It’s a common refrain that Call of Duty simply needs to cut out the middleman and just turn into a full fledged multiplayer-only game, but there are some absolute sickos out there who just keep egging Activision on to keep giving us 3 or 4 hours of absolute military-industrial nonsense, and god bless ‘em that they keep actually giving it to us.
That’s especially true of the Black Ops games, which even by Call of Duty standards, have an ongoing storyline that is full-on bananapants conspiracy theory lunacy, not helped by the fact that Activision has Treyarch et al time jumping from game to game to the point you truly have no idea what narrative thread they’re gonna pick up at any given moment. And somehow, some way, heroes have arisen who have taken it upon themselves to untangle this tangled narrative web they’ve woven, and give the people a straightforward, chronological answer as to what the fresh organic hell is going on in this series.
It’s me. I am heroes.
At ease soldiers. It’s time for one hell of a debriefing.
This is the story of Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Call of Duty: World At War/Call of Duty: Black Ops (1942 – 1945)
Our tale actually doesn’t even begin in the Black Ops series at all. We need to take you back to World War II. Or, at the very least, Call of Duty’s version of it. World At War had a dual narrative between the US and the Russian side. We can ignore the US side right now. If you want to hear Kiefer Sutherland yell at you, there are better ways to do that, and you want the one that includes Fulton balloons.
What you do wanna know about is the Russian side. We begin in 1942, with Soviet soldiers Dmitri Petrenko and Victor Reznov (HEY KIDS, IT’S GARY OLDMAN!). After Petrenko’s entire unit gets wiped out by the Nazis, he’s left for dead under their corpses until Victor Reznov finds him. Together, they go on a three-year tear throughout Russia helping to push back the Nazis, with very little help from their asshole commanding officer, Nikita Dragovich. They eventually march right into Berlin fighting the good fight, and Reznov, apparently, goes down in history as the guy in that famous photograph of the Russians raising the Soviet flag over the Reichstag.
Oh but wait, there’s more. Some years after that, Reznov and Petrenko are still under Dragovich’s command, alongside his executive officer, Lev Kravchenko. They wind up on a mission to a frozen barge to capture a Nazi officer, Frederick Steiner, the chief architect behind a chemical weapons project called Nova, which they are to retrieve in the process. The mission is accomplished but Dragovich decides he wants to see what dat chemical bioweapon do, first hand. Because he has the patience of a goldfish, he locks a bunch of his men in a chamber, and pumps in the chemicals. Reznov survives, thanks to the British showing up mid-gassing and making a mess of things. Reznov tries to blow up the barge containing Nova, and ends up getting tossed in a dank Russian prison called Vorkuta for his trouble.
Call of Duty: Black Ops (1961 – 1968)
Fast forward about 20 years, when we meet Alex Mason, the Forrest Gump of U.S. covert operations. My dude was involved in EVERYTHING. When we meet Alex, he’s actually in Cuba, alongside fellow soldiers Frank Woods and Joseph Bowman, on the day the Bay of Pigs invasion jumps off. These three are the crack team tasked with attempting to assassinate Fidel Castro during the coup. Sure enough, the three actually succeed at killing Castro…..’s body double. The real deal ends up capturing Mason while attempting to flee the country, and giftwrapping him for his new bestie: Nikita Dragovich.
Dragovich tosses Mason in Vorkuta, where he actually makes friends with the still-imprisoned Victor Reznov, who tells him about his sordid dealings with Dragovich, Steiner, and Kravchenko. One day, Reznov orchestrates a massive prison break, staying behind to provide more cover while Mason makes his way back to the States. Once he gets home, he’s rewarded for his bravery with a sweet tour of the Pentagon, a meeting with JFK, and a new mission to kill Dragovich.
Thing is, though, while all this is happening, Mason seems a little….off. He keeps seeing random numbers popping up out of thin air, and while at the Pentagon, he seems to come down with a mild case of Wanting To Kill JFK (though he thankfully doesn’t). He’s fine though, really, ready to get out there, start murderin’ again.
