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[[File:mw_2_logo_-_jpeg_on_black_jpg_jpgcopy.jpg|frame|The "[[Call of Duty]]" is only on the box for brand awareness.]]
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'''[[Memetic Mutation|RAMIREZ!]] We're Oscar Mike to {{SITENAME}}, get to the edit button and describe [[Modern Warfare]] here!'''
''[[Modern Warfare]]'' is a [[Spin-Off]] of the [[World War II]]-themed [[First Person Shooter|FPS]] series ''[[Call of Duty]]'', set [[Next Sunday
The setting is best described as an [[Alternate History]], with the divergence point lying somewhere before the [[The Eighties|Chernobyl disaster]], when powerful Russian leader Imran Zakhaev started a massive Ultranationalist movement in Russia. Said movement eventually initiated a civil war against the Loyalist pro-Western faction of Russia, which serves as the backdrop in the first game and the catalyst of the Middle Eastern rebellion, another of the original's plot lines. The second game, set [[Time Skip|five years later]], sees what happens to a new [[Cold War]] between the US and an Ultranationalist Russia when a covert op to unmask a wanted terrorist goes ''[[It Got Worse|horribly]]'' [[Gone Horribly Wrong|wrong]]. The third one follows [[Crapsack World|the happenings of]] [[World War III|said war]] and the desperate hunt for [[Complete Monster|the man that caused all of this]].
On May 10, 2011, gaming blog Kotaku released a leaked list of ''Modern Warfare 3'''s features, including locations in the main story, new characters
Not to be confused with the Troperiffic ''[[Community]]'' episode [[Community/Recap/S1
{{tropelist|[[Say My Name|RAMIREZ]]! Take out that BTR and add more tropes to this page!}}
== Alpha to Delta ==
* [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality]]: We're not sure on how, in multi-player matches, Brazilian gangs, African militia or the Afghan Taliban... er, "Op For"... get ahold of Harriers, Pave Lows, Russian choppers, UAVs, NATO weapons and nukes, or how they're able to defend their turf from highly-trained Black Ops, but unless one likes having their multi-player turned into a curbstomp...
* [[The Ace]]:
** Gaz in ''Modern Warfare'', he does hold the team record on the training course and is Cpt. Price's right-hand man.
** Soap in ''Modern Warfare 2'', as well. Clearing the Pit in ''18'' seconds is a pretty impressive feat that Corporal Dunn says is amazing. If you listen for longer, you get to hear about the 'creepy dude in a skull mask' who completed it in 18.2 seconds. With a 1911.
* [[AKA-47]]: Mostly averted, only some weapons appear without their real names.
* [[All There in the Manual]]:
** "Loose Ends" contains a lot of explanations to some apparent plot holes in ''Modern Warfare 2'''s story, if you look at the newspaper clippings. For example: it's explained Makarov, despite his own status as an Ultranationalist, was specifically harassing the new Ultranationalist government, and tensions were ''very'' high between Russia and everywhere else.
** The Hardened edition of ''Modern Warfare 3'' includes a field journal kept by Soap that goes into detail about his thoughts regarding each mission, along with other little details that would be hard to show in-game, as well as his gradual growing obsession with killing Makarov.
** The text on all of the loading screens shows quite a bit of interesting background information on many of the characters. For example, the intro screens to "Blackout" in the first game notes that Nikolai was a former sergeant of a Soviet anti-tank rifle unit, and the loading screens for "No Russian" in the second list Makarov's extensive history of terrorist attacks.
* [[America Saves the Day]]:
** Averted in both ''Modern Warfare'' and ''Modern Warfare 2'' (while the details of the player character in ''Modern Warfare 2'' are unconfirmed beyond his name, rank and unit, his senior, {{spoiler|1=the now-Captain "Soap" MacTavish}}, and the apparent [[Number Two]] "Ghost" are both from the Special Air Service).
** ''Modern Warfare'''s brutal, while still heroic subversion of this occurs when {{spoiler|the American protagonist's team has been ordered to retreat because of the possibility of Nuclear arms on the battlefield. When an allied aircraft gets shot down, your team opts to land momentarily to save the crew, using the "[[No One Gets Left Behind|leave no man behind]]" mentality. For a second there it seems the ploy works and the Americans save the surviving crew member. Instead, the nuke goes off, the chopper goes down, everybody dies, including the American player character, who while surviving the initial crash and explosion; dies of his injuries}}. [[It Got Worse]]. {{spoiler|The world's apathetic response to this is what motivates the [[Big Bad]] of ''Modern Warfare 2''}}.
** The main American character in ''Modern Warfare 1'', {{spoiler|played for three missions, is killed, as is the main American supporting character, and it comes down to the Brit to fire the last shot of the conflict}}.
** ''Modern Warfare 2'' when {{spoiler|Pfc Allen, deep undercover with the Ultranationalists, ''kills'' civilians instead of, well, saving them. And to make matters worse, when Makarov kills him, he leaves the [[False-Flag Operation|very American body]] to be found. Much later, you find out that Shepherd helped stage the conflict so that he could abuse it as a mad attempt to get himself written into history. Then he betrays both Makarov and you... and to get at Shepherd, Price lets Makarov go, albeit not on good terms}}.
** Subverted hard in ''Modern Warfare 2'' {{spoiler|when it turns out that Shepherd started the war with Russia in the first place in an insane attempt at creating a new era of American supremacy and getting his name written into history; moreover, the surviving American character Ramirez's unit seems completely unaware of this and all too happy to counterattack Russia}}.
** SOMEWHAT played straight in ''
* [[And This Is For]]:
** {{spoiler|In "No Russian", Makarov says "For Zakhaev" before engaging the FSB on the runway. Which is ironic, as the airport he's murdering everyone at is called ''Zakhaev'' International Airport}}.
** Done twice in ''Modern Warfare 3'': {{spoiler|"This is for the boys at Hereford." And at the very end, "For Soap"}}.
* [[And Your Reward Is Clothes]]: When you complete the "Ghillie in the Mist" (completed by getting one-shot kills with sniper rifles) challenges. The clothes you unlock are ghillie suits, which actually make your sniping ''better''.
* [[Anyone Can Die]]:
*
** [[NPC|NPCs]]: {{spoiler|Vasquez, Gaz, Griggs, at least 30,000 Americans sent into [[Qurac]], a lot of civilians in a Russian airport, Meat, Royce, Ghost... Ozone and Scarecrow are interesting, as you can save one
** PCs: {{spoiler|1=Al-Fulani, Jackson, Allen, Sat-1, Roach, Harkov and Yuri. Soap survives being shot in ''Call of Duty 4'' and survives a nasty knife stab to the chest in ''Modern Warfare 2'', but finally meets his maker in ''Modern Warfare 3'' after falling out of an exploding building}}.
* [[Arc Words]]:
*
** "...the will of a single man."
* [[Armor Is Useless]]:
** In the Rio missions, the TF141 [[Red Shirt|red shirts]] who wear Kevlar vests are only slightly more durable than the gangsters, who wear soccer t-shirts. Averted by the [[Implacable Man|Juggernauts]], who are just as durable as their hulking appearance, [[Attack Its Weak Point|unless you can get behind them]].
** Same goes for the Op For and Militia forces in multi-player: despite a number of character models being unarmored, they are just as durable as their armored foes or allies (that is, not very). Of course, [[PVP-Balanced]] [[Tropes Are Not Bad|is not a bad thing]].
*** [[Justified Trope]]: Modern infantry armor, while it will generally work against pistol rounds and shotgun pellets, is not going to reliably stop rounds from anything that is of at least assault rifle caliber. Now if the operators had hard armor with ballistic inserts, then they might survive rifle shots.
** Averted in ''Modern Warfare 3'''s
* [[Artistic License Military]]: In ''Modern Warfare 2'', when Task Force 141 is assaulting the Russian gulag, they get F-15s to soften up the landing sites first. F-15s are only used by the Air Force, not the Navy, and they're air superiority fighters. The Strike Eagle variant ''can'' act as a Wild Weasel (plane that neutralizes air defenses), but it would have made more sense to use the F/A-18 Hornet/Super Hornet, or given the [[Next Sunday
* [[Asskicking Equals Authority]]:
** {{spoiler|1=''Captain'' "Soap" MacTavish}} in ''Modern Warfare 2''.
** Captain McMillian in ''Modern Warfare 1''. Not even {{spoiler|breaking a leg when a helicopter falls on him}} can kill him... or even lower his sniping accuracy.
** Cpt. Price and his absolute inability to die throughout ''Modern Warfare 1'' (or due to being shot in the head aboard the ''Tirpitz'' during [[World War II]], for that matter). This carries over to {{spoiler|1=Captain MacTavish}} in ''Modern Warfare 2''.
** And also ''Modern Warfare 2'''s [[Big Bad]], {{spoiler|General Shepherd}}, who in the game's finale nearly kills Soap and manages to beat Price in hand-to-hand combat, never mind the fact that {{spoiler|Shepherd}} had just been in a [[Made of Iron|Helicopter Crash]] and is able to ''stand'', let alone put up a fight.
** Averted with Imran Zakhaev, the [[Big Bad]] of ''Modern Warfare''. {{spoiler|Despite surviving the loss of his arm in an earlier mission, in the final confrontation he goes down just as easily as any of his soldiers}}.
** Averted with [[The Dragon|Al-Asad]] (newly-assumed leader of an [[Qurac|unnamed Middle Eastern country]]) and Victor Zakhaev (son of the [[Big Bad]] and {{spoiler|commander of the Russian Ultranationalist forces}}) as well. Al-Asad {{spoiler|is captured as soon as you enter his safehouse, and is shot in the head}} after Captain Price [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique|questions]] him. At the end of "Sins of the Father", {{spoiler|you corner Victor Zakhaev on a rooftop. [[Better to Die Than Be Killed|He shoots himself in the head to avoid being captured]]}}.
* [[Awesome Personnel Carrier]]: A lot of the real world carriers make it into the game like the BTR, BMP, M2 Bradley and Humvee.
* [[Back for the Dead]]:
* [[Badass]]: Soap, Price, Gaz, Griggs, Jackson, Vasquez, Roach, Ghost, Ramirez, Sgt. Foley, Dunn, Sandman, Truck, Grinch, Frost, Yuri... basically the entire main cast.
* [[Badass Beard]]:
* [[Badass Crew]]: Several, but Task Force 141 arguably plays the trope the straightest.
* [[Badass Mustache]]: Shepherd and Price, of course. Sandman as well.
* {{spoiler|[[The Bad Guy Wins]]}}: Sure, by the end of ''Modern Warfare 2'', Soap and Price have {{spoiler|killed Shepherd}}, but that doesn't change the fact that his [[Batman Gambit]] has already succeeded. {{spoiler|1=If ''Modern Warfare 3'''s leaked plot is any indication, Makarov was also able to escape Shepherd's men in ''Modern Warfare 2'''s ending and causes more havoc amongst both the Russians and Americans in ''Modern Warfare 3''}}.
* [[Bag of Spilling]]:
** Most levels start you off with whatever weapons the game designers want you to have, even if you ended the previous level with a different loadout and there was no time or reason to change. "Takedown" -> "The Hornet's Nest" is the most obvious example. There are a only a few levels where your loadout carries over.
** A particularly [[Egregious]] example is near the end of "Loose Ends". No matter what weapon you had {{spoiler|before getting knocked off your feet by a mortar}}, you'll have Ghost's AK-47 given to you by the end of the mission. {{spoiler|Not that it helps}}.
** Averted in the first Modern Warfare levels "Ultimatum" -> "All In" -> "No Fighting in the War Room". "All Ghillied Up" -> "One Shot, One Kill" as well, though only a few weapons will carry over; anything else turns into an AK-47.
* [[Bash Brothers]]:
** Soap and {{spoiler|Price}}. Epically so.
** Ghost and Roach from ''Modern Warfare 2''.
** Arguably Sandman and Price in the third game.
* [[Big Bad]]:
** Imran Zakhaev in ''Modern Warfare''.
** Vladimir Makarov in ''Modern Warfare 2'' seems to be this, but {{spoiler|he is revealed to be piece in Shepherd's plan. He's the true villain of ''Modern Warfare 3'' though}}.
* [[Big No]]: Gaz and Ghost both get one in their respective games, and Price gets a ''[[Star Wars]]'' worthy one {{spoiler|when Soap dies}}.
* [[Bilingual Bonus]]:
** In the airport level, a poster with a picture of an aircraft and the word "Mukha" in Cyrillic letters. This word means "fly" as in "small and extremely common insect." If you are feeling charitable this could be seen as a inside joke; if you are not, then it is a [[Blind Idiot Translation]].
** Which is peculiar, as other Russian texts are done quite right.
** Enemy chatter is delivered in original languages (Arabic, Russian
** In addition, the drunk Russian in "Crew Expendable" says "Drink to health, Captain!" right before you shoot him.
** And Nikolai drops a [https://web.archive.org/web/20120415014445/http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/The_Enemy_of_My_Enemy/Trivia rather foul-mouthed tirade] at Makarov's and
** All the French from the Paris mission in ''Modern Warfare 3'' is more than convincing, as is the German from "Scorched Earth".
* [[Bittersweet Ending]]: The third game. {{spoiler|Makarov has finally paid for what he's done and the war's come to an end, but nearly everyone who worked to get that far, including Soap and Yuri, are dead, and the world still had to fight a war in which millions of people died, essentially, for nothing. London is devastated in the chemical attacks and most of the European capitals suffered a similar fate}}.
* [[Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics]]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQkOl4bCW5M throwing] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_FXmjrqvrA knives]
* [[Black and Gray Morality]]: Your enemies are monsters, there is no question about that. That said, you and your team members sometimes resort to... less than savory methods of dealing with antagonists.
** Such as tying
** When
** Also in ''Modern Warfare 3'', {{spoiler|Yuri, Soap and Price track down a man who knows the whereabouts of Makarov's bomb-maker, Price sets off a can of nerve gas in the room and makes a deal to give him a mask if he gives them the information. After all the information is given Price hands him the mask, only to shoot him in the head with his pistol saying, "This is for the boys at Hereford."}}
* [[Black Mesa Commute]]:
** Many of the levels start with a quick helicopter ride to the starting area. It's possible to shoot, but doing so is a waste of ammo so you're pretty clearly just supposed to kick back and hum The Ride Of The Valkyries.
** In ''Modern Warfare'''s
** Continues in ''Modern Warfare 2'', when the game opens with the player at an American base in Afghanistan, where he trains some local militia, runs an obstacle course, and can walk around and observe the other soldiers.
* [[Blinded by the Light]]: Flashbang grenades, the resident [[Trick Bomb]]s.
* [[Blind Idiot Translation]]: The Japanese version has multiple translation issues, especially the eponymous line in "No Russian". Instead of being translated to the Japanese equivalent of "Do not speak any Russian", it ended up as "Kill the Russians".
* [[Bolivian Army Ending]]: In ''Modern Warfare 3'': {{spoiler|Sandman and the rest of the delta team stay behind to allow the others to escape, fending off a large amount of soldiers. To make matters worse, the diamond mine collapses on them
* [[Book Ends]]:
** Roach's story begins and [[Tear Jerker|ends]] with someone tossing a lit cigar (Soap tosses one at the start of "Cliffhanger" and {{spoiler|[[Tear Jerker|Shepherd drops one on to Roach's body after it's been doused with gasoline]] at the end of "[[Wham! Episode|Loose Ends]]"}}).
** The first time the ''Modern Warfare'' version of Price is seen going into action, he is smoking a cigar. After {{spoiler|he kills Makarov}}, he smokes a cigar.
** To a lesser extent, the same music plays during the starting and penultimate mission briefings. The starting and ending briefings also feature a short [[Character Filibuster]]. {{spoiler|Captain Price's is even a response to General Shepherd's}}.
* [[Bring My Brown Pants]]: In ''Modern Warfare 2'''s multi-player, the voiceover alerts for an incoming enemy AC130 are rather... [[Oh Crap|emphatic]].
** With the exception of Task Force 141 (voice of Ghost). [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1m7u4WU2hs He doesn't seem too concerned].
** Notably the Spetsnaz announcer who seems to lose it on finding out.
*** Oddly enough, the Spetsnaz announcer is rather calm when a friendly nuke is called in.
* [[Brits With Battleships]]
* [[But Thou Must!]]:
** In ''Modern Warfare 2'', {{spoiler|the "No Russian" level, even though you are heavily armed the game prevents you from trying to thwart the terrorist attack by giving you a game over and telling you that you must go along with the massacre should you try and shoot the terrorists}}.
** The politically correct German version, however, turns this into "But Thou Must Not" {{spoiler|by NOT allowing you to shoot civilians despite this [[Completely Missing the Point|being the whole point]] of the level (you get a [[Game Over]] for that). Considering that you still can't shoot your "allies", there's nothing much to do for you throughout the first half of the level, except perhaps shooting the skylights for the particle effects}}.
