Frank Woods

Master Sergeant Frank Woods is one of the main characters of the franchise's Black Ops sub-series, serving as the deuteragonist of Call of Duty: Black Ops, the tritagonist of Call of Duty: Black Ops II, a character mentioned in Call of Duty: Black Ops III, a main character in Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, a playable character in Call of Duty: Black Ops: Declassified, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0.
He was a Marine veteran during the Korean War and Vietnam War, and a CIA and MACV-SOG special agent during the Cold War. In the 1980s, he helped the CIA fight against the Soviet spy Perseus and his network and Raul Menendez, who swore vengeance against Woods for the death of his siter Josefina. In 2025, he gives Alex Mason's son and his honorary nephew, David, information to connect the dots on how Menendez is tied to their past and to stop the terrorist. In the 2040s, Woods was revived by Savannah Mason-Meyer and became a member of the Archetypes and instructs the Specialists on how to use their equipment and weapons.
He was voiced and motion-captured by James C. Burns in Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified, Call of Duty: Black Ops II, and Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII. He was also voiced by Damon Victor Allen in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), Call of Duty: Warzone, Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
==Biography==
===Early Life===
Frank Woods was born on March 20th, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to unnamed parents, but ran away from home at an unknown age and lived on the streets. While on the streets, he learned how to be fully independent and later joined the United States Marine Corps in the 1950s. Woods participated in the Korean War, gaining him combat experience and a reputation that led him to be recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency. He also became his close friend with fellow marine Alex Mason, whom was also recruited into the CIA's Special Activities Division. Additionally, The two later meet and became close friends with naval officer Joseph Bowman.
==Black Ops==
===Bay of Pigs Invasion===
Woods and Alex Mason's first mission in Call of Duty: Black Ops first took place in Havana, Cuba were a CIA backed team known as Operation 40 was tasked to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. The team fought through police and Cuban forces as they escape from Havana and continuing to Castro's compound. Once in the compound, Bowman splits the team in order to find Castro.
Woods and Mason locate Castro and his mistress, Mason kills Castro and either Mason or Woods kills his mistress. The two regroup with Bowman and as the team escapes Cuba, Mason jumps off the vehicle that they were in to ensure that the team escapes, which leads to Mason's capture at the hands of the real Castro (revealing that the one that the team killed was a double) and Soviet Armed Forces lead by Russian General Nikita Dragovich and his second, Lev Kravchenko. Mason was then sent to Vorkuta, where he was experimented on by Friedrich Steiner for sleeper agents.
===Operation Flashpoint===
Soon after Mason escapes Vorkuta, Woods leads his team to disrupt the Soviet Space Program in Baikonur, U.S.S.R. As soon as the mission begins, the team notices that Weaver was captured by Kravchenko and is being tortured by the Soviets, prompting Woods to order the team to move in and rescue Weaver from his captors. After fighting through Soviet Forces, Woods and Mason zip-line through a window, execute a few Soviet Soldiers, and manages to save Weaver.
The team then went to shut down a missile launch, but the first attempt failed as the missile's computers were fried. Woods then ordered Mason to destroy the missile with Valkyrie Rockets and succeeded. They then fight through the underground tunnels and as the mission ends, Kravchenko escapes with no sign of Dragovich, with the team assuming that he was killed in an explosion from his Limousine. It's later revealed that Dragovich wasn't inside the limo, and escaped presumably before the team made it to Baikonur.
===Vietnam and Supposed Death===
Woods returns as team leader of the MAC-V SOG in Khe Sanh, Vietnam where he, Mason, and Agent Jason Hudson fights through NVA to locate Dragovich which fighting through into Hue City eventually led them to Laos. Once in Laos, the team was captured. Once they were at the presence of the Viet Cong, they were forced to play Russian Roulette. Woods and Mason used this as a chance to escape from the Viet Cong after Bowman was executed. Once escaped, Woods and Mason fought through the NVA. After such, they were encountered by Kravchenko.
