Call of Obligation: Black Ops is a decades-spanning story of deception, betrayal, and questionable psychiatry. It’s only one of CoD’s a number of separate subseries, however it’s by far the beefiest.
Again in 2010, it will have been straightforward for developer Treyarch to whip up some jungle belongings and ship Call of Obligation 7: Vietnam, however as a substitute it unleashed a sprawling techno-thriller with all-you-can eat acronyms wherein half of the characters are hallucinations and the remainder are historic figures as much as no good.
Black Ops is the place Call of Obligation will get bizarre– a classy head journey with plot twists to spare. There’s a century’s price of storyline on this epic espionage saga with extra on the best way, so take into account this your pre-mission briefing forward of Black Ops 7. Right here is all the pieces you should know in regards to the Black Ops story to date.
BLOPS is a twisted net of flashbacks, dream sequences, and choice-driven alternate endings, so we’re charting essentially the most chronological and canonical path we will. It begins with a World at Battle.
1942
Stalingrad, September 1942. Pink Military soldier Dimitri Petrenko claws his means by streets of corpses guided by his comrade, Soviet sniper Viktor Reznov. Reznov’s father was killed by the Nazis, creating in him a thirst for payback so deep that not even demise will quench it.
1945
Petrenko and Reznov blast into Berlin and plant the hammer and sickle atop the Reichstag in 1945. Black Ops 1 reveals their post-war fates. Treacherous officer Nikita Dragovich and his pet sadist Lev Kravchenko drag our heroes right into a activity power looking German scientist Friedrich Steiner– the evil genius behind a doomsday nerve fuel known as Nova 6. They nook the unrepentant jerk within the Arctic Circle the place Steiner defects, to Reznov’s disgust.
Dragovich betrays Reznov and gasses his males with the Nova 6, killing a number of together with our POV character from World at Battle. Reznov is rescued by the British however sinks the Nova stockpile beneath the ice.Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner escape with the formulation. Reznov is recaptured and despatched to the Vorkuta jail camp the place he waits 16 years for a brand new protagonist to bro out with.
1961
Through the Bay of Pigs invasion, the US helps a coup that fails to overthrow Fidel Castro’s authorities. In actual life, the U.S. offered funding, coaching, and air assist for the revolution. In Black Ops 1, the CIA sends some particular ops assassins to get rid of Castro: Alaskan Marine Alex Mason, Navy Seal Joseph Bowman, and chain-smoking, nigh unkillable veteran Frank Woods. Mason and Woods turn out to be the bedrock characters of BLOPS. Bowman, not a lot.
Treyarch’s trio take down El Commandante’s physique double. Mason is captured and taunted by an alive and nicely Fidel. Castro arms his prisoner over to returning Soviet heavies Kravchenko and Dragovich, who throw him within the gulag at Vorkuta.
The unhealthy guys rewire Mason’s mind to turn out to be a sleeper agent managed by a cryptic numbers station. Mason resists with the assistance of Reznov, his lone ally within the bowels of the Russian jail– Shawshank Redemption in a Soviet labor camp. As the lads bond, Reznov packages a backdoor into Mason’s mind, compelling him to annihilate Steiner, Kravchenko, and Dragovich by any means obligatory.
1963
Reznov engineers an rebellion with a catchy 8-step plan that doubles as a conditioning software. Huge Vik sacrifices his personal freedom so Mason can catch the final practice out of Vorkuta, ending his two 12 months imprisonment.
The extraordinarily traumatized Mason is assigned to handler Jason Hudson and summoned to the Pentagon. Secretary of Protection Robert McNamara briefs them on Dragovich’s plans whereas Mason, who most likely ought to have taken some self care PTO, begins to unravel. Mason’s psychological breakdown crescendos when he meets John F. Kennedy as Dragovich’s programming surfaces.
Even if he simply crashed out in entrance of the President, Mason’s bosses ship him to sabotage the Soyuz area program and torch the group of Nazi scientists engaged on Nova 6. The group rescues double-agent Grigori Weaver, who loses an eye fixed within the course of. He doesn’t have a large position past BLOPS 1, however he performs a pivotal half within the Zombies’ Darkish Aether Saga– one of many characters who discovered new life throughout the mode.