** Also, thou must reach the top of the White House to prevent the bombing run, even though when you get there there's already at least four other soldiers signaling, one from the same position as you, and Ramirez doesn't have any further role in the plot. So you could have died anywhere along the way and achieved the same result.
* [[Butt Monkey]]: The United States of America. As a result of... less-than-ethical (and intelligent) decisions ({{spoiler|as well as being framed by Russian
* [[Call Back]]: Many of them in ''Modern Warfare 2'':
** Sneaking through the snow with Soap in "Cliffhanger" homages the level "All Ghillied Up" from the previous game, but the true call back comes in "Contingency
*** That in itself is a shoutout to the fanbase, with whom the dogs had a rather... tenuous relationship in ''Call of Duty 4''.
{{quote|
*** {{spoiler|Price}}'s lines during this level also reference many of Captain MacMillan's in "All Ghillied Up
** ''Modern Warfare 2''{{'}}s final level is one huge homage to ''Call of Duty 4''{{'}}s final level. Both have "game" in the title ("[[Game Over]]" and "Endgame"), both involve a vehicular chase (in
**
** Once you {{spoiler|rescue Price from the Gulag
*** "This belongs to you, sir."
**** And then said M1911 is {{spoiler|1=given back to Soap after his death in
** After
** Price's conversation with Baseplate/MacMillan in
{{quote|
'''Baseplate:''' (sighs) You're on everyone's shit-list, John. There's no way I could get you clearance.
'''Price:''' Don't give me that! You still owe me for Pripyiat. I'm calling it in.
** Soap's field journal in the
** The family briefly seen in England is named Davis, the same as ''[[Call of Duty]] 2'''s British [[Player Character]].
** In the first SAS mission in
** ''Modern Warfare 2''{{'}}s
* [[The Cavalry]]:
** Normally, the extraction copter has a squad of soldiers inside it that immediately pours out and begins shooting anything that moves. This is normally when you're in a tight spot, as in the second part of the Pripyat sniping mission in ''Modern Warfare''.
** Also played straight by {{spoiler|Nikolai}} in ''Modern Warfare 2'' when {{spoiler|he saves Soap and Price ''three times'', first in Brazil, again in the boneyard and once more after Shepherd's death}}.
*
* [[Charles Atlas Superpower]]: Various times in ''Modern Warfare 2'''s
* [[Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys]]: Averted. France is merely one of the ''many'' European countries the US comes to the aid to. You fight alongside [[Gauls With Grenades|the GIGN, who prove themselves to be very capable]]. Also while Delta ultimately take Volk down, the GIGN were the ones who found him. France is also one of the countries NATO manages to hold onto; Germany, meanwhile, is clearly falling. GIGN troops are also a support option in Survival, and are extremely durable and more than able to hold their own against anything short of a Juggernaut.
* [[Chekhov's Skill]]: In
* [[The Chessmaster]]:
** ''Modern Warfare 2'''s {{spoiler|General Shepherd appears to have been outmaneuvered when his deep cover agent is used by Makarov to frame America and set off a war. And then it turns out Makarov was playing into his hands, and Shepherd is using the resultant chaos to cover his tracks}}.
** {{spoiler|Arguably, Makarov was ''hired'' by Shepherd to kill Allen and precipitate an invasion of the US by Russia. He certainly seems to think it would happen at the end}}...
** Arguably, the entire series focuses on Price and his efforts to outmaneuver the [[Big Bad]] of each game. {{spoiler|Although he's not the one to finish off Zakhaev or Shepherd, it's only because of his intervention that Soap manages to kill either. His [[Arch Enemy]] Makarov, however, dies by Price's own hand}}.
* [[Climb, Slip, Hang, Climb]]: The beginning of "Cliffhanger" from ''Modern Warfare 2''.
* [[Cluster F-Bomb]]: Nikolai gives one, [[Bilingual Bonus|in Russian]], to Makarov's men and {{spoiler|Shadow Company}} in ''The Enemy of My Enemy'':
{{quote|'''Nikolai:''' Holy shit! No, I'm really not paid enough for this job! The missiles alone cost so much! Your mother! Cunt!}}
* [[Co-Op Multiplayer]]:
** ''Modern Warfare 2'' featured "Spec Ops" missions, which can be played alone, or with a friend. A few require a buddy (such as one that places one player into a vehicle, like an AC-130 or a Black Hawk]).
** ''Modern Warfare 3'' allows Spec Ops to make its return, this time with online play even with people you don't know. In addition to the regular Mission Mode, there is also Survival Mode, with a ranking and unlock system similar to the multi-player.
* [[Cold Sniper]]: Cpt. MacMillan in ''Modern Warfare'', though he is also brilliantly ironic and averts this when it comes time to high-tail it out of the sniping position.
* [[Comeback Mechanic]]: Deathstreaks. Much like it sounds, it's a bonus given to players who're doing particularly bad. If they die multiple times in a row without ever getting a kill, the game will give them a buff of some sort (such as increased health or dropping a grenade upon death) to help them out.
* [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]]: Grenade spam. It's not uncommon to have more aim bot assisted frags used than actual bullets, more than the soldiers could possibly carry.
* [[Continuity Nod]]:
**
** And in ''Modern Warfare 3'', {{spoiler|Price places it upon Soap's body in tribute after he dies}}.
** A subtle example in the third game: Baseplate is {{spoiler|1=Captain MacMillan}} from ''Modern Warfare 1''. At one point, Price says, {{spoiler|"You still owe me for Pripyat."}}
** Another subtle example in the third game: the briefing/loading video for the level "Back on the Grid" ends by showing a series of photos of people affiliated with Makarov. Among the photographed people is Lev Kravchenko, [[The Dragon]] from ''[[Call of Duty: Black Ops]]''. [[Copy and Paste Environments|Less subtly]], one of the buildings in that level is taken directly from a multi-player map from ''Call of Duty 4''.
* [[Continuity Snarl]]: Is Operation: Kingfish canon or not?
* [[Controllable Helplessness]]: The level "The Coup" in ''Modern Warfare''.
** And the "Aftermath" level, where you get to control the {{spoiler|dying American}} protagonist after the nuclear explosion, as well as the [[Fission Mailed]] sequence near the end of the game, at least until Price throws you a pistol.
** The ending sequence in ''Modern Warfare 2'' has your character watching {{spoiler|Shepherd}} brutally beating {{spoiler|Captain Price}} in hand to hand combat, with you not being able to help because of {{spoiler|a rather large knife in your chest}}. At least, until you realize that {{spoiler|you have a rather large knife ''in arm's reach''
** And a bit before that, you get to see through the eyes of {{spoiler|the mortally wounded Roach, Ghost being killed, and being burned alive after Shepherd has their bodies tossed in a ditch and doused in gasoline
**
** Played with in ''Modern Warfare 3''. {{spoiler|As Yuri, you're behind Makarov as he guns his way through the airport, just after shooting Yuri in the stomach for betraying him. You can try to shoot Makarov with a security guard's pistol, but Yuri will miss every time, and eventually pass out from his injuries
** Again in ''Modern Warfare 3'': {{spoiler|the player controls a dad using a camcorder, recording his vacation in London with his family and unexpectedly getting caught in a nerve gas attack
* [[Cool Guns]]: Obviously.
* [[CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable]]: [[Doubly Subverted]]: {{spoiler|at the end of "Game Over", Soap can see a soldier start CPR on Price. Soap apparently blacks out, and the soldier is now pounding on Price's chest in an attempt to revive him. The game ends giving you the impression that it fails however. ''Modern Warfare 2'' reveals that Price is alive, meaning it did revive him, but it should be noted that it is unclear how long it took, or what Price's condition upon being revived was}}.
* [[Crapsack World]]: Hoo, boy. Aside from {{spoiler|multiple nuclear detonations}} and an army of West-hating psychopaths in control of Russia, there's also more subtle indicators of just how screwed up ''Modern Warfare''-Earth is, like how even private terrorists have access to large amounts of heavy-duty military hardware, and the sheer size of the favela gangs in Rio leaves you wondering just how ''bad'' things are down there.
** To illustrate this, in the Chernobyl missions, the then-obscure group of Russian mercenaries are equipped with BMPs, attack helicopters and at least one T-72. And what were they doing there? They were selling ''nuclear material''.
*** They mentioned how a lot of it was unintentionally similar to real life. Jesse Stern said "We also talked about how terrorists operate in the modern era. We played around with situations where we had heavily armed terrorists carrying machine guns and explosives
** Lampshaded sarcastically by Gaz: ''"Good news first, the world's in great shape."''
* [[Curb Stomp Battle]]:
** In "Heat": six SAS operatives vs. an army of angry Ultranationalists. The SAS lost a man from tank fire. The Ultranationalists lost several hundred men, five tanks and eight helicopters. The Ultranationalist leaders, unsurprisingly, were pissed.
** The first part of the last level in ''Modern Warfare 3''. Dozens of guards in suits with pistols against two men {{spoiler|in juggernaut suits with belt-fed machine guns}}.
* [[Cutscene Boss]]: {{spoiler|General Shepherd}} from ''Modern Warfare 2'' is a quicktime event variety. [[Call of Duty/Awesome|It's very well done]]. Also {{spoiler|Makarov}} in ''Modern Warfare 3''.
* [[Cycle of Revenge]]: Zakhaev hated the Americans and Britons for ruining his country, so he started a terrorist campaign against them. They blew his arm off.
* [[Danger Deadpan]]: A lot of them in ''Modern Warfare'' and ''Modern Warfare 2''.
* [[Darker and Edgier]]:
** ''Modern Warfare'' was a [[Darker and Edgier]] version of the rest of the ''[[Call of Duty]]'', while ''World at War'' went down the [[Bloodier and Gorier]] route for World War II with the Pacific Campaign, as well as a very graphic take on the Eastern Front. ''Modern Warfare 2'' took it further, what with {{spoiler|[[Washington D.C.]] becoming a war zone, with the White House taken over}} and the infamous playable "terrorist" level. The [[Moral Guardians]] were not amused.
** It makes a comeback in ''Modern Warfare 3'' when {{spoiler|you play a dad on vacation with his family, filming your little daughter. Suddenly, a truck parks near where your daughter was playing and detonates, releasing a chemical agent all over the city}}.
* [[Deadly Lunge]]: Com-fucking-mando (Pro).
* [[Death by Disfigurement]]: Subverted with {{spoiler|Zakhaev's assassination attempt. Turns out
* [[Death From Above]]:
** The levels "[[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|Death From Above]]" and most of "Shock and Awe" in ''Modern Warfare 1'', as well as the gameplay moments where you can call in airstrikes and/or artillery barrages.
**
** One of the Spec Ops levels in ''Modern Warfare 2'' involves one player as a Blackhawk door gunner clearing a path for a
** The
* [[Death in All Directions]]: ''Modern Warfare'' frequently has the enemies constantly throwing grenades at you on [[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels|Veteran]] [[Harder Than Hard|difficulty]]. Averted in ''Modern Warfare 2'', although now they sometimes resort to flashbang grenades instead.
* [[Death Is Dramatic]]: Averted. None of the playable characters that die in the series ever get a meaningful last moment with their friends or a heartfelt speech.
* [[Determinator]]:
*
** Although it isn't pointed out directly, {{spoiler|Yuri}} was gutshot by {{spoiler|Makarov}} ''four days'' before he shows up as the playable character in
** The US military during the battle of
{{quote|
** Captain Price in ''Modern Warfare 3'', who will stop at nothing to hunt down Makarov.
** Special mention has to go to Makarov, who survives
* [[Department of Redundancy Department]]: The South American arms dealer that Task Force 141 chases in Rio is known to the men as "Alex the Red". This is said by Shepherd after he dramatically gives the man's real name as "Alejandro Rojas
* [[Didn't See That Coming]]: Played straight and averted at the same time in the third game when {{spoiler|Yuri got punched down a staircase by Price. Yuri obviously did not expect Price to punch him or else it would not have worked so simply. The player, however, probably saw it coming from a mile away, not just because Soap planted the seeds of doubt about Yuri within Price moments earlier but because [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|betrayal isn't exactly unheard of in a ''Call of Duty'' game]]}}.
* [[Dirty Coward]]: For all of his showboating and grand speeches about a new era to lead his country, Al-Asad proves himself to be a coward among cowards. It probably doesn't help that he was little more than a pawn of the Ultranationalists, as {{spoiler|he wasn't even the one who ordered the nuclear detonation}}.
* [[Disposable Pilot]]: In "Hunted", both pilots are always killed, though most of your squad survives.
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]: {{spoiler|The Russians want a thousand dead Americans for every civilian killed in the airport attack. Thankfully, this isn't literal
* [[Downer Ending]]: ''Modern Warfare'' ends with {{spoiler|most of the SAS/USMC joint task force dead and the Ultranationalist leader taken out, but as ''Modern Warfare 2'' shows, that just makes things worse}}...
** ''Modern Warfare 2'': {{spoiler|yes, you stopped Shepherd, but Task Force 141 has been destroyed, Price and Soap are internationally wanted fugitives for "treason" -- despite having done nothing against ''their'' home country -- along with "global terror" and "violent acts against the government", the East Coast and Washington in particular are devastated, the US is going to war with Russia without a commander (the SECDEF having given Shepherd "a blank check"), Makarov is still on the loose, and as noted on [[Fridge Brilliance]] , Shepherd already won even in death}}.
*** There ''is'' a bit of a high note, though: {{spoiler|Shepherd was presumably going to use his hero status and unlimited budget to perform unilateral military actions across the globe (as evidenced by his very well equipped "Shadow Company"). Even if he ends up a martyr, his death prevented his plan from going any further. Price and Soap are still alive, and as Price admitted, the key was both for Shepherd to die ''and'' for them to live}}.
**** And, if ''nothing'' else, at least {{spoiler|Shepherd would not live to see his dream carried out in full}}...
* [[Drill Sergeant Nasty]]:
** Cpt. Price acts like this towards Soap in the prologue, but this attitude doesn't survive the first mission {{spoiler|where he [[Take My Hand|saves Soap from sliding off the helicopter's ramp to his doom]]}}. While Price quickly drops the attitude once the real mission starts, even a nasty superior isn't going to let one of their men fall to their doom
** Price becomes this to Yuri in ''Modern Warfare 3'' after {{spoiler|Soap's final words were that Yuri and Makarov somehow knew each other too well. After learning the truth about the two, Price grudgingly lets Yuri tag along in the next mission, but says he has to keep up at his pace. This is mostly gone by the end of the mission though
* [[Dummied Out]]:
** Hackers have found a surprisingly large amount of abandoned content in the first game, including different reticule images for every rifle scope (in the final game, due to a programming oddity, all rifle scopes use "scope_overlay_m40a3", but there are ''seven'' others, including two for the M21), [https://web.archive.org/web/20120626103636/http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Call_of_Duty_4_Cancelled_Levels several abandoned levels] including one where the player would have controlled an attack helicopter, and the AT4 rocket launcher, which is in the game but never accessible without cheating. ''Modern Warfare 2'' was planned to have a level set on board the ISS rather than a brief scene featuring it, but this was cut due to fears it damaged the flow of the game.
** There are other clues hidden within dummied-out weapons: two in ''Call of Duty 4'', the "Brick Blaster" and "Select a location", seem to indicate that [[Quick Melee]] would have still involved bashing people over the head with your gun rather than the newly-added knife. In ''Modern Warfare 2'', the HUD icon for the L86 LMG, as well as its maximum ammo in single-player (420, the same as most assault rifles) indicate that it was originally meant to be an L85 assault rifle instead.
* [[Dynamic Entry]]:
** Soap tackles Rojas off a first floor balcony and onto a wrecked car as soon as you catch up to him.
** In the third game, an American tank drives ''through'' an office that a group of Russians are taking cover in. {{spoiler|Later in the same mission, [[Big Damn Heroes|another tank comes to your rescue]] by exiting ''directly through a brick wall'' without warning right on top of the Russian troops that had you pinned down, and blows up a Russian tank}}.
==
* [[Earn Your Happy
* [[Easily Forgiven]]: Averted. {{spoiler|After learning about Yuri's past with Makarov, Price feels that he sufficiently regrets his actions to be allowed to live. For now. However, during the next mission, he is clearly still pissed at Yuri and doesn't fully trust him. This is apparently gone by the next mission though
* [[Easy Logistics]]:
** The invasion of {{spoiler|the United States}} in ''Modern Warfare 2''. The Russians are able to get an ''enormous'' amount of manpower, including armored vehicles and Havoc helicopters to {{spoiler|the United States' Eastern Seaboard}}. It is implied in the [[Alternate History]] of the setting that the Russian military - particularly their Navy - is a ''lot'' more powerful than it is in [[Real Life]], but some players found it difficult to swallow. However, by the later levels, the Russians seem to be running out of munitions and weapons, as they're shown using captured Javelin launchers and Barret rifles instead of the gear they dropped with, and when {{spoiler|Price detonated the EMP over the East Coast}} the invasion instantly comes to a complete halt due to the lack of resupply.
