Five years after the events of Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Russia has been taken over by the Ultranationalists and an Ultranationalist rebel by the name of Vladimir Makarov carries out terrorist attacks against the West. A CIA agent is put in the ranks of Makarov, but after being killed during a terrorist attack, the Russian government believes the US ordered the attack and invades the US in retaliation. The story focuses on a US Ranger that takes part in repelling the Russian invasion, while a multinational task force seeks to find Makarov and put an end to any further damage.
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At the end of the campaign mission Exodus, you're meant to grab a briefcase and move on. Skip it and drop prone instead, and if you look closely you'll spot two scraps of paper lying nearby that both read 'MW2 Never Die', a little goodbye note from the devs.
On the campaign level The Hornet's Nest, break away from the main path and head right, then cut through a shack tucked near some barrels. Keep pushing and you'll end up in a small garden with a stash of items waiting at the far wall, if you know where to turn.
General Shepherd was originally meant to go out in a proper boss fight staged on a version of the Rust map, but it got swapped for a simpler scripted cutscene before launch. If you pay attention during the actual ending, Rust is still sitting there visible in the background, a leftover trace of the fight that never made the cut.
Digging through the game's files shows that Raptor, the VIP you pull out during the Wolverines! mission, was originally written to be the President of the United States. That got dialled back before release, but the finished game still leaves heavy hints that he's someone seriously high up.
Every other mainline Call of Duty between Call of Duty 3 and Modern Warfare 3 got a Wii release. MW2 is the odd one out, Nintendo owners were handed a port of Call of Duty 4 instead of the actual sequel.
MW2 is where the Tactical Nuke killstreak was born. String together 25 kills without dying and you could call one in, ending the match on the spot with your team taking the win while a mushroom cloud filled the screen. It became the single most bragged-about achievement in the whole series.
Barely months after MW2 turned into one of the biggest launches ever, Activision fired Infinity Ward's own founders, Jason West and Vince Zampella, citing insubordination. The pair fired back with a lawsuit claiming they were dumped right before a huge royalty payout was due. It eventually settled out of court, but not before West and Zampella had already gone off and started Respawn Entertainment.
The fallout from MW2's success didn't stop at the top. A group of 38 current and former Infinity Ward staff filed their own lawsuit, arguing Activision had only handed out $28 million of a $118 million bonus pool tied to the game's sales and kept the rest.
Rust, the tiny industrial 1v1 map everyone spent hundreds of hours dueling on back in 2009, quietly resurfaced over a decade later. Head to the B flag on the Taraq map in the 2022 Modern Warfare 2's Ground War mode and you'll find an almost identical structure sitting there as a nod to where it all started.
You fight through a Burger Town restaurant during the Wolverines! mission in the original 2009 campaign. That same fictional chain has kept popping up in later Call of Duty releases, including a sign spotted on the Verdansk map, a running gag that all traces back to this one throwaway location.