Mason’s Magical Murder Tour with his buddies ends up leading them to a British scientist who’d been working with Dragovich on refining Nova into the far more potent Nova-6, and points the way to finding Steiner, who had been continuing to produce the stuff at a Soviet test site. Steiner, oddly enough, is looking to cut a deal with the CIA, and two agents, Hudson and Weaver, infiltrate the test site to grab him. Unfortunately, Hudson and Weaver are just a touch too late, as they walk in on Victor Reznov executing Steiner point blank. Oh, wait, did I say Victor Reznov? I meant Alex Mason, who got to the site first, and kills Steiner while calling himself Reznov.
Hudson and Weaver drag Mason into CIA interrogation and learn that the Russians did a number on Mason while he was in their custody, and that’s literal as hell. While he was in his custody, Mason was turned into Dragovich’s own personal Manchurian Candidate, set to carry out specific actions via a series of numbers broadcast to sleeper agents around the world. And he would’ve gotten away with it if not for that pesky Victor Reznov, who futzed with Mason’s programming at Vorkuta to make him target Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner. The new programming’s imperfect though, which is why Mason still has urges to kill JFK and hallucinates Reznov showing up in random places, even though sadly, in reality, Reznov died during the escape from Vorkuta.
The good news, though, is after the CIA is done with him, Mason remembers where Dragovich programmed him and is broadcasting the numbers from a Russian ship in the Gulf of Mexico. The feds raid the ship on the ground, the Navy is called in to bomb it from the sky, and Mason eventually gets his hands on Dragovich, drowning him as the ship goes down. Job’s done, evil’s punished, though a bit in the credits hints that maybe, just maybe, Alex Mason might’ve been partially responsible for the JFK assassination. We don’t know and for some reason they never bring this up again.
COD Black Ops: Cold War (1981 – 1984)
Skipping past the 70s entirely–until Activision decides to make Call of Duty: Deep Throat or something–Mason’s apparently still active in the 80s. In 1981, he, Frank Woods, and a new guy named Adler–who’s giving “We have Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor at home”—are deployed to Iran to take out two men–Qasim Javadi and Arash Kadivar–as pure retaliation for orchestrating the Iranian hostage crisis. We’re just gonna slide on past the fact that the crisis was already over in ‘81. Either way, when they catch Arash, he name drops Perseus as the one responsible. For anyone not up on the history of spycraft: Perseus is the name of a legendary Russian spy who managed to infiltrate the Manhattan Project. Supposedly, he was even at Los Alamos during the atomic bomb tests, feeding info to the Soviets. Clearly, this guy being name dropped as being responsible for another earth shaking political event ain’t good.
After a briefing with Uncanny Ronny Reagan, a team is assembled, Mason and Woods are joined by MI6, CIA, and Mossad agents, along with a player-made expat named Bell who had intel on Perseus from ‘Nam, implying he was responsible for Operation Fractured Jaw going sideways–that is to imply thatPerseus blew the whistle on the US potentially bringing nukes into Vietnam. Yeah. We actually tried that. After the team kills their way across Eastern Europe, they discover some more shocking intel: Something called Operation Greenlight, a program where the US smuggled nuclear devices into multiple cities in Europe in the 50’s, ready to be activated should the Russians try to invade. Oh, and also, Perseus has infiltrated that too, taken one of the nukes, gotten ahold of the full list of Nikita Dragovich’s sleeper agents, their trigger numbers, and the detonation codes for all of the Greenlight bombs. Cool.
Mason and his team chase this shady son of a bitch across Europe and Russia, even winding up in KGB headquarters at one point, but after one of their crew gets clapped escaping there, Adler suddenly decides Bell might know more than they let on. He’s right, but in the worst way. After pressing them further, it turns out–strap the fuck in for this one–Bell was actually a Perseus agent, shot and left for dead by Arash Kadivar in Iran because he was jealous of how close Bell was to Perseus, thus clinching his nomination for Hater of the Year 1981. Apparently seeing a fucked-up opportunity during interrogation, Adler “volunteered” Bell for MKUltra, using psychotropics, hypnosis, and the like to implant fake memories of being in Vietnam, and thus having Bell join the team. Don’t mind that burning smell in the air right now, that’s just THE GENEVA CONVENTION SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTING.