Most operators would name it a day there, however as a result of of Reznov’s programming, Mason actually can not cease till he finds and ends Dragovich. The gang blows up his limo however they bail earlier than the kill is confirmed.
5 days later, President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Mason is current on the scene, however the CIA is kind of unbothered by the brainwashed killing machine’s proximity to the crime of the century and retains him on the payroll.
1968
In Vietnam, Mason joins up with previous buddies Woods and Bowman in search of Soviet intel on Nova 6. Mason meets with a defector that he believes is Viktor Reznov and so they survive quite a bit of motion setpieces collectively. The crew ultimately arrives in Laos to safe a crashed aircraft carrying a cargo of Nova 6, however the fuel is gone once they arrive.
VC and Spetsnaz troops ambush group BLOPS and power them to play Russian Roulette in a ugly homage to The Deer Hunter. After Bowman is brutally murdered, Mason and Woods combat their means free, hijack a Hind, and bust up Kravchenko’s headquarters, saving “Reznov” as soon as once more. Woods sacrifices himself to save lots of Mason from the cornered Kravchenko, and each males are presumed useless. In true Call of Obligation vogue, neither are.
In the meantime, Weaver and Hudson make contact with Dr. Steiner, who’s now terrified of Dragovich and determined to flip on him. He reveals that Dragovich is hours away from ordering sleeper brokers to unleash Nova 6 throughout the U.S., upsetting nuclear battle. Hudson and Weaver rush to Steiner’s lab on Rebirth Island, however Mason and his guardian angel beat them to it. They infiltrate the ability on their very own and discover Steiner. Reznov executes the Nazi scientist, however that’s not what Hudson and Weaver see. Mason is alone, and so they watch him pull the set off.
Hudson and Weaver take Mason in and race to unravel his severely compromised mind to cease World Battle 3. Their determined interrogation makes up the enduring body narrative of Black Ops 1. “The numbers, Mason!” ranks amongst Call of Obligation’s most immortal strains– proper up there with “50,000 individuals used to stay right here” and “f***ing campers.”
We be taught the reality: Reznov died in Vorkuta and the disgruntled previous soldier who’s been following Mason round is a Battle Membership-style figment of his creativeness.
Mason decodes the sequence and leads a strike on Dragovich’s undersea numbers station. Within the remaining showdown, Mason strangles Dragovich and places an finish to his decades-spanning plot. This won’t be the final of Mason’s issues.
With Black Ops within the bag, we leap ahead 4 video games within the launch order to Black Ops: Chilly Battle, set within the temporary window of the Eighties earlier than the flashback sequences of Black Ops 2. Dragovich is useless, Mason is half out of his thoughts, and a brand new determine named Persus has emerged from the ashes.
1981
Soviet spymaster “Perseus” amasses energy and creates his personal rogue intelligence community to sow discord internationally. By 1981, they’ve stolen an American-made nuclear bomb courtesy of Operation Greenlight, an especially doubtful top-secret program that hid scorched-earth nukes all throughout Europe.
Woods is again in motion after blowing up and escaping from a POW camp. Hudson asks him to hitch Mason and new tremendous spy man Russell Adler to seek out Perseus for the CIA. They seize an injured Perseus lieutenant and produce them in for some gentle MKULTRA. M16 agent Helen Park helps implant the Perseus agent with false reminiscences of serving with Adler in Vietnam with a view to exploit them for intel.
Reborn as “Bell,” the brand new participant character joins Adler’s group, the place they’re saved in test with a “would you kindly” model management phrase: “We’ve acquired a job to do.” They collect a CIA Scooby gang and uncover a Spetsnaz coaching floor dressed up like an idyllic American suburb, full with an arcade and period-appropriate Doritos. They affirm the stolen nuke was of U.S. origin, and be taught the reality about Operation Greenlight– and their boss’s position in it.
Hudson was not solely conscious of the plan, he was in cost of it. The squad cabinets their beef and plots to steal an inventory of sleeper brokers from KGB headquarters in Moscow.
