Blood of the Dead predictions. You heard it here first.

[Electric Jesus]

Alrighty, so release is just around the corner, and one of my favorite pieces of news was the recent announcement that easter eggs will be disabled in BO4 until 10am PST on the 12th, so that nobody has solved the map before other people have even played. Solid move. 

That being said, despite possible leaks, we’re still totally in the dark on where the story is going precisely. However, there are a few loose ends that are screaming to be tied up, So I figured I would go over those and explore some specific wild theories I have. 

 

I think I’ll just start by stating my claims, and then I’ll build up a body of evidence for each. I’ll start with the easier-to-digest theories before I get into wild territory. 

A new trailer for Blood of the Dead dropped while I was typing this, so I’ll come back and update with details from the trailer if they’re relevant.

 

The Aether story will continue in the DLC season with Victis as the main cast, and Primis stuck in Alcatraz, maybe dead.

 

I honestly think it’s damn near 50 / 50 whether Primis or Victis are going to carry the torch from here on out (if the Aether story even continues after Blood of the dead.) There’s not a lot of direct evidence that Victis are specifically going to come back at this point in time, but circumstances seem to be lining up just right for that to happen.

 

They made a big deal out of ending Season 1 of the comics with Victis being put on ice, and they drew big attention to it in the Intro cinematic of Blood of the dead. The timeline specifically says that Victis are being kept safe “until they are needed next.” This seems like Richtofen definitely anticipates / planned around needing them again, and I don’t foresee them returning to alcatraz some OTHER time to retrieve them. 

 

That being said, it could be the case that the easter egg ending involves all 8 characters escaping the island, or only 4. If the latter were the case, this is the perfect opening for Victis. Personally I really don’t want Primis to actually die for good, but if the next chapter in the storyline involves Victis on the outside trying to find a way to get Primis out of Alcatraz, that would be cool. 

 

I wouldn’t even be surprised if there was a mid-easter-egg cutscene, after which you resume the game as Victis. 

 

Nikolai is super important in Blood of the Dead.

 

So treyarch specifically had nikolai’s name spoken in Mob of the Dead. It might have been a case where they just picked a random member of Primis to throw in there, so it being Nikolai specifically might not mean anything. 

 

However, I just wanna point something out about the chronology of Blood of the Dead. It appears to take place during their brief trip after the Zetsubou cutscene, except something has gone wrong. If that’s the case, then this version of Primis has not gone through to Revelations, and more importantly Gorod Krovi never happened, so Nikolai specifically is the only character who has had no catharsis, and won’t get to have “his moment.” Needless to say, the man might be on edge. 

 

Additionally, I believe Jason Blundell recently got asked by a fan who his favorite character is, and he said Nikolai. I’ll try to find a link for that one. 

 

Mob of the Dead was a simulation. Victis and the Mobsters are the same people.

 

Alright, bear with me here. 

 

Ever since the end of Season 1 of the comics, I’ve had this nagging feeling that somehow, some-f—ing-how, the Victis crew are literally sal, finn, billy, and al. Let me explain what I mean.  Obviously those 4 guys are real people that lived and died well before Victis were born. Allow me to digress a bit.

 

I’m really intrigued by the whole Zero-base and Empty Earth from the comics.  Victis get into four pods / hospital bed type things, it draws their blood, and then they suddenly find themselves in “Empty Earth.” It’s described as an alternate earth that’s unstable and falling apart, living things first. 

 

Uh, what? So they get their blood drawn, and somehow that “teleports them to another dimension?” I suspect that what’s actually happening is they’re entering into a simulated universe inside of the computer, with their blood samples jacking them into the matrix, so to speak. 

 

So from their perspectives, they sat down in these chairs, woke up in corresponding chairs in another dimension, ran some errands, came back to the chairs, and re-appeared in their home universe. I think from our perspective though, they just sat down in the first chairs and went to sleep. Getting back to the chairs inside Empty Earth was just the trigger to wake them up again. 

 

Ok, that all being said, I think it’s highly possible that the map Mob of the Dead takes place in a similar simulated universe, and that Victis, who are on Ice in alcatraz, are “playing” mob of the dead in their heads while in stasis. Each of them just has an alias as a real life italian mobster in the sim, because the lab was built with the creative direction of Stanley Ferguson, and he had an affinity for the history of Alcatraz.  So

 

Specifically, I think when Richtofen built the cryo pods in alcatraz, he made a simulated universe of his own to jack Victis into to keep them busy, and that universe is Mob of the Dead.

 

Alright, here are a few bits of info that nudged me toward that Idea. 

 

There are two very interesting ciphers on Gorod Krovi I want y’all to keep in mind. Let me just drop these quotes here. I’ll refer back to them as Quote 1 and Quote 2. 

 

It was a strange flight, the plane crashed. We passed through time and space, in a way, flying over areas that shouldn't have been there. Hmm, there was no sign of any remains. I do not know where it landed, honest.

 

Finally the lab is almost complete. Security measures have been put in place so the chance of detection by the Americans is very unlikely. We also have several agents embedded with the staff as insurance. We will keep the individuals in stasis, on ice to speak, and continue the specimen rotation once we finish drawing more power from the drill. Oh, I almost forgot, the sequencing for the current blood samples is as follows: SSMJABR

 

The red eyes on Mob of the dead were a huge departure at the time. Not only that, but when you entered “115” on the number pad in the spiral staircase, you got an angry devil-voice quote that said something to the effect of “Not this time.” So, there’s no 115 going on here? When the map came out, I got the strong impression that these weren’t “normal” zombies, or maybe that they weren’t even “real” zombies.

