning of the map, Takeo says "Darkness is the domain of the dead, we must give this place life!".  And we know Gersch was sucked into another dimension. And all of a sudden Richtofen is wearing a space suit while demon monkeys drop down from the sky as everything turns red during a dark cloudy night. And the EE ends with us releasing him from this “horrible place”, just like how MotD and Origins ends. So is it in another dimension?

 

Considering that theory then leads me to wonder if the Old 4 ever really jumped through time at all. It seems like we never really go backwards in time but possibly never jumped into the future either. What if we were stuck in Der Riese, a map with an eclipse and clocks stuck at a single moment, living that loop over and over till 1969, when we finally escape that place and end up in Kino. Then Kino, possibly being a regular map, teleports us into the Aether where we end up at Ascension. Then we are stuck in there, during Gersch’s nightmare, till Call of the Dead. That map along with Shangri La and Moon, are modern maps. So if Five did take place after 2009, its possible we were stuck in Ascension till then before escaping to Call of the Dead. And if you wanted to kill more time, you could say we got stuck in the old WaW maps while in the Aether. That’s why they end up at Nacht and Verruckt, and why Mule Kick was added. And being in the other dimension keeps them from aging. This is all one theory if we go down the road of maps taking place in the Aether. 

 

 

Thanks for reading and Sorry about the length.  Wanted to use a couple more points and pictures to back up some things, but took forever to type this up and just wanted to get it posted before the internet shuts off or something and I lose it. I'm sure additions and changes will be made since I'm up and down on different aspects of the theory constantly.

 

Thanks again!

[Stop Mocking Me0]

I'm not going to let all this hard work be forgotten (Believe me I know the feels of LONG post's pains) 

 

 

 

The idea of the O4 being stuck in that reality of WAW maps seems logical. 

 

 

It's also fair to point out every map until MOTD has been confirmed to take place in order, chronologically. I hypothesize that the "cycle" of weasel to death has occurred a LOT, so much in fact that while the "bubble" of the prison remains objective of time. The rest of the universe moves on, making it so the prison may appear to be in 1939, however, it's really happening in about 2025 after die-rise. If this is the case, Origins would be the next map to happen out of order, does this mean that Origins isn't the "first" outbreak ever? 

 

 

All zombies characters have had near death experiences as well: 

Tank, nikolai, takeo: 115 testing. 

Richtofen?: MULTIPLE accounts of teleporting and vrill-reactivity

Sam: the MPD, the aether, argotha, ect. 

Maxis: He's died like four or five times now. 

5 crew: Yep

gersh: died in the gersh testing with yuri

COTD guys: … No idea, I'm sure there's something. 

Nact soilders: Plane crash

verruct soliders: prisoners of the nazi party, and experiments. 

Tranzit crew/CDC/CIA: Big fiery death missiles. 

MOTD crew: Obviously themselves and electric chairs. 

Prisoners/guards: Riot deaths or something.. 

Ghost lady: ? 

Brutus: satin spawn

causmonaut: Died in failed moon expeditions (groph? Shuster?) 

Tranzit:Him: Big battery failure. 

tranzit denizens: Rat test subjects. 

Napalms: Obvious… 

Screacher: Died in battle. 

Brock/Gary: Died over and over exploring tombs. 

George: IDk… 

Monkeys: Failed monkeys-to-space launches. 

Nova crawlers: Vrill test subjects. 

dogs: fluffy puppies

 

 

This may not seem to deal with zombies, but read it. Extinction IS a mirror of zombies, why is anyone's guess. 

 

http://www.callofdutyzombies.com/forum/index.php/topic/159164-multiverse-theory/

[TEX]

Yeah, thanks Cheese. I always enjoy your analysis and am happy to see you posting over here. I know it would be super time consuming but.... remembering the video you edited and posted on the other forum; it would be awesome to see a refined concise version of this in A/V format.

[Cheesegrater28]

Thanks guys. 

 

Tex: I considered doing a video because it probably would make the theory easier to understand. Visuals always say more than I can. But to be honest, there's so many aspects of the theory that I'm up and down on. I'm sure that even during the time it would take me to make the video, I'd probably switch opinions here and there. And then when I was done it, I'd still want to change something, small or big. Even Mockings point about the Nacht plane crash is something I haven't considered that has got me thinking. 

 

So I'm not sold on this theory completely yet. It poorly explains a lot of things like the Pre Origins letters. I like to rationalize that maybe Sam led them from there Afterlife places into this one since she knew it was a doorway out, but then why would they all be in the year 1918 in different places. Lots of things to debate.

 

Its just the best one that I can come up with using the info from the game and shaping it into a direction I'd prefer the game to go. The reason I like this timeline is because everything still matters and it gives the story a place to move forward. I fell like Kids playing with toys, multi universes, time paradoxs, and some of the other theories, make a lot of the story, old and new, not matter anymore. So I'm sticking with trying to make it all count.