After brutally beating Mason, Kravchenko was stabbed in the back by Woods, but Kravchenko cooked his entire grenade belt strapped to his body at his last breath. At great reflexes and timing, Woods tackled Kravchenko out a window and everyone, even Mason and Hudson, presumed he was killed by the grenade explosions. At the end of Black Ops, after Dragovich was killed by Mason, Mason receives a note from X stating that Woods is still alive. This was unknown at that point.
===Imprisonment and Escape===
Both Woods and Kravchenko survived their confrontation, with the former managing to get Lev's grenade belt loose and used the loading bay next to the window to get it over (using it as "Sump" so it could absorb the grenade and cause little damage). Though Kravchenko was injured by Woods's knife wound, he managed to recover quickly and captured Frank. He was sent to the Hanoi Hilton, and was then moved to a POW camp in Da Nag months later. By 1972, Woods was the last of the seventeen prisoners, and engineered an escape and got back home safely. Woods would continue to serve the CIA during the 1970s, such as rescuing a group of CIA analyst and fighting the NVA.
==Black Ops Cold War==
In 1981, Woods is tasked with eliminating Iranian terrorist leaders Arash Kadivar and Qasim Javadi by President Ronald Reagan, and works with Mason and Russell Adler. Kadivar revealed to the group of the resurgence of "Perseus", a Soviet spy who Adler was tasked with stopping for decades, and believed was dead. After the operation, Woods was briefed by Hudson about "Perseus", and President Reagan gave Adler the order to form a team to stop the Soviet spy and his network. Woods and Mason become members of Adler's team alongside CIA agents Lawrence Sims and Eleazar "Lazar" Azoulay, MI6 agent Helen Park, and new operative who is code named "Bell". Woods and Mason were sent to Kiev to deal with a situation while Adler and his team went to Germany to capture/eliminate Russian mafia boss Anton Volkov.
After their mission in Kiev, Woods was tasked with infiltrating a Spetsnaz training facility in Ukraine with "Bell", and learn of the CIA nuclear program called Operation: Greenlight. The program was a CIA operation where they placed nukes across Europe, and that it was headed by Hudson. Woods and the team confronted Hudson about "Greenlight", and the latter revealed that it was scorched earth policy if the Soviet Union invaded the United States. The team realized that "Perseus" had access to one of the nukes from Berlin, but also gained intel that "Perseus" was looking for sleeper agents that Dragovich programmed back in the 1960s. Woods and Mason were then sent to Yamantau to collect the intel from the mainframe, aided by KGB double agent Dimitri Belikov. Despite the success of the mission, Hudson's superior Emerson Black reveals that "Perseus" had erased the list, forcing Adler and his team to infiltrate the KGB headquarters to collect the list. The player has the option to collect evidence and have Woods and Mason eliminate Robert Aldrich and Vadim Rudnik, which can cripple "Perseus'" network and prevent their spies from infiltrating the American and European governments.
Woods would later participate in finding Theodore Hastings in Havana to what they believed was the nuke's location, and the team learned that "Perseus" had reprogrammed Hastings to give him access to launch all of the American nukes in Europe. Woods and the team managed to escape from Havana, but Park/Lazar are left behind and killed by Tropas. Depending on the player's choices, "Bell" will either reveal the truth of "Perseus's" location in Solvovetsky, or lie to Adler that "Perseus" is in Duga.
<tabber>
Truth (Solvovetsky) = If "Bell" decides to aid the CIA in stopping "Perseus" and tells them his location, Woods participates in the operation in destroying the AA-guns to prevent the signal of the nukes. During the operation, Woods and Mason separated from Adler and "Bell" who were destroying the last AA-gun so Hudson could send in a bombing run to destroy the facility. Woods, Mason, Adler and "Bell" succeed in destroying the AA-guns, and Woods and Mason hear Adler's speech on how wars are won before leaving the island.
|-|
Lie (Duga-2) = If "Bell" decides to betray the CIA, they will take Adler, Woods, Mason and Park/Lazar (if present) to Duga-2. If "Bell" didn't contact their Soviet allies, Adler will kill them and leave their body to be find by the Soviets. If "Bell" managed to contact their Soviet allies, Woods and the team are ambushed and killed in the process, leaving Adler to be killed by "Bell". "Perseus" will reveal himself after Adler's death, and allows "Bell" to signal the detonation of the nukes. 