With the assistance of a mole named Belikov, Adler and Bell infiltrate the Lubyanka and cross paths with Mikhail Gorbachev and a bunch of Soviet spooks, together with younger Imran Zakhaev, the longer term remaining boss of Fashionable Warfare. The two collection don’t cross over fairly often, however there are sporadic hints that the worlds of Treyarch and Infinity Ward aren’t as separate as they appear.
The brokers go loud and escape with the sleeper record, which factors them to a Greenlight scientist named Hastings. By the point they discover him it’s too late– Perseus has the activation codes.
Adler abandons his completely refined mind-meld scheme and force-feeds medication instantly into Bell’s mind as a substitute. Their previous as a Perseus agent resurfaces together with the placement of the key base.
The story can go a couple of other ways from right here, however so far as canon is anxious, Bell lets Adler’s intrusion slide and offers up the actual location. The group destroys Perseus’ monastery stronghold and secures the nukes, however the man himself escapes. Hudson, eager to clear up any free ends, orders Adler to execute Bell because the story concludes.
Chilly Battle sits awkwardly within the Black Ops timeline– you’d suppose somebody would point out the entire “seeding a continent with nukes” factor over the following few many years of the story. Nonetheless, the retcon works, and characters like Park will pop up in future video games.
The actual fundamental occasion of Black Ops within the Eighties isn’t Perseus, nonetheless– it’s Black Ops 2’s Raul Menendez, a ruthless arms seller turned charismatic cult chief locked in a 40-year blood feud with Mason and Woods.
1986
Alex Mason has retired to Alaska’s frozen tundra, elevating his son David and being usually irritable. He ought to strive mushing wolf-dogs. Ex-handler Hudson and Oliver North come a-knocking with one final job: “Uncle” Woods has gotten himself captured once more whereas messing round within the Angolan civil battle.
Mason and Hudson rescue Woods and within the course of Mason crosses paths with an ice-cold younger arms seller named Raul Menendez. The males scuffle, Mason shoots his eye out and leaves him for useless.
At this level in his profession, Mason has slaughtered complete legions of hostile NPCS. What distinction does yet another gun-runner make? However Menendez survives with a gnarly scar and swears vengeance on the spook.
Raul was raised throughout Nicaragua’s soiled wars, watching U.S. backed Contras tear his homeland to shreds. His animosity in the direction of America turned private when his beloved sister Josefina was almost burned alive by a grasping American businessman.
Raul and his father constructed a large drug cartel that attracted the ire of the CIA. The company merced Papa Menendez in entrance of his son, which additional soured Raul’s emotions in the direction of the US.
By 1986, he’s working arms with the Soviets in Afghanistan. Mason and firm are despatched to intervene, linking up with native freedom fighters and a Chinese language contact named Tian Zhao. They survive a Soviet assault led by Lev Kravchenko, final of the Dragovich loyalists.
The sight of Kravchenko does a quantity on Mason’s, let’s face it, fully cooked mind, however it’s Woods who canonically delivers the killshot after they find out about a mole within the CIA.
The Mujahideen chief activates the People underneath orders from Menendez, leaving the squad to die within the desert. A delirious Mason sees “Tough Vik” Reznov experience in on horseback to save lots of the day.
The CIA finds the Menendez household compound in Nicaragua and cuts a test to Manuel Noriega, the real-life Panamanian dictator on the U.S. payroll. Noriega’s goons storm the compound and brutalize Josefina. Raul goes berzerk. Noriega shoots his personal males and lets Menendez go as a favor, which Raul returns by almost beating the overall to demise.
Once they lastly meet, Woods hurls a grenade meant for Raul, however a foul bounce means it kills Josefina as a substitute. Raul survives, and vows that Woods, and your entire world, will someday really feel his absolute loss. Three years later, Menendez places his plan into movement.
1989
The U.S. invades Panama with the purpose of overthrowing Noriega. In actual life, Noriega was smoked out of the Vatican embassy by Van Halen music on loop. In BLOPSworld he’s captured by (who else?) Mason and Woods. Hudson informs his males that Noriega is a “high-value particular person” to be exchanged for an nameless prisoner.