** During the battle in New York City, the Russians are winning, primarily because their jammers are making it impossible for the USAF to attain air superiority. Once Metal destroys it, the Air Force blows the hell out of the Russians' supply and support apparatus, forcing the Russians back to the waterline where their navy can support them. When Metal subsequently boards the Russian command sub and turns their cruise missiles against the fleet, the entire Russian invasion breaks down and they withdraw across the entire East Coast.
** The Russian invasion of Europe. ALL OF IT. Former Soviet Generals, eat your heart out. They had the admittedly huge advantage of the simultaneous chemical strikes on all the European capitals to clear the way, and the NATO counterattack beats them back within mere days anyway. Though how exactly you drive an army into France, from Russia, without being noticed by any of the other countries between those two, remains unclear and a source of great jealousy for those nations NOT equipped with Whole Army Stealth Systems.
* [[Eleventh-Hour Superpower]]: The last level of ''Modern Warfare 3'' {{spoiler|puts the player in Juggernaut armor, not seen anywhere else outside of Special Ops missions, and then allows you to rampage with it by marching directly into the teeth of multiple waves of enemies, backed up by RPG teams, without any cover to hide behind... and without needing any. Then you're stripped of your armor and have to proceed normally for the rest of the level}}.
* [[Elite Mooks]]:
** {{spoiler|Shadow Company}} in ''Modern Warfare 2''. They have about 50% more health than normal soldiers, and can usually survive one additional bullet compared to everyone else. They are also notably better shots than most enemies, carry better weapons, and sometimes use smoke grenades to cover themselves. Justified, as they are {{spoiler|Americans (though it's not explained whether they are mercenaries or soldiers) and so would have access to better equipment and training than the Ultranationalist Russians you've been fighting throughout the game}}.
** [[Heavily Armored Mook|Juggernauts]] in the same game, but only in Special Ops. They take a ridiculous amount of damage... and that's not counting the fact they take five .50BMG rounds to the face before dying.
** In Survival Mode in ''Modern Warfare 3'', enemies get stronger over time, until you are fighting [[Gas Mask Mooks|commands and heavy commandos]], who take seven to ten rifle rounds or two to three knife hits to bring down, and carry western assault rifles (like the ACR) and tons of grenades.
* [[Elites Are More Glamorous]]: In ''Call of Duty 4'', you had the U.S. Marine Corps' Force Recon and the British S.A.S. In ''Modern Warfare 2'', you have the international special ops unit Task Force 141 (made of the best soldiers from the best units), and the U.S. Army Rangers. {{spoiler|And one mission for the CIA}}.... ''Modern Warfare 3'' sets you in the boots of Delta Force, more S.A.S., Spetsnaz and (Russian) Secret Service characters, with French GIGN and U.S. Navy SEALs as NPC allies. The aforementioned {{spoiler|CIA}} mission subverts this by being [[I Did What I Had to Do|completely devoid of glamor, that goes oh-so-horribly-wrong at the end]].
* [[Emergency Weapon]]:
** The knife, although several of the ''Modern Warfare 2'' perks and the Tactical Knife 'attachment' make it less so.
** Easily subverted in multi-player, where many veteran players have a gear and perk configuration based entirely around running around and stabbing people, and one of the more infamous issues with ''Modern Warfare 2''.
* [[Empathy Doll Shot]]:
** Heck, there's an abandoned teddy bear in just about every single multi-player level of ''Call of Duty 4''. One even pops up, prominently lit, in an {{spoiler|empty safehouse}} in ''Modern Warfare 2''. ''Modern Warfare 2'' also has one pinned to a wall with a knife through its head.
** There is also an {{spoiler|inflatable sex doll}} found in a bathtub in {{spoiler|Makarov's hideout}}. No telling whose it was.
** The {{spoiler|inflatable sex dolls}} are also in multiple places in the
* [[Enemy Chatter]]: After a [[Deal with the Devil]], {{spoiler|Price somehow manages to score not only Shepherd's location but also a "decryption code" allowing himself and Soap to tap into Shadow Company's wireless voice communications}}.
* [[Enemy Mine]]: After {{spoiler|Shepherd's betrayal, Price invokes this to get Makarov to divulge the location of Shepherd's hideout}}.
* [[Everybody's Dead, Dave]]:
** {{spoiler|Everyone but Soap and Price dies at the end of ''Modern Warfare''. And '''again''' (though only for Task Force 141 this time) in ''Modern Warfare 2''}}. Not necessarily. Archer and Toad may have escaped at the end of the level "Loose Ends" since they were far enough away to provide sniper support. Also since Rook (as the last TF 141 member you see alive) was still alive by the betrayal,
** Ultimately, by the end of the events of ''
* [[Every Car Is a Pinto]]:
** If a car gets shot enough, it explodes. Naturally, tanks and other armored vehicles are immune to this, which is why you have RPGs and Javelin Missile Launchers.
** In ''Modern Warfare 2'', cars are ''slightly'' more durable. [[Big Bulky Bomb|Tanker trucks and jet engines, however...]]
* [[Evil Versus Evil]]: ''Modern Warfare 2'''s relevant level is called "The Enemy of my Enemy", and is caused by {{spoiler|Shepherd deciding that Makarov, as well as everyone else, has [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|outlived his usefulness]]}}. It's notable that Infinity Ward could have covered all the necessary plot points in a cutscene, but chose to make a full level instead.
* [[Evil Sounds Deep]]:
** The {{spoiler|Shadow Company}} soldiers' voices, which are pretty damn scary.
** Inverted with Makarov, who speaks in a somewhat high-pitched rasp. Doesn't make him sound any less scary though.
* [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]: The ''[[Call of Duty]]: Modern Warfare'' games are... ''Call of Duty'' in a modern war setting. Pretty self-explanatory.
* [[Explosions in Space]]: Played ''painfully'' straight during the sequence in which {{spoiler|a nuclear warhead ICBM is launched by Price and detonates above the atmosphere over Washington D.C., creating an [[Electro Magnetic Pulse]] that disables the invading Russian vehicles... [[You Fail Physics Forever|and other things]]}}. Not only does the resultant explosion have a [[Planar Shockwave]], but there's also a delayed ''air pressure shockwave'' that destroys the observing International Space Station.
* [[Expy]]: Ghost to Gaz, they play the second-in-command to the captain of their respective squad, played by the same actor, and {{spoiler|are executed by high-caliber pistol}}.
* [[Eye Scream]]: In ''Modern Warfare 2'', Soap kills {{spoiler|General Shepherd}} by throwing a knife at him. It hits him in the eye.
* [[Faceless Goons]]:
** A lot of the Ultranationalists and Al-Asad's soldiers wear face-concealing masks, as do a few of the Favela gang members in Rio. Later, {{spoiler|Shepherd's Shadow Company troops wear helmets and balaclavas}}.
** The Juggernaut enemies, totally. [http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100309213330/callofduty/images/3/38/Juggernaut_SpecOps.jpg From a distance, it's nearly impossible to tell where they look out of due to the angle they run at you]{{Dead link}}: the helmet on top of their head looks like it covers their entire face. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130312045640/http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100124195325/callofduty/images/7/75/JUG_FACE.jpg When they get closer, you can then notice that they wear a intimidating-looking, face-covering mask].
* [[Fake Balance]]: Check the trope page.
* [[False-Flag Operation]]:
** In ''Modern Warfare 2'', Makarov {{spoiler|kills a known American agent ''after'' said agent takes part in a civilian massacre without realizing his cover's already blown, leaving the body so the Americans will be blamed}}. In a variation, the evidence is not forged, just taken out of context.
** Then it happens again when {{spoiler|Price launches the nuke to send an electromagnetic pulse over [[Washington DC]]. Before the missile has even hit its target, even though there might have still been time to shoot it down, Shepherd is blaming Makarov in order to get his blank check}}.
* [[Fatal Family Photo]]:
**
** At the end of ''Modern Warfare 2'', there is a photo of Task Force 141. Although only {{spoiler|Price, Soap and Ghost are recognizable anyway, only Soap and Price are known to still be alive at the end}}.
** And in ''Modern Warfare 3'', there's a photo of Soap, Price, Sandman and Ghost. {{spoiler|Again, with the exception of Price, everyone in the photo dies}}.
** Video version in ''Modern Warfare 3'', you briefly take control of a father recording his daughter and wife while on vacation in London. Then you notice a delivery truck in the background {{spoiler|which is the exact same type as the ones the SAS were hunting down in the mission immediately prior... and then it detonates a dirty bomb which instantly kills the girl (and probably the wife) while the husband gets to survive just long enough to die from exposure to chemicals/radiation}}.
* [[Field Promotion]]: After the events of ''Modern Warfare'', Soap has been promoted all the way from Sergeant to Captain.
* [[Finishing Stomp]]: Done to Soap by
* [[Fission Mailed]]:
** The missions {{spoiler|"Shock and Awe" and "Game Over"}} in ''Modern Warfare''.
** There are many more of these sequences in ''Modern Warfare 2''. The most notable examples: {{spoiler|Roach is nearly blown up by a mortar, but survives it... just long enough to get shot in the chest and killed off for real. A little later, Soap is slammed over the head, stabbed in the stomach, and stamped on the face all in a row. None of these actually kill him}}.
** And, most notably, when the defense of downed aircraft {{spoiler|ends with blinding flash}}. Some time later, we learn that {{spoiler|Pvt. Ramirez hasn't met the fate of Sgt. Jackson from the first game}}.
* [[Foreshadowing]]:
** There's actually a decent amount of this regarding {{spoiler|General Shepherd's [[Face Heel Turn]]}}.
** More subtly, in "Game Over", black birds (presumably ravens) can be seen when the helicopter first comes into view. {{spoiler|That helicopter then blows up the bridge you're going over for extract, sealing Gaz and Griggs's fates}}.
** Also, towards the end of "Of Their Own Accord", you can hear [[Mission Control|Overlord]] ordering every unit in the city to "get the hell out of there!" {{spoiler|before the nuclear missile Price launches in the next level hits}}.
** The end of the
** When Sandman is first introduced, there's a picture of him and two guys with blacked out faces. They're
** An unintentional example: also in "Persona Non Grata", when taking control of the UGV, looking back at the control station reveals Yuri using Kamarov's model from ''Call of Duty 4''. {{spoiler|Kamarov shows up to help later on, though he doesn't actually do much before he dies
* [[Forgotten Fallen Friend]]: Quite often.
* [[Freeze-Frame Bonus]]: There's a surprising amount of background information on the characters during the loading cutscenes, in all the text that briefly appears. For example, in the intro to "No Russian", you can get a rather detailed breakdown of the terror campaign Makarov's been going on (he's killed ''thousands'', making the airport massacre [[But for Me It Was Tuesday|Tuesday]]), and during the loading scene for "Takedown", you can learn that Rojas supplies governments and mercenaries and serves as a buffer between the two as well.
* [[A Friend in Need]]:
** Nikolai comes to Soap's rescue in Brazil and then remains the only one to stand by Soap {{spoiler|and Price}} when they {{spoiler|are framed as terrorists}}. Guess he [[The Power of Friendship|takes care of his friends, too, even when the whole world is against them]]. The fact that it isn't [[Lampshade Hanging|pointed out]] anywhere in the game, makes it [[True Companions|ever more awesome]].
** Then again, five years before, guess who personally "walked him out of there" when he had been caught and tortured by the Ultranationalists? That's right, Soap himself.
* [[From Bad to Worse]]: Invoked twice in ''Call of Duty 4''. The first time is just after you've rescued the downed American chopper pilot, then {{spoiler|as you're being evac'ed, a nuke goes off, crashing your helicopter and killing the Marine character Sgt. Paul Jackson}}. The second time is when the joint S.A.S.-Marine squad is making their way toward Zakhaev at the missile silo, only to {{spoiler|1=watch in horror as two ICBMs launch and head toward America, where the projected casualty rate will be almost 42 million instantly killed}}.
** Arguably the ''point'' of ''Modern Warfare 2''.
{{quote|{{spoiler|'''Price:'''}} "Out of the frying pan" is more like it. This world looks more like hell than the one I just left.}}
** Taken to eleven in ''Modern Warfare 3'', if the advertising campaign is anything to go on. A [http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/File:TIME_MW3.jpg poster] with a [[Time (magazine)|Time magazine]] mock-up, showing a mostly destroyed or crumbling urban center, with the headliner "World On The Brink" featured prominently.
* [[Funny Background Event]]: If you stealthily approach the VIP's house in Arcadia, you can surprise a Russian soldier inside, who is busy raiding the fridge, despite wearing a full gas mask.
* [[Game Breaking Bug]]: Players have discovered how to glitch the console versions to allow unlimited ammo and no need to reload, ever. This leads to a [[More Dakka]] grenade spam fest the likes of which the world has never known. Ok, the Dakka bar has been raised. The glitch works on the AC-130 Killstreak Reward, meaning that it can fire its 105 mm cannon (the size of an artillery shell) at machinegun speed. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8k_U0GO74M ...My god (4:00)]. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0toMjjgTDU And if you think that's bad...] Though that's not a hack, just a modification of local files with the caveat that you have to host for it to work.
* [[Gameplay Ally Immortality]]:
** Only for major characters, whereas [[New Meat]] dies just as easily as the protagonist.
** A mixed bag in the case of Task Force 141: certain men are almost guaranteed to die, although it is possible to prevent this, while other operators are outright Redshirts; on the other hand, during "Loose Ends" both Ozone and Scarecrow have this ''until'' you plant the DSM. {{spoiler|Makarov's partners during "No Russian"}} also are almost guaranteed to die, and if you somehow manage to prevent this will actually stop and disappear at the end of the level.
* [[Viewers are Morons|Gamers Are Morons]]: The primary justification for switching to IWnet was that it's "more accessible" than opening a server list and clicking on a server.
* [[Gatling Good]]:
** You [[Best Level Ever|know]] the part in ''Call of Duty 4''. Also, ''Modern Warfare 2'' seems to be in love with this trope. Gatling guns as sentry guns, Gatling guns on helicopters, Gatling guns on planes, player-used Gatling guns, Gatling guns on SUVs, Gatling guns on Humvees, about the only thing a Gatling gun isn't attached to is [[Tank Goodness|tanks]] or being as a [[Big Freaking Gun]]. This is a bit of [[Truth in Television|truth in video games]], as Humvees, helicopters, planes and even SUVs can be equipped with Gatling guns. There are in fact real-life SUVs with Gatling gun roof-turrets exactly like the ones that {{spoiler|Shadow Company}} use.
** In ''Modern Warfare 3'', you can wield Gatling guns on helicopters, tanks, and a remote controlled vehicle armed with a gatling gun and a grenade launcher.
* [[Gene Hunt Interrogation Technique]]: Rojas and Waraabe's interrogations head into this territory. Rojas's involves a car battery, power tools, cigarettes and a plunger. Waraabe's consists of threatening to poison him with a nerve gas, then when he talks giving him a gas mask. {{spoiler|Then shooting him}}.
* [[Genre Savvy]]: {{spoiler|General Shepherd}} knows when an entire squad of men suddenly drop out of contact that {{spoiler|he's being hunted by Soap and Price}} and orders an immediate evacuation, knowing they can't stop them.
* [[Giant Mook]]: The Juggernauts. They soak up .50BMG rounds like a sponge, and nearly everything else is useless. To elaborate, killing a Juggernaut takes about 2.5 full magazines of assault rifle fire, 14 shotgun blasts, nearly 60 rounds of machinegun fire, or 5-6 direct hits from a M203 40mm grenade launcher, putting them on par with fantasy enemies like Heavy Armor soldiers from ''[[First Encounter Assault Recon|F.E.A.R.]]'' or Boomers from ''[[Gears of War]]''. Fortunately, for realism and balancing issues they don't appear in the story campaign, only in the bonus Special Ops missions.
* [[Golden Snitch]]: In the
* [[Gondor Calls for Aid]]: After the {{spoiler|EMP strike}}, the Rangers encounter a fellow soldier acting as a "runner", who has been sent to regroup the remaining soldiers to retake {{spoiler|the White House}}.
* [[Gosh Dang It to Heck]]: "Sarge? Did HQ just tell us to go "F" ourselves?"
* [[Gravity Screw]]: On the Russian plane, the pilot loses control for a moment during which everyone inside gets weightless. In the middle of a firefight.
* [[The Greatest Story Never Told]]:
** Oh so much. Raid on the cargo ship? Lost in a storm. Your heroic saving of Pelayo? No one knows about it thanks to {{spoiler|the nuke}}. Your CO's {{spoiler|executing Al-Asad? Nope. He's presumably said to have died in the nuclear explosion}}. How about {{spoiler|SAVING THE US FROM A MASSIVE NUCLEAR INVASION, watching your friends be gunned down and killing the world's [[Big Bad]]? Nope! "Missile tests" and "skirmishes"}}. Hijacking a submarine and {{spoiler|stopping a Russian invasion? Of course not}}!