</tabber>
===The Hunt for Adler===
Three years after stopping Perseus's plans, one of his agents, Vikhor "Stitch" Kuzmin decided to enact his revenge on Adler for taking his eye and causing him to be imprisoned in the Gulag. Stitch and his men infiltrated the CIA safehouse in Berlin, and tricked Adler and his squad to infiltrate the Pines Mall in New Jersey. The Perseus agent then ambushed Alder and captured him, and Woods was tasked by the CIA to lead a rescue team to find him. Three months after his capture, the CIA received information that Adler was last sighted in Laos. Woods was given a team that consisted of Terrell Wolf and Karla Rivas, and was tasked to rescue Adler before he was killed or gave information away.
Woods and his team arrived to help Rivas fight against Perseus troop that were led by former warlord turned Perseus agent, Kapona "Naga" Vang. After dealing with the troops, Woods and the team found empty Nova 6 caches in a nearby village, realizing that Naga tricked them into thinking "Perseus" cared about the gas. Finding torture devices, the team comes to the conclusion that Adler was tortured and taken away by Naga while they battled his troops. The group then interrogated the remaining Perseus soldiers, and learned from them that Adler was taken to Verdansk. Returning to Hudson, he orders Woods and his team to travel to Verdansk and rescue Adler from Stitch. On June 10th, Woods and his team managed to rescue Adler, but unbeknownst to them, Stitch had succeeded in completing his programming on the agent.
===Fighting against Perseus' Network===
Woods continued his service with the CIA in fighting against the Perseus Spy Network, as Perseus' agents were completing their task of destroying satellites to stop them from interfering with the numbers broadcast. While investigating the destroyed satellite that landed in orbit in Algeria, Adler would secretly secure a data recorder presumably due to his programming from Stitch. Woods was then assigned to stop Perseus agent Kaori "Kitsune" Tanaka who had infiltrated the Echelon NATO station in West Berlin, but Kitsune would upload the broadcast, causing some of Woods' men to turn on each other. Woods was forced to battle his own men and escaped from the station with the operative Stryker as Kitsune escaped.
After the Echelon incident, Woods met with Hudson, who revealed that forensics showed that the data from the crashed satellite would have survived. Woods then laments that Adler was the first to the satellite and that the Perseus soldiers were clean, and Hudson concludes that Adler has been compromised by the Perseus network. He realizes that Hudson is correct since his soldiers were brainwashed at the Echelon Station, and is told by Jason to find Mason to bring Adler in. Woods would contact Mason, who would find Adler and bring him to a interrogation room similar to the one Alex was in back in the 1960s. Mason and Hudson succeeded in breaking Adler's brainwashing, and Woods participated in going to Verdansk with Mason, Hudson and Adler to stop Stitch and the spy network. Woods would fly their helicopter to confront Stitch, and Adler executed the Soviet after learning that Perseus had passed away a year prior from cancer.
After dealing with Stitch, Woods and the team returned to Verdansk and discovered an abandoned Nazi bunker, encountering SOE captain Carver Butcher. The captain explained that after winning the Second World War, he founded numerous task force's to find any remnants of the Nazis across the world.
==Black Ops II (1980's)==
The campaign of Call of Duty: Black Ops II starts in a CIA-run retirement home known as the Vault with the Joint Special Operations Command locking the building down after being breached by political activist and Latin terrorist Raul Menendez. Woods did confirm Menendez's presence (while demeaning Harper) and shows David Mason a heart-shaped pendant that Menendez left at the Vault. Woods told David and Harper that all Menendez said to him was Mi hermana (translating into My sister in Spanish). Woods then start to tell the story of how Menendez's rise to power began.
