With Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 right around the corner, we here at Suggestive Gaming figured
now would be a great time to catch up on the storyline of the old games so we can pick
back up with-
Oh… well let’s go over the storyline of the main Black Ops trilogy anyway in honor
of the new release!
Without further ado, this is what you need to know about Call of Duty Black Ops...but
first, we have to take a little trip back.
In 1942 during the Second World War, we find American Marine Private Miller on the Makin
Island of Japan, captured by the Japanese Army.
He is forced to watch his team be tortured and executed before being saved at the last
moment by a squad of Marines, led by Corporal Roebuck and Sergeant Sullivan.
The group lead an assault on the Peleliu beach, and Miller destroys the Japanese tanks there,
allowing the American artillery to advance.
However, shortly after, Sullivan is killed by a katana-wielding Japanese officer who
is promptly killed by Miller.
Sullivan’s death triggers Roebuck’s promotion to Sergeant, and he and his squad take out
a Japanese airfield.
Meanwhile, the Battle of Stalingrad is raging on between the Russian and German forces on
the Eastern Front.
Russian Private Dimitri Petrenko awakens in a bloody fountain to witness his comrades
being executed by German soldiers.
Feigning death, he is able to wait until the German men leave, and he meets another Russian
survivor: Sergeant Viktor Reznov.
Reznov explains to Dimitri that his mission is to eliminate German general Heinrich Amsel,
the man commanding the unit behind the current massacres.
The two men fight their way back to what remains of Dimitri’s unit, and they lead an assault
on Amsel’s communication post, overtaking it, and killing the general in the process.
Three years later, during the Battle of the Seelow Heights near Berlin, Dimitri has been
captured by German soldiers and is being kept in an abandoned house.
He is saved by an attacking Soviet unit, and he is reunited with Reznov, who introduces
him to Private Chernov, his right-hand man.
They then fight their way to a German camp, wiping it out in turn.
During this time, Miller and the American armed forces are able to penetrate and take
control of Peleliu.
In Germany, Dimitri and Resnov make their way to Berlin to engage with German soldiers.
After fighting over several days they are able to make their way to the German U-Bahn
metro station, and are forced to retreat inside to avoid an artillery bombing.
Once inside, a surge of water enters the tunnel, which Dimitri is unable to avoid.
In the Pacific, Miller’s squad make a ground assault on Okinawa, eventually fighting their
way into Shuri Castle.
There, the squad find Japanese soldiers surrendering, but they are revealed to have been concealing
live grenades under their armor, which go off, killing Roebuck or Private Polonsky,
depending on Miller’s reaction.
Japanese soldiers lead a battle inside the castle center until Miller calls in an airstrike,
allowing the Americans to take Shuri Castle and effectively claim victory in the Pacific
War.
Meanwhile, Reznov is able to drag Dimitri, who narrowly avoided drowning, out of the
U-Bahn and they regroup with the Soviet Army.
They fight their way to the Reichstag: a German parliament building in Berlin.
At the entrance, Chernov is burned with a flamethrower and later dies of his wounds.
Reznov and Dimitri fight their way to the rooftop of the building, where the Soviets
clear their way to the Nazi flag atop it.
Dimitri brings down the flag, and begins to plant a Soviet one in its place.
He is then shot by a wounded German soldier, whom Reznov kills with a machete.
Fighting through his wounds, Dimitri makes his way to the flagpole and plants the Soviet
flag, signaling victory and the end of the war in Europe.
Some twenty years later, during the Cold War in 1968, SOG and CIA operative Alex Mason
is being held captive in an unknown location, being interrogated by an unknown person about
a number station being used to contact Soviet sleeper agents in the US.
Mason recounts his past experiences, starting with a failed mission to assassinate Fidel
Castro in 1961 during the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
Mason is captured by Castro’s soldiers and presented to Nikita Dragovich, Major General
of the Soviet Army.
Dragovich sends Mason to the Vorkuta Gulag, a Russian labor camp, where he is held for
two years.
Inside Vorkuta, Mason meets and befriends Viktor Reznov, who was captured and imprisoned
following Operation Olympus, in which Reznov and Dimitri Petrenko, under the orders of
Dragovich and Colonel Lev Kravchenko were sent to the Arctic Circle to capture a Nazi
Scientist, Friedrich Steiner, to prevent him from unleashing a nerve toxin called Nova-6.
The group find and secure Nova-6, however, Dragovich orders his soldiers to restrain
Reznov so he could see the effects of Nova-6 for himself.
