History YMMV / CallOfDutyBlackOpsII

** Mason taking the controls of an F/A-38 in "Cordis Die" is okay for a bit, the plane in VTOL mode handles just like the drones you've piloted several times in the campaign and the helos in the original's Multiplayer. Then the game has the audacity to put you into flight mode, '''''completely change the control scheme in the middle of a level without explaining a thing''''', and task you with shooting down the drones attacking the convoy. This of course requires you to fly down the streets of downtown Los Angeles without hitting a skyscraper and if you try to fly over them, you run the real risk of flying right off the map and failing the mission before you can recover. And, if you're trying to complete challenges to unlock the excellent [[UniversalAmmunition Ammo Pickup]] campaign perk, it can be a real heartbreaker when you're one challenge away, remember that there's a challenge for killing multiple enemies with one Skybuster missile, and the game responds by denying you access to them because you didn't meet the [[GuideDangIt never-explained-anywhere requirement to activate them]] (the original pilot needs to live through the VTOL section to authorize use of the missiles for you; if the convoy takes too much damage during that section, she dies).

* EvilIsSexy: [[IWasQuiteALooker In his youth]], Raul Menendez looked like a {{Telenovela}} star, even after Mason popped him in the eye and he gets half of his face burned up. Appropriately, he spends the mission "Suffer With Me" in an unbuttoned dress shirt.

* AnticlimaxBoss: Menendez receives ''significant'' build-up throughout the game as a powerful combatant, more so than almost any other ''Call of Duty'' villain, yet at the end he's not defeated in a dramatic confrontation but rather [[spoiler:due to Section literally dropping on top of him ''by accident''.]] To add insult to injury, Vladimir Makarov, the antagonist of previous ''Call of Duty'' title ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare 3'', released just the year before, goes down only after being [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill the victim of a helicopter crash, being shot twice, getting beaten senseless and choked out at the same time, slammed through a glass ceiling, having his neck broken and an outright hanging]], all of which is, in [[PressXToNotDie some form]] or another, under player control. Conversely, Menendez [[spoiler:is a pure CutsceneBoss, as one only has to shoot his two guards (or one guard and Defalco if he survived Chloe's kidnapping attempt)[[note]] If Farid is present in Odysseus, Defalco will die during Salazar's betrayal.[[/note]] And then the game automatically stabs him twice for you and forces the final decision regarding his fate.]]

* AnticlimaxBoss: Menendez receives ''significant'' build-up throughout the game as a powerful combatant, more so than almost any other ''Call of Duty'' villain, yet at the end he's not defeated in a dramatic confrontation but rather [[spoiler:due to Section literally dropping on top of him ''by accident''.]] To add insult to injury, Vladimir Makarov, the antagonist of previous ''Call of Duty'' title ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare 3'', released just the year before, goes down only after being [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill the victim of a helicopter crash, being shot twice, getting beaten senseless and choked out at the same time, slammed through a glass ceiling, having his neck broken and an outright hanging]], all of which is, in [[PressXToNotDie some form]] or another, under player control. Conversely, Menendez [[spoiler:is a pure CutsceneBoss, as one only has to shoot his two guards (or one guard and Defalco if he survived Chloe's kidnapping attempt)[[note]] If Farid is present in Odysseus, DeFalco will die during Salazar's betrayal.[[/note]] And then the game automatically stabs him twice for you and forces the final decision regarding his fate.]]

* AnticlimaxBoss: Menendez receives ''significant'' build-up throughout the game as a powerful combatant, more so than almost any other ''Call of Duty'' villain, yet at the end he's not defeated in a dramatic confrontation but rather [[spoiler:due to Section literally dropping on top of him ''by accident''.]] To add insult to injury, Vladimir Makarov, the antagonist of previous ''Call of Duty'' title ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare 3'', released just the year before, goes down only after being [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill the victim of a helicopter crash, being shot twice, getting beaten senseless and choked out at the same time, slammed through a glass ceiling, having his neck broken and an outright hanging]], all of which is, in [[PressXToNotDie some form]] or another, under player control. Conversely, Menendez [[spoiler:is a pure CutsceneBoss, as one only has to shoot his two guards (or one guard and Defalco if he survived Chloe's kidnapping attempt)[[note]] or if Farid is present in Odysseus, which will cause Defalco to die in that level's shootout.[[/note]] And then the game automatically stabs him twice for you and forces the final decision regarding his fate.]]