===1986===
Starting eighteen years after the death of Soviet General Nikita Dragovich, Woods was found tortured and barely alive by Mason and Hudson in a cargo box on a barge in Angola after Mason discovers that Woods was in fact alive after his encounter with Kravchenko. While Mason was trying to call Angola Military Leader, Jonas Savimbi, for extraction. The attempt failed after Menendez destroyed the radio he was using to contact Kravchenko (who must've worked for Menendez after the death of his previous superior) and the village that Mason, Hudson, and Woods were in was put on full alert. After an intense battle against a huge group of MPLA and Tropas, Savimbi arrived in a hijacked Hind (at first, Hudson thought it was the Soviets coming to kill them) and started to extract the three. Just as soon it was mission accomplished, Hudson was shot in the shoulder by a Cuban Soldier, but the shooter was immediately killed by Woods.
Mason, Woods, and Hudson was then deployed to Afghanistan alongside Chinese SDC Chairman Tian Zhao to help the Mujahideen and their leader Mullah Rahmaan to defend their home from Soviet Russia. After serious fight, Woods first spots a heavily armed attack beginning, Mason leads a countercharge and eventually jumps onto the the enemy leader's tank. After Mason fights him, Woods finds out that it was Kravchenko who was invading Afghanistan.
After an interrogation of what affiliates Kravchenko has on Menendez (which can end as soon as it begins with Mason killing Kravchenko due to Reznov's influence on him or Woods killing him after the interrogation, both are based on player choice) the Mujahideen betrays the CIA and SDC revealing that they were actually working for Menendez and dumps them in the middle of nowhere, tied up and restrained. After a few hours, a group of strangers came by to free the team and Zhao and provided them with water. Mason thought it was Reznov, but Woods denied saying that if it was, he would stick around do some explanations.
After Afghanistan, the team did a joint operation in Nicaragua with the Panamanian Defense Forces and Manuel Noriega in order to capture Menendez. The mission unfortunately went completely array when, on sight of Menendez, Woods throws a grenade into Menendez's sister's (Josefina Menendez, who was severely crippled in a Warehouse fire) room, ultimately killing her accidentally, putting Menendez's remaining life on a much more sinister path that would uncover in years 1989, 2014, and 2025.
===1989===
Woods, along with Mason and fellow CIA asset Mark McKnight, take part in "Operation Just Cause" to capture Noriega by orders from (then) President George H. W. Bush. Suddenly, Hudson gets on the comlink (which had been bugging off constantly) to tell Woods and Mason that Noriega was actually a prisoner exchange/handoff with actionable intelligence on a high priority "Nexus Target"(if Kravchenko is thoroughly interrogated, Woods will start to remember his final words: "...he even has people in the CIA", and will start to become suspicious).
As Noriega is escorted throughout the slums, Woods becomes more and more puzzled at the situation. As soon as "Nexus Target" is revealed as Raul Menendez, Woods awaits his arrival for an attempt at his life (if Woods kills Kravchenko, his final words will be heard. This is to make the player suspicious). Once Woods took the shot, Woods will then discover that he actually killed Mason (or just merely wounded him, ensuring his survival into the very end of the game. This depends on the player's choice). Once Woods goes to shoot Noriega, his right kneecap was then shot and destroyed by Menendez himself, who then shoots and destroys his left knee, leaving Woods crippled for the remainder of his life. After witnessing Hudson's death, Woods attempts to comfort David (Mason's Son), but loses consciousness from his wounds.
===Retirement===
Following the operation in Panama, Woods was honorably discharged from the military and decided to raise David as his legal guardian out of guilt for Alex's death. During the early years of the 20th century, Woods told JSOC about Menendez and the threat he posed, but they were too busy with the drone race. Woods was later taken to the Vault by the CIA, since he knew too much and participated in their classified operations during the Cold War.
