Metal Gear Solid 5 Accidentally Triggered a Secret Ending Without Achieving World Peace

For years, a band of would-be peacemakers in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain have been working to trigger a secret ending that only appears once all nuclear weapons in the game are dismantled. Last week, that cutscene triggered, but there was a problem. There were still over 7,000 nuclear weapons in the game.

The nuclear disarmament ending is a secret cutscene that was discovered after players datamined the game and uncovered the hidden content. After some digging around, players discovered that this cutscene can only be activated by destroying all the nukes as part of the game's multiplayer component. Basically, players can build nuclear weapons in the game and stockpile them in their own bases, which function as a kind of multiplayer hub. These bases can then be attacked by other players as a form of online combat. The invading players can then steal these nukes for themselves, or destroy them.

Spoilers in the video.

There's an entire subreddit called "Metal Gear Antinuclear" dedicated to achieving this cutscene, and they weren't too happy to see the cutscene trigger for PC players prematurely. Konami for its part has issued a statement regarding the matter.

"The nuclear disarmament event was triggered in the Steam version of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on Feb 2nd at approximately 12:00 GMT," read the statement. "We are still investigating, but can confirm that the event was triggered while the nuke count hadn't reached zero."

The antinuclear subreddit has its own theories as to why the cutscene triggered for PC players. Some say that it was an error with the game's code, as the number of nukes in the game was so large that the counter errored into the negative numbers, triggering the event.

Others say that this was a deliberate move by Konami to tease the upcoming Metal Gear Survive.

While Konami investigates the issue, we must come to terms with the fact that Metal Gear Solid V has just declared a nuclear-free (virtual) world, despite weapons of mass destruction still terrorizing the world order. A terrifying false-alarm for its virtual denizens.