The Mansion, no more. Shattered Veil is the name of Season 3’s Zombies map. It’s not a name anyone predicted, but it immediately made my head race with possibilities. I like it a lot!
The name has inspired me to dig up the script of a theory video I buried a few months ago (I had too much to say about The Tomb) and give it a new coat of paint. Work smarter, not harder, etc.
It’s no secret that the Dark Aether saga has been messy recently. While exciting for long-term Zombies fans, Treyarch introducing Chaos and Aether elements has weakened the tight-knit narrative we experienced throughout Cold War Zombies.
Vanguard Zombies may be the key to understanding what’s going on. To be clear, this is a theory. I’m not betting the house on it, but I think it’s interesting to consider some of the pieces of intel, at the very least. Before we get to Vanguard, though, we need to return to the end of Aether.
Looking back at Tag Der Toten, we can see the previous order of the universe. There was Agartha, the place above creation; the Dark Aether, the place below creation; and our world in the middle. Nikolai’s Grand Scheme changed everything.
Primis Nikolai: When we are gone, so too is everything that spewed forth from the Aether. Element 115, the Apothicons, even Monty himself. All of it will be banished to where it belongs—the Dark Aether.
(Tag Der Toten Ending Cutscene)
Primis and Ultimis’ sacrifice resolved the paradox, creating a new singular universe. Samantha and Eddie made it into this universe, but everything else was thrown into the Dark Aether, the “dustbin of history.”
Alice: I hope someone out there can hear this. I’m not quite certain this device even works.
Alice: You see, I’m an historian. I was touring ancient sites in Peru when it all went dark. Suddenly, I’m in this…jigsaw landscape…
Alice: This hodgepodge of creatures and artifacts…like a collision of cultures and eras.
Alice: I’ve seen medieval structures alongside twenty-first century buildings. I’ve seen ancient, storybook creatures and mechanical monsters straight from a science fiction novel.
Alice: And the thought I cannot seem to shake now is that the universe has a dumping ground for things that go bump in the night.
Alice: Others I’ve encountered assume this is Hell. But it’s worse. It’s the dustbin of history. It’s the rubbish dump of time.
Alice: When the universe is through with you…this is your final stop.
(Cold War: Lost Souls-Alice)
The Dark Aether contains residue from the multiverse of the Aether story. Our world is protected from the Dark Aether by a dimensional barrier known as the veil. This takes us to Vanguard Zombies, where Elder God Kortifex introduced us to the concept of the veil for the first time.
Von List: That farm with the windmill — the one in Merville, France. Doesn’t look very important, does it, Kortifex?
Kortifex: To me, Wolfram, nothing about your world looks particularly “important.”
Kortifex: Earth is just a stepping stone to my eventual triumph back in the Dark Aether.
Kortifex: I help you here, you help me get back. The rest is just… details.
Von List: Fair enough. But do you know what transpired near that windmill during our last global conflict?
Von List: “The Great War,” we called it. “The War To End All Wars.” Heh. Such optimism…
Kortifex: Is there a point to this, Wolfram?
Von List: Indeed there is. The First World War pitted outmoded tactics against unprecedented weaponry.
Von List: In just one day at that farm, ten thousand men fell as they marched in ranks directly into machine gun fire.
Kortifex: Ahh. That explains it. So much blood spilled all at once. It left its mark on the veil that separates us from the Dark Aether.
Von List: Precisely! The “weak spot” we are trying to exploit.
Kortifex: And the dead who fell that day? All those thousands of corpses?
Von List: Oh, they are buried nearby.
Kortifex: Not for long…
(Vanguard: Mark of the Veil)
Kortifex explains that while the veil separates our world from the Dark Aether, the horror and bloodshed of the First World War weakened it at Mervile. It became easier for denizens of the Dark Aether to break through and exploit.
However, it may not just be bloodshed that punctures holes in the veil protecting the new universe from the Dark Aether. In Vanguard’s reimagining of Shi No Numa, Professor Krafft explains why Zombies appear in the Swamp of Death once again.
Krafft: Krafft here. You are currently on one of the most remote islands in the Japanese archipelago.
Krafft: The few who know of it have long considered it haunted. Though “sacred” might be a better word.