* AnticlimaxBoss: Menendez receives ''significant'' build-up throughout the game as a powerful combatant, more so than almost any other ''Call of Duty'' villain, yet at the end he's not defeated in a dramatic confrontation but rather [[spoiler:due to Section literally dropping on top of him ''by accident''.]] To add insult to injury, Vladimir Makarov, the antagonist of previous ''Call of Duty'' title ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare 3'', released just the year before, goes down only after being [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill the victim of a helicopter crash, being shot twice, getting beaten senseless and choked out at the same time, slammed through a glass ceiling, having his neck broken and an outright hanging]], all of which is, in [[PressXToNotDie some form]] or another, under player control. Conversely, Menendez [[spoiler:is a pure CutsceneBoss, as one only has to shoot his two guards (or one guard and Defalco if he survived Chloe's kidnapping attempt) and then the game automatically stabs him twice for you and forces the final decision regarding his fate.]]

** [[spoiler: Getting gyped into shooting ''Alex Mason'', Woods' reaction to (possibly) killing his best friend, and Hudson's death are all incredibly hard to watch in [[WhamEpisode "Suffer With Me".]] That is, unless you know how to [[MultipleEndings avert the former.]]]]

** By the late 2010s/early 2020s, relationships between China and the USA have deteriorated to the degree than many analysts argued that they are locked in a new Cold War.

* CriticalResearchFailure:
** Menendez and his father ran a cartel during the '80s. Nicaragua had no cartels during this time period; all drug trafficking in that area was done by the briefly mentioned [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters Contras]] and their CIA allies.
** Menendez also mentioned seeing the atrocities committed by the US-backed Contras during his childhood, cementing his hatred of the US. However, he was born in 1963, and the Contras did not exist until the overthrow of the Somoza regime by the Sandinistas in 1979. The main purveyors of the atrocities in the '60s would have been Somoza's National Guard.

** Crosby, despite being given a name to indicate he's as important as the rest of the SEAL team, seemingly exists solely to round out the roster, as he has exactly one line in the game and only appears in three missions where he does nothing of note except sit at the controls of the VTOL that is the end point of his last mission.

** Menendez and his father ran a cartel during the 80's. Nicaragua had no cartels during this time period; all drug trafficking in that area was done by the briefly mentioned [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters Contras]] and their CIA allies.
** Menendez also mentioned seeing the atrocities committed by the US-backed Contras during his childhood, cementing his hatred of the US. However, he was born in 1963, and the Contras did not exist until the overthrown of the Somoza regime by the Sandinistas in 1979. The main purveyors of the atrocities in the 60's would have been Somoza's National Guard.

* EvilIsSexy: [[IWasQuiteALooker In his youth]], Raul Menendez looked like a damn {{Telenovela}} star, even after Mason popped him in the eye and he gets half of his face burned up. Appropriately, he spends the mission "Suffer With Me" in an unbuttoned dress shirt.

** Admiral Briggs shows this throughout the game. His constant references to genitalia (calling his enemies "cocksucker" and referring to the SDC's takeover as grabbing countries by the balls) and his refusal to speak above a terse whisper make it hard to take him seriously as a high-ranking military officer.

** [[spoiler: Getting gyped into shooting ''Alex Mason'', Woods' reaction to practically killing his best friend, and Hudson's death are all incredibly hard to watch in [[WhamEpisode "Suffer With Me".]] That is, unless you know how to [[MultipleEndings avert the former.]]]]

** The much-hated lag compensation from ''VideoGame/ModernWarfare 3'' is back with a vengeance. It seems that Treyarch didn't patch out the netcode problems when they received the new engine to work with for ''Black Ops 2''. To make matters worse, fan complaints to Treyarch regarding the netcode are being ignored entirely, as Treyarch "finds nothing wrong with it". The fans' reaction has '''not''' been pleasant, to say the least.

