Zack Snyder has teased a time loop at work in Army of the Dead, and the movie might provide a disguised alternate timeline glimpse at the heist succeeding. In Army of the Dead, Dave Bautista's mercenary Scott Ward leads his team of veteran zombie killers, known as Las Vengeance, to pull off a heist in the sealed-off, zombie-filled Las Vegas. Of course, there’s more going on than they’re told, and that includes in Army of the Dead’s sci-fi elements.
During the meeting where businessman Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada) hires the team, he lays out the basic plan for the heist. Tanaka narrates the plan over a montage of the team carrying out their mission, which might seem like a throwaway moment. Upon closer inspection, the team all appear to be in the same outfits and carrying the same tactical gear as they eventually do when they embark on the mission.
Unlike in the ending of Army of the Dead, the film’s debriefing montage also shows the heist as successful with the entire team returning home, which could actually be an alternate victorious timeline hidden right in front of viewers. This could provide considerable evidence to back up the observation made by Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick) that the team are caught in a loop “fighting and dying”. Vanderohe reaches this conclusion upon the team’s discovery of a previous failed heist of Tanaka’s casino, with the rotting skeletons of the deceased team appearing to resemble them. Tanaka’s own layout of the heist plans could add more evidence to this, with Snyder’s curious decision to have the team identically suited up as they end up being later in the film.
Along with Army of the Dead's soundtrack allusions and other hints in the movie, Snyder himself, well-known for making cryptic teases, alluded to a time loop being at work in the Army of the Dead franchise during both the film’s press tour and that of its prequel Army of Thieves a few months later. The attention Snyder’s drawn to it is enough to indicate something relating to time paradoxes and loopholes is going on. While Vanderohe’s philosophical treatise on the team’s apparent doom is where the movie places most of its attention in this regard, Snyder might’ve snuck in another hint to it. In depicting a blueprint of the heist and showing it as successful, Snyder may be quietly showing viewers a look outside of the very nebulous time loop.
This might also suggest there being something more sinister to Bly Tanaka than what the movie actually presents. In the third act, it’s revealed that Tanaka’s real goal was to retrieve the head of one of the intelligent Alpha zombies, in this case the Alpha Queen (Athena Perample), for nefarious experimental plans. This has also led to theories of Tanaka as much more connected to the zombie outbreak itself. His run-through of how the heist is intended to go might also hint that he’s a puppet master in how the time paradox might function.
That could mean that Tanaka is an associate of the aliens connected to the creation of the king of the Alphas Zeus (Richard Cetrone) in Area 51 or possibly a more metaphysical villain. In any case, for there to be a time loop at all, there has to be a timeline in which events unfold unencumbered. While its alien mystery remains, Army of the Dead might have shown an alternate version of events in which the Las Vengeance team successfully left the zombie-filled Las Vegas strip as millionaires.