Here are some ideas.
Ok, so we have hellhounds on Shi No Numa. They obviously were not created there. They were most likely created at Der Riese in the animal testing facility. My guess is Samantha's dog, Fluffy was the first test specimen for these hell hound experiments.
Also, if you think about it, if Richtofen was getting all this money, equipment, etc to fund his research, do you really think they would start him off at Shi No Numa in small huts? I don't. He probably started off his experiments at Der Riese in the nice big facility with all his equipment there and near his home country of Germany. Possibly escpaing to Shi No Numa after murdering Maxis and taking credit for his inventions, such as the WWDG-2 and teleporters.
The transmissions on Der Riese lead me to believe that the testing facility at Der Riese was running low on Element 115 and needed to obtain larger quantities. This is why they traveled to Shi No Numa, to continue the experiments with direct access to the meteor, the supplier for element 115.
These reasons and more lead me to believe that Der Riese took place before Shi No Numa. Shi No Numa and Der Riese do not have dates on the loading screens, only their locations. On Verruckt there is a date. I don't think they added dates on the new maps because they wanted to mask the fact that current releases of DLC zombie maps are not in order in terms of the story's time line.
These are just some observations I have made, feel free to disagree or post ideas that contradict what I have written.
Sun Aug 16, 2009 9:10 am by COMPLETEWASUK