== Black Ops 6 ==
To be announced...
== Black Ops II (2025) ==
===2025===
Now 95 and retired, Woods spent the remainder of his life before the Vault taking care of David as his legal guardian. On April 19, he was visited by Menendez and given the heart-shaped pendant, telling him "Now it begins". During the future missions in the campaign, Woods tells David and Mike Harper his past operations that tied him and Mason with Menendez from Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Panama. After telling David of the operation that left him crippled and the death of Alex (up to the player's choice), he encourages David to find and kill Menendez. 
====Endings====
At the end of the campaign, Woods' fate depends on player decisions:
<tabber>
Ending 1 =
After the events of Judgement Day, Woods receives an unwanted visitor, which is revealed to be a 92-year-old Alex Mason, alive and well. Thinking it was a hallucination, Woods tapped Mason in the torso, and to his surprise, it was really Mason and not a mind trick. Later, David was then reunited with his long-lost father.
|-|
Ending 2 = After the events of Judgement Day, in either scene, whether Mason is alive or not, Woods will be killed by Menendez, claiming his revenge for his sister. His body was placed on his bed with Menendez's pendant.
|-|
Ending 3 = After the events of Judgement Day, Woods and David visit Mason's grave site, with David telling Woods that he is stepping down as Lieutenant Commander of the US Navy for retirement. Woods replies "He's glad to hear that".
</tabber>
==Black Ops III==
Before the events of Black Ops III, Coalescence Corporation CEO Sebastian Krueger requested information involved in Project Nova back during the Cold War. Krueger intended to revive the CIA's MK project, and looked up information on Woods, Mason, and Hudson. Krueger would later have Nova 6 re-created, which would cause the Singapore disaster in 2060 and the deaths of 300,000 people.
==Black Ops 4==
Between 2043 and 2045, Woods was revived alongside Mason, Menendez and Viktor Reznov by Project Blackout. Referred to as the Archetypes, Woods was assigned by Alex's granddaughter, Savannah Mason-Meyer, to assist specialists in combat. During his time, Woods and Savannah begin a relationship, but he discovers that Alex has been brainwashed by an unknown attacker. Woods takes Mason to the Asylum in an attempt to reverse the effects, and reveals Reznov to Alex in hopes of getting his memory back.
==Modern Warfare (2019)==
Woods appears in the 2019 reboot Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and 2020 battle royale Call of Duty: Warzone as a playable operative, and became available on August 26, 2020, for players who pre-ordered Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. In the game, he is an operative for Demon Dogs, a branch unit for the Coalition, a multi-alliance group that battles the Al-Qatala and the Ultranationalists. In the sequel Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, he appears as a operative for SpecGru and makes a brief appearance in the infilitration sequence of Warzone 2.0.
== Call of Duty: Mobile ==
Woods was added into Mobile in 2020 during season twelve, and became a major character in the comics. In the comics, Woods is the founder of the Phantom Corps, recruiting new operatives and explaining the threat of The Atlas Corporation, The Iron Will and The Tontine.
==Quotes==
===Black Ops===
===Black Ops Cold War===
===Black Ops II===
===Black Ops 4===
=== Mobile Comics ===
===Warzone===
==Trivia==
*Woods' blood type is B-negative.
*In the multiplayer map Nuketown and Nuketown 2025, Wood's name is one of the mailboxes.
*Woods is the third character chronologically in Call of Duty to be seen in a reflection. The others are Captain Price in Modern Warfare 3, and Raul Menendez (in "Time and Fate") and Section in ("Cordis Die") in Black Ops II.
*His most preferred weapon seems to be the Commando, a type of carbine rifle.
*Voted "The Best Video Game Character of the Year" at the 2010 Spike Video Game Awards.
*According to an early casting call and file names, Woods' surname was "Barnes".
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