History YMMV / CallOfDuty

* MagnificentBastard: [[YMMV/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII Raul Menendez]], [[YMMV/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII Dolos]], and [[YMMV/ModernWarfare General Shepherd]], see their pages for details.

** The guys who hate ''World at War'', ''Big Red One'', ''3'', ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps Black Ops]]'' and [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII its sequel]] because they weren't done by Infinity Ward. Many fans also '''''hate''''' the Juggernaut perk and/or rifle grenades, and the MP-40 in ''World at War'' is given similar views.

** ''World at War'' attracts a lot of flak for various reasons (unfair respawns in single, DarkerAndEdgier, going back to UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, being by Treyarch, etc).

* SidetrackedByTheGoldSaucer: A lot of people play ''World at War'' JUST for VideoGame/NaziZombies.

* SeasonalRot: Most long-time fans of the franchise agree that ''Modern Warfare 2'' is when the franchise started to become increasingly glamorous and distanced from the previous entries' brutal depiction of warfare.
* {{Sequelitis}}: The series generally fell into this starting from GHOSTS due to being StrictlyFormula in multiplayer, and the singleplayers features increasingly implausible scenarios and increasing number of [[AKA47 fictional firearms]].

* SequelDisplacement: A vast majority of the fanbase have never played the original game, ''United Offensive'' or even ''Call of Duty 2'', largely because the current ''Call of Duty'' fanbase consists of Xbox 360/One and [=PS3=] and [=PS4=] gamers, and the early games were PC exclusives before being ported to consoles (with the exception of ''United Offensive'', which still has not seen a console release).

** The second half of the Foy mission in ''United Offensive'' comes to mind. As if sniping tankbusters while EVERYONE IS SHOOTING AT YOU isn't enough, the final part of the mission is just as brutal.
** The very last sections of both the American and Russian campaigns of ''United Offensive'' force you to wait for German tanks to show up and be destroyed, while soldiers respawn infinitely. In the American mission, they are so frequent you may not even get enough time to reload your Panzerschreck; in the Russian one there are also soldiers firing at you from afar, and a Stuka doing frequent bomb runs - it may even destroy the artillery piece you can use and force further exposition to scrounge for Panzerfausts around.

** PrivateMilitaryContractors seem to be recurrent villains in the franchise, counting on the Shadow Company from ''Modern Warfare II'', Cordis Die's mercs from ''Black Ops II'', and Atlas Corporation from ''Advanced Warfare''.

** ''Ghosts'' is generally considered to be a sub-par ''Call of Duty'' sequel due to its weak original setting story and characters, overreliance on RareGuns as the second attempt to futurize the franchise, stupid hype ("Fish AI" and an "improved graphics engine" that needed better equipment to display graphics that looked the same as previous games), and a ClicheStorm plot with [[DarknessInducedAudienceApathy no likeable characters on either side]] that ends in a blatant SequelHook.

** The classic [=CoD=] gamebreaker is the [=PPSh=]-41; in the original, it had a huge 71-round magazine along with very friendly and predictable recoil and an excellent iron sight. Almost every later game tried to {{Nerf}} it somehow. Submachine guns in general have always been overpowered in the WWII games, although to an extent that's actually historically accurate, as most Call of Duty multiplayer maps are designed in such a way that most encounters are at smg range, where a bolt-action rifle (designed to engage at distances upwards of 100 meters) will usually be outclassed.
** [=CoD=] 1 also had the scoped Mosin-Nagant; while every other scoped rifle had to reload one round at a time, the Mosin-Nagant used a stripper clip even when scoped, giving Soviet snipers a ''huge'' advantage in multiplayer.
** Apart from the ''other'' broken scoped rifle, of course. The [=FG42=] in the original game was ridiculous; a selectable semi/full-auto high-damage weapon with an extremely accurate scope, it was a true do-everything gun with no meaningful weaknesses whatsoever.
** The rifle grenades in ''World at War''. They're pretty much accurate rocket launchers. If one uses them, they will be hated.
** Any form of grenade or rocket launcher is usually decried as a "noob tube". It didn't help that one of the default classes in every ''Modern Warfare'' game before the player unlocks Create-A-Class has an assault rifle with a grenade launcher, meaning you don't even have to work to unlock it if you like the weapon the default class puts it on.