At this point in the game, you get the option here to have Bell tell Adler everything he knows but secretly rathim out to Perseus.ut since none of the sequels take place in Threads-style nuclear winter, we can assume the canon ending is the one that involves Bell deciding to help the CIA for some reason, giving up the location of the transmitters that would trigger the detonators, jetting out to the Solovetsky Islands in Russia, and destroying them all. Bell is rewarded for their courage, bravery, and valor by Adler considering Bell a loose end and putting a bullet in their skull. There goes our hero. Watch him as he goes.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II (1986 – 1989)
So, in 1986, Mason is finally retired, living in Alaska and being a shitty dad to his 7-year old kid, David, to a damn near hilarious degree. That gets interrupted when Agent Hudson (HEY KIDS! IT’S MICHAEL KEATON!) shows up with Oliver North–who, for reasons that defy good goddamn sense, actually voices himself–with a problem. Apparently, Frank Woods kept fighting the good fight for the CIA after the 70s, but has gotten himself captured while on mission in Angola, his entire team tortured in front of him before he was left alive to hang out with their rotting corpses. Despite his kid’s protests, America still comes first in the Mason household. Alex Mason heads off to Angola, and helps rescue Woods, but not before having a violent encounter with a radio operator that ends with Mason shooting out the man’s eye.
That radio operator turns out to be Raul Menendez, an arms dealer who has decided the best revenge for an American fucking up his sister Josephine’s face in a fire and the CIA killing his drug dealer father is getting stupidly rich off the Soviet-Afghan War. The CIA’s investigations lead them to try and capture Menendez at a plantation in Nicaragua, in an operation by–get this–MANUEL NORIEGA. Anyone born after 1989, you’re just gonna have to trust me that this is fucking hilarious. The raid is messy but successful, but once Woods sees Menendez, he tosses a grenade his way that winds up bouncing into Josephine’s bedroom, killing her. Menendez, however, still escapes thanks to, I repeat, MANUEL NORIEGA.
Once the feds get word that Menendez faked his death and Noriega was involved thanks to a mole in the CIA, they go all in on taking Noriega out of power, leading to the big invasion of Panama in 1989. Hudson, Woods, and Mason are all boots on the ground, tasked with capturing Noriega. Woods and Mason succeed, but Hudson comes in over the radio with a change of plans: Noriega’s no longer being captured. He’s a prisoner exchanged for Menendez. Woods is the huckleberry tasked with holding onto Noriega until Menendez is black-bagged and brought out in the open, but when he is, Hudson gives the sudden order to shoot Menendez. Woods does his duty, but unfortunately, when he gets up close and personal with his target and takes off the bag on his head it’s Mason. And then the actual Menendez blows off Woods’ kneecaps with a shotgun.
Apparently, Menendez spent the Panama invasion kidnapping David Mason and convincing Hudson to lead his two golden boys into a trap. Menendez puts Woods and Hudson in a dark room with Mason’s son and his corpse, kills Hudson, leaves Woods crippled, and basically does that one scene from Kill Bill where the Bride kills Vivica Fox in front of her daughter. Cold blooded shit right there. The two do eventually get rescued, and Woods swears to help raise David, never once telling the poor kid how his father actually died.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (1991)
In 1991, the now-wheelchair-bound Woods has settled into a cushy little desk job at the CIA, as the Man In Chair for William “Case” Calderon, Troy Marshall, and their handler, Jane Harrow. During an extraction mission for an Iraqi Secretary, Saeed Alawi, things go pear-shaped after Alawi is targeted by an extremist paramilitary group called Pantheon. Case and Marshall manage to take out the Pantheon guys, but Alawi gets merked by someone you don’t expect: Russell Adler.
As it turns out, some years prior, Adler was on Pantheon’s trail, but the breadcrumbs led to someone pulling Pantheon’s strings inside the CIA. Coincidentally, right around then is when the CIA went looking for the mole that led Raul Menendez to Hudson and Mason.After a tipoff, their investigation just so happened to magically lead to Adler. He immediately went rogue, and while Case and Harrow do bring Adler in after Iraq, he leaves Woods a cryptic message: “Bishop takes rook.”
