Call of Duty: Black Ops

**Call of Duty: Black Ops** is a 2010 first-person shooter game developed by Treyarch and published by Activision.

## Game Information

### Campaign

In April 1961, Mason, Woods, and Bowman partake in Operation 40 to assassinate Fidel Castro and assist the CIA-sponsored Cuban exiles during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Mason shoots Castro's body double and stays behind, allowing Woods and Bowman to flee in an extraction plane. He is captured by the real Castro, who hands him to the Soviet Union. Imprisoned at Vorkuta Gulag, Mason befriends former Red Army soldier Viktor Reznov. Reznov gives Mason the identities of their enemies: Major General Nikita Dragovich, Colonel Lev Kravchenko, and ex-Nazi scientist Friedrich Steiner, who defected to the Soviet Union. In October 1945, Reznov, Dimitri Petrenko, and their platoon were sent to extract Steiner from a Nazi base in the Arctic. However, they were betrayed by Dragovich, who tested Steiner's nerve gas "Nova 6" on Petrenko and his squad, killing them. Reznov was spared when British commandos, interested in acquiring Nova 6, attacked. He destroyed Nova 6 and escaped, only to be captured by the Soviets and sent to Vorkutlag. The Soviets later recreated Nova 6 using British scientist Daniel Clarke.

By 1963, Mason and Reznov spark an uprising to flee the prison; Reznov stays behind to facilitate Mason's escape. In November, President John F. Kennedy authorizes a mission to assassinate Dragovich. Mason, Woods, Bowman, and CIA agent Weaver are dispatched to the Baikonur Cosmodrome to disrupt the Soviet space program and eliminate members of "Ascension," a Soviet program giving sanctuary to Nazi scientists. The team destroys the Soyuz spacecraft, while Dragovich is seemingly killed in a car explosion.

In January 1968, Mason's team is sent to Vietnam as part of MACV-SOG. After defending Khe Sanh from a North Vietnamese assault, they recover a dossier on Dragovich from a Russian defector being held by the North Vietnamese Army in Hue City during the Tet Offensive; the defector is revealed to be Reznov. After Dragovich resurfaces, they penetrate Laos to recover a Nova 6 shipment from a downed Soviet plane. They are captured by Viet Cong and Spetznaz forces at the crash site. Bowman is executed, but Woods and Mason escape, hijacking a Mi-24 Hind and crippling the Ho Chi Minh trail before rescuing Reznov from Kravchenko's base. They confront Kravchenko, but he primes grenades strapped to his body, forcing Woods to push himself and Kravchenko out of a window; Mason presumes the two dead.

Hudson and Weaver interrogate Clarke in Kowloon City. Clarke reveals the location of a facility in Mount Yamantau before being killed by Dragovich's men. Hudson and Weaver destroy the facility and receive a transmission from Steiner requesting to meet at Rebirth Island, as Dragovich will kill him next. Mason and Reznov, meanwhile, head there to assassinate Steiner, succeeding as Hudson and Weaver arrive. Hudson and Weaver witness Mason carrying out the act alone while declaring himself Reznov, prompting the pair to interrogate him; it is revealed that Mason is hallucinating a string of randomized numbers.

Dragovich has sleeper cells placed within each State capital, which, when ordered by a broadcast of the numbers from his station, will release Nova 6. In response, the U.S., now at DEFCON 2, is preparing a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. Hudson reveals that Mason was brainwashed by Dragovich at Vorkuta to serve as a Soviet sleeper agent and assassinate Kennedy. Reznov died during the breakout, and the Soviet defector was killed; Mason's visions of Reznov are an illusion caused by the brainwashing. Prior to his death, Reznov reprogrammed Mason to assassinate Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner. Mason remembers the location of Dragovich's broadcast station is a Russian ship named *Rusalka* off the coast of Cuba. An assault on the *Rusalka* begins, with the United States Navy called in to destroy it. Mason and Hudson confront Dragovich in the underwater submarine base protecting the ship, with Mason drowning Dragovich. He escapes with Hudson, and they join Weaver and the Navy.

Footage of President Kennedy before his assassination on November 22, 1963, is shown, revealing Mason was among onlookers who watched him arrive at Love Field, suggesting Mason may have carried out his initial programming.