** Some Call of Duty fans were not too pleased when the VideoGame/ModernWarfare franchise was introduced and turned out to be a hit.
** Gamers themselves aren't too pleased that the franchise ''itself'' is popular. The franchise itself is a best-seller. You wouldn't know this by looking at most gaming boards, though.

* GrowingTheBeard: Combined with the whole Infinity Ward versus Activision stuff after ''Modern Warfare 2'', general sentiment following the release of ''VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII'' is that Treyarch has gone from the makers of "off" Call of Duty games to the new makers of "on" Call of Duty games. After ''Ghosts'' released the year after and was judged to be SoOKItsAverage, most of the remaining IW fans jumped ship as well.

** Not to mention the heavy use of SimultaneousArcs, although the previous games tended to do all the missions with one character in one batch before shifting over to another character, and [[spoiler:no playable characters actually die until ''Modern Warfare''.]]

* SnarkBait: Due to its popularity, lots of people mock the ''Call of Duty'' franchise, particularly its [[RealIsBrown cinematic hyperrealism]] and how it appeals to the rowdy "dudebro" demographic as well as [[PeripheryDemographic pottymouthed kids and teens]] attracted by the violence. Related memes, such as Major League Gaming along with ProductPlacement for Doritos and Mountain Dew, are frequently mentioned and used when making fun of the series. [[https://www.wattpad.com/134798382-mountain-dew-and-doritos-an-epic-mlg-tale-swear-on An example.]]
** It's also partly a side effect of the early 2010s, when people were transitioning from the 90's and 00's. The amount of bullying kids faced in middle and high school from people who played the "Darker and Edgier" games that saturated the market left a bad impression in many kids.

* ArchivePanic: As of 2019, the franchise suffered this trope.

** [[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/press-f-to-pay-respects Press F To Pay Respects:]] An action prompt from a quick time event in ''Advanced Warfare'', which involved pressing the '''F''' key (X button on Controller) to pay respects to a dead soldier. This was turned into a '''colossal meme''', as the {{Narm}} of a [=QTE=] being in the middle of an otherwise-serious cutscene was mercilessly made fun of online for ruining the atmosphere and treating the death as a joke. The meme has become culturally significant, in that it's an unironic "I'm sorry for your loss" statement, as both gamers & non-gamers who have gone online know what "F to pay respects" means, as it's part of internet lexicon for commenting on a series of real-life or fictional misery.
** '''C'''hildren's '''O'''nline '''D'''aycare [[labelnote:explaination]] An [[FunWithAcronyms altered]] version of the franchise's logo, which was used to mock younger players who tends to scream with their microphones[[/labelnote]]
** Dogs [[labelnote:explaination]] Starting in the Black Ops 2 map Hijack, where the Attack Dogs killstreak would spawn in dogs from holes in the boat. It became a joke across the community as it was bizarre how the dogs would just sit in some secret hole until called upon. Further pushed in Ghosts, where dogs became even more of a joke due to how absurd the Guard Dog scorestreak was. First, the player would whistle for the dog. Then the dog would come, dressed in a Kevlar vest. And it had '''more''' health than the player. It was also very [[ScrappyMechanic buggy]], especially on larger maps, where it would go after enemies, while trying to return to the player. [[/labelnote]]
** "I do ur mum harder than you suck at this gaem" [[labelnote:explaination]] Often times ur mum insults are used by little kids who probably shouldn't even be playing the game to insult a player who is better then them at the game. [[/labelnote]]

** In ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare 2'', many. [[spoiler: Makarov for mowing down an airport full of innocent civilians and blaming pinning it on the U.S.; the "good" Russian army vowing to kill 1,000 Americans for every dead Russian civilian in the airport (and they go about this gleefully by shooting down civilian evac choppers); and Shepherd for orchestrating it all because, he claimed, there weren't enough patriots in America.]]