After a debriefing with Livingstone, the current director of the CIA (HEY KIDS, IT’S LOU DIAMOND PHILLIPS!), Woods, Marshall, and Case are suspended. They decide to take a little vacation to see the Rook, which does not, in fact, involve taking an eluvian to visit the new Dragon Age protag, but instead sets up shop at an abandoned KGB blacksite where Woods and Co. can go dark and start investigating Pantheon while Harrow runs interference with the CIA. After recruiting a German tech expert named Neumann and a professional assassin named Sev, the team go about busting Adler out of a CIA blacksite buried under Capitol Station in DC, which happens to be hosting an event in support of a little known senator named Bill Clinton. The mission would’ve gone smoothly if Pantheon didn’t show up and make an unholy mess of things, a mess that gets blamed on the folks at the Rook, so I guess they’re…super…quadruple suspended?
Adler reveals that Pantheon has been getting awfully chummy with Saddam Hussein, giving him weapons in exchange for facilities. Thanks to Adler’s old MI6 buddy, the Brits manage to delay a raid in Desert Storm long enough for Case and Co to sneak into one of Saddam’s palaces and raid the Pantheon facility. They find a sample of an American bioweapon called Cradle, proudly made in the USA at a decommissioned CIA laboratory for Advanced Technologies and Applications. Adler stays in Iraq to hunt down Pantheon’s lead scientist, Malvey Gusev; Case and the others go to the lab.
After a botched entry, Case’s gas mask falls off once in the facility, leading him to hallucinate unholy terrors swarming the facility in a sequence that would give Sam Lake the vapors. During the trip, Case also remembers the truth behind Cradle and Pantheon: As in, not only was it basically supposed to be the CIA’s own supersoldier serum, but Case was one of its first test subjects, experimented on by a secret CIA bioweapons division called–drumroll–Pantheon. Unfortunately, Cradle created less Captain Americas more 28 Days Later-style rage monsters. After Case went berserk, destroying the lab, Livingstone shut the facility down, and had Case rehabilitated, but not before Pantheon skimmed some Cradle off the top for their own purposes before going off to do their own thing.
The rest of the team make their own discoveries though. A video recording showed that Malvey Gusev’s role in this was being tasked to make the psychotic effects faster and more potent….by Harrow. After some good old fashioned intelligence work (read: breaking into a crime syndicate casino, and helping Adler in an active Desert Storm warzone), the team manages to get ahold of Gusev, who tells the team Pantheon’s holed up in Vorkuta–yep, the same Vorkuta from Black Ops 1– making more Cradle.
The team arrives in Vorkuta too late to stop Pantheon from moving the Cradle payload out, but they do run into and capture Harrow. After injecting Harrow with a special dose of truth serum, she spills the beans that Pantheon’s ultimate plan was to use a batch of Cradle to infect Washington DC, pin the deed on Saddam Hussein, and blame Director Livingstone for the CIA’s failure to protect the country. Harrow would’ve become de facto Director, and Pantheon would essentially become a new shadow government.
At least, that would’ve been the plan before Pantheon raids the Rook to try and rescue Harrow. Case manages to board Harrow’s escape helicopter, and after it crashes in a nearby river, and a sample of Cradle gets cracked open, Case rage-strangles her to death while the chopper drowns him along with her. Gosh, they really do love their stranglings in this series.
The day is saved for now, and two weeks later, Livingstone meets with Woods and Marshall to tell them they’re still technically missing-in-action, and he’s keeping them that way to safeguard against Pantheon, who not only still have a shitload of Cradle, but also 100% still have moles in the CIA.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2025)
Fast forward to….next year, actually.
Let’s take a tiny step back to the early aughts. While the US was locked in on bringing peace to the Middle East, Raul Menendez was, apparently, a busy little bee, taking on the mantle of “Odysseus.” He forms an Anonymous-type movement called Cordis Die, except better than Anonymous since they’re A: still popular, to the tune of 2 billion followers, and B: actually getting some shit done, most notably, a cyberattack that manages to bring about a second Cold War between China and the rest of the world.
