Call of Duty: Black Ops/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


A list of some of the Subjective Tropes found in Call of Duty Black Ops and its fanbase.

  • Abridged Arena Array: Nuke till you puke!
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced:
    • Reznov is in Call of Duty: Black Ops? Awesome!
    • Quick Scoping has been gimped? And Commando is nowhere to be found? And kills from Killstreaks don't help you towards bigger Killstreaks? Awesome!
    • One Man Army (the perk that switches classes) isn't coming back in Black Ops and a lesser extent, Scavenger will strictly replenish ammo and equipment, not grenade launcher ammo. So bye-bye noobtube spamming.
    • Not to mention that it will have dedicated servers, mod tools, and developer console back after all these were ditched by Infinity Ward.
    • You can lean around corners again, too!
    • The Japanese version will have two versions: dubbed, or with subtitles.
    • New version of Nazi Zombies! In the Pentagon! And the characters are John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Robert McNamara and Fidel Castro!
    • For those with the Wii versions, the Nazi Zombies mode does appear in this port!
    • For Black Ops 2, it's been announced the campaign will be much less linear with multiple endings, and that the multiplayer will apparently be getting a facelift for the first time since Call of Duty 4. Win Back the Crowd indeed.
  • Anvilicious: Killing Castro in the first mission (or rather, his double) causes you to get the achievement "Death to Dictators", and the killing shot goes into slow motion while heavenly music plays. It's pretty heavy-handed, especially considering that Castro is a living leader of a modern country. Needless to say, the Cuban government was not pleased when they found out. They even accused the US of attempting to do virtually what they failed to do in Real Life.
    • Heavenly might be taking it a bit far... Castro's definitely portrayed unsympathetically, but pretty much everything you do in the game is made to seem shady at best, unethical at worst. The Castro mission was no exception.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Mason averts the total extermination of America at the last moment and kills the three Big Bads, but he killed JFK five years before and eventually is marked for termination along with Hudson and Weaver.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Treyarch appeased the NUKETOWNNUKETOWNNUKETOWN crowd with a playlist that rotates on that map alone, though it's only available during double-experience weekends on consoles.
  • Complete Monster: Black Ops has Dragovich, a guy who was a Jerkass since World War II, and has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He most definitely crosses the Moral Event Horizon when he throws Dimitri Petrenko (The Hero of Treyarch's previous game World at War) into a gas chamber and releases a chemical agent that melts human tissue just to see if it works. Even worse when it turns out that even though he is killed and his main plan fails, his plot to create a presidential assassin actually succeeds.
    • His dragon, Kravchenko, is no less monstrous - if you linger long enough in a specific area to listen to a radio recording made by him, he mentions that they've tested Nova 6 on children and infants. Intel on him indicates that Kravchenko is a bipolar sociopath who can only find joy in human suffering, and he even mutilated and murdered his sister when she spurned Dragovich's advances to show his loyalty.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: Sergei gets one early on in the "Vorkuta" mission in which he impales a guard through his back with a pickaxe and tosses him over his shoulder.
  • Even Better Sequel: To World at War.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Reznov, why are you so useless in combat since Vorkuta? Because he's not actually there.
    • Why do enemies keep shouting "VORKUTA!" during combat? That's were you were brainwashed.
    • Right after Woods sacrifices himself, you hallucinate he's asking you if you're okay, before it turns out it's actually Reznov asking the question. They're both dead.
      • Wait, if most of the missions are told via Flashback, why can I play as Hudson? because he's the one interrogating Mason.
        • Foreshadowed in Numbers when you, playing as Hudson, dish out a little bit of "Press X To Torture" on Dr. Clarke.
    • After Vorkuta, how the hell did Mason sneak back across the Berlin Wall? Dragovich needed him to because of the brainwash, and probably had some strings pulled to facilitate it.
