Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes2014

Skull Face:
[Briefing files > Acquired Tapes > Agent's Recording > Secretly Recorded POW Interrogation] [waterboarding is heard, and then shuffling them prisoner back to the boiler room cell. A man is heard driving in] [Barely audible, as if he is far away] I needed this place, to listen to the words people have to say. That's something they could never understand. [the man, Skull Face, then walks up to the prisoner, who is groaning in agony] You've done your part. You told us plenty. You've known the pain of ages. And even now you think, as any person would, that this can't be happening. Is it education? Morals, faith? Just an imprint of a lifetime of stories? Face to face with oblivion, which is where you are, and you still think that help is coming. The world you were born into is made to save you. Isn't that right? Of course it is. Everyone knows that. Until your last breath, you know it. Without the slightest chance or reason left to them, humans are capable of hope. I'm no different. But for one thing. When my time came calling I didn't die. My family died, my country died, but they didn't take me with them. All Hell took from me was this skin, this outer peel that marked me "human." My village had an oilseed field and a fine factory. Every day my friends and I would see our parents at work in that factory. That's all I had. All the world I knew. Then one day, aircraft came droning in from some far-off sky. The factory was bombed. Some... "spies" had told them we were making weapons. The building burned. We tried to flee outside. The crowd blocked the exit. The crowd of people. Hot. So hot. I tried to push through their legs and get ahead, but a boot in my stomach put me on the ground. The smoke of them burning filled me up. I heard my name called... but not for long. At the infirmary they carried me to, a nurse in the corner saw me and remarked, as if it happened every day: "They should let the poor thing die." Those are the only words of my mother tongue I remember. It was the language of my village. Until foreign troops invaded. Then the last identity I had left - the words I spoke - were pulled from me. My skin would never feel anything again. This face would be burned again, in torture, at foreign hands, but I, I still writhe in that burning factory. Doused in scalding rapeseed oil. That's all I have to feel, that pain - all I have to remind me I exist here. [chuckles] Those "spies" reported well. We made weapons all right. As cartloads of rifles came in from the battlefields, we fixed them up and sent them back out. So our country could win. Or rather, so that little world we knew could continue. I came to realize I mustn't die. I'm their last hope, all those who perished and left me here. I have to accomplish something. If I don't, their will will be swept out of this world. [Skull Face proceeds to grab the prisoner] So? Do you see me now? Tell me. What do you see? Hmm? You have eyes. What do your eyes see? [chuckles] Yes, that's right. You see a skull face. You see me. This skull is who I am. My mark, my proof of humanity. I have no country, no language, I have no face, but I haven't lost my skull. So I told myself... The pain and effort that keep me alive will never know relief, never bear fruit, never be repaid. I know that, but I told myself to focus on some hope, a nonexistent hope to guide me through this burning world. A hope - call it a dream. A melancholic delusion. As the pressures within me stretch me to bursting, and I force myself not to cry out, though the words I thought were carved into me are gone, and all I knew is dead. I know how you feel. I've felt that. So show me. That I'm not the only one. That you too can return to this world, for revenge. Do you see me? Don't die. Don't die! [the Prisoner Dies] [as if disappointed] Ahh...