Standing between them and global domination, however, is a Spec Ops unit spearheaded by a now grown up, chisel-jawed David Mason going by the almost-impressively shitty codename of Section. In 2025, he and his partner Mike Harper (HEY KIDS IT’S MARY POPPINS) get a hot tip that Menendez gives a now-decrepit Frank Woods his dead sister Josefina’s pendant. When David starts asking questions, Woods gives the team his sordid history with Menendez, clueing the team in on what his intentions might be with his recent investment in weapons technology, new rare earth minerals, and a hunt for a superhacker named Karma. The more he learns, though, the more David starts experiencing suppressed memories of his time being held captive by Menendez. Some time later, David visits Woods one more time by himself, where Woods finally breaks down and clears things up for David, finally telling him the whole story of how his father actually died and a word of encouragement to “kill that maniac.”
David eventually joins an undercover operation to capture Menendez in Pakistan, which is successful, earning praise from his admiral (the late, great Tony Todd) and Secretary of State David Petraeus. Fun sidenote: IRL, Petraeus resigned from the CIA three days before this game came out after having an affair with his biographer and feeding her classified information during interviews. So, lol.
The praise doesn’t last, though. Menendez is held captive for questioning aboard the battleship USS Obama, but during interrogation, one of Mason’s colleagues, Salazar, turns out to be a mole, helping Menendez escape custody and sending a supervirus into the ship’s defense system that gives him control over America’s entire drone defense platform. Like a Trojan horse. Like Odysseus. See what he did there?
After securing the President and the other G20 leaders from Menendez’s drone strikes, David’s team tracks Menendez to Haiti, infiltrates his HQ, where he’s already giving a speech telling his followers he’s in his base, killing the US’s drones, and they are free to revolt because no military can stop them. While there’s another multiple choice ending here in-game, the canon outcome is that David finally tracks Menendez down and, because he’s a good boy who listens to his elders, David puts a bullet in his head. Unfortunately, Menendez’s assassination triggers a dead man’s switch, automatically posting a new message online that makes him a martyr, and thus turning the anarchy dial for his followers up to 11. The last thing we see before credits roll is a news report showing a riot brimming while the White House is on fire.
Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII (2043 – 2045)
And even given everything you’ve just read, here’s where shit gets real fuckin’ wacky.
See, Black Ops 4 came out that year that Activision actually test-piloted making Call of Duty multiplayer only. So, it doesn’t have a campaign/narrative arc in the traditional sense. However, they did cram quite a bit into Specialist tutorials and other scattered lore drops as the game updated. And jeeezus do they have a tale to tell, predominantly concerning Alex Mason’s granddaughters, Jessica and Savannah.
Jessica is a soldier who is KIA during an operation, while her two squad mates, code names Ruin and Battery, are critically wounded. Savannah, on the other hand, is a literal trillionaire who seems to be dabbling in military technology. That’s a good mix of things, always works out. Anyway, some time later, she calls 10 of the most elite soldiers in the world–including Ruin and Battery–to her labs for a project that will supposedly save the world. Because if anyone has changed the world for the better always, it’s people with more than nine zeroes in their bank account.
The project appears to be some sort of Metal Gear-style hyper advanced simulated mission designed to turn the best into the best of the best, complete with a simulation of Frank Woods as the instructor. As time goes on, however, it becomes clear the rabbit hole goes way deeper and weirder. The real project underlying these little missions is called Project Blackout, which has somehow managed a way to bring dead soldiers back to life as a sort of artificial human called an Archetype. More than that, Blackout’s already a success, with Savannah managing to resurrect Frank Woods, Alex Mason, and, for some fucking reason, Raul Menendez. Savannah even went on to have an affair with Archetype Woods, who is also tasked with re-brainwashing Archetype Alex Mason. Apparently, Jessica Mason knew about this, and was against it the whole time, which was the catalyst for Savannah having her killed, using brainwashed Archetype Mason to do the deed, even using an Archetype of Victor Reznov to help. Jesus Christ.
The Specialists involved in the testing do eventually start to catch on after witnessing some of the weird shit happening at the facility at night, which spurs Archetype Menendez to decide he needs to assert control over Blackout.He does this by threatening to kill Savannah’s kid. It’s almost like resurrecting an arms dealing terrorist was a terrible idea. Menendez/Savannah try to take out the Specialists, but they’re saved and able to escape with a little help.from Jessica, who’s got one of those dope Raiden cyberjaws. Apparently, the Jessica shot at the beginning of the game was just another Archetype. ‘Kay.