** Most likely averted with Team Metal's actions though. Their turning the battle of New York (and the invasion of America) isn't going to be forgotten (their commander even calls it "one for the books"), they won't be forgotten for saving the Vice President, the President knows that they took down Volk, and {{spoiler|them [[Heroic Sacrifice|sacrificing]] themselves to save the Russian President and end WWIII definitely won't be forgotten}}.
* [[Grenade Spam]]: Quite possibly the [[Trope Namer]]. Certainly the [[Trope Codifier]] and [[Ur Example]].
* [[Griefer]]: "Boosting" is when players using outside voice chat on opposing sides would kill each other for the 25 killstreak Nuke with minimal deaths in the same location utilizing Tactical Insertions. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NITwwUHwy4 Booster Justice] is the most well known response to this tactic.
* [[The Gump]]: In ''Modern Warfare 3'', it turns out that Yuri {{spoiler|1=was there when Zakhaev's arm was shot off, watched the nuke go off in ''Modern Warfare 1'', and was supposed to join Makarov in the "No Russian" airport massacre, but Makarov gut-shot him in the underground parking lot after Yuri had a change of heart. Yuri even managed to crawl up to the main terminal and was steps behind Makarov, Private Allen et al., trying to stop them before passing out from his injuries}}.
** {{spoiler|Makarov himself gets this treatment for most of that scene as well, showing him as the driver that got Zakhaev safely away after he was shot, and as the one who ''detonated'' Al-Asad's nuke}}.
* [[Gun Accessories]]: So very many of them; gun customization is half the fun in multi-player.
* [[Guns Akimbo]]:
** In ''Modern Warfare 2'', where you can get dual weapons in Story and Spec Ops Mode and unlock them in Multi-player. And you can get ''dual [[More Dakka|Desert Eagles]]''. Dual Desert Eagles as '[[More Dakka]]'? Please. Dual P90s (there's a reason it's called a "bullet hose") with the "Rapid Fire" or "Extended Mags" attachments. ''That's'' [[More Dakka]].
** Dual lever action shotguns are an infamous example. This particular combination ended up being one of the iconic multi-player "wrongs", alongside the Javelin and infinite glitches, noob tubing and knifing, to the point that when Infinity Ward finally released a patch to reduce their effectiveness, hackers promptly got to work trying to circumvent it.
** In "Down the Rabbit Hole", Grinch dual wields Desert Eagles... ''at two different targets''.
* [[Guns Are Worthless]]: One of the more popular multi-player setups in ''Modern Warfare 2'' is Marathon/Lightweight/Commando. The high movement speed works with lag to make the user very difficult to hit, while Commando effectively renders the user invulnerable for a brief period when stabbing and allows him to stab people from farther away than usual.
** Oddly inverted with an unfixed bug in ''Call of Duty 4'': attaching a suppressor to the G3 causes knife stabs initiated with it to take upwards of a second to register, by which time it's entirely possible for your target to move out of the way or just knife you first.
* [[Gunship Rescue]]:
** ''Modern Warfare 1'': featured at least three Gunship Rescue scenes: one is in the USMC mission "The Bog", featuring two Super Cobras coming to The Squad's rescue when it's overwhelmed by enemies; the second features a Lockheed AC-130 gunship appearing just before the team faces a enemy armored platoon; and the third one is in the very end, when a Havoc arrives to rescue Soap in the last damn moment, {{spoiler|it's too late for Gaz and Griggs though}}. There's also a mission where you can call in a Mi-28 at will, so whether it invokes a Big Damn Heroes moment depends entirely on you.
** ''Modern Warfare 2'': when Roach and Ghost escape from {{spoiler|Makarov's safehouse}}, chased by dozens of Russian Mooks. 30 meters from the extraction point, you get knocked out by a mortar right next to you, only to awaken while being dragged away by the collar by Ghost. As you try to take some more enemies down through your blurry gaze, the ringing in the ears turns into the unmistakeably sound of miniguns warming up and a chopper flies over your head, completely shredding the pursuing soldiers to pieces. {{spoiler|But once you're up on your feet and handed the retrieved data to General Shepherd, [[Cavalry Betrayal|he shoots Roach and Ghost]] [[Tear Jerker|and burns their bodies in a ditch]]}}.
** The gunship levels from the first game return in the third, in which you have to blast free a path out of Paris for the soldiers who captured Volk. Earlier in the level you can throw purple smoke grenades to call an airstrike. At the end of the level, the Delta Force soldiers are making a stand on the Pont d'Iéna against vastly superior Russian forces with heavy tank backup. Just as you start to run out of ammo and the tanks close in, American bombers come in and obliterate the Russian forces. {{spoiler|Unfortunately this causes the Eiffel Tower to collapse}}. In Sierra Leone, you can take remote control of the gun on Nikolais gunship and in Berlin you are given a target designator for an A-10, "the tanks natural enemy".
* [[Happy Ending Override]]: Happens in the opening scene of ''Modern Warfare 2''. It turns out that despite everything you did in the first game, the Ultranationalists ended up seizing power anyway and Zakhaev is now considered a national hero in Russia.
* [[Harder Than Hard]]:
** The "Veteran" difficulty level. Technically subverted as of Modern Warfare 2, where the four difficulties roughly equate to "Very Easy" (not available in Spec Ops), "Easy", "Normal" and "Hard". [[Nintendo Hard|It won't stop Veteran from sniping you in the crotch from halfway across the world]].
** It also subverts [[Easier Than Easy]] (assuming Recruit equates to Very Easy, which is implied at the difficulty select screen which describes it as "casual") because even on Recruit, you will die. A few times. Maybe even a lot.
* [[Hatedom]]: The rage about the Dedicated Server brouhaha and the infamous multi-player lack of balance aside aside, this hatedom is one part [[Hype Aversion]], one part "lol it's the same game", and one part "it's not realistic".
* [[Hellish Copter]]:
** {{spoiler|[[Nuke'Em|Poor]] Sergeant Jackson}}.
** Subverted in ''Modern Warfare 3''. {{spoiler|At the end of the "Black Tuesday" mission, Frost's helicopter takes a hard hit, and it looks like it's going to crash into a New York high-rise, but it levels out just in time and flies away safely}}.
* [[Hero Antagonist]]: The Russian police and airport security you fight in "No Russian".
* [[The Hero Dies]]: Several times, but done most tear-jerkingly with {{spoiler|Soap}}.
* [[Heroic Mime]]:
** The player character never speaks while you are playing as him. However, a [[Flash Back]] mission in ''Modern Warfare'' has you playing as the otherwise-talkative Captain (then-Lieutenant) Price, and the guy you play as in "Death from Above" is just as talkative as the rest of the gunship's crew. In ''Modern Warfare 2'', {{spoiler|Soap, the PC from the previous game, is now your team leader}}, though he stops talking when you play as him.
*** Averted in the last mission of ''Modern Warfare 3'', where, in the vein of ''Black Ops'', {{spoiler|Captain Price}} is just as chatty as ever when it's his turn to be the [[Player Character]] {{spoiler|again}}.
*** Also averted briefly in "No Russian" in ''Modern Warfare 2'', where Private Allen is heard once ("Copy, second floor window!") while responding to a teammate.
** In coop Spec Ops mode and multi-player, no one can hear what their own character says, but they can hear what their teammates say.
** Also averted with both Warhammer and Yuri, though Yuri usually only talks in cutscenes.
* [[Heroic Sacrifice]]:
** Invoked towards the end of ''Modern Warfare 3'' by {{spoiler|Team Metal}}.
** In ''Modern Warfare 1'', {{spoiler|Griggs is killed while trying to get a paralyzed Soap to safety}}.
* [[He Who Must Not Be Seen]]:
** The case for all of the playable characters, although subverted by ''Call of Duty 4'' with "Death From Above" where you can see your SAS team and usual character as little splotches of black or white (depending on whether you chose a "black hot" or "white hot" thermal setting), and turned around in ''Modern Warfare 2'' where you're a newer operator {{spoiler|and the player character in ''Modern Warfare 4'' is now your NPC team leader}}.
** Also used with your [[Mission Control]]: Baseplate in ''Modern Warfare'', and Overlord in ''Modern Warfare 2''. Worth noting is that they're both played by the same voice actor. Averted across the series in the third game, however, where the new Baseplate in ''Modern Warfare 3'' turns out to be MacMillan from ''Call of Duty 4''.
* [["Hey You!" Haymaker]]:
** Captain MacMillan does this to a soldier (who drops the only accessorized P90 in single-player) with his rifle during the level where you play as Captain Price in the past during ''Call of Duty 4''.
{{quote|'''Captain MacMillan''': Oi! Suzy!}}
** Captain Price has his own variation in "Just Like Old Times"... with a knife.
* [[Hide Your Children]]:
** Horribly averted in the third game with the Davis Vacation Scene. {{spoiler|It's a video from the perspective of a camcorder showing a family on vacation in London. A little girl is playing with some birds when a terrorist bomb in a truck next to her suddenly explodes}}.
** Played straight in {{spoiler|the infamous No Russian level of the second game. Despite being a major Russian airport, not a single child can be seen among all the civilians. Most likely since the nature of the level was controversial enough}}.
* [[Hoist by His Own Petard]]: {{spoiler|Soap kills Shepherd by pulling out the knife which the latter stabbed him with and throws it into his head while he's distracted}}.
* [[Hold the Line]]:
** In ''Modern Warfare'', {{spoiler|after killing al-Asad}} you have to defend your position against enemy troops until your ride out of there arrives, steadily falling back after to more defensible positions towards the primary landing zone (LZ). This is turned around later in the mission, {{spoiler|where you have to advance through the same territory you'd conceded to the enemy earlier}}, and reach the new LZ before the helicopter reaches "bingo" fuel. Gaz is not happy. Neither is the player in Veteran mode. 3 minutes to get to the LZ, and a nonstop pit of super-accurate Russian soldiers swarming from across the only two stretches of land you can pass through. You could expend 30 rounds killing 10 soldiers in front of you only to get shot dead by 10 more arriving on your flank.
** The ending of the mission "One Shot, One Kill" has you and {{spoiler|a paralyzed-from-the-waist-down}} Captain MacMillan defending a fairground in Pripyat against an endless spawn of baddies until the helicopter arrives to get you out of there.
** "Wolverines!" in ''Modern Warfare 2'' features a sequence where you have to defend a restaurant containing a VIP from Russian soldiers, who will climb onto the roof from two separate ladders while you're supposed to have a sentry gun pointed elsewhere.
** "Loose Ends" has you holding a mountain estate while a portable hard drive with the worst transfer speeds ''ever'' takes anywhere from twenty-eight hours to four minutes to perform a file dump. It actually only takes around five minutes, but the file transfer status shown on the HUD makes you wonder why the manufacturer's building hardware for TF141. It doesn't help that fellow TF141 operator Scarecrow, the main NPC guard for the portable hard drive, simply stands next to it in a ''de facto'' hallway and fires towards the front door despite his complete lack of cover or even concealment, while the layout of the ground floor allows two or three routes for enemy troops to reach the DSM. Fortunately, two of those routes merge directly in front of his fire arc, and the enemy helicopter-inserted troops ''can'' be interdicted (i.e. shooting them down once they fast rope down or even shooting down the helicopter in midair).
** The end parts of "Iron Lady" and "Down the Rabbit Hole" has you holding out for a couple of minutes protecting a VIP while evac arrives.
* [[Homage]]:
*
** A lot of the American campaign in
** A ruthless American General-turned-bad who has a team of black-clad mercenary commandos called Shadow Company? Lethal Weapon, anyone?
** Chasing Rojas through Rio in "Takedown" recalls a different team of commandos chasing Bruce Banner down those same alleyways in 2008's ''[[The Incredible Hulk]]''.
** Soap being held up by Russian soldiers in "Cliffhanger" is similar to an early scene from ''[[
* [[Hope Spot]]:
** Story-wise, there's a small moment in "Loose Ends" after Roach {{spoiler|1=has been hit by a mortar, where it seems like he's going to make it out all right, complete with the enemy suddenly going [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy]] while he's magically handed a whopping ''nine'' magazines and 40mm grenades to go with his new AK. Then Shepherd shoots him}}.
** A couple in ''Modern Warfare 3
** When
** "Checkpoint Reached". The game's auto-save feature is pretty good at avoiding "unsurvivable" moments.
* [[How We Got Here]]: One mission begins with your team surrounded by smoking wreckage, with your squad leader screaming at you to get off the street and reporting on the radio how badly everything is going. It then flashes back to twenty minutes earlier as your team is being inserted at the start of an operation.
* [[Hypercompetent Sidekick]]: Ramirez! Add another trope entry!
* [[Hyperspace Arsenal]]:
** Averted, as you can only carry up to two weapons. The first ''Modern Warfare'' limited it to a primary and a sidearm, with heavier weapons requiring a Perk slot, or the Overkill perk used to equip two primaries. In ''Modern Warfare 2'', still averted, but while the Overkill perk is gone the secondary weapon may be a sidearm, a shotgun, or an explosives launcher. The Riot Shield counts as a primary weapon, while the One Man Army perk (change classes without having to die first) prevents you from equipping a secondary weapon. Oddly enough, in third Person mode, even sidearms will be carried on the character's back. In the story modes and co-op mode though, the player character may carry any two different weapons (or weapon configurations) of any type, and will do so several times through the story. You can also see every weapon on your fellow NPCs during the story mode.
** There are some single-player story mode weapons that mount more attachments than they can have in multiplayer; for example, the M4A1 SOPMOD (Red Dot Sight, Suppressor, M203 Grenade Launcher), or the special ACR from ''Modern Warfare 2'''s "Cliffhanger" level: Red Dot Sight, Suppressor
** Step 1:
== India to Quebec ==
* [[Identical Grandson]]: ''Modern Warfare'''s Captain Price looks just like (right down to the [[Porn Stache|righteous mustache]]) Captain Price in ''Call of Duty 2'' who looked like Captain Price in ''Call of Duty''. [[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|The Price Mustache has been passed down the Price line for generations]]! Also, Sgt. Reznov in ''World at War'' is an ancestor of Zakhaev from ''Modern Warfare''. As this seems to be a theme of the series, identical names could carry the same weight even if one of the characters in question is never shown by his face: Dimitri Petrenko is both the Red Army player-character in ''World at War'' and the Loyalist medic trying to revive {{spoiler|Price}} at the end of ''Modern Warfare''. Also, Foley, who was present in the first game, makes a reappearance in ''Modern Warfare 2''. However, the first Foley was white and a captain while the ''Modern Warfare 2'' version is black and a sergeant. His go-to guy, Ramirez, was in ''United Offensive'' as a sergeant.
* [[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels]]: Recruit, Regular, Hardened and Veteran. ''Modern Warfare 2'' suggests these translate to "Very Easy", "Easy", "Normal" and "Hard", respectively, due to the exclusion of "Recruit" from the difficulty list in Spec Ops.
* [[Implacable Man]]:
** In multiplayer, anyone who knows how to properly use the riot shield. Quickly becomes the bane of the other team in Headquarters Pro matches, as the headquarters may only be captured or destroyed if no opposing players are within range.
** The last level of ''Modern Warfare 3'' starts with Yuri putting on a juggernaut suit and picking up a machine gun. And turns out, so do you! Then you kick the door of the van open and jump out in front of Markarovs Hotel. The guards in their fine suits [[Curb Stomp Battle|don't stand a chance]].
* [[Incredibly Lame Pun]]: Completion achievements in ''Modern Warfare 2'', such as ''[[Rhymes on a Dime|Soap On A Rope]]?'' '''''Really?!!'''''
** Okay, think about this for just a moment: {{spoiler|Soap rips a knife out of his chest and tosses it into Shepherd's face. Pretty awesome, right? Wait, where did that knife hit Shepherd? In the eye? ''Soap'' just got in his eye}}? Intentional or not, this is a great way to ruin the atmosphere of ''Modern Warfare 2'''s climax.
* [[Infant Immortality]]: {{spoiler|Averted in ''Modern Warfare 3''. We see a little girl on vacation with her family get killed by a truck bomb full of poison gas}}.
* [[In Medias Res]]: The series as a whole begins in the midst of a Russian civil war [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|in 2011]]. We are never given any explanation as to the causes of this situation, but needless to say, it serves as a catalyst for [[It Got Worse|everything else that happens]]. Each of the later games similarly begins in the middle of one ongoing war or another, with the context of what's going on getting explained as you go along.
* [[Instant Death Bullet]]:
** Subverted: sometimes in campaign, if shot once in the leg, enemies will crawl around or draw their guns when downed. With the Last Stand perk, someone taking will receive a chance for payback by drawing their sidearm while downed. With the Final Stand deathstreak, your character will draw ''their primary weapon'', and if they manage to survive long enough, will be able to pick themselves up and return to the fight.
** Watching two players with Last Stand incap each other at the same time, and then begin wildly trying to finish the other off with their sidearms first is awesome.
*** Hilarity ensues if one of them has Final Stand, wins, then gets up in time to kill the loser when he comes back for revenge.