Hudson tells Woods that the hooded captive is Raul Menendez, and orders him to shoot the restrained prisoner through the swap. To Woods’s horror, the person is basically Alex Mason, and whereas the canon isn’t completely clear about this, it’s extensively believed that Mason isn’t any extra.
Afterwards, the actual Menendez seems, blows away Woods’s kneecaps, and divulges that he’s kidnapped Mason’s son David. Menendez used the boy as leverage to power Hudson to do his bidding. He slits Hudson’s throat with Josefina’s locket, leaves David traumatized, and spares Woods to undergo with the guilt of killing his closest good friend.
In a single fell swoop, two lead characters from the earlier Black Ops sport had been wiped off the board and one other horribly mutilated, leaving younger David to select up the items– a narrative to which we’ll return after a detour by the early ‘90s for Black Ops 6.
Woods spends the intervening years using a desk and elevating David as finest he can with out revealing the reality behind his father’s demise. The CIA believes that Russell Adler is the mole, paid off by Menendez to teamkill his CoD clan. Woods doesn’t purchase it, and suspects a shadow faction contained in the company itself: Pantheon.
Pantheon started as a CIA subdivision within the ‘70s, experimenting with a psychotropic super-soldier serum known as Challenge: Cradle. After a disastrous outbreak of the Cradle virus turned survivors into hallucinating rage monsters, Deputy Director Daniel Livingstone formally disavowed it.
The group reformed as an unbiased rogue cabal, reviving Cradle in secret whereas fanning the flames of America’s ceaselessly wars.
Talking of which, seize your finest bootleg Bart Simpson shirt and prepare to tear some packs of Gulf Battle generals, as a result of it’s 1991 and we’re invading Iraq… the primary time.
1991
Wheelchair-bound Woods is fielding a brand new group: his protege Troy Marshall, ops specialist Jane Harrow, and the enigmatic William “Case” Calderon. The squad is tasked to extract Saddam Hussein’s defecting protection minister Saeed Alawai, however their goal is executed on the spot by fugitive Russell Adler.
Adler insists that the CIA is compromised, and says he couldn’t permit the person to fall into Pantheon’s clutches. He surrenders himself with a easy riddle for Woods: “Bishop takes Rook.” Livingstone dismisses his warning and suspends the squad, who resolve to comply with Adler’s path anyway.
“Rook” refers to an previous KGB safehouse in Bulgaria that Adler and Woods found throughout their adventures within the ‘70s. The disgraced group shacks up there and recruits some new allies: German tech man Felix Neumann and Sev Dumas, an murderer from the fictional city-state of Avalon. She was educated and betrayed by the Guild, an underground felony community that can turn out to be far more necessary within the sequel.
With the gang assembled, they get away Adler from a CIA black web site deep beneath the U.S. Capitol constructing whereas Arkansas Governor Invoice Clinton works the room at a glitzy gala upstairs..
Again on the Rook, Adler explains that Pantheon was in mattress with Hussein, buying and selling experimental weapons for entry to his definitely-real WMD services. He tells them about Cradle and the place they could discover it. Subsequent cease: Saddam’s palace.
With assist from Chilly Battle’s Helen Park, the rogue BLOPers infiltrate Hussein’s gilded bunker. Amongst his hoard of treasures, the squad finds a pattern of Cradle. Additionally they uncover that Jane Harrow is Pantheon’s mole throughout the CIA and hint the virus’s origin to a analysis facility on American soil.
Once they arrive in Kentucky, Case falls down an elevator shaft and is uncovered to the Cradle, experiencing a Zombie nightmare.
Case overcomes his BLOPs protagonist amnesia and unlocks his previous– he was the failed authentic check “case” for a Cradle-powered super-soldier. The challenge was scrapped, his reminiscences had been erased, and he was welcomed again into the loving arms of the CIA, which stays oddly unconcerned with the scrambling of its staff’ minds.
