In the last two years of World War II, Pvt. Miller and Pvt. Petrenko, two allied soliders, will fight to end WWII. In famous battlefields from Pelelieu to Seelow Heights, Call of Duty World at War delivers brutal action, intense sieges, desperate stands, and memorable characters. Using any weapons at your disposal, from Thompson SMGs, to Flamethrowers, to T34 tanks, fight back the evil of the Fascist Reich and the Japanese Empire in the fifth installment in the Call of Duty Franchise.
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Death Cards were a genuinely new idea for the series when World at War launched - collectible cards hidden in nearly every single campaign level, each one unlocking a different co-op cheat once you track it down.
Pvt. Chernov, the diary-keeping Soviet soldier, actually ends up as a victim of a flamethrower attack later in the campaign - a grim payoff for a character who spends most of the game quietly writing down his experiences of the war.
In World at War's multiplayer, the very first perk slot always just gave you extra equipment as standard, a holdover system carried straight across from Call of Duty 4 since Treyarch hadn't yet had the chance to properly reshape multiplayer in their own image.
The LVT amphibious landing vehicle you ride in during the Pacific missions is noticeably smaller and faster than the real ones actually used in World War II - a bit of gameplay-over-accuracy that historians of the Pacific campaign like to point out.
Fred Tatasciore voices Nikolai Belinski in the Nazi Zombies mode, but for whatever reason he never actually got a proper credit for it in the game's cast list. He'd go on to voice loads more Zombies characters in later Treyarch games, so it's a bit of an odd oversight in hindsight.
Scroll far enough through the full voice-over credits for World at War and you'll spot 'Weird Al' Yankovic's name sitting there alongside 50 Cent, presumably from some other unrelated bit of licensed audio bundled into the credits list rather than actual campaign lines.
Pvt. Pyle's name isn't just a Full Metal Jacket reference - it's actually a layered nod, tracing back through the Marine Corps nickname to the 1960s sitcom Gomer Pyle, USMC as well. Treyarch clearly did their homework on that one throwaway character.
Miller's entire American campaign is technically being directed by a Major Gordon, a character who plans operations and feeds intel over the radio but is never actually seen in person throughout the whole game.
Treyarch spent roughly double the development time on World at War compared to their previous game, Call of Duty 3 - starting work back in late 2006, a full two years before it actually shipped.
As basic as it sounds now, World at War was actually the very first Treyarch-developed Call of Duty game to ever launch on PC, having previously stuck to console-only releases for the series.