 

Not only that, but if you enter 935 on the same number pad, it plays the map’s music easter egg.  So I’m left thinking that Mob of the Dead takes place somewhere that has Zombies, but no Element 115. At the time I initially thought it was literally hell (obviously it’s hell / purgatory metaphorically) but i don’t know now. Even if it was, it would still be a universe within the jurisdiction of Monty / the Apothicons, so I don’t see why it WOULDN’T have element 115.

 

That would make sense if it were all in a computer, or some other form of artificial bubble-universe though. No need for 115. PLUS, not only are you rewarded with music when you enter 935, but in the intro Cutscene, Billy’s narration says that weasel launches into a song-and-dance routine at 9:35. It seems like they really want us to know that group 935 are running the show here. 

 

Additionally, let me direct your attention to a notorious Weasel quote on Mob of the Dead. When getting kills with a raygun, Al mutters to himself “Nikolai, Nikolai, Nikolai, why do I keep hearing that name?”  At the time, once again, the only explanation for this was “Timey Wimey Stuff.” Booooo. I think if Al was actually just the avatar of one of the victis crew, (say misty for instance) and the primis crew are standing around the cryo chambers talking, her ears might actually be hearing nikolai’s name being spoken, so she / he is aware of it inside the simulation as well. Think of how in the movie Inception, they can hear music echoing down from the real world when they’re in a dream, because their sleeping body is actually hearing it in person. 

 

I might be going down a rabbit hole here, but an extension of this idea is that the mobsters breaking the cycle was the trigger to wake up victis.  When you get to the final showdown on the GG bridge in Mob of the dead, killing weasel gives you the ending “life over. The cycle continues.” Alternately, killing the others gives you “Game over. The cycle is broken.” Not only that, but in the music trailer for Mob, there’s a quote about it all being a “sick, twisted, fucked up game.” I think treyarch might have been a lot more literal than we initially thought. 

 

I could probably come up with a lot more to say on this one, but I need to digest it a bit. Moving on.

 

Primis are the ones riding on Icarus when it’s seen repeatedly in Black ops 3.

 

Ok, forget all that simulation stuff for now if your brain hurts, cuz this might whether that’s true or not.

 

Alright, so we all know that the plane from Mob of the Dead makes an appearance on several maps in Black Ops 3. On the Giant it appears on the roof of the teleporter building with the catwalk. On Shadows, it can be seen flying overhead, and in Zetsubou it is specifically seen popping out of a portal in the sky, only to disappear into another. 

 

Needless to say, this is weird. At this point in the story we’re not aware of any reason why the plane would be outside of San Francisco 1934, other than “timey wimey stuff,” which is an unsatisfactory answer. However, I think the answer might have been right under our noses the whole time. Lets gather more bits of evidence first. 

 

Sal’s Laundry Ticket

 

On Shadows, in a zombie spawn window just outside the spawn room to the right, a player can actually find a laundry-ticket showing that Sal DeLuca recently got his suit cleaned, and that his order number was 56.  As it turns out, the number 56 appears on the tops of some of the buildings in Morg City, seemingly drawn / arranged deliberately. If i remember correctly, these numbers are only visible to the player in theater mode, but I would imagine they would be visible from the air, like on a plane for instance. 

 

It seems to me that there’s some kind of coordinated effort going on, like for some reason it’s really important that the passengers on Icarus be aware that Sal’s number was 56.  We know for a fact that Richtofen was once at large in Morg City, so he’s the most likely candidate for who drew the numbers on the roof. Additionally, we don’t actually know who’s on the plane that we see in BO3. It could be the mobsters, but I suspect that it’s primis themselves (from Blood of the Dead).

 

Here’s what I think is going to happen when you fly the plane in Blood of the dead. Rather than just flying through the fog and hitting the bridge, you’re going to fly through a series of portals, pop out in the skies above each BO3 map, and THEN you pop back out and hit the bridge. Not only that, but if you look down from the plane, you might see the numbers on the rooftops below you as you pass over each map as an easter egg step, like a code you need to collect. 

 

I just adore the idea of Richtofen secretly putting codes on all of the rooftops of each map, so he can set up a ridiculously coordinated fly-over later down the line.  Hell, the easter egg ending might even be Primis breaking the cycle by flying through a bunch of portals, then popping out and landing on the roof of The Giant. Referring back to quote 1 (finally,) who exactly is the speaker of this quote? Based on the way they speak, it sounds like Richtofen telling a fib. Maybe after they fly off the island successfully, Monty gets mad that they escaped damnation, so Richtofen says Quote 2 to him, withholding the location of the plane for some reason. 

 

Alright. I’ll be back to add more thoughts soon.

[anonymous]

Great theory, EJ, it really makes me thinking. Yet I wonder why Victims would be put in the Alcatraz realm. If it is Group 935 who is behind this, or even the Illuminati or solely Richthofen, what use would the neverending suffering of Victims/the Mobsters bring?

 

Also, if the red eyes mean "unreal zombies", why red eyes in Gorod Krovi and Revelations? It surely must have to do with Blood of the Dead, but how? Those realities aren't "Inception-like" (love your comparation), are they?