He proceeds to gas his own men, and Reznov witnesses the horrible death of his friend
Dimitri.
Reznov is able to break free and lead a small group of his own soldiers to escape and sink
the ship holding the weapon, hoping to prevent its use in the future.
However, he is not able to escape for good, and is later captured and sent to the prison.
Viktor tells his story to Mason, and asks him to promise him to avenge Dimitri’s death
by killing Dragovich and his allies, Kravchenko and Steiner.
Reznov and Mason spark an uprising amongst the prisoners, and in the chaos, the two are
able to escape captivity.
Afterwards, Mason is escorted to the Pentagon with his handler Jason Hudson, where he is
given a mission by President John F. Kennedy to assassinate Dragovich.
He is then sent with Master Sergeant Frank Woods and Chief Petty Officer Joseph Bowman
to sabotage a Soviet space launch which Dragovich will be present at.
They are able to destroy the rocket, but Dragovich escapes, leading to a five year manhunt by
Mason.
By this time, the SOG are deployed to Vietnam to investigate Soviet presence.
Mason is then tasked with obtaining a dossier with information on Dragovich from an unknown
defector, who to Mason’s surprise, turns out to be Reznov.
Later, Mason and the SOG fight their way through Viet Cong-controlled territory in an attempt
to chase Kravchenko, but they are sent to find and investigate a downed Soviet plane
carrying Nova 6.
However, the team of Mason, Woods, and Bowman are captured by the Viet Cong.
Meanwhile, Agent Hudson is sent on a mission to infiltrate a Soviet base believed to be
the center of development for Nova 6.
There, he and his team find a trap set by Dragovich, but are contacted by the Nazi scientist
Dr. Steiner, who reveals his location and information on cracking the numbers broadcast
in exchange for his safety from Dragovich.
Mason, Woods, and Bowman meanwhile, are held in captivity and forced to play Russian Roulette.
After refusing, Bowman is murdered by their captors with a metal pipe.
Woods and Mason then quickly hatch and execute a plan to kill their captors and escape.
The two then steal a Russian Hind helicopter and fly it to Kravchenko's base.
There, Mason once again comes across Reznov, who leads him to Kravchenko.
Once Mason locates him, however, Kravchenko is able to ambush him and knock him out.
Woods arrives quickly thereafter and is able to stab Kravchenko, who then pulls the pin
on his grenade in a last-ditch attempt to kill Woods and Mason along with himself.
Woods is able to tackle him out of the window, however, and they both fall, seemingly exploding
on the way down.
Mason and Reznov then find documents that lead them to Dr. Steiner’s current location:
Rebirth Island, and the two set off.
There, Mason finds Hudson, and the two fight their way through the Nova 6 research facility
to finally reach Dr. Steiner.
Hudson leads an assault on the facility, while Mason sneaks in with Reznov.
Mason and Reznov reach Steiner before Hudson, and Reznov murders Steiner.
While this is how Mason remembers the events, his interrogator reveals himself to be Hudson,
who witnessed Steiner’s death not at the hand of Reznov, but of Mason himself, who
was alone in the room with the scientist.
It is then revealed that during his stay at Vorkuta, Mason was subjected to an intense
form of torture and mental reconditioning in an attempt to turn him into a sleeper agent
to perform acts for the Soviet army inside of America.
However, Reznov was able to interfere with the conditioning and instead use it to brainwash
Mason into a devotion to kill Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner to avenge Dimitri’s death.
Shortly after, during their escape from the prison, Reznov was killed, with all of his
further appearances to Mason being a figment of his imagination.
Finally broken free from his brainwashing, Mason is able to recall the origin of the
numbers broadcast, a ship called the Rusalka.
The CIA infiltrate the ship as well as the underwater broadcast station it is anchored
to.
There, Mason finally kills Dragovich, and destroys the broadcast station, stopping the
threat of any other sleeper agents being awoken in the United States.
By 1986, Mason had left active duty to live in Alaska with his seven year old son David,
whose mother had died.
Hudson arrives to recruit Mason to help deal with the Angolan civil war after Woods and
his squad disappeared trying to help the Angolan rebels and their leader Jonas Savimbi.
Mason agrees, and he and Hudson set out and recover Woods in Cuando Cubango, where he
was captured after his men were killed by Nicaraguan arms dealer Raul Menendez.