* NeverLiveItDown: The funeral scene, which ultimately popularizes the PC version's interact key as the respect-paying button.
* NintendoHard: The single player campaign for ''Finest Hour'' can be quite difficult. As the series had not yet switched to regenerating health, players had to find health kits and use them wisely. Also, your health bar itself was very small, meaning a few bursts of machine gun fire could take you out. Not to mention that now there was no GameplayAllyImmortality at any point - you had to conserve your health kits to give to your named allies if they needed them more than you did. Checkpoints were few and far between, as well as many opportunities to get yourself killed between those sparse checkpoints. All this comes together to form a very challenging experience.
* NoSuchThingAsBadPublicity: No matter how many people hate the game series, it sill manages to sell millions of copies. Whatever the developers are doing, seems they're doing ''something'' right...

** Not to mention the heavy use of SimultaneousArcs, although [[spoiler:no playable characters actually die until ''Modern Warfare''.]]

** Woods in ''BO4'' has become quite possibly the single most hated character in the entire franchise. Yes, the same Woods who was ''the'' fan favorite of the first two ''Black Ops.'' He is relegated to the role of the announcer for tutorial modes, which would be fine if he acted like he did in the previous games at all. Instead, he's reduced to an absurdly obnoxious TotallyRadical caricature ([[WereStillRelevantDammit "That bounce was lit AF!"]]) that everyone wishes they could mute.

** ''Ghosts'' is generally considered to be a sub-par ''Call of Duty'' sequel due to its weak original setting story and characters, overreliance on RareGuns as the second attempt to futurize the franchise, stupid hype ("Fish AI"), and a ClicheStorm that ends in a blatant SequelHook.
* CompleteMonster : [[Monster.CallOfDuty Has its own page which contains the most despicable villains this franchise has to offer]].
* CowboyBebopAtHisComputer: The people who say the ''Modern Warfare'' series glorifies war and xenophobia. It's kind of hard to state that when the first game alone shows the horrible consequences of gung-ho military adventurism while having you teamed up with Russian Loyalists the entire time. It also seems to have even skipped a lot of ''player's'' attention that the American forces are coming to "liberate" the unnamed Middle Eastern country, with ambiguous and contradictory evidence about whether it's a genuine sentiment or a transparent power play for control of the "oil rich" Arab nation. Y'know, just like real life.
** Can apply to the whole series since every and each installment has at least one level that shows that WarIsHell. However, it's still thought of as "the FPS series that glorifies war" by people who, if they played it at all, paid zero attention to anything but the shooting.

** In 2014-2016, it's against the ''Videogame/CounterStrike'' Global Offensive fanbase.

** Press F To Pay Respects: An action prompt from a quick time event in ''Advanced Warfare'' which involves pressing the '''F''' key (which is the game's interact button) to pay respects to a dead person. The letter was also ''commonly (and ('''un''')ironically)'' used by both gamers & non-gamers for commenting the series of real-life or fictional miseries. The [=PS4=] uses the X button, but the "Press X to pay respects" meme is not popular enough.)

* HolyShitQuotient: The Zombies mode in Black Ops. [[spoiler: It begins with Secretary of Defense Robert [=McNamara=], Fidel Castro, John F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon having a conference after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Then, zombies break into the Pentagon.]]
-->'''[[spoiler: Kennedy]]''': Zombies. [[spoiler: Gentlemen, in times like these, our capacity to retaliate must be, and has to be, massive to deter all forms of aggression.]]\\
[[spoiler: ''(Kennedy opens a secret panel of the conference wall, revealing a stockade of weapons)'']]\\
'''[[spoiler: Kennedy]]''': Gentlemen, lock and load.
** Done again in ''Call of the Dead.'' [[Creator/GeorgeARomero George Romero]] is the BigBad? Creator/RobertEnglund, Creator/DannyTrejo, Creator/MichaelRooker and Creator/SarahMichelleGellar are working on a horror movie only to have to face real zombies? [[RuleOfCool Hell. Yeah.]]