Krafft: It is a natural “weak spot” between this world and the Dark Aether. It is where Saraxis first made contact with humanity, many centuries ago.
(Vanguard: Haunted. Sacred.)
Shi No Numa is no stranger to Zombies fans. It’s where Aether started, where we first met Richtofen, Dempsey, Takeo, and Nikolai. The swamp appears to be a natural weak spot, not created by bloody violence but by something else.
Could it be that weak spots in the Veil are generated at specific locations tied to the past? It’s quite a coincidence that Elder God Saraxis appeared to humans for the first time in Shi No Numa of all places.
There’s also the Projekt Endstation facility in Morasko, Poland, where we were first introduced to the Dark Aether chapter of Zombies. It makes sense that the most significant outbreak of the new universe would happen at the location of Nacht Der Untoten.
Even Vladimir Zykov, The Forsaken, spoke of vulnerabilities in the veil where the Dark Aether and the new universe overlap.
Zykov: Day 937: Gathered lots of electronics. No success constructing transmitter. Some gear seems very old. Other components unlike any I have ever seen. Wish I could find instruction manual.
Also finding shimmering “weak spots” where this world seems to overlap with home. Attempted to pass through but could not.
Still, caught a glimpse of what looked like Southeast Asia. So close, yet out of reach. Must keep trying.
(Cold War: Day 937)
Even The Tomb has some links to this theory. The parallels to Origins led many to think the map would reimagine the fan-favourite Black Ops 2 map. Although that wasn’t the case, The Tomb did have some pretty interesting ties with the Ice Staff, the Dark Aether Nexus mimicking the Origins PAP mound, and the legendary Treyarch Sound team reworking some classic Origins tracks.
There is also a peculiar bit of chatter between Weaver and Grey that may become meaningful somewhere down the line.
Weaver: I was born near Smolensk Forest. 20,000 men were massacred there. Spooky fucking place for an eight-year-old. But shit, it was like an amusement park compared to here.
Grey: Yeah, I think this is one of those dimensional weak spots Strauss talks about. The Dark Aether’s bled through here for centuries.
(The Tomb – Character Conversations)
Grey confirms that Oskar Strauss theorised that the Dark Aether can bleed through dimensional weak spots. It’s also interesting that Weaver was raised near a viable candidate for a Dark Aether weak spot. Given that a few carvings on his cell wall in Terminus looked suspicious, I wonder whether he encountered the Dark Aether long before Cold War.
As for the forthcoming map, if we take the name “Shattered Veil” literally, the veil protecting the world from the Dark Aether will soon perish. This could have disastrous consequences for our characters, but it may finally help us make sense of BO6 Zombies’ story.
Again, I need to make some assumptions that I can’t back up but stick with me for the theory’s sake. Let’s propose that the new universe created at the end of Tag Der Toten is the universe where the Chaos story existed—an unrelated universe that was never tied to Aether.
Little by little, remnants of Aether have crept into the new universe by bleeding through the veil. It seems like the events of Shattered Veil will blast open a gateway. The new universe—the Chaos universe—is now infected by all sorts of horrors from the past, present and future.
This would explain how three different eras of Zombies can interact with each other without destroying anything that came before. I think it’s the perfect way to include Aether and Chaos without making it feel cheap. As long as we’re treading new ground while interacting with the past, I’m more than happy to see old faces, weapons, locations, etc, return.
Everyone has their own thoughts on this, of course, and the threshold for what is acceptable varies from person to person. As far as I’m concerned, anything that isn’t Ultimis or Primis is on the table. I expect “new versions” of Takeo, Dempsey, and Nikolia to pop up and join Eddie eventually, and as long as they are new versions, that sounds good to me! I’d rather see the Chaos crew return before going back to the OG characters, but I’m not going to sit here and say I wouldn’t lose my shit if it happened.
That concludes my Shattered Veil theory. I eagerly await further teasers, the gameplay trailer, and, hopefully, a new intro cinematic! Despite having my issues with the story of Black Ops 6 Zombies so far, I’ve still enjoyed a lot of it, and I think this map has the potential to iron out almost every one of them. We’ll see where Treyarch goes with it.
Intel referenced via https://codex.detonated.com