The year is 2011, and civil war has broken out in Russia between the Russian government and Russian ultranationalists under the command of Imran Zakhaev who seek to restore Russia back to its former Soviet-style leadership. A revolution has toppled a regime in an unnamed Arabic country which has ties to the Russian ultranationalists, with Khaled al-Asad coming to power. These two simultaneous events are causing fear that al-Asad and Zakhaev might form an alliance and use nuclear weapons against the West. In response to these concerns, the United States and the United Kingdom conduct joint operations to put down both uprisings, without putting their own nations' security at risk. Will they succeed?
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The phrase existed in smaller gaming circles before this game came out, tracing back to Halo 2 forums as far back as 2004. But it was Call of Duty 4's underslung grenade launcher that pushed the term into the mainstream and made it a permanent part of shooter slang.
Head to any multiplayer map with the big shipping containers, Shipment is the easiest spot, and take a proper look at the white lettering stencilled on the sides. Depending on the container, it reads out as 'INFINITY WRD' or 'COD MW', a sly little signature from the studio itself.
The Saudi Arabia invasion mission borrows its name straight from Apocalypse Now, where Robert Duvall's Kilgore snarls the same line before an airstrike. Infinity Ward leaned on war-movie references a lot for mission titles, and this is one of the more obvious ones once you know it.
Handing the player a gunship, a thermal camera, and a group of ground troops to protect turned out to be such a good formula that other studios copied it wholesale. Ace Combat: Assault Horizon's own AC-130 level lifts the structure so closely, right down to the three weapon types, that critics called it out directly.
Leftover game files reference multiplayer versions of the AC-130's 25mm, 40mm, and 105mm guns, suggesting the gunship was at one point planned as a killstreak-style reward you could call in online. It got cut before launch and wouldn't actually show up as a multiplayer reward until Modern Warfare 2.
The whole atmosphere of the mission, two operatives creeping through hostile, war-torn territory, mirrors the Owen Wilson film Behind Enemy Lines pretty closely. There's even a specific beat, a huge convoy cresting a grassy hill toward the player, that plays almost shot-for-shot like a scene from the movie.
One of the most quoted lines from the whole game, 'Fifty thousand people used to live here. Now it's a ghost town,' actually comes from Captain MacMillan surveying Pripyat, not Captain Price like a lot of players remember it. It's a small mix-up that's stuck around in fan trivia for years.
Finish All Ghillied Up from start to finish without a single enemy ever noticing you and you'll unlock the achievement Ghillies in the Mist, a nice nod to how tense and deliberate that mission is built to feel.
The stealth mission technically lets you go loud if you fancy it. Shoot down the enemy helicopter patrolling overhead with a Stinger and, in the remastered version at least, you actually get an achievement for it rather than being punished for breaking stealth.
There's a funny little inventory quirk in the original release: trade your USP .45 for something like an RPG-7 or a P90 during All Ghillied Up and the next mission hands you an AK-47 out of nowhere instead of what you'd actually earned. It got quietly fixed when the remaster came out.