** ''Ghosts'' is generally considered to be a sub-par ''Call of Duty'' sequel due to its weak gameplay.

* FandomRivalry: The ''Call of Duty'' fanbase has a historical rivalry with Electronic Arts titles ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonor'' and later ''VideoGame/{{Battlefield}}'' in the department of military first-person shooters.

* WereStillRelevantDammit: Many people accused Activision of this after the announcement that ''Black Ops 4'' would not feature a single-player campaign while also introducing a Battle Royale mode, decisions that respectively jumped on the AAA game industry's questionable party line that gamers no longer wanted single-player games, but "Live Services" instead and clearly [[FollowTheLeader chased the tails of]] popular games of the time like ''VideoGame/{{Fortnite}}'' and ''VideoGame/PlayerUnknownsBattlegrounds''.

** Since 2013 to this day, it was the time when the developers experiment with all new characters and (usually future) settings. Even its return to WWII doesn't feature the return of iconic characters due to the relatively new Sledgehammer games in charge instead of Infinity Ward. The return of the Modern Warfare in 2019, along with COD Mobile bringing the best of Modern Warfare and Black Ops in one mobile package, has managed to WinBackTheCrowd.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: The mere mentioning of Modern Warfare 2 on any gaming forum will bring the wrath of untold [[UsefulNotes/PCVsConsole PC fanboys.]]

** Press F To Pay Respects: An action prompt from a quick time event which involves of pressing the '''F''' key (which is the game's interact button) to pay respects to a dead person. The letter was also ''commonly (and ('''un''')ironically)'' used by both gamers & non-gamers for commenting the series of real-life or fictional miseries. The Console uses the X button, but the "Press X to pay respects" meme is not popular enough.)

** The classic [=CoD=] gamebreaker is the [=PPSh=]-41; in the original, it had a huge 71-round magazine along with very friendly and predictable recoil and an excellent iron sight. Almost every later game tried to {{Nerf}} it somehow. Submachine guns in general have always been overpowered in the WWII games, although to an extent that's actually historically accurate.

* InternetBackdraft:
** ''Modern Warfare 2''. PC gamers were not happy with the lack of dedicated servers, and everyone else agreed that the many GameBreaker bugs left in the final product should have been found and dealt with during playtesting. The level "No Russian" is also extremely controversial. Critics and fans alike seem to fall in two camps - 1) those who think the level was a sadistic and somewhat tasteless attempt to stir up controversy and 2) those who find it gut-wrenching and horrifying but accept that this was most likely Infinity Ward's intent in the first place. There is also a ''far'' more frightening (and unsettlingly large) portion of the fandom who [[MisaimedFandom actually think the level is cool]] and gleefully slaughter as many unarmed civilians as possible.
** ''Black Ops 4'' is already getting this from not just the haters, but most of the ''[=COD=]'' player base for its preorders alone. To elaborate, in addition to getting rid of the Campaign mode in favor of a Battle Royale mode to cash in on ''Fortnite'' and ''[=PUBG=]'', you have several digital and physical editions available to get. That's nothing new. However, you also have the "Black Ops Pass" in addition to the regular Season Pass, which not only locks some future DLC behind another paywall, but also locks the Zombies mode behind paid DLC. A mode that was in the base games of the previous entries is now relegated to DLC unlocking. And you can only get the Black Ops Pass in the most expensive ''digital'' version of the game. If you buy the physical version only, you're locked out of this mode at launch, especially for non-[=PS4=] players, who have to wait a month for DLC, due to the timed exclusivity deal Sony has with Activision. Then there's the fact that a DLC pack of previous ''Black Ops'' games' multiplayer maps will be [=PS4=] exclusive. Not timed, but always. Throw in the fact that Activision is still going to monetize the game with microtransactions and we're looking at a bigger catastrophe of a company trying to monetize a game passed its base build than EA's attempt to squeeze more money out of ''Star Wars Battlefront II''.

* CriticalDissonance: The franchise is a serial victim of this. Due to being one of the largest FPS franchise, it is often bashed by reviewers or random internet goers who simply did not like the first person shooter genre. Complaining about something inherent in the genre, like "All you do is shoot at things" is a very common criticism.