** Mostly averted in
** '''Horrifically averted''' with {{spoiler|Roach. He's clipped by a mortar, and then shot point-blank in the chest with a [[Hand Cannon]]. He's still alive when Shepherd sets him on fire
* [[Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence]]: A series staple since the first game is that a closed door might as well be a steel bank vault covered in barbed wire and tigers if your superiors aren't around to open it. [[As You Know|Justified in that doors are incredibly complicated machines that require years of specialist training to operate]]. Finally in ''Modern Warfare 3'' you are allowed to open a door... and immediately get punched down a flight of stairs for doing it. ''Modern Warfare 2'' allows you to smash through windows that are big enough. There are three other occasions in the third game where you're prompted to open a door by a superior officer earlier than the above. The first time is the side door of an Mi-8 Hip, {{spoiler|which turns out to be carrying Makarov, who promptly shoots you and kidnaps the man you've been trying to rescue}}. The second leads out of a church, and upon opening it {{spoiler|you are immediately attacked by a hyena and a group of enemies}}. The third is the back of a truck believed to be holding a bomb, which under normal circumstances ends up empty and nothing bad happens, yet. {{spoiler|However, if you took the option to skip the "Davis Family Vacation" scene, the truck ends up being the real deal, exploding and killing your entire squad}}. There's also many of the regular fences around to stop you wandering off the map.
* [[Interface Screw]]: Dropping a M.O.A.B. in multiplayer results in a few seconds of slow-mo for everyone before the enemies of the player who called the bomb die. Should the game switch hosts while this happens, the countdown before resuming is slowed down as well, leading to a three-second timer that takes fifteen.
* [[In the Back]]
* [[Invaded States of America]]: Russia invades the United States as revenge for what they thought was a terrorist attack on their soil sponsored by the United States.
* [[Invulnerable Civilians]]:
** Averted. The level "The Coup" in ''Call of Duty 4'' shows civilians fleeing from and subsequently being gunned down by Al-Asad's soldiers.
** Part of "Takedown" in ''Modern Warfare 2'' has civilians fleeing the battle between your unit and Rojas's militia, and said civilians will be killed if they're caught in the crossfire. Killing too many yourself is a [[Nonstandard Game Over]]; in "O Cristo Redentor" (a Special Ops mission using this map), each difficulty has a certain number of acceptable civilian casualties.
** Also averted ''hard'' in "No Russian", where {{spoiler|killing civilians, or at least allowing it to happen, is part of the entire point of the mission}}.
* [[Ironic Echo]]: {{spoiler|"Since when does Shepherd care about danger close..."}}
* [[Ironic Name]]: The first name of the terrorist you spend most of the game fighting (Vladimir Makarov) name means "ruler of peace".
* [[The Ishmael]]: Arguably Roach in ''Modern Warfare 2''
** It's actually quite an interesting example. If you've played the first game, Roach is [[The Ishmael]]. If you haven't, Roach is the main character.
* [[It's Up to You]]:
** Many, many examples. Let's just say that unless the player moves their ass and gets across the room, the enemies will usually keep spawning at the far end indefinitely. Though, to be fair the NPCs, especially the unkillable ones, sometimes act useful to the plot too. Fortunately, in some case, it only ''looks'' infinite... particularly if you're just picking a really suboptimal approach to the objective. The first game has more justifiable examples in certain spots.
** There are certain infinite spawns in ''Modern Warfare'', but ''Modern Warfare 2'' does away with them: if you kill enough people, they will stop coming in ''every'' instance. That being said, there's a lot of places that have a ''lot'' of guys attacking from a lot of directions, possibly more than you have ammunition... the Gulag (and its Spec Ops counterpart "Breach and Clear") includes ''vertical'' flanking, but at least it's generally in one direction, while the favela missions "Takedown" and "The Hornet's Nest" are ''all about this''.
** [[Memetic Mutation|RAMIREZ! DO EVERYTHING!]]
* [[Iwo Jima Pose]]: Players in ''Modern Warfare 2'' can be rewarded an emblem resembling the flag planting at Iwo Jima for killing a bomb-carrier in Sabotage or Demolition multiplayer game modes.
* [[Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique]]:
** Shown in ''Call of Duty 4'', where Price is beating the crap out of Al-Asad for info.
** Sandman beats up Volk at the end of "Bag and Drag", and he is presumably interrogated after "Iron Lady". They following exchange happens in the next mission.
{{Quote|'''Price''': Did our man talk?
'''Sandman''': They always talk.}}
* [["Join the Army," They Said]]: Unintentional ([[Do Not Do This Cool Thing]]) or no, under a certain light the game can be seen as recruitment software. It succeeds too.
** Kind of undone when you realize that one level involves {{spoiler|the player killing a corrupt American general}}.
* [[The Juggernaut]]: [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|The Juggernauts]]. They only appear in Spec Ops and as a perk in multiplayer. {{spoiler|Until the final level of ''Modern Warfare 3'', where ''you'' are the Juggernaut}}.
* [[Jump Scare]]: During "Crew Expendable", if Soap moves too far away from Price while in the first cargo hold, a mook will usually leap out of nowhere, screaming and firing a Desert Eagle. This is practically guaranteed to make any player who encounters it for the first time brown their pants, especially because the mook can kill you in a couple of shots.
* [[Justified Tutorial]]:
** As per the habit of the parent series, the tutorial is presented as having your character on a shooting range and training course where an instructor gives you a run-down on what are obviously game mechanics, with dialog written to [[Painting the Fourth Wall|sound like]] training instruction. The player's performance in the training course prompts the game to suggest a difficulty setting. The obvious fourth wall breaks like explaining aim assist or checking if you know how to switch weapons (tick box: recruit ''does'' have arms) do tend to swing these into unintentional hilarity; particularly when it's assumed you'll do something you don't have to, such as "he's spraying bullets all over the place" which can follow a controlled burst with every round on target.
** Averted in ''Modern Warfare 3'', where there's no separate tutorial level and the first mission shows you hints along the way. Then again, they assume that if you're playing the campaign of the third game, you've at least played the second and know what you're doing.
* [[Just Plane Wrong]]:
** The intro to ''Modern Warfare 3'''s second mission has dialogue by F-22 pilots preparing an attack run, only for the cinematic to clearly show F-15 Eagles. Additionally, their drop tanks appear to be mislabeled as bombs, and the description of HARMs as JDAMs is totally off.
**
* [[Kill'Em All]]:
*
** ''Modern Warfare 2'' kills off {{spoiler|almost everyone in Task Force 141 other than Soap, Price
** By the end of ''Modern Warfare 3''
** It's legitimately easier to list who's still alive:
* [[Knife Nut]]:
** One of the [[Game Breaker|dominant playstyles]] in online games, particularly in ''Modern Warfare 2'' (alongside akimbo shotguns and infinite-ammo grenade launchers).
** Arguably any of the [[Player Characters]] depending on your actions. Price and Soap stand out though.
* [[Leitmotif]]: Both games have short series of notes that make up parts of a lot of the other songs in each game. In ''Modern Warfare 2'''s case, it even plays in multiplayer during quiet moments.
* [[Lampshade Hanging]]: Plenty.
** "Who's Soap?"
*** "Who the bloody hell is Yuri?"
** ''Call of Duty 4'' may have a very subtle bit of this in the role Soap takes in the squad. Contrary to real-world military tactics, wherein it can take hundreds of bullets to down a single man due to suppression fire and whatnot, shooter games expect the player to expend as little ammo as possible to kill enemies. So naturally, the player takes the role of the squadron's new sniper.
* [[Large Ham]]: MAJOR PETROV, a [[One-Scene Wonder]] from "Cliffhanger" and the Spetsnaz multiplayer announcer in ''Modern Warfare 2''. Doubles as [[No Indoor Voice]].
* [[Left Hanging]]: Who was the VIP in Arcadia, and why was he important? It's implied he was {{spoiler|killed by someone from Shadow Company, after he got the guy to open the door}}, but you never find out what was in the briefcase or who he was; the most that's revealed is he's not the Vice President, since {{spoiler|he's saved by Sandman's team in the ''Modern Warfare 3'' mission "Goalpost
* [[Lethal Joke Item]]: The Winchester Model 1887, which dates from the 19th century and is available in a game which is set in the 21st century. While it has one of the longest ranges for a shotgun in-game,
* [[Letters 2 Numbers]]: AM3RICA, 3NGLAND, FRANC3, G3RMANY.
* [[Levels Take Flight]]:
** Mile High Club, the [[Brutal Bonus Level]].
** The first half of an early campaign level and one Spec Ops mission in ''Modern Warfare 3'' take place in the Russian equivalent of Air Force One. In a reference to the ''Call of Duty 4'' level, the Spec Ops version is given the name "Milehigh Jack".
* [[Made of Iron]]: In this series, the player character being rocked by an explosion and temporarily losing consciousness is used as a way to change scenes. This means your characters can be knocked unconscious multiple times per mission and keep fighting.
** {{spoiler|Soap}} has had a tanker blown up at his back, went over a waterfall, got ''stabbed in the chest'' and stomped on the face. {{spoiler|It takes an explosive bomb planted right behind him and a drop out of a multi-storey church, coupled with severe chest wounds, to finally do him in}}.
** {{spoiler|Price}} has survived {{spoiler|the aforementioned exploding tanker, at least two years in a gulag, getting the crap beaten out of him by Shepherd, outrunning a bomb meant to kill him, crashing a helicopter and throwing himself and the [[Big Bad]] of the third game through a glass atrium}}. The first thing he does at the end of the trilogy? {{spoiler|He simply lights up a cigar and puffs away}}.
** {{spoiler|Yuri}} in the third game is shown to be badass enough to survive {{spoiler|being shot in the stomach by his former employer (then dragging himself through an airport to stop his attempted killer, being thrown down a raging river and waterfall, diving out of a building and falling several stories to the ground below, taking an RPG round that only stuns him, and taking a direct RPG round from a helicopter while in a Juggernaut suit}}. At another point, he gets jumped by a hyena as he opens a door. As it bites down on his arm, he keeps it at bay, draws a pistol and kills two hostile African militiamen before capping the hyena. Bear in mind, ''hyenas have a bite force of 800 psi'', and his arm does not have a scratch on it.
** {{spoiler|Shepherd}}. He beats that crap out of {{spoiler|Soap and Price after having just been in a helicopter crash}}.
* [[Mad Libs Dialogue]]:
*
** The mad libs in question include the player characters' names. Which can lead to some hilarious combinations, such as Dunn shouting "Ramirez! ''WOULD YOU COVER ME?!''" as if it's ''your'' fault there's two dozen angry Russians trying to kill him at any one time.
* [[Make the Bear Angry Again]]: How do we instigate a fight between [[Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny|the world's only superpowers]]? Have an [[Renegade Russian|Ultranationalist]] frame the U.S. for a [[False-Flag Operation|terrorist attack]] on Russia.
* [[Man On Fire]]: "Back on the Grid" has a point where a group of militia are preparing to execute a villager. If the player does nothing, the villager in question is doused gasoline, and then the militia leader pulls out a lighter, with predictable results.
* [[Master Apprentice Chain]]: MacMillan -> Price -> Gaz -> Soap -> Ghost -> Roach.
* [[Master of Unlocking]]: Typically, only the ranking officer in a squad has had the years of training required to operate a door.
** Though in
** There are three instances where you can open a door, without a breaching charge, in
* [[Meaningful Echo]]:
** "[[Written by the Winners|History is written by the victors]]." Interestingly, one instance is spoken by the [[Big Bad]] while another comes from a protagonist, but they're both making the same point: the victors wrote ''their'' history.
** And again in the third game: "[[Determinator|The will of a single man.]]" The only difference in usage is ''which'' man is being referred to.
** From the training mission of ''Call of Duty 4'': "What the hell kind of name is Soap?" From Soap's Journal released with ''Modern Warfare 3'': "What the hell kind of name is Ghost?"
* [[Meaningful Name]]:
** Mocked. Gaz was an extremely popular character in ''Modern Warfare 1'', and so many players came up with elaborate [[Epileptic Trees]] to justify how he could have {{spoiler|survived being executed right in front of you}}. So Infinity Ward added a [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]] of him, who uses the same voice actor and performs the same role on the team. His codename is "Ghost". According to the official comic miniseries, {{spoiler|the "Ghost" who appears in ''Modern Warfare 2'' is a separate and clean-shaven British operator named Simon Riley}}.
** It's played straight with Roach and the absurd amount of abuse he endures to that the rest of TF141 either avoids or is killed by. He nearly falls to his death after missing a jump between cliffs, then doesn't make a subsequent jump and gets knocked out from the fall, flees a horde of angry gunmen on foot while unarmed after waking up and with no support at all (he to literally jump off of a rooftop ''again'', this time into the air from even higher up, towards a flexible ladder suspended below a helicopter), has part of a gulag collapse on him, {{spoiler|gets punched in the face by Price}}, survives a minefield ambush, and holds out for several minutes against ongoing siege with only small arms and claymore mines, and ''still'' manages to sally from the building and break through. {{spoiler|He only dies after being clipped by a mortar blast -- from which he wakes up and is still able to aim and fire a weapon -- being shot in the stomach with a high-caliber handgun, and ''being set on fire''
** After his long career in the ''Call of Duty'' series, {{spoiler|Price}} [[Sealed Badass in a Can|comes back from the gulag]] and unflinchingly does some really crazy shit no one was ready for. His bill for stopping a war and killing the [[Big Bad]] is very high.
* [[Melee a Trois]]: The airplane graveyard level features a
* [[Mercy Invincibility]]: The "Pain Killer" [[Consolation Prize|Deathstreak perk]] in
* [[Military Alphabet]]: Military game. Natch.
* [[
{{quote|
* [[Mismatched Eyes]]: It's very difficult to notice, but Makarov has a green left eye and blue right eye.
* [[Monumental Damage]]:
** {{spoiler|Look no further to Washington D.C}}.
** Part of ''Modern Warfare 3'' takes place in Paris. What more do you have to say? The New York Stock Exchange also gets quite a beating; but the Statue of Liberty and the Freedom Tower seem to be intact. The Hamburg City Hall gets hit by a few missiles, but remains standing with only superfacial damage. The church in Prague seems to be a stand in for the Saint Nicholas Church, but is not an actual recreation. But it also gets blown up {{spoiler|with you inside}}. The Diamond Mine in Siberia also exist in [[Real Life]], but it's not really a monument. The Louvre in Paris was also hit by chemical attacks, but it is unclear what type of structural damage it suffers.
* [[Moral Dissonance]]: Subverted in ''Modern Warfare 2''. {{spoiler|It initially looks like Price fired the nuke at Washington to wipe out the invading Russians, but instead he detonates it in the air, setting off an EMP which turns the tide for the Americans... albeit at the cost of their own electronics too}}. {{spoiler|[[Double Subversion|It also destroys the ISS and everybody on it]]}}.
* [[More Dakka]]: They really didn't tone down the dakka. In many ways there's even MORE in ''Modern Warfare 2''.
** The Akimbo weapons are the best examples, especially machine pistols or submachine guns. Light machine guns also count. You can also use the "double tap" perk from the first game, which doubles any gun's firing rate.
* [[Motive Rant]]: {{spoiler|Shepherd}} gives one after {{spoiler|stabbing Soap in the chest and pulling out his revolver}}.
{{quote|
* [[Multinational Team]]: Task Force 141, as well as the "Joint Operation" team from near the end of
** Of course
* [[Mythology Gag]]:
** In the intro to the final mission in ''Modern Warfare 2'', it becomes clear that Price is carrying three weapons, one of which is his pistol. This is a rather crafty joke about his origins; he's such an old hand, he still has his ''Call of Duty 1'' dedicated pistol slot, which contains the same incorrect-for-his-country M1911!
** Price himself is taken directly from the original ''[[Call of Duty]]'' right down to his facial hair; slightly less well-known is that a Captain Foley and Major Sheppard showed up back in the first game too. Ramirez waited until ''United Offensive'', when he turned up as a sergeant. Death in the CoD universe apparently works on the honour system.
* [[Nerf]]: The Model 1887 shotgun. All shotguns in the online mode lose reach and accuracy when used in akimbo. [[Game Breaker|The Model 1887 shotgun lacked this reduction]]. It was fixed
* [[Never Bring a Knife to A Fist Fight]]: The start of the
* [[Never Speak Ill of the Dead]]: Invoked by the Ultranationalists in ''Modern Warfare 2'' to diabolical effect
* [[New Meat]]:
** Soap starts off like this in ''Modern Warfare'', as he's whisked off to his first mission hours after reporting to Captain Price on his first day in the Regiment. Ironic to be treated so, considering that he'd had gone through and passed [[wikipedia:United Kingdom Special Forces Selection|Selection]]. The reason Price seems to have no respect for Soap at the beginning of the game is because he doesn't seem to believe that [[Painting the Fourth Wall|a guy like]] [[Player Character|Soap]] ''could'' pass Selection. Suffice to say, Soap [[Asskicking Equals Authority|proves his worth
** Ironically, there's a new minor character in
** Roach doesn't get the same treatment, as he's already an operator from whichever parent unit he was in before TF141, but he may be a relatively new member of the 141.