** Skill-based matchmaking. Despite the existence of League Play for this kind of thing, public playlists also group similarly-skilled players into the same lobby. Each match becomes a stressful tryhard marathon if you're even marginally good, and the lag issues are magnified when everyone's roughly equal in skill, as most gun fights boil down to who has the better (or worse, due to how lag compensation works) connection. In addition, because the matchmaking is skill-based, chances are high that you will end up being matched with the same people you met a few games back, and even higher you will end up in the same lobby that you just left, which was already a recurring problem in ''[=MW2/3=]''.
** K9 units, which are equally as fatal as they were in the first game, but are arguably more broken this time around. They don't draw fire from sentry guns; they won't trigger any shock charges, claymores, and bouncing betties; they can go through the Guardian's microwave energy without pain; and they have a very nasty tendency to pounce on players who have just recently respawned.
** The spawning logic, particularly in the over-played Nuketown 2025 and Hijacked maps, is... broken, to say the least. It's possible for players to force the game to switch which team spawns where by pushing enough players into it that the opposing team starts spawning at the other spawnpoint, fixing the problem of earlier games where one team will never get out of the "bad" spawn in a level so long as one teammate insists on trying to snipe from it all day... but the game will also ''randomly'' switch spawn points for no particular reason, even as two or three people from the original team are still in it, and then refuse to apply the player's rule for switching spawns until the original team is pushed out of it entirely; tough luck if you thought your spawn point would be a safe place to wait for your care package to drop. Even worse is that in some objective-based modes like Hardpoint, the spawning logic seems to always favor one specific team and will go out of its way to switch spawn points every time the objective appears near the unfavored team's spawn - there have been rare occasions where it's even spawned ''both teams at the same spawn point for over a minute'' rather than let the unfavored team spawn near the objective and have the advantage for once.

** The Executioner pistol. This pistol is unique in that it utilizes shotgun shells, but the tradeoff is the damage per pellet from each shot is so weak that it takes ''extremely'' close-range shooting just to be able to bring down a target with less than the full five-shell cylinder. To add onto the weapon's woes, it has horrible reload speed and ammo capacity, as well as lacking the other pistols' long-range capability because [[ShortRangeShotgun shotguns aren't allowed to reach past ten feet]]. There are attachments and the Secondary Gunfighter wildcard you can use to improve this pistol somewhat, but you're probably better off actually using a shotgun over this pistol and use the spare Pick-10 points for shotgun attachments, any gun that's not the Executioner, perks, and any wildcards you want.
** Zombies mode turns the SMR into this. In multiplayer it's powerful and accurate, well-deserving of its late unlock - in Zombies, it makes the starting 1911 look amazing. Even ignoring that semi-auto weapons are already at a disadvantage against the zombie hordes, it has low reserve capacity (only barely beating the M14, and that's assuming you didn't Pack-A-Punch it - its only real upside is that it has its regular 20-round magazines instead of a paltry 8-round one from reusing four-year-old code), it has a slow reload, it's surprisingly weak considering the power it has in multiplayer, and worst of all, thanks to a glitch the entire point of aiming down the sights is nullified as it ''still has bullet spread''.
** Oh boy... The Jet Gun from Transit is arguably the worst wonder weapon to ever exist in Zombies history. There are a lot of reasons why many people despise this weapon. First of all, wanna build the Jet Gun? Go look for 4 parts in the fog and have denizens jumping at you endlessly, but wait! There's more! You can only pick up one part a time and when you're done finally building it, you can't have the zombie shield nor turbine! And when you're done building it, good luck holding that weapon as it is super heavy and it will slow you down at an extreme rate. However, the biggest insult to injury is that when you use the Jet Gun, you can only pull down the trigger for 15 seconds total or it will break. Although it will cool down once you stop pulling the trigger, the recharge rate is extremely slow. And if you do manage to break the Jet Gun, good luck because you'll have to find 4 parts all over again!
* SpoiledByTheFormat: Menendez is finally captured by David in "Achilles' Veil"...the fourth-to-last mission in the game, before he has a chance to enact any of his plans, thereby tipping off that he'll either escape or have an ace up his sleeve that makes things worse for the Americans. As it turns out, he has ''both''.