* FanHater: Given how ''Call of Duty'' is treated as a punching bag by the internet, it's only natural that the franchise's fans are also scorned. It's not uncommon for some commentators to write off fans as potty-mouthed kids, hypermasculine dudebros, or gun nuts. The fact that [=CoD=] fans have been known to throwing tantrums over something as insignificant as a weapon's reduced fire rate didn't help matters.

** The ''Call of Duty'' franchise as a whole has become this ''for the entire Internet'', now that [[{{Creator/Bungie}} the developers of]] [[{{Franchise/Halo}} that other franchise which everyone claimed was the cancer killing first person shooters]] have moved on (and come back into public view, but the ''Halo'' hype seems to have started again). This reached the point that footage from ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyInfiniteWarfare Infinite Warfare]]'' wowed audiences at E3 2016... until the ''Call of Duty'' title came up on screen, silencing the cheers.

* FanNickname: Quite a few people who discovered the original, United Offensive and Call of Duty 2 [[SequelDisplacement after playing the next-gen games]] are now calling them "Call of Duty Classic". The first game was released with this title as a downloadable game after ''Modern Warfare 2''[='=]s release.
** Black Ops is usually shortened to [=CoDBLOPS=] or just "Blops".

** Press F To Pay Respects: An action prompt from a quick time event which involves of pressing the '''F''' key (which is the game's interact button) to pay respects to a dead person. The letter was also ''commonly (and ('''un''')ironically)'' used by both gamers & non-gamers (which is frequently seen in Facebook pages, and later some very little official pages) for commenting the series of real-life or fictional miseries.(NOTE: The Console uses the X button, but the "Press X to pay respects" meme is not popular enough.)

* NeverLiveItDown: The funeral scene, which popularizes the PC version's interact key as the respect-paying button.

** The guys who hate ''World At War'', ''Big Red One'', ''3'', ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOps Black Ops]]'' and [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII its sequel]] because they weren't done by Infinity Ward. Many fans also '''''hate''''' the Juggernaut perk and/or rifle grenades, and the MP-40 in ''World At War'' is given similar views.

** ''World At War'' attracts a lot of flak for various reasons (unfair respawns in single, DarkerAndEdgier, going back to UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, being by Treyarch, etc).

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Quite A few
** Sgt Reznov. From World at War It helps that he's CrazyAwesome.
** From The Modern Warfare series: Gaz, Cpt. Macmillian, Sgt.Foley, Yuri, and Ghost (to the point He got his own comic)
** Even though He's A Dog, Riley from Ghosts seems to be the only character people seem to like from that campaign.

* InternetBackdraft: ''Modern Warfare 2''. PC gamers were not happy with the lack of dedicated servers, and everyone else agreed that the many GameBreaker bugs left in the final product should have been found and dealt with during playtesting. The level "No Russian" is also extremely controversial. Critics and fans alike seem to fall in two camps - 1) those who think the level was a sadistic and somewhat tasteless attempt to stir up controversy and 2) those who find it gut-wrenching and horrifying but accept that this was most likely Infinity Ward's intent in the first place. There is also a ''far'' more frightening (and unsettlingly large) portion of the fandom who [[MisaimedFandom actually think the level is cool]] and gleefully slaughter as many unarmed civilians as possible.

* ContestedSequel: ''World At War'' attracts a lot of flak for various reasons (unfair respawns in single, DarkerAndEdgier, going back to UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, being by Treyarch, etc). ''3'' does likewise, largely for pointless motion sensor gimmicks, rather dull graphics, no PC port, and abandoning the "major historic battles" motif in favour of being set in a series of seemingly random towns that even the French have probably never heard of.

* MagnificentBastard: [[YMMV/CallOfDutyBlackOpsII Raul Menendez]] and [[YMMV/ModernWarfare General Shepherd]], see their pages for details.

* HePannedItNowHeSucks: Inverted with [[Creator/JoshScorcher Josh Scorcher]], who had the ''”audacity”'' [[spoiler: to put the whole series at #1 on his Overhated Video Games list]].