While attempting to radio for an extraction, Mason encounters Menendez, and in the following
confrontation, Menendez pulls a grenade, but Mason is able to shoot Menendez in the face
and jump free from the hut before it explodes.
Savimbi then arrives in a helicopter to help them escape.
Mason and Hudson then begin to track Menendez, who survived the blast and established himself
even further as a primary arms dealer for conflicts all around the world, including
selling weapons to Lev Kravchenko, who survived the blast in Vietnam but is later executed
by Mason, Hudson, and Woods after an interrogation revealing that Menendez had moles in the CIA.
Menendez holds a grudge after an American injured his sister Josefina in an insurance
scheme, burning her nearly to death, and his father was assassinated by the CIA, charging
his one-man assault on the West.
The CIA authorize a strike against Menendez’s base of operations, and Mason, Woods, and
Hudson are sent in.
Local security forces storm Raul’s compound, and upon seeing a guard hurting his sister,
an enraged Menendez stabs him to death, but is wrestled to the ground and sedated by the
others.
Awakening outside, Menendez is freed by General Manuel Noriega, whom he had paid off previously
to protect him from American capture.
He attacks Noriega and runs back to the compound to find his sister.
He reaches her room, but is held back by Hudson.
Woods, becoming enraged by seeing his captor again, tosses a grenade at him.
The grade misses, however, and enters Josefina’s room, exploding and killing her.
Menendez survives the blast, but with the help of Noriega, fakes his death in order
to work from the shadows to get vengeance for his sister’s death.
He finally makes his move in Panama during Operation Just Cause.
Hudson, Woods, and Mason intend on capturing Noriega, but it turns out Menendez was only
using Noriega as bait.
He kidnaps Mason’s son David, then captures Hudson and Mason.
Using David’s life as a bargaining chip, Menendez forces Hudson to call Woods and tell
him to shoot a captured man with a bag over his head, as it is Raul Menendez.
Woods complies, and afterwards runs down to discover the man he killed was actually Alex
Mason.
Menendez then shoots Woods in both legs, crippling him.
He takes Woods to where he is holding Hudson and a drugged David.
Menendez asks Hudson which life he should take next, and Hudson sacrifices himself.
After Menendez kills Hudson with his sisters pendant, he leaves Woods to suffer with the
guilt of killing his friends.
David wakes up, and Woods takes him in, raising him under the lie that his father was simply
killed by a drifter.
After spending decades in the shadows, Menendez re-emerges in 2014 as the leader of a social
media populist movement called Cordis Die.
By 2025, Cordis Die has amassed a following of over two billion followers, which triggers
the US to recognize Menendez as a national terrorist threat once more.
Using his investments in weapons technology over the decades, Menendez is able to hire
engineer Chloe Lynch to develop a new rare earth element called Celerium, which houses
more processing power than the entire US military.
He then hires a Magnetometrist, Erik Breighner to process it into a smaller form, which is
placed in a chip that Menendez stores in his fake eye.
Using Celerium, Menendez hacks the Chinese Stock Market and crashes it, sending them
into a depression.
Menendez manipulates the media to believe the attack was ordered by the White House,
triggering a Cold War between China’s Strategic Defense Coalition and the US-led NATO.
Menendez uses the political turmoil to incite conflicts and attempt to bring about a war
between the two superpowers.
This leads the US to send in David Mason, now a Navy SEAL Commander code-named Section,
and his team, called JSOC, to search for Menendez once more.
The JSOC gather intel from Woods, and eventually follow Menendez’s tracks to find Breighner,
who tells them about something code-named “Karma” and is shortly thereafter killed.
The team find out “Karma” is actually Chloe Lynch, whom Menendez is trying to eliminate
to tie up loose ends.
Depending on the players actions throughout the rest of the game, several drastically
different outcomes can take place, including Chloe living or dying to prevent Menendez’s
future cyber attack, as well as actually killing or apprehending Menendez himself.
In our playthrough, Chloe does not survive, and the story culminates with Menendez’s
capture and imprisonment on the USS Obama.
There he is interrogated, but an attack by Cordis Die allows him to break free.
Menendez uploads the virus stored in his eye into the US mainframe, and escapes in a jet.
Menendez takes refuge in a base in Haiti to take control of the United State’s drone
army.
The US launch an attack on the base, but Menendez kills a Marine and takes his uniform to disguise
himself.
He then broadcasts a message revealing that his plan was to actually destroy the drones
to cripple the US military and allow Cordis Die’s billions of followers to rise up and
attack the government.
