The videos for the Secret Theater were originally developed in secret by the production team's Real Time Demo Unit for Metal Gear Solid 3, with the original intention of showing the videos to the production staff as entertainment during the game's completion party. Kojima, however, decided after seeing them to place them on the official website, where it instantly spawned popularity. As a result, new episodes were developed exclusively for the site, where it spawned 3 "series" (International equivalent to the American media's "seasons"), plus a fourth on the way by the time Subsistence was released.