### Zombies

During World War II, Doctor Ludvig Maxis formed Group 935, a group of scientists intended to improve the human condition. Lacking funds, they soon turned to creating superweapons to aid the Nazis. Their discovery of Element 115 from a meteorite in Japan led to zombies' creation. Maxis and his assistant, Dr. Edward Richtofen, also work on other projects, leading to the creation of teleportation devices and 115-powered weapons. Attempting to use himself as a test subject, Richtofen accidentally teleports to a catacomb within the Moon, where he comes into contact with a mysterious pyramid device that causes him to hear ghostly voices, slowly taking away his sanity. He is later teleported to an exotic jungle known as Shangri-La, where he spends three weeks studying the Vril energy force. Upon returning to Germany, Richtofen secretly forms a plan to kill Maxis and gathers many members of Group 935 to build a Moon base known as Griffin Station. While maintaining his cover with Maxis and the rest of Group 935, Richtofen manages to capture three soldiers: Tank Dempsey, Nikolai Belinski, and Takeo Masaki; he begins to experiment with Element 115, causing memory loss for all three soldiers.

Maxis continues his work on other experiments, attempting to use his daughter's dog, Fluffy, as a test subject for his own teleportation device. However, the experiment fails, and Fluffy is transformed into an undead Hellhound. Richtofen takes the opportunity and traps Maxis and his daughter Samantha inside the teleporter with Fluffy, believing they will die. Richtofen escapes as Der Riese is overrun by zombies with his three captured soldiers and arrives at the Rising Sun research facility in Japan, where Element 115 was first discovered. After gathering a sample of 115 at the site and recovering a weapon known as the Wunderwaffe DG-2, they return to the Der Riese factory in Germany. In an attempt to escape the zombie horde, the group accidentally overloads a teleporter with the DG-2, sending them forward in time. They arrive at an abandoned Nazi theater in the 1960s, where Richtofen discovers several recordings left behind by Dr. Maxis. Samantha, having survived and managing to control the zombies, continues raising the undead to hunt down Richtofen.

In 1963, the United States government manages to grab hold of several of Group 935's inventions, keeping them hidden in the Pentagon. Zombies breach the Pentagon, trapping John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Robert McNamara, and Fidel Castro inside and forcing them to fight their way out. Meanwhile, Richtofen's crew arrives at a Soviet Cosmodrome site, where Richtofen intends to travel to Group 935's Moon base, Griffin Station. The crew is contacted by Gersh, a member of the Ascension Group who requests to be freed from Samantha's grip. After freeing Gersh, the four of them are teleported further in time and arrive at a Siberian lighthouse sometime in 2011, once used by Richtofen as a secret lab. However, they are trapped within a locked room and forced to rely on four movie actors: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Danny Trejo, Robert Englund, and Michael Rooker, who are filming a zombie movie on-site along with director George A. Romero, who had been infected as well. Richtofen requests the four celebrities to find a golden rod, a Vril generator device, which he then uses to fix the teleporter. He transports himself and the other three soldiers back to Shangri-La, leaving the celebrities behind to continue fighting Romero and the horde. At Shangri-La, the group discovers two explorers, Gary and Brock, who died trapped within a time loop while trying to discover the secrets of the mythical Agartha realm. The group saves the explorers' lives by traveling back and forth in time, altering the environments of the temple in the process. They discover an altar within the temple with Richtofen's name written on it and a piece of a meteorite containing Element 115. However, the explorers remain stuck in the never-ending loop.

With the Vril generator and the meteorite piece, Richtofen believes he can control the zombies and returns to Griffin Station. Here, they attempt to activate the MPD, a machine that controls the Aether energy, which opens to reveal Samantha inside; instead of dying by Richtofen's trap, Samantha is teleported to the moon while Maxis is sent somewhere else. Samantha accidentally triggered the MPD and was trapped within the device, but this also allowed her to enter the Aether realm. Maxis, who was retrieved by Group 935 scientists, apologized to his daughter and committed suicide in front of her, prompting her to assume control of the zombies and seek vengeance on Richtofen. Richtofen fuses the golden rod and the meteorite piece and, using it to switch souls with Samantha, takes over as the new zombie controller. This causes his former allies to feel betrayed, and they ally themselves with Samantha (who now resides in Richtofen's body). Maxis is revealed to have become a sentient artificial intelligence living within the systems of Griffin Station, and he guides his daughter and the three soldiers to launch three missiles at the Earth. This severs Richtofen's link with the Aether, but the launch results in the catastrophic destruction of the Earth while still leaving Richtofen in control of the undead.