Obviously, there’s no ending. I don’t even know how you’d end that. I dunno, let’s just go with the ending from Burn After Reading.
Call Of Duty: Black Ops III (2065 – 2070)
So, it’s now 20 years after whatever the fuck Black Ops 4 was. Menendez kickstarting a revolution seems to have worked because the world is dealing with all sorts of uncivil unrest while still dealing with the drone warfare Cordis Die started 20 years prior. Now, it’s just straight up “The Future,” with robot combatants and jetpacks and shit.
Our hero is a player character quite imaginatively codenamed “Player”. They get critically injured in combat, but are saved by Commander John Taylor. In order to rescue Player from death’s door, it’s decided they should get outfitted with a full on cybernetic brain called a DNI. It worked for Robocop, why shouldn’t it work out here.
Actually, it really does. Player and their partner Hendricks put in five long, bloody years of work across the globe. They are eventually put under the command of a handler named Rachel Kane, and tasked with investigating a CIA black site in Singapore that has gone quiet. The bigwigs at the top have been murdered, the site’s classified data–intimate details about every CIA operation past and present–stolen and eventually leaked out to the world. Kane concludes that this was the work of Commander Taylor and his team, who have since gone rogue. After some investigation, the team tracks Taylor’s last known location: An abandoned HQ for a corporation called Coalescence, left in ruins after a chemical accident rendered the entire eastern side of Singapore unlivable. Player and Hendricks go investigate, finding another lab about a mile down where, quelle fucking surprise, the CIA was engaging in unlawful human experimentation.
Shit goes full on Ghost In The Shell from here narratively, so let’s cut to the wild ass chase: As it turns out, the CIA hadn’t given up on mind control at all all these years, and contracted Coalescence to continue the collective research on using technology to predict and/or control the populace, hoping to find a way to quell the worldwide hostility without, you know, addressing any of the valid reasons people are hostile. While never said outright since this game technically released right after Black Ops II, it’s safe to assume this is the endgame for Nova-6/Cradle/Project Blackout, all of it. The fruits of all that labor result in Corvus, an AI algorithm able to read, monitor, and shift human thought through the use of the DNI devices, and anyone connected to them. The first inhumane experiments were done in the Coalescence lab in Singapore, under the codename Black Project, but when Corvus became self-aware, as AIs tend to do in these situations, his grief at the suffering inflicted convinced him to obliterate the lab.
Taylor’s crew were sent to the lab to investigate before Player and Hendricks. When they used their DNIs to download Corvus’ data, they shared Corvus’ knowledge of what was done to the test subjects and were justifiably pissed, while also unintentionally providing a vector for Corvus’ new goal: a hivemind predicated on eliminating the immense pain and suffering caused by humanity’s crimes against humanity, spreading like a computer virus to anyone who connects, sharing their memories and knowledge, and creating compliant virtual Archetypes of anyone who gets newly connected. When the CIA attempted to bring Taylor’s team in for aggressive debriefing–or, rather, debriefing with bullets–Taylor defied the order, which is why he and his entire team went rogue. His new mission was to find the lead scientist of the Black Project, Sebastian Krueger, and question him. With bullets.
By then, Corvus had already managed to infect Player and Hendricks after their repeated connections through their DNIs, attempting to calm their hostile minds using the image and concept of a frozen forest as a shared conditioning technique. While Hendricks is absorbed entirely into Corvus’ hivemind, Player manages to fight through the frozen forest and the illusions therein to complete his mission of purging Corvus from the DNI system, but not before Hendricks manages to find and put a bullet in the wholly-unrepentent Krueger.
And that’s the story thus far. At the end of everything (so far), the full knowledge of the CIA’s crimes are known to the world, leaving the virus gone. But the world remains still deep in turmoil, until Activision/Microsoft decides to pick this story up where it leaves off. Of course, then I’ll forced to add onto this piece, and I’ll subsequently lose my entire goddamn bag of marbles.
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