* [[Next Sunday
* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]:
** In ''Modern Warfare 2'', the current [[Big Bad]]'s reign of terror is attributed to the fact that, without the previous game's [[Big Bad]], no one is around to "keep him in check". As it turns out, {{spoiler|"No Russian" was a [[Batman Gambit]]: Makarov knew all along the player was a spy, and kills him at the end so the Russians will find the body and blame it on America, touching off a war}}.
** {{spoiler|1=Essentially what Captain MacMillan says after you kill the lone dog in the ruins, right before you get swarmed by a ton of dogs that will most likely kill the good Captain}}.
** In the third game, {{spoiler|Price, Yuri and Soap all travel to Russia to attack a location they all believe is Makarov's safehouse, with the help of Kamarov (from the first game}}. However, this plan goes awry when {{spoiler|Makarov reveals that he knew Kamarov was a mole and knew what they were planning all along, then tries to kill the whole team with planted explosives, resulting in Yuri being injured and Soap and Kamarov dying}}.
* [[Nintendo Hard]]:
** Veteran difficulty. Crazy accurate baddies, your aim is thrown off moreso and the screen bloodied more quickly when you get hit, no blindfiring, painfully short time limits... Ouch. It's so hard, it could be called ''[[I Wanna Be the Guy|I Wanna Be The Soldier]]''. Technically, all the combat in the ''Modern Warfare'' games are short-to-medium range. Assault rifles can generally hit a small window from ''a thousand feet away''. Veteran isn't just hard. It's realistic.
** The ''Call of Duty'' franchise's Veteran mode is truly [[Nintendo Hard]]: The Next Generation. The ferris wheel stage in
** ''Modern Warfare 2'' is mostly better about it. The more 'special' sequences in the game where you must go though it in a particularly different manner than the rest of the game tended to be still enraging
* [[No-Holds-Barred Beatdown]]:
** {{spoiler|Shepherd}} beating the ''hell'' out of both {{spoiler|Price and Soap}} in the climax of ''Modern Warfare 2'', ''by himself''.
** At the end of ''Modern Warfare 3'', {{spoiler|Price delivers one to Makarov. It's immensely satisfying}}.
* [[No Arc in Archery]]: No bullet-drop, but Granada will still arc.
* [[No Communities Were Harmed]]:
** Played straight in the missions "Wolverines!" and "Exodus" taking place in "Northeastern Virginia". Averted once you get to {{spoiler|Washington D.C}}.
** The Oasis Hotel, "Arabian Pennisula" at the end of ''Modern Warfare 3'', is obviously modeled on the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai.
* [[No Good Deed Goes Unpunished]]: The American protagonist {{spoiler|dies because, after saving a downed chopper pilot, he isn't far enough away when the nuke blows}}.
* [[Nominal Importance]]:
*
** A somewhat mixed bag in the case of Task Force 141.
* [[Nonstandard Game Over]]:
** When you get killed by a grenade ("Watch for the grenade danger indicator") or accidentally shoot one of your teammates ("Friendly fire will not be tolerated!").
** Also, the trailer for ''Modern Warfare 2'' shows {{spoiler|1=Captain MacTavish}} being gunned down if the player fails to rescue him.
** Same goes for {{spoiler|letting one's target (i.e. Faust or Shepherd) get away, and Price dying if you fail to crawl for Shepherd's revolver, then to retrieve and finally throw the knife from your chest at Shepherd}}.
* [[Noodle Incident]]:
{{quote|
'''Kamarov:''' Hm... I guess I owe you one.
'''Gaz:''' Bloody right you do.
* [[No One Gets Left Behind]]:
** [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies|Deconstructed hard]] for the Americans in "Shock and Awe" from the first game.
** Played straight in "Blackout" (and paid back with interest throughout the rest of the series) and "One Shot, One Kill" (even though [[Memetic Badass|MacMillan]] would have been fine no matter what you did).
** Averted in "Heat". [[Red Shirt|Mac]] is wounded and left behind (though some [[Dummied Out|leftover dialogue files]] suggest the player would have at least had the option of rescuing him), and Gaz also tries to motivate the player to fall back by suggesting he'll be left behind.
** Averted for {{spoiler|most of Team Metal (except Frost) in "Down the Rabbit Hole", who stay behind as they buy time for the helicopter to escape. Despite Price insisting that the helicopter stays for them. Notably, Sandman insists that Price and the helicopter do leave without them}}.
** Subverted in "Blood Brothers". {{spoiler|Soap is injured and you spend the entire mission getting him to safety, but as soon as you do he dies anyway
* [[Notice This]]: Important stuff/objectives are often glowing.
* [[Not So Different]]: Zakhaev and {{spoiler|Shepherd}}. They both think that their countries have become weak nations and they both want to make them strong again through bloody wars, which they think is the only way to make them strong again.
* [[Now You Tell Me]]: Subtly [[Played for Drama]] at the end of "Loose Ends". {{spoiler|Price tells you over radio not to trust Shepherd. Shepherd, meanwhile, is setting you on fire
* [[Nuke'Em]]:
** The ending of ''Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare'', and in ''Modern Warfare 2'', if a player manages to achieve a very difficult 25 kill streak, a tactical nuke drops on the battlefield, killing all the players. The player who initiates the launch gets XP for the players it kills and has their team win. Think it as winning because it was launched on your terms.
** A [[What Could Have Been|forgotten, unused gametype]] appropriately titled "Global Thermonuclear War" has you holding down a nuke in the middle of the battlefield like Headquarters. When you capture it, it goes off like a normal nuke.
* [[Oh Crap]]:
**
** Price doesn't think someone like Soap could pass Selection for the Regiment. Hey, wait, you're playing Soap...
** The first game is known for the degree to which it uses this trope as a part of its anti-war themes. Throughout the game, you play as:
*** A dethroned president as he is manhandled, beaten and ultimately executed.
*** The gunner of an AC-130 gunship providing support to the main characters, showing how easy and detached the experience of killing may be.
*** A USMC Force Recon grunt who
*** A sniper in a flashback mission, which explores the origin of the [[Big Bad]].
*** An SAS operative
** A minor example in ''Modern Warfare 2'': when
* [[One-Man Army]]: Averted... [[Artificial Stupidity|in theory
* [[Out-Gambitted]]: Zig-zagged between Shepherd and Makarov. {{spoiler|Shepherd outgambits Makarov, then Makarov outgambits Shepherd, then it turns out that was part of Shepherd's plan, then Price throws a spanner in the works, then Shepherd uses that to outgambit Makarov further, then Price and Soap go on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] against Shepherd that may have been part of Makarov's plan. Then Makarov gets killed later}}.
* [[Painting the Fourth Wall]]: In ''Modern Warfare 2'', {{spoiler|the between-mission briefing is at one point replaced with an "EMERGENCY BROADCAST" for several minutes}}. In fact, ''every'' cutscene qualifies as this trope, they're presented as an information system displaying relevant details about the mission in an [[Rule of Cool|unrealistically efficient manner]] while the characters all talk over it off-screen, as if they're standing next to the player watching it. The {{spoiler|emergency broadcast}} cutscene just kicks it up a notch. These type of cutscenes were also used by Treyarch in their [[Quantum of Solace]] game.
** In one mission in ''Modern Warfare 2'', Soap mentions that he hates dogs, echoing the feeling of many players. {{spoiler|Captain Price}} says that they were nothing compared to {{spoiler|the ones in [[Continuity Nod|Pripyat]]}}.
* [[Parental Substitute]]: Implied between Soap and Price, who the former affectionately refers to as 'old man'.
* [[Personal Space Invader]]: The attack dogs and hyenas.
* [[Playing Both Sides]]: {{spoiler|1=General Shepherd and Makarov in ''
* [[Playing Possum]]:
** In the single-player campaign, when critically wounded and grounded, some enemies will keep shooting at you with their sidearms (this only applies if they only take a single bullet to the leg that drops them fully and manage to crawl away long enough to turn over and draw the sidearm, as opposed to simply staggering them; a subsequent hit would kill them). In multiplayer, the "Last Stand" and "Final Stand" perks allows the player to do so, and in Special Ops the player(s) can do this... albeit it's not exactly "possum" against the AI.
** Played with near the end of "Endgame", when {{spoiler|1=Soap starts staggering towards the Pave Low crash site: as you reach it, a lone Shadow Company trooper lays on his back next to the wreckage, and as you get closer you realize that he's pointing his G18 machine pistol at you... but after a few squeezes of the trigger just result in empty clicks, he tilts the weapon and takes an almost surprised or exhausted look at it before collapsing against dirt and rock behind him and going limp}}. Other than seeing his comrades' pitiful fate at the end of "Just Like Old Times", possibly the only truly sad moment for {{spoiler|Shadow Company}}.
** If wounded but not killed near a wall or other object, enemy soldiers will sometimes fall against it and then prime a grenade, at which point they'll wait for the player or another enemy to move close and then drop it. They'll typically hold the grenade for about thirty seconds or so before passing out and dropping it anyway, and can be taken ut by shooting them in the leg or shoulder, which is usually exposed.
* [[Plot Armor]]: Any NPC who isn't scripted to die wears [[Plot Armor]].
* [[Powerful Pick]]: You use ice picks to climb at the beginning of an early mission. Soap later uses his to knock some enemies off a snowmobile.
* [[Precision F-Strike]]:
** {{spoiler|Shepherd}} at the end of ''Modern Warfare 2''.
** Also, Corporal Dunn during the ''Modern Warfare 2'' level "Second Sun" (well, a Precision ''S'' Strike, really); considering that he and his squadmates (including Ramirez/you) {{spoiler|were running for their lives as, thanks to an EMP, it was literally raining aircraft all around them}}.
** In "The Sins of the Father", if Soap has 100% accuracy up to that point, Griggs will say "Oh Fuck" when Victor Zakhaev rams the guard tower. Otherwise, he says "Oh shit".
* [[The Present Day]]
* [[President Evil]]: Al-Asad.
* [[
* [[Press X to Not Die]]: After a dog knocks you down and rears its head back your throat, a message appears telling you to press the knife button when it lunges at you to bite, which will get your character to snap its neck if done correctly. Quite a few others are scattered throughout ''Modern Warfare 2''.
* [[Pretty Little Headshots]]: Oh so averted. Especially so in the cases of
* [[Previous Player Character Cameo]]: Soap MacTavish of ''Modern Warfare'' is the [[Player Character]]'s CO in ''Modern Warfare 2''.
* [[Punched Across the Room]]: In ''Modern Warfare 3'', {{spoiler|Yuri opens a door to a basement and gets punched down a flight of stairs by Price}}.
* [[Qurac]]:
** At least in ''Modern Warfare'', they don't bother naming the country. The pre-mission briefings show where in the Middle East various missions take place, but they take care to spread them over the geographic locations of several different real-life countries. And its overthrown president Al-Fulani is named the Arabic equivalent of "John Doe".
** The final mission in ''Modern Warfare 3'' takes place at the Oasis Hotel at the "Arabian Peninsula". Yet it's a dead ringer for the Burj Al-Arab Hotel in Dubai, UAE. Granted, Infinity Ward was probably trying not to get sued by the real Hotel, for suggesting they would {{spoiler|allow the most famous terrorist on Earth to just check in with 50 of his terrorist buddies}}.
** Averted in ''Modern Warfare 2'' though, where you're fighting in Afghanistan. {{spoiler|But that's of little importance to the plot}}.
== Romeo to Zulu ==
* [[Ranger]]: In ''Modern Warfare 2'', SGT Foley, CPL Dunn, PVT Ramirez
* [[Rare Guns]]: Many of the old FPS standbys are present, but special mention goes to the "PM-9" (M-9) in the third game. An obscure, never exported, Japanese Uzi variant inexplicably appears in the hands of a Russian's henchmen in the Czech Republic and as a popular weapon in multiplayer.
* [[Rated "M" for Manly]]: Well, given the target demographic...
* [[Real Is Brown]]:
** The first game has no brown filter, but is beautifully desaturated. The bloom effect associated with this trope is used very sparingly.
** The second game is more colorful.
** The third game is also colouful, except for Germany, where apparently real is washed out green.
* [[Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic]]: Several characters, especially Baseplate and War Pig, speak with a fair share of "uh"'s and other stumbling.
* [[Reasonable Authority Figure]]: Russian President Vorchevsky, who doesn't really want war with the United States.
* [[Redemption Equals Death]]: {{spoiler|Yuri
* [[Red Herring]]:
* [[Reds with Rockets]]
* [[Renegade Russian]]: Zakhaev and his protege Makarov.
Line 590 ⟶ 589:
* [[Retcon]]: "Soap's Journal" indicates that "Mile High Club", [[The Stinger]] from the fourth game, was one of the first of Task Force 141's missions.
* [[Reverse Grip]]: The only way a knife may be held and used. Unless thrown.
* [[Revision]]: In the third game, it is revealed that {{spoiler|Yuri played a background role}} during several key events in the ''Modern Warfare'' timeline. He is first seen during the nuke deal held in the "[[Call Back|One Shot, One Kill]]" mission from the first game (where {{spoiler|he and Makarov are the ones who drive the injured Zakhaev to safety}}), as well as being present when {{spoiler|Makarov (standing in Al-Asad's safehouse) detonates the nuke in the "Shock
* [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]]: {{spoiler|In the final mission of ''Modern Warfare 3'', Price and Yuri don Juggernaut suits and shoot their way through a small army of terrorists on their way to kill Makarov
* [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]]: The mission "Shock and Awe" in ''Modern Warfare'', in which {{spoiler|a nuke goes off, killing the American player character and his squad}}.
** In
** Get a 25 Kill Streak in ''Modern Warfare 2'' Multiplayer and use the killstreak reward if you have it. This is what happens for everyone. But for whoever used the nuke, it's ''also'' a "I Win" button.
** ''Modern Warfare 3'' has a similar killstreak for making 25 kills in one life
* [[Rouge Angles of Satin]]: For God's sake, the General's name in ''
* [[RPG Elements]]:
** You get to "Create a Class", where you get to choose a primary weapon, sidearm (or [[More Dakka|Machine Pistol]], or [[Short-Range Shotgun|Shotgun]], or [[Awesome Yet Impractical|explosives Launcher]]), as well as Equipment, a special grenade, and three perks. And a [[Consolation Prize|deathstreak reward]]. It overlaps with [[Archive Panic]] quite a lot
** The ''Modern Warfare'' series actually has a unique system for it, though. Besides standard level ups, there is also a system where for each kill you get with a specific weapon, you get to unlock one of its many attachments. So get ten kills with the M4A1 in ''Modern Warfare 2'', and you get to attach a grenade launcher to it. However, if you decide to switch to a different assault rifle, you lose that attachment and must get ten kills for your new AR before you can attach a grenade launcher to it
* [[Rule of Cool]]: ''[[Call of Duty]] 4: Modern Warfare'' had its moments, but ''Modern Warfare 2'' goes into it far more with the ability to go [[Guns Akimbo]] with pistols, submachine guns, [[Sawn Off Shotgun|Sawn Off Shotguns]]; throwing knives; and a plot more concerned with [[HSQ]] rather then sensibility and seeming possible.
* [[Rule of Drama]]: Every helicopter in the series that comes to pick you up has about 30 seconds worth of fuel before having to leave you. No exceptions.
* [[Running Gag]]: An unbelievably subtle one. In the first mission of
** Characters voiced by Craig Fairbrass complaining about their uncooperative backup.
*** Gaz in
{{quote|
'''Gaz:''' [[Sarcasm Mode|That's just great!]] Where the hell are they gonna land now?
'''Sea Knight Pilot:''' Bravo-Six, we're getting a lot of enemy radar signatures, we'll try to land closer to the bottom of the hill to avoid a lock-on.
'''Gaz:''' Oh, he's gotta be takin' the piss! We just busted our arses to get to this LZ and now they want us to go all the way back down?!
***
{{quote|
'''Baseplate:''' Workin' on it Bravo Five. Loyalists forces in the area may be able to assist but we cannot confirm at this time. Baseplate out.
'''Gaz:''' Useless wanker!
'''Captain Price:''' Gaz, gimme a sitrep on those helicopters!
'''Gaz:''' Captain Price! We are on our own sir!"
'''Sgt. Kamarov:''' Bravo Team, this is Sgt. Kamarov, I understand you and your men could use some help.
'''Gaz:''' It's bloody good to hear from you mate!
'''Sgt. Kamarov:''' Standby, we're almost there, ETA 3 minutes Kamarov out.
*** Ghost in
{{quote|
*** Wallcroft in
{{quote|
'''Baseplate:''' Local police are arriving on scene. Bravo 2 will be on station in five minutes.
'''Wallcroft:''' Bollocks! Nothing takes five minutes!