    • A common complaint about the multiplayer is that lag can make it look like you were killed after you hid behind cover, leading people to call them magic bullets. Remember, this is a game involving the Kennedy Assassination, magic bullets are par for the course.
  • Fridge Horror: After playing Black Ops, you can't help but despair whenever you finish World At War, knowing that instead of their much-deserved "heroes return", Petrenko will be horribly killed within a few months and Reznov will be thrown into a hellhole gulag for nearly two decades.
  • Generic Doomsday Villain: General Dragovich.
  • Genre Savvy: It's actually not that hard to figure out that Reznov was dead the whole time before the big reveal, even on the first playthrough, if you pay enough attention.
  • Iron Woobie: Mason. Hell, he starts the game tied to a chair suffering Cold-Blooded Torture. Reznov also qualifies.
  • Magical Russian: Russian Reznov from World At War returns. He helps Mason escape from prison and develops a habit of being pulling Big Damn Heroes moments to save Mason's life. Except that Reznov (apparently) died in the prison escape. Mason had been brainwashed to be a sleeper agent, and Reznov interrupted that conditioning to make him want to kill Reznov's enemies. He helped Mason escape just on the hope that Mason would be successful.
  • Memetic Badass: In-story, Dimitri, Reznov, and Sergei.
  • Memetic Mutation: The floating apple, a Take That against people who overreact to Game Breaking Bugs in multiplayer.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Reznov frequently shows up to help Mason in battle. Over the course of the game, one cannot help but get the feeling that something is wrong with how convenient his appearances are. This creepy, unsettling feeling reaches a peak at the end of "Rebirth" and during "Revelations," where it is revealed he was a figment of Mason's brainwashed mind all along. There are also the implications that JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was also a Soviet sleeper agent ("Oswald...compromised...") and that Mason eventually kills JFK in the very last moments of the final cutscene.
    • Looking at intel can be exceptionally creepy, because all the ambient noise is erased from the room, as well as the music, except for this ongoing, creepy, wheezing noise like deep breathing or some kind of ventilation machine. It begins to wear on you after about two minutes and becomes deeply unnerving after five. It's never specified what it is, either...
  • Player Punch: Dimitri Petrenko's death.
  • Rewatch Bonus: The little details about Reznov stand out much more on a second playthrough. Why is he continuously going on separate missions with Mason's MACV-SOG unit? Why is he looking healthy and squared away like one of the American Marines, even wearing an American uniform? The answer to the first question is because he's not really there. The answer to the second question is likely because Mason is replacing an actual American on each mission with Reznov in his mind. It would be Foreshadowing, except it's cleverly hidden by Weaver's presence; because Mason describes him as being absolutely trustworthy despite being Russian in a short throwaway line, we assume the unit has some sort of policy that lets defectors serve with them. The first time through, the player assumes it's just a weak excuse to keep Reznov around for more of the game, and since most players like him, it's not even thought of as a problem. Even Reznov's appearance in the tunnel isn't true Foreshadowing, because it's made to look like Mason's buddy is chastising him for being startled, hiding the fact that he's just seen Mason talk to someone who isn't there.
    • Additionally, Mason's fanatical need to kill Dragovich and the others can easily be explained on a first playthrough by revenge and the fact that he was directly ordered to by John F. Kennedy himself. On a second run, you can see the compulsion programmed in by Reznov.
  • That One Level: SOG is usually considered of the hardest missions due to Respawning Enemies.
    • Specifically, respawning enemies with various heavy weapons, that you have to stand up in front of three separate times to pass a certain evil check point.
    • Infinite enemies also appear at the very end of "Executive Order". Worst. Hallway. Ever.
  • Win Back the Crowd: After the dedicated server brouhaha with Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops came to PC with dedicated servers and a server browser again. Not to mention the return of everybody's favorite gamemode from World at War. Black Ops 2 is also having this effect from the moment of its trailer's debut. Less linear gameplay and different endings based on how you do? The cries of stagnation are finished.
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