** Mason taking the controls of an F/A-38 in "Cordis Die" is okay for a bit, the plane in VTOL mode handles just like the drones you've piloted several times in the campaign and the helos in the original's Multiplayer. Then the game has the audacity to put you into flight mode, '''''completely change the control scheme in the middle of a level without explaining a thing''''', and task you with shooting down the drones attacking the convoy. This of course requires you to fly down the streets of downtown Los Angeles without hitting a skyscraper and if you try to fly over them, you run the real risk of flying right off the map and failing the mission before you can recover. And, if you're trying to complete challenges to unlock the excellent [[UniversalAmmunition Ammo Pickup]] campaign perk, it can be a real heartbreaker when you're one challenge away, remember that there's a challenge for killing multiple enemies with one Skybuster missile, and the game responds by denying you access to them because you didn't meet the [[GuideDangIt never-explained-anywhere requirement to activate them]] (you need to keep the convoy from taking too much damage during the VTOL section so that the original pilot can authorize you to use the missiles; if you let the convoy take too much damage, the pilot dies before she can authorize anything for you).
** All of the Strike Force missions are difficult, mostly because of [[ArtificialStupidity the friendly AI being suicidally stupid]] - indeed, it's possible to lose men in the ''tutorial'' because they won't get away from a drone that's about to explode and take them with it unless you specifically order them to do so - but the first and the last stand out. The first mission requires you [[HoldTheLine to defend a position]] from constant, endless waves of SDC troops who are supported by a constant wave of quad-rotors and [=UGVs=]. You only have two gun turrets and a single CLAW, both of which are likely to bite it in the first ''minute'', to back up your [[CannonFodder very squishy infantrymen]]. And unlike other Strike Force missions where you can end it immediately by completing the objectives, you have to hold out for the entire ten long, '''''looooooong''''' minutes. The final one gets a ''very'' close second for the most difficult because it also involves holding out - it's only for a minute, but this time there is almost no appreciable cover near the area you need to hold out at and the rest of your team will abjectly ''refuse'' to move up to the area unless you manually take control and move them into position.
** "Suffer With Me" is brought to a near-screeching halt when, after a scripted event, a strobe grenade is dropped at your feet and you have to run down a tunnel as a helicopter gunship fires on you. Note that, as above, the scripted event is over - you need to start running ''immediately'', and you are actually being shot at during it. At the end of the tunnel you have to make a running jump from it to a balcony - and the main problem here is that when you are sprinting, getting shot slows you down for a second before you can start sprinting again. Even on the off chance that the gunship doesn't get a lucky shot and just kill you halfway, nine times out of ten you will jump or stop sprinting too early and promptly fall to your death. And that's not counting in the fact that an otherwise-passable run of that section can end with you dying anyway because ''Noriega got in your way'' and messed up your jump.

** Salazar's motivation for [[spoiler:turning on you]] is rather vague, and some believe it could've been explored more in detail. Alas, he only gets a few lines after the aforementioned act and doesn't appear afterwards.

** "He has no rules. No boundaries. He doesn't flinch at torture, human trafficking, or genocide. He's not loyal to a flag or country or any set of ideals."[[note]]The narration for mission 4's intro, describing how deplorable Makarov is, has been repurposed to describe {{Jerkass}}es and in general people committing very minor slights or offenses.[[/note]]

** Pretty much every line that [[LargeHam Jonas]] [[HistoricalDomainCharacter Savimbi]] says. In particular, "Our journey to victory has begun. DEATH TO THE MPLA!"

** Menendez and his father ran a cartel during the '80s. Nicaragua had no cartels during this time period; all drug trafficking in that area was done by the briefly mentioned [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters Contras]] and their CIA allies.
** Menendez also mentioned seeing the atrocities committed by the US-backed Contras during his childhood. However, he was born in 1963, and the Contras did not exist until the overthrown of the Somoza regime by the Sandinistas in 1979.

* CriticalResearchFailure: Menendez and his father ran a cartel during the '80s. Nicaragua had no cartels during this time period; all drug trafficking in that area was done by the briefly mentioned [[YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters Contras]] and their CIA allies.

* HarsherInHindsight: Or HilariousInHindsight depending on your beliefs, but President Bosworth was clearly played up to resemble Hillary Clinton, who became the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for president in 2016.