* [[Sawn Off Shotgun]]: Which can be [[Guns Akimbo|dual wielded]]. [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/11/30/ Tycho and Gabe agree
* [[Schmuck Bait]]: The [[Big Red Button]] with the "Do NOT press X/Square/F" prompt in ''Modern Warfare 2'''s post-game museum. {{spoiler|It makes the exhibits come to life and attack you}}.
* [[Scenery Gorn]]:
** The nightime D.C. levels are breathtaking in how messed up the city looks.
** The {{spoiler|nuclear wasteland}} and Prypiat in the first game definitely count too.
** If you didn't shed a few [[Manly Tears]] over it, then turn in your passport, ''tovarisch'' ("comrade").
** In ''
* [[Sealed Badass in a Can|Sealed Badass In A Gulag]]
* [[See You in Hell]]: {{spoiler|Price and Makarov wish each other good luck this way after Shepherd double-crosses both. Price even asks to give his regards to Zakhaev, if Makarov gets there first}}.
* [[Sergeant Rock]]: Foley in ''Modern Warfare 2'' is willing to put his squad (and himself) at great personal risk to get the job done. For instance, refusing to pull back when ordered, so that they could continue to cover evacuating civilians, and ordering that a crippled Blackhawk be positioned to take out as many surface-to-air missile launchers as possible before it could go down; {{spoiler|he maintains his cool after the EMP starts causing aircraft to fall out of the sky, gets the squad under control, and continues to lead the squad through the rest of the Second Battle of Washington, D.C
* [[Sequel Difficulty Drop]]: In the single-player campaign, you can survive ''a lot'' more bullets in ''Modern Warfare 2'' compared to the first ''Modern Warfare'', especially on the Regular difficulty setting, and even noticeable on Veteran difficulty. This is balanced out somewhat by the sequel having more open levels giving the enemy many more opportunities to flank and ambush you, as well as having larger groups of enemies than in the first game.
* [[Sequel Difficulty Spike]]: ''Modern Warfare 3'', in contrast, is roughly on par with ''Modern Warfare 2'' on most difficulties, but is absolutely ''insane'' on Veteran difficulty, as you are given much less health than in previous games, combined with enemies that are suddenly psychic as well as given superhuman reflexes and perfect aim.
* [[Sequel Escalation]]: One of the ''themes'' of ''Modern Warfare 2'' is how crazy things have gotten due to the events of the first game. Yes, [[It Got Worse]] than {{spoiler|a nuke going off}}. There's an underlying theme about how you can't just shoot everything and hope to win.
* [[Serial Escalation]]:
** ''Modern Warfare 2'': {{spoiler|''Washington D.C. is turned into a war zone, with the White House and Washington Monument in ruins''}}. The fact that it's clearly not {{spoiler|the [[Fallout|Capital]] [[A Nuclear Error|Wasteland]]}} is what makes it truly striking, with the {{spoiler|White House}} mostly intact, except for the enemy combatants occupying it and shooting at the American troops storming up the front lawn. The rest of {{spoiler|[[Washington D.C]]}}. is full-on [[Nightmare Fuel]], with fires breaking out everywhere, concertina wire strung out, Apache gunships in the air, and what looks like a casevac chopper taking off from the streets.
** There's also the matter of {{spoiler|character deaths. In ''Modern Warfare 4'', you get to watch Gaz and Griggs be shot and killed. Then in ''Modern Warfare 2'', you get to watch in first person as you and your friend are shot and burned. Then in ''Modern Warfare 3'', you spend a whole level watching [[The Hero|Soap]] fade, before a [[Hope Spot]] and then his death. Not fun}}.
* [[Shell-Shock Silence]]: With the exception of small arms gunfire, any kind of explosion will make your character deaf for a few seconds if he was standing next to it. Tank guns, guided missiles, grenades... you name it.
* [[Shooting Gallery]]: The opening levels of both games.
* [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]:
** {{spoiler|Potentially ''Modern Warfare 2'': Shepherd's plan succeeded although you killed him, Soap and Price are fugitives, and the USA and Russia are about to start World War III}}. Darned if there isn't a third installment. Let's not forget, everything Jackson and the USMC did in the original ''Modern Warfare'' was rendered inconsequential when that nuke went off. Though to be fair, they *did* effectively demolish Al-Asad's war machine and regime to the point where he got desperate enough to do it, which considering the very heavy implications that he was a threat to the entire Middle East proves that [[Downer Ending|what happened]] [[Middle-Eastern Coalition|was preferable to the alternative]]. Of course, that should tell you [[War Is Hell|something about the games in general....]]
** {{spoiler|In ''Modern Warfare 3'', it's suggested the nuke would have gone off regardless of whether Al-Asad had been caught, Makarov's dialogue during Yuri's flashback gives the impression he had intended for the nuke to go off and kill as many Americans as possible in a trap. Its consistent with his actions in that game and his far reaching plans. Adds a delicious irony: Shepherd's alliance with the man who is responsible for killing his 30,000 soldiers is motivated by the lack of response from the world at their deaths}}.
** Also the second game renders many of the first game's accomplishments moot, as more than one character mentions.
* [[Shoot the Television]]: The level "Charlie Don't Surf" in the first installment of the franchise has an achievement called "Your Show Sucks" for shooting or otherwise destroying all the televisions showing Al-Asad's speech.
* [[Short-Lived Aerial Escape]]:
* [[Short-Range Long-Range Weapon]]: The main reason helicopters were considered overpowered in the original was because of the notoriously poor accuracy of the RPG-7 (the only real anti-vehicle weapon available), making it impossible to reliably hit anything beyond 5-10 meters. Of course, the splash damage meant that using it at that range was a [[Yet Another Stupid Death|bad idea]]. In real life, the RPG-7's range is... bad... compared to other launchers. In any case, ''inverted'' with the other weapons: you can shoot across the map with a [[Sniper Pistol|pistol]], and hit far and away in large maps with assault rifles.
* [[Shot to the Heart]]: At one point in ''Modern Warfare 3'', you need to press X to do this to Soap.
* [[Shout-Out]]: Many, many references.
** ''[[Airplane!]]
{{quote|
SAS Soldier: "Surely you can't be serious."
Gaz: "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley."
** ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]'' a ton of them in the freighter level: "I like to keep this for close encounters." "Check those corners!" "We - are - leaving!"
*** Price gets back at it in ''Modern Warfare 2''. "Whatever you're going to do, Soap, do it fast!"
*** A Ranger over the radio in "From Their Own Accord" also goes "We - are - leaving!".
*** While he never quotes him verbatim, pretty much everything Dunn says after {{spoiler|the EMP}} could be taken right out of Hudson's mouth.
** ''[[Apocalypse Now]]'':
** ''[[Behind Enemy Lines]]'
** ''[[Black Hawk Down]]''
*** Plus, every single helicopter, no matter how it's shot, will go down the exact same way that Super 61 did.
*** ''Modern Warfare 3'' has
*** Sandman, the Delta sergeant himself, is a walking reference to Black Hawk Down, being voiced by William Fichtner.
*** When told that police help is five minutes away, Wallcroft responds that "nothing takes five minutes!".
** ''Collateral'':
** ''[[Command
** ''[[Counter-Strike]]'':
** ''[[Dr. Strangelove]]''
** ''[[Fallout]] 3''
** ''[[Generation Kill]]'':
*** And the fact that every enemy infantryman is a "foot mobile
*** Not to mention the Rangers' Humvees bearing a striking resemblance to the 1st Recon's "Ghetto Hoopties" right down to the "B[/]" identifier marking and the custom paint job the marines added themselves before the invasion.
** ''[[Lethal Weapon]]'': Shepherd's group is called "Shadow Company". The antagonists in the first ''Lethal Weapon'' were also called "Shadow Company".
** ''[[Mass Effect]]''
** ''[[Night at the Museum]]''
** ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'':
** ''[[Predator]]'':
** ''[[Pulp Fiction]]'':
*** In the first ''Modern Warfare'', during "Crew Expendable", if the player strays too far from Price in the first cargo bay, a mook will leap out with a goddamn [[Hand Cannon]] and ambush you while screaming, pretty much exactly like the last of Brett's gang did in the movie. Making it better is that surviving the ambush is very hard
** ''[[Red Dawn]]'':
** ''[[Rainbow Six]]'':
** ''[[Rambo]]'':
** ''[[The Rock]]'':
*** It should be noted that Hans Zimmer did the music for both ''Modern Warfare 2'' and ''The Rock
** ''[[Top Gun]]'':
** ''[[Splinter Cell]]'':
** ''[[STALKER]]: Shadow of Chernobyl'':
** ''[[Star Wars]]''
*** In the same mission, a suddenly missing patrol squad is blamed on [[A New Hope|a bad transmitter
** ''[[Super Mario Brothers]]'':
** ''[[Terminator]] 2'':
*** The Winchester 1887 shotgun is a reference to ''Terminator 2'', being [[Arnold Schwarzenegger|Arnie]]'s choice of gun for half the film
** ''[[Transformers]]'':
** ''[[Tron]]'':
** ''[[True Lies]]'':
*** Also, the Prestige challenge for Harrier kills is called "You're Fired", the [[Pre-Mortem One-Liner]] from the movie.
** ''[[X-Men]]''/MyWayEntertainment:
** ''[[Children of Men]]'':
** In ''Modern Warfare 2'', the restaurants are thinly-veiled [[Bland-Name Product]] versions of Taco Bell, TGI Friday's, Starbucks and Burger King.
** In the training mission for ''Modern Warfare 1'', you melee a watermelon, probably a reference to R. Lee Ermey's hate of watermelons.
** In-series example
* [[Shown Their Work]]:
** The AC-130 sequence is so spot on that it can fool ''actual'' AC-130 crew.
** The [http://callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/Russo-American_War_Radio_Chatter radio transcripts] in ''Modern Warfare 2'' are ''spot on''.
* [[Silliness Switch]]: ''Modern Warfare'' also has some silliness cheats like Ragtime Warfare, which is basically [[Soundtrack Dissonance]] on demand, or enemies exploding into tires.
* [[The Slow Walk]]:
** The first half of "No Russian" locks you and your "allies" into doing this. Also briefly forced during the "Suspension" Special Ops mission, after a fighter jet-launched munition hits the side of the bridge, though eventually you're able to continue sprinting towards the second part of the fight.
** Juggernauts, which use the walking animation of your "allies" from "No Russian". They ''can'' charge at you, but only if you're far away, and even then, you're still faster than them. This is used to deliberate effect in the third game, when {{spoiler|Price and Yuri take their slow [[Unflinching Walk]] towards Makarov's safehouse while wearing the suits}}.
* [[Small Reference Pools]]: The only explanation possible for why the AK-47 is being used by modern Russian Federation forces.
** Before ''Modern Warfare 3'', the Dragunov SVD is also in its more well-known, wood-furniture version rather than the upgraded, synthetic SVD-M actually used by modern Russian forces.
* [[Sniper Pistol]]:
** Surprisingly, your pistols can reach a LONG way.
** The 1887 shotgun in ''Modern Warfare 2'' has been criticized for its unreasonably long range and accuracy ([[Reality Is Unrealistic|in reality, shotguns are very accurate to about a hundred meters...]]). Thankfully, it is one of the last guns unlocked ''and'' has a shitty fire rate and reload time (compared to other shotguns), preventing most players from using it. The main reason for people hating on the 1887 is the fact that [[Short-Range Shotgun|every other shotgun is atrocious at range]]. To the point that you can fire at someone across A ROOM and for some reason cause no damage whatsoever since all of your buckshot seems to have magically disappeared for no reason. The 1887 mysteriously lacks this problem (not to mention that the shotgun with the shortest barrel is somehow the most accurate when compared to even the M1014 which is one of the most accurate shotguns in use today...).
** Pretty much all guns that aren't shotguns can be effective at all ranges with enough skill to use them at exceedingly long ranges: the bullets will hit whatever you aim at, with no bullet drop needing compensation for.
* [[Sniper Scope Sway]]:
** You can hold your breath to steady your aim for a few seconds, after which the sway will be even worse until you get your breath back. You can also use perks to extend how long you can hold your breath. The same is true of the thermal scope, while the ACOG scope has a lower zoom level and less sway, but you can't hold your breath.
** Changed around in ''Modern Warfare 3'': all weapon sights have sway of some degree, which becomes less severe when the player is crouched or laying down. Using the "Breath" weapon proficiency lets you hold your breath like with a sniper rifle to eliminate sway for a few seconds, while the "Stability" proficiency reduces the overall amount of sway.
* [[Sniping Mission]]:
** "All Ghillied Up" and "One Shot, One Kill" in ''Modern Warfare''.
** A few Spec Ops missions in ''Modern Warfare 2'' also are designed for sniping.
* [[Sniping the Cockpit]]: At one point, your character does this to a Havoc. Then Captain MacMillan does it to another one. Which almost crashes on top of him.
* [[Society Marches On]]:
** A dialogue between two background soldiers in ''Modern Warfare 2'' was clearly written before [[wikipedia:Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010|December 22, 2010]]. Not surprising, since ''Modern Warfare 2'' came out in November 2009.
{{quote|'''Soldier 1''': Hey man, [[Ho Yay|you still gay?]] ...Just kidding.
'''Soldier 2''': Don't ask, don't tell, man.}}
** Prior to "No Russian", a screen indicates that Makarov is now as much of a threat as Al-Qaeda. It was more devastating then, since Al-Qaeda has been on the decline of late.
* [[Somebody Else's Problem]]: {{spoiler|Shepherd's motivation in the sequel. After the nuclear explosion in the original murders forty-thousand American soldiers under his command, he is outraged at the apathetic response of the American people, which could only be exasperated by Russia's continued militarisation. In an attempt to motivate his own country to war and bring about a new generation of willing martyrs with which to battle foreign threats, he manipulates Makarov into sparking an invasion of the US mainland}}.
* [[Something Completely Different]]:
** Yuri, in ''Modern Warfare 3''. For the first time in the trilogy, you play as a Russian. A good guy too.
** Harkov, Russian equivalent of Secret Service, also qualifies.
* [[Southern-Fried Private]]: Cpl. Dunn in
* [[Space Does Not Work That Way]]:
* [[Spanner in the Works]]: In ''Modern Warfare 2'', the only thing that {{spoiler|Shepherd's [[Batman Gambit]]}} doesn't take into consideration is {{spoiler|Price breaking out, going "off the grid," and being willing to do ''anything'' to succeed}}. Unfortunately, as fate would have it the only difference it makes is ''accelerating''
* [[The Squad]]: Too many to count.
* [[Stay Frosty]]: Soap says this quite often in ''Modern Warfare 2'', Sgt Foley several times, and once by a Shadow Company trooper, to the point of absurdity.
* [[Stealth-Based Mission]]:
** The first parts of "Cliffhanger", of "Contingency" and the (intended) entirety of "Evasion" (based off of "Contingency") in ''Modern Warfare 2''.
** "All Ghillied Up" in ''Modern Warfare''. Later recreated in the ''Modern Warfare 2'' Special Ops map "Hidden".
* [[Stealth Pun]]: The snipers that are covering you in "Loose Ends" are named [[Killer Rabbit|Archer and Toad]].
* [[Sticky Bomb]]: Semtex grenades and C4.
* [[The Stinger]]: The bonus level
* [[Storming the Castle]]:
** ''Modern Warfare 3'' has a literal one in "Stronghold", the achievement for beating it is even called Storm the Castle, and ends with one in "Dust to Dust".
** "The Gulag" in ''Modern Warfare 2'' also qualifies, bonus points for having once been a castle.
* [[String Theory]]: Price has one in ''
* [[Suicide Mission]]: Occurs at the end of ''Modern Warfare 2''.
* [[Super Dickery]]: {{spoiler|Price appears to launch the nuke to demolish D.C., but he just used an EMP to destroy the Ultranationalists' air-support and transport. Unfortunately, this also destroys the International Space Station, kills a hapless astronaut in the wrong place at the wrong time, ''and'' might have brought down any American aircraft still in range when the EMP hit. To say nothing of anyone who had been on life support or a pacemaker, considering how the ''Modern Warfare'' EMP seems to work... heck, it even takes out the electronics of the American forces on the ground too, leaving you without any working optics or night-vision, and only spoken words within earshot for verbal communications, for the rest of "Second Sun"}}.
* [[Super Window Jump]]: Soap seems to like doing this. In
* [[Supporting Protagonist]]: Price is the real star of the ''Modern Warfare'' series {{spoiler|seeing as how he's the only character to live through each game}}. However, he's only playable twice: once in the first game as a flashback, and again in the last mission of ''Modern Warfare 3''.
* [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]]: Ghost (in the second game) and Wallcroft (in the third game), who are voiced by the same person as
* [[Take That]]: In ''Modern Warfare 2'', the local militia are less than helpful, and it's up to the U.S. soldiers to do all the work. The first combat mission begins with a team of Army Rangers engaged in a pitched firefight with insurgents across a river, while the sole local militia ally present, instead of helping out, is calmly sitting behind cover eating a candy bar. Further down one can also spot a trio of Rangers looking at a cell phone. The entire sequence may be a reference to a similar scene in ''[[Generation Kill]]'', where the Marines were engaging an enemy force across a river, with only some of the Marines firing while the remainder stayed in cover, resting and eating while waiting to be rotated into combat or receive orders.
