Call of Duty: Black Ops

Video Game
STUDIOActivision
RELEASED2010

When he's interrogated by unknown figures, Alex Mason has to remember the location of a broadcast station, to stop a horrifying biotic weapon attack. During the progress, he begins to suspect the true identity of his Soviet friend-Victor Reznov.

Knowledge

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The Menu Room Has a Working Text Adventure Hidden Inside It

Before you even hit start on the campaign, you're strapped to a chair being interrogated. Rock the triggers back and forth fast enough and you break free, wander over to the terminal in the corner, and can type in a bunch of commands. One of them just loads up Zork, the 1977 text adventure Activision happens to own the rights to, complete with its own achievement for getting eaten by a Grue. It's a proper, playable version too, not some stripped-down tribute.

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That Same Terminal Unlocks an Entire Arcade Shooter

Once you're loose from the interrogation chair, typing DOA into the CIA terminal drops a full top-down zombie shooter called Dead Ops Arcade into your Zombies menu. It plays like a twin-stick Smash TV knockoff, and getting through the opening sequence just to reach it was such a rite of passage that later ports kept the exact same trigger-mashing intro untouched.

Call of Duty: Black OpsSource

Nuketown's Mailboxes Are a Quiet Nod to Its Own Hero

Walk up to the two houses on Nuketown and you'll notice the mailboxes are stamped with the names Mason and Woods, the two characters you spend the campaign playing alongside. Flip into spectator mode and cross to the far side of the barbed wire fence and there are even more mailboxes with names nobody's fully pinned down, suggesting Treyarch dressed the whole set more than most players ever bothered to check.

Call of Duty: Black OpsSource

Nuketown's Population Sign Actually Counts You

That faded 'Welcome to Nuketown' billboard isn't just set dressing. The population number on it genuinely changes to match how many players are currently in your match. It's such a tiny detail most people never look up long enough to notice, but Treyarch carried the idea forward, giving it an actual gameplay job as a kill counter in the Black Ops II zombies version of the map.

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There's a Doomsday Clock Ticking Just Outside the Map

Nuketown is tiny, but its makers still snuck a detail past the map's own boundaries. If you go into spectator mode and pan the camera out, there's a clock tower sitting off in the distance that's actually a doomsday clock, counting down toward the end of the round rather than any real time of day.

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The Whole Campaign Twist Hinges on a Man Who's Already Dead

For most of the game you fight alongside Viktor Reznov, the gruff Russian soldier who's been dragging Alex Mason toward revenge since World at War. The big reveal near the end flips that entirely: Reznov actually died early in the story, and every appearance after that point was Mason's own fractured mind keeping him around, a side effect of the brainwashing Reznov himself had tampered with.

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Shooting Reznov Gives You a Different Response Depending on When You Do It

Normally the game scolds you and resets the checkpoint the instant you turn a gun on an ally, and Reznov is no exception, at least at first. Players eventually noticed that shooting him during his introduction in Vorkuta gets the usual 'you betrayed your comrades' warning, but doing it in any of his later appearances triggers different dialogue entirely, a subtle nod to the fact he isn't really there anymore.

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Reznov's Father Fought in the Same Battle He Did

During the mission Project Nova, Reznov mentions in passing that his own father was present at the Battle of Stalingrad, the same fight Reznov himself survived back in World at War. It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it line, but it adds a whole extra generation to a character whose backstory already carries most of the game's emotional weight.

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Mason Has Apparently Been Dressing Like Reznov the Whole Time

Pay attention during the Rebirth Island mission and you'll notice Reznov is wearing the exact same outfit as Mason. It ties into the reveal that Mason believed, on some level, that he actually was Reznov, and it's a nice bit of visual foreshadowing that only really clicks once you already know the twist and go back looking for it.

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Reznov's Voice Actor Has Played Real Cold War Figures Before

Viktor Reznov is voiced by Gary Oldman, and according to GamesRadar's rundown of the game's cast, he's just one part of a genuinely stacked lineup that also included Ed Harris as Hudson and Ice Cube as Bowman. Oldman's other credits stretch from JFK to Christopher Nolan's Batman films, which makes his gravelly Soviet soldier feel almost understated by comparison.