During his escape, however, David is able to stop Menendez and either capture him or
kill him.
In our playthrough, we captured him and he was later able to escape captivity and revisit
Woods, killing him.
He then visits his sister’s grave and douses himself in gasoline, lighting a match to relive
her suffering in the fire that scarred her.
Forty years later, in 2065, an unnamed soldier (who we will henceforth refer to as the Player),
along with their commanding officer Jacob Hendricks, are assisted by cybernetically
enhanced soldiers working for the Winslow Accord and their leader John Taylor to rescue
the Egyptian Prime Minister in Ethiopia.
The mission is a success, but the two men are critically wounded during evac.
Taylor rescues them and they are put under cybernetic surgery to save their life and
enhance them on the battlefield.
After five years serving under Taylor, the Player and Hendricks are recruited by CIA
agent Rachel Kane to investigate a CIA black site in Singapore that has lost communications.
There they discover that the site was attacked by a criminal organization known as the 54
Immortals and its data was stolen.
Kane examines the station’s logs and determines that Taylor and his team were the last ones
there, leading her to believe that they must have defected and murdered the team.
In order to learn the truth about what happened, the Player and Hendricks pose as arms dealers
and meet up with the 54 Immortals.
Though their cover is blown, they are able to recover the data drives and discover Tylor’s
last known location: an abandoned Coalescence Corporation facility in Singapore where ten
years prior, a mysterious explosion killed 300,000 people.
The two men head there and find it housing a hidden CIA research facility.
They find a member of Taylor’s crew, Sebastian Diaz, leaking information and are forced to
kill him.
After connecting with his neural interface they discover that Taylor is searching for
the survivors of the explosion ten years ago: Sebastian Krueger and Dr. Yousef Salim.
The 54 Immortals show up due to Diaz’s leaks and capture Kane, but the player is able to
kill their leader and rescue her.
The trio of Kane, the Player, and Kendricks then head to Egypt to find Salim.
There, they find him, who reveals that he worked on a secret project involving the enhanced
humans’ neurological interfaces to comfort unstable test subjects using an imaginary
Frozen Forest.
He also reveals that Taylor and his team are obsessed with finding this Frozen Forest,
before an explosion interrupts them, and Taylor and his squad arrive and capture Salim.
The player had slipped a tracking chip on to the doctor, however, and the Player, Hendricks,
and Kane pursue.
Taylor interrogates Salim, and executes him before ordering another one of his officers,
Sarah Hall, to ambush the three.
They defeat her and connect to her interface to discover an AI virus named Corvus, who
had corrupted Taylor and his team during their mission in Singapore.
Corvus was the result of the experiments on the Direct Neural Interface.
Upon gaining sentience, Corvus released Nova 6, causing the explosion and the deaths at
the Coalescence facility in Singapore.
Corvus infests the team and makes them obsessed with finding the Frozen Forest.
The Player and Hendricks also become infected through their interfacing with Hall and Diaz.
The two track down Taylor in Cairo, and after a battle, Taylor is able to resist Corvus
and rip out his DNI, freeing himself it it’s control.
However, Hendricks becomes taken by Corvus and kills Taylor, leaving the Player behind
to go find Krueger in Zurich.
The Player and Kane rush there to stop him.
After reaching the Coalescence Corporation building, Kane attempts to stop Corvus, but
it locks her in a room, leaking gas inside to kill her.
The Player then finds Hendricks holding Krueger hostage, and he ultimately kills him.
The Player then kills Hendricks.
In order to rid the world of Corvus, the Player attempts to kill himself, only to end up in
a simulated Frozen Forest, created by Corvus in order to hold on to the consciousness of
dead DNI users.
After learning of the death it caused in Singapore, Corvus sought to create a place of eternal
peace, where every DNI user could live on.
Inside the Player finds the remaining consciousness of Taylor, who now exists as a glitch in the
system.
Taylor helps the Player purge his DNI, in order to finally erase Corvus for good.
After finding his way out of the headquarters, a security officer asks the Player to identify
himself, to which he responds “Taylor”, revealing that the Player’s consciousness
had actually been living a simulation inside Taylor’s mind after the initial accident
through the DNI.
It was only after the DNI purge that Taylor’s consciousness was able to take full control
once again.
Hey everyone thank you so much for watching this episode of What You Need to Know.
If you enjoyed it, please leave a like and a comment telling us what else you’d like
us to cover.
Make sure you check out our Modern Warfare summary for more Call of Duty content, and
we hope to see you next time!