A on line casino heist factors the squad in the direction of Gusev, Harrow’s Cradle scientist. He’s hiding out in Kuwait, so Case, Adler, and Lawrence Sims, one other Chilly Battle veteran, floor his flight.
Gusev tells the gang that Pantheon’s headquarters is positioned in an previous Soviet jail camp– Victor Reznov’s previous hang-out Vorkuta, floor zero for your entire Black Ops saga.
In essentially the most shameless nostalgia fest since Snake returned to Shadow Moses, group Rogue BLOPs revisits the gulag and apprehends the traitorous Harrow. They dose her with fact serum and drag the entire story out of her: She blames Adler for the home-invasion deaths of her dad and mom and joined Pantheon for revenge.
Their grasp plan is to make use of the Cradle for a false-flag terror assault on Washington, D.C. The Iraqis would take the autumn, Livingstone could be KIA, and Harrow/Pantheon could be in cost of the CIA.
Pantheon invades the Rook, setting off a climactic safehouse standoff. Harrow makes an attempt to flee on a helicopter, however Case boards her vessel mid-flight. Utterly geeked on Cradle, Case strangles Harrow in a blind rage and sends the chopper crashing right into a river, the place each are presumed useless. Certain they’re!
Livingstone makes peace with Woods, Adler, and Marshall and encourages them to hang around their shingle as an off-the-books Black Ops cell. In a remaining stinger, we see that Pantheon is down however not out as one other mole, Jackson Caine, slips into Livingstone’s workplace and hacks into his pc.
The story continues 44 years later in Black Ops 7, however first there’s the matter of Menendez to take care of.
In 2014, a social motion named Cordis Die emerges from the web. Its charismatic chief Odysseus positive aspects followers together with his impassioned rants in opposition to the corrupt 1%. He engineers riots in Iran and North Korea and develops an unstoppable pc worm out of the uncommon earth steel Celerium with the assistance of hacker Chloe Lynch.
He makes use of it to hack the Chinese language inventory trade in 2018, pinning the blame on the U.S. and triggering a second chilly battle between NATO and China amid an escalated drone arms race. Mason’s former ally Tian Zhao is in cost of China’s SDC and dealing with Menendez, combining their huge assets to warmth up the battle and usher in a brand new world order.
2025
By the far off distant future of 2025, Cordis Die has amassed two billion followers, none of whom realise their cult chief is the Nicaraguan narco-terrorist, and that your entire “Occupy BLOPS” motion was only a cowl for one man’s mad-on in opposition to Woods and Mason. Younger David Mason is now a Navy Seal operator named “Part” who nonetheless checks in on his expensive previous Uncle Frank.
Menendez makes the primary transfer by visiting a still-living, still-smoking Woods within the Vault, a retirement residence for Mimis and Pop Pops with pink of their ledger. He leaves behind the pendant used to homicide Hudson.
Part and his JSOC boys Mike Harper and Javier Salazar go to Woods for some action-packed ‘60s flashbacks. The previous man offers them the filth on his tragic historical past with Menendez and clues them in about Celerium. The younger bucks embark on a collection of missions investigating Menendez, and his large mercenary military.
The gang eavesdrops for intel a few cyber weapon known as “Karma.” Part, Harper, and Salazar seek for it on the decadent floating metropolis of Colossus, the place they uncover that “Karma” is definitely Chloe Lynch, and that Menendez is attempting to kill her to maintain her quiet in regards to the Celerium pc worm.
Her destiny has but to be confirmed by canon, but when they do save Karma from prime henchman DeFalco, she uncovers Menendez’s final plan: on June nineteenth, Freedom Day, he’s going to hijack the U.S. army’s drone system and unleash an digital rumbling on each main metropolis inside each world superpowers. That’s tomorrow.
Over Part’s objections, his commander Admiral Briggs decides it’s excessive time to seize Menendez. They contact Farid, a deep cowl operative observing Menendez ignite a revolution in Yemen. Farid sacrifices himself to save lots of Harper and Melendez is well captured and brought onboard the plane service U.S.S. Barack Obama.