* [[Take the Wheel]]: In the second game, when Price and Soap escape the Shadow Company in a Jeep, and their driver gets hit by a stray bullet. This can be a very [[Unexpected Gameplay Change]], as you are thrust from [[Rail Shooter]] into [[Driving Game]] with no warning whatsoever.
* [[Take Your Time]]: Many missions feature countdowns, but one notable exception is when you're chasing Rojas in "Takedown
* [[Taking You with Me]]:
** A bug which was once taking over ''Modern Warfare 2'' multiplayer involves players tricking the game into cooking a Javelin Anti-Tank missile. The second you die, it fires into the ground at your feet, killing everyone nearby. Fortunately for everyone ticked off about how a coding error turned half the players in any given match into running suicide bombs, the Javelin Glitch has been excised.
** "Of Their Own Accord" from ''Modern Warfare 2'' gave us this awesome line:
{{quote|Sgt. Foley: ''[after the helicopter is hit by a missile]'' Take us up! If we're going down, we're taking those SAM sites with us!}}
** And this is essentially the point of the ''Modern Warfare 1''/''Modern Warfare 2'' perk/deathstreak "Martyrdom" (drop a grenade after you die) and the ''Modern Warfare 3'' perk "Dead Man's Hand" (detonate [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|C4]] after you die).
* [[A Taste of Power]]:
** Sort of. The default classes in multiplayer have stuff that you won't be able to use off-the-bat after you gain class customization.
** Best example is from ''Modern Warfare 3'': one of the default classes gives you a G36 (unlocked at level 42) as well as using the Overkill perk (level 47) to also start with a PP-90 (level 28).
* [[Technology Porn]]: ''Modern Warfare 3'' showcases some of the U.S. Military's latest toys, including an F-22 dropping JDAM GPS-guided bombs ([[Mecha Expansion Pack|they only got this ability later in their production life]]) in a cutscene and V-22 Ospreys, used in a mission to rescue the Vice President.
* [[Tempting Fate]]:
** In the Siberian Mine mission of ''Modern Warfare
** In ''Modern Warfare 2'', before "The Pit", Corporal Dunn comments that he wants some real action rather than just blocking positions for SEALS and Delta. A few days later, America is invaded by the Russians.
* [[Testosterone Poisoning]]: Viewer discretion is advised when looking directly at Captain MacTavish. Pregnant women, ''non''-pregnant women, all the geeks in high school, your average blue-collar worker, and Americans in general should all exercise caution when looking directly at Captain MacTavish. [[Overly Long Gag|If Captain MacTavish looks directly]] ''[[Overly Long Gag|back]]'' [[Overly Long Gag|at you, contact your local poison control immediately]].
* [[That's What I Would Do]]: How Price guesses Makarov's attack plan.
* [[Theme Tune Rap]]: Sgt. Griggs raps over the end credits of ''Modern Warfare''. Possibly an [[Expository Theme Tune]] as well.
* [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]]: The Tactical Nuke kill-streak reward in ''Modern Warfare 2'', which instantly kills every player on the map and ends the game in victory for your team.
* [[This Is Sparta]]: Right before the last section of the last level, {{spoiler|Captain Price}} ends his speech with a simple "We. Will. Kill him".
* [[Throw-Away Guns]]: Not only can the player drop his weapons to pick up others, he's often instructed by his superiors to do so.
* [[Throwing Your Sword Always Works]]:
** {{spoiler|This is how Soap kills Shepherd, using ''the knife lodged in his chest''}}.
** In "Down the Rabbit Hole", Sandman kills a charging Russian with his knife, and then throws it into another charging Russian. [[Justified Trope|Justified]] both times, as both of these characters are more than badass enough to pull it off.
* [[Title Confusion]]: "No Russian" is often presumed to mean "don't kill any Russians" because Makarov and the Ultranationalists are themselves Russian, and the first line is Makarov doing a [[Title Drop]], using the phrase as an order to the player and his other lackies before the shooting starts. The airport, however, is ''in Russia'', and as such, the people waiting in line to pass through the metal detectors before boarding outbound flights are most certainly Russian, barring a few tourists or businessmen returning home. "No Russian" means "don't speak any Russian, use English", to disguise the fact that the attack is conducted by Russians {{spoiler|because Makarov intends to frame the United States for it}}. The ambiguity of this line is probably responsible for the infamous (in Japanese) mistranslation of this line in the Japanese version of the game as "Kill them, the Russians". It's also a REALLY dark piece of metahumour: Makarov's crew mow down the civilians at a casual pace, without any sense of urgency until the armed forces arrive. There's "[[Incredibly Lame Pun|No Russian]]" about with them...
* [[Title Drop]]:
** From General Shepherd in ''Modern Warfare 2'': "Learning to use the tools of modern warfare is the difference between the prospering of your people and utter destruction."
** There's also a smaller one in that game: the main menu refers to the campaign mode as "For the Record", and {{spoiler|Price's first line during the loading screen for the last mission is "This is for the record."}}
** Gaz refers to "the sins of our fathers" in the intro for the level "The Sins of the Father".
** "[[Wham! Episode|Good, that's one less loose end]]".
** In
* [[Title In]]: Used to introduce every mission, except for one (
* [[Token Minority]]:
** Sgt. Griggs.
** Not just him, Sgt. Jackson is also black, although it's hard to tell with the gloves. Also, Lt. Vasquez and Pvt. Ramirez are Hispanic, and the randomly generated Marines and Rangers have no fixed ethnicity, although they mostly lean towards white (which is [[Truth in Television]]) anyway.
** Partially subverted in ''Modern Warfare 2'' with Sgt Foley. You'll also find guys like Worm, Meat (sometimes?) and the driver from TF141 and a few randomly generated Rangers and Task Force members are black
* [[Took a Level
* [[Torture Always Works]]: "Did he talk?" "They always talk."
* [[Tranquil Fury]]: In the briefing for the penultimate mission of ''Modern Warfare 2'',
* [[Trick Bomb]]: The flashbang grenade is [[Shell-Shock Silence]] and [[Blinded by the Light]] put together in one neat [[Sensory Overload|Sensory Overloading]] package. Just make sure you're not [[Hoist by His Own Petard|caught in the blast you've made]].
* [[Tricolours With Rusting Rockets]]
* [[The Unfettered]]: {{spoiler|Price}} comes back from the gulag a little crazy. He flat-out confronts Shepherd on if he's willing to do whatever it takes to win. {{spoiler|Then he launches a nuke at the country he was sprung to save, wreaking God knows how much hell to eventually turn the tide of the war}}. He goes straight from that into becoming the world's most wanted man and embarking on a one-way trip to kill the [[Big Bad]]. {{spoiler|Shepherd might have had a blank check, but Price forgot his First Bank of Badass balance years ago and is ignoring all the calls from collections}}.
{{quote|-''"The healthy human mind doesn't wake up in the morning thinking this is its last day on Earth. But I think that's a luxury. Not a curse."''}}
* [[Unexpected Gameplay Change]]: "All Ghillied Up" and "[[Death From Above]]" in ''Call of Duty 4''. Some of the levels in ''Modern Warfare 2'' also qualify.
* [[Universal Driver's License]]: Averted, in that you can either fire weapons from a vehicle but not drive it (both games) or the vehicles you can control are relatively simple to do so in real life (
* [[Unwitting Pawn]]: {{spoiler|Everyone but [[Spanner in the Works|Price]]}} in ''Modern Warfare 2'' is factored in {{spoiler|Shepherd}}'s [[Batman Gambit]].
* [[Up to Eleven]]:
** Seems to be the line of thought behind development of ''Modern Warfare 2'': "how can we take everything from the first ''Modern Warfare'' and make it ''AWESOME''?" Whether the results are indeed awesome is in the eye of the beholder.
** Also lampshaded in the achievements: getting one star in eleven different Special Ops missions unlocks one called "It Goes Up To Eleven".
* [[Urban Warfare]]: Most of the game, for better or for worse.
* [[Verbal Tic]]: Let's get this page edited, hooah?
** '''''HOOAH!'''''
*** '''HEY! TROPERS ARE OSCAR MIKE!'''
*** According to the other wiki, hooah is Army talk for "anything other than no
*** Little known info: "Hooah" is actually derived from "HUA", which means "Heard, Understood, Acknowledged
**** Actually HUAA, "Heard, Understood, And Accepted
*** "Oscar-Mike" means "on the move", which makes sense to be said constantly considering how often you ''are'' on the move.
** OORAH! in the first game.
*** But this is the Marines version of Hooah, so it's to be expected as you play "Force Recon" Marines for part of the game.
** Well
*** Similar words are used in armed forces all over the word. Essentially, its a manly affirmative grunt, Hooah?
* [[Victory Pose]]: The very first thing {{spoiler|Price}} does {{spoiler|after having killed Makarov}}, in his own [[Badass]] fashion. {{spoiler|Without saying a word, he sits up, pulls out a cigar, and lights it}}.
* [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]]: ''Modern Warfare 2'''s level "No Russian". If you choose to play the level, what you do with the civilians is entirely up to you... the game never gives you a single prompt to open fire.
* [[Video Game Cruelty Punishment]]: Killing civilians (in any mission other than "No Russian") results in a instant [[Nonstandard Game Over]]. ''Modern Warfare 2'' takes a somewhat realistic approach to this: if you shoot a civilian that's been in your line-of-sight for more than a couple seconds, the game assumes you did it deliberately, and thus are a cold-blooded sociopath, and immediately fails you. However, if some dumb-ass civilian runs out in front of you from out of nowhere in the middle of a firefight, and you gun him down reflexively before having time to confirm whether or not he's armed, the game will rule the shooting as "excusable" and let you carry on the mission.
* [[Violent Glaswegian]]: Arguably [[Subverted Trope|subverted]] with Captain MacMillan: he may be a man with a heavy Scottish accent in a military force, but his appearance in the game is of that of a sniper who tells ''you'' to stay cool and maintain stealth. Also subverted in ''Modern Warfare 2'' with Soap MacTavish ("let's get the 'ell outta hayah!"), who in addition to commanding you during the campaign is your supervisor on the [[Stealth-Based Mission]] "Acceptable Losses" on Spec Ops, and who will berate you should you fail to maintain the element of surprise in the mission. Except with knives. Almost any time Soap uses a knife, it gets creepy.
* [[Visual Pun]]: Kill a player that killed you in multiplayer gives you bonus XP, the words "Payback!" appearing on the screen, and dollar bills will fly out of the target of your payback.
* [[Walk It Off]]: Both games have a now-standard regenerating health model.
* [[War for Fun and Profit]]: Makarov and his men, even going so far to incite a war between Russia and the US.
* [[The War Room]]: The penultimate level in ''Modern Warfare''.
* [[Weaponized Animal]]: In Survival Mode in ''Modern Warfare 3'', on harder maps, attack dogs may have C4 strapped to them.
* [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]]: {{spoiler|Shepherd}}'s end goal is to snap average American citizens out of what he sees as willful ignorance towards how much sacrifice is necessary to maintain everything they take for granted, {{spoiler|giving him a near-endless supply of volunteers and the funds to load them out for bear with}}. To say he does some extreme things to achieve this, crossing the [[Moral Event Horizon]] multiple times in hindsight, is an understatement.
* [[We Have Reserves]]:
{{quote|{{spoiler|"Since when does Shepherd care about danger close?" - Captain Price}}}}
* [[Wham! Episode]]:
** All games have at least one. ''Call of Duty 4'' has "Shock and Awe" and {{spoiler|the nuke and Jackson's death}}, the first indication that the game really means business. ''Modern Warfare 2'' ups the ante with a seemingly endless string of these, but the biggest is probably {{spoiler|Shepherd's betrayal at the conclusion of "Loose Ends"}}.
** ''Modern Warfare 3'' has "Blood Brothers". {{spoiler|Makarov's still one step ahead of you, and Soap dies after it looked like he was going to make it}}. Also, there's {{spoiler|the little girl and her family dying in a terrorist attack}}.
* [[Wham! Line]]:
** ''[[Title In|Of Their Own Accord:]] {{spoiler|[[Title In|Washington, D.C]]}}.''
** Two from "Blood Brothers": "Captain Price, Hell awaits you" and "Yuri, my friend. You never should have come here."
* [[What Happened to the Mouse?]]:
** What exactly was in that briefcase in the panic room in ''Modern Warfare 2'', and who was the man there?
** Frost disappears after "Scorched Earth". There's no rhyme or reason as to why this is
** Ramirez, Dunn, Foley
* [[What the Hell, Player?]]:
** Shooting your own teammates will give you a [[Nonstandard Game Over]], giving you the message I"Friendly fire will not be tolerated!".
**
** Going out of your way to shoot down a helicopter during a covert sniping mission will cause MacMillan to berate you for "showing off
** Crouching down in the back of the jeep for too long in the first game's final level causes Gaz to shout at you to get off your ass and shoot.
* [[World of Cardboard Speech]]:
* [[World War III]]: The [http://www.youtube.com/user/CALLOFDUTY?v=coiTJbr9m04&feature=pyv&ad=13337861990&kw=COD2 trailer for
* [[Wretched Hive]]: The ''favelas'' of Rio de Janeiro, where hundreds of armed men are mobilized to hunt you down within minutes, rather reminiscent of ''Black Hawk Down''. This is actually [[Truth in Television]] to some extent: the Brazilian police rarely (if ever) enter the neighborhoods with anything less than fully armored SWAT teams because the gangs are so well equipped. And the SWAT teams that do get there [[The Elite Squad|have a skull/dagger/pistol emblem]] that pretty much symbolizes how much of a [[Badass Army]] you need to be to pull it off. One of the favelas was recently occupied... with the handy assistance of the ''Navy''.
* [[Written by the Winners]]: {{spoiler|1=The main topic of Price's final monologues in ''Modern Warfare 2''}}. {{spoiler|And ends with [[An Aesop]] about why committing so much force against a foe backed into a corner with access to nuclear weapons is a bad thing}}.
* [[Yanks With Tanks]]: Many of the missions involving the U.S.M.C. or U.S. Army feature this heavily. Particularly, the mission "War Pig" from the first game is all about this.
* [[You All Look Familiar]]:
** Despite being an militia presumably without a uniform, the Brazilian enemies in the sequel have very few variations in clothing and faces. Other enemies in the game are similar, but there are some which are just hard to tell, due to wearing face, mouth or eye covering clothing.
** Same goes for the African militias in ''Modern Warfare 3'', no matter what country they're from (for the record, Sierra Leone and Somalia are at ''opposite ends'' of the continent... the former at the Atlantic Ocean coast, the latter bordered by the Indian Ocean).
* [[You Can Barely Stand]]: In all three games:
** The first game ends with a seemingly mortally wounded Captain Price tossing his sidearm to a likewise nearly dead Soap to deliver the final shots against [[Big Bad]] Zakhaev and his two bodyguards.
** The final battle in ''Modern Warfare 2'' has
** The last level in ''Modern Warfare 3'' has {{spoiler|a severely injured Yuri telling Price to go on, and then (after Price crashes the escape helicopter) Makarov having the injured Price at his mercy, before the wounded Yuri returns to distract Makarov (and give Price the opening he needs to kill him)}}.
* [[You Can't Thwart Stage One]]:
** One of the storytelling issues with "No Russian".
** Thank god for {{spoiler|1=[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THU2H5_nadQ video editing programs]}}.
** And they couldn't thwart the first/main stage of {{spoiler|Shepherd's plot, although they killed him}}.
**
* [[You Have Got to Be Kidding Me!]]: Griggs has a more colorful version when the door in the nuclear facility opens very slowly.
* [[You
* [[You Have Researched Breathing]]:
** The "Tactical Knife" addon is merely a different pistol stance, with your left hand primed for quick stabs. Your character can only do this when holding a gun with this "addon", once they pick up another handgun they will also ditch the associated knife, even though there is no reason to do this. Also, the benefits of some multiplayer Perks like Scavenger or Commando.
** The "Breath" proficiency in ''Modern Warfare 3'' is a literal version of this: it lets you hold your breath while aiming down the sights.
* [[You Should Have Died Instead]]: Price clearly feels this way {{spoiler|about Yuri after Soap dies in "Blood Brothers", even if he doesn't outright say it}}.
* [[Zerg Rush]]:
** The main strategy of the Russians in the invasion of the USA.
** The ending of the Brazil missions in ''Modern Warfare 2'' has you rushed by a very angry crowd of gang members.
** It also happens if you shoot the wild dog in "All Ghillied Up". Should you survive, MacMillian is very understandably annoyed with you.
** What the Ultranationalist Inner Circle faction does in in ''Modern Warfare 3''.
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