Shock! We had been enjoying proper into Menendez’s good ruse your entire time. It’s the “getting caught was half of my plan” gambit that was all the fad within the late aughts, although to be truthful, Black Ops 2 scribe David S. Goyer additionally wrote the screenplay for the trope-defining Darkish Knight.
Cordis Die goons storm the Obama and Menendez seizes management of the ship with the assistance of his double agent, your now ex-BFF Salazar. He uploads the virus and takes over the U.S. army drone community earlier than escaping.
Since canon presumes you accomplished the bonus Strike Missions and took down Tian Zhao, Chinese language planes will save the ship and ally with JSOC in opposition to the drones, ending the chilly battle for good.
As 1000’s of steel demise machines swarm upon populated cities, Part, Harper, David Petraeus, and the President of the US are shot down in a war-torn Los Angeles. Underneath siege by a military of killer drones, the lads escort POTUS to security in a single essentially the most spectacular setpieces in a collection that has quite a bit of them.
JSOC and China hint the drone management sign to a Cordis Die facility in Haiti and stage a full-scale invasion. Menendez goes stay once they arrive, however as a substitute of destroying the world’s cities he blows up each single one of the drones as a substitute, crippling American army infrastructure.
Part lastly captures his father’s assassin and makes a martyr out of Menendez– which is strictly what he wished. He posts a posthumous YouTube video instructing his billions of followers to take benefit of the drone-free energy void and seize management of the US.
Treyarch has been fairly agency that the “Menendez dies” ending of Black Op 2 is canonical, though his promised Cordis Die rebellion fizzles out.
2035
Call of Obligation: Black Ops 7 is about a decade after the top of BLOPS 2. Frank Woods has lastly gone to that previous troopers’ residence within the sky and David Mason continues to be dorkily calling himself Part and main a brand new group named “Specter One,” with previous faces like Harper and Marshall and new ones just like the bionic 50/50.
The world continues to be shaken from the drone incident. The Guild has shed its shady starting and is reborn as a strong tech large providing safety in unsure occasions. In 2035, the useless Menendez shocks the world with a prophecy and a risk: in three days, your streets will run pink together with your blood. He’s presumably referring to a brand new fear-based macguffin that pushes minds to the sting of consciousness with typical Black Ops trippiness.
It’s a “5 minutes into the longer term” setting, a contact extra sci-fi than Fashionable Warfare however nearer to a tomorrow that appears simply across the nook. It’s not the primary time that Black Ops has moved ahead within the timeline, and it’s nowhere near the enormous leap taken by Treyarch for Black Ops 3.
2062
Set in 2062, Black Ops 3 is the odd duck in an already fairly bizarre franchise. It depicts a surreal, Phillip Okay. Dickian future that’s been solid within the fallout of Cordis Die’s drone battle, the place the previous geopolitical order has collapsed and optimized into two bloated megafactions locked in limitless proxy wars. New expertise makes air supremacy out of date. Mechs roam the battlefield, and wallrunning supersoldiers interface instantly with the grid.
Black Ops 3’s marketing campaign is formidable and unusual, however it feels much less like the following chapter within the Black Ops saga and extra of an elective epilogue, the type of ending you’d reload a save to keep away from. There’s connective tissue to the bigger mythos, however none of the traditional characters or grudges survive the time skip. Additionally, BLOPS being BLOPS, most of the motion seems to be the digital experiences of a disembodied dying consciousness inside a simulation.
Whereas there’s no purpose to doubt its canonicity, Black Ops 3 isn’t the main focus of Black Ops 7– The newest title has far an excessive amount of unfinished enterprise previously to linger within the far-flung future. Nonetheless, the gradual drift in the direction of sci-fi is plain, and it makes whole sense: Black Ops has spent the final 15 years strip-mining the shadow wars of the twentieth century, and there’s actually just one route left to go.
Will Black Ops lose its psycho wetworks swagger if it strikes past the present day? Is there nonetheless extra juice to squeeze from our clandestine previous? Or is it time for Treyarch and Raven Software program to invent one thing solely new? In any case, if we discovered something from Call of Obligation: Black Ops, it’s that identities are something however everlasting.