* BestLevelEver: There's a level from the perspective of BigBad Raul Menendez, a flashback where he is held captive by the [[UsefulNotes/PanamaniansWithPlanes Panamanian Army]]). When they take his disabled sister Josefina away from him, '''[[UnstoppableRage the man goes absolutely apeshit]]'''. During the following sequence he ''literally'' sees red as he cuts a bloody swathe through what seems like an entire platoon ''on his own'', armed with nothing but a shotgun and a machete. He can tank more bullets than a Juggernaut and not even explosive fuel barrels and grenades going off ''right next to him'' can slow him down. He doesn't even have the time to reload - it happens near-instantly and is justified as him ''picking up the guns of the slain soldiers around him''. Not only is it incredibly awesome, it pushes the character right into AntiVillain territory as it is clear his vendetta against America is motivated by his deep love for his sister [[spoiler:and his need to avenge her death when she dies to a grenade that was meant to kill him]].

* BestLevelEver: There's a level from the perspective of BigBad Raul Menendez, a flashback where he is held captive by the '''[[UsefulNotes/PanamaniansWithPlanes Panamanian Army]]'''. When they take his disabled sister Josefina away from him, '''[[UnstoppableRage the man goes absolutely apeshit]]'''. During the following sequence he ''literally'' sees red as he cuts a bloody swathe through what seems like an entire platoon ''on his own'', armed with nothing but a shotgun and a machete. He can tank more bullets than a Juggernaut and not even explosive fuel barrels and grenades going off ''right next to him'' can slow him down. He doesn't even have the time to reload - it happens near-instantly and is justified as him ''picking up the guns of the slain soldiers around him''. Not only is it incredibly awesome, it pushes the character right into AntiVillain territory as it is clear his vendetta against America is motivated by his deep love for his sister [[spoiler:and his need to avenge her death when she dies to a grenade that was meant to kill him]].

* BestLevelEver: There's a level from the perspective of BigBad Raul Menendez, a flashback where he is held captive by the '''[[PanamaniansWithPlanes Panamanian Army]]'''. When they take his disabled sister Josefina away from him, '''[[UnstoppableRage the man goes absolutely apeshit]]'''. During the following sequence he ''literally'' sees red as he cuts a bloody swathe through what seems like an entire platoon ''on his own'', armed with nothing but a shotgun and a machete. He can tank more bullets than a Juggernaut and not even explosive fuel barrels and grenades going off ''right next to him'' can slow him down. He doesn't even have the time to reload - it happens near-instantly and is justified as him ''picking up the guns of the slain soldiers around him''. Not only is it incredibly awesome, it pushes the character right into AntiVillain territory as it is clear his vendetta against America is motivated by his deep love for his sister [[spoiler:and his need to avenge her death when she dies to a grenade that was meant to kill him]].

* BestLevelEver: There's a level from the perspective of BigBad Raul Menendez, a flashback where he is held captive by the Panamanian army. When they take his disabled sister Josefina away from him, '''[[UnstoppableRage the man goes absolutely apeshit]]'''. During the following sequence he ''literally'' sees red as he cuts a bloody swathe through what seems like an entire platoon ''on his own'', armed with nothing but a shotgun and a machete. He can tank more bullets than a Juggernaut and not even explosive fuel barrels and grenades going off ''right next to him'' can slow him down. He doesn't even have the time to reload - it happens near-instantly and is justified as him ''picking up the guns of the slain soldiers around him''. Not only is it incredibly awesome, it pushes the character right into AntiVillain territory as it is clear his vendetta against America is motivated by his deep love for his sister [[spoiler:and his need to avenge her death when she dies to a grenade that was meant to kill him]].

** Strike Force. While most agree that it's a good idea on paper, the NintendoHard difficulty due to the suicidal ArtificialStupidity of your units - it's basically a mode where the regular, competent singleplayer enemy AI gets pitted against the at-best extremely {{spiteful|AI}} Combat Training multiplayer AI - make them a chore. To make things worse, you need to win them all to get the best ending. To add insult to injury, a good chunk of the challenges present in said missions are ''extremely'' hard to get, like winning a ''very'' difficult mission while acting entirely in the MissionControl mode, when with the way the game is built, assuming direct control is the only way to avoid a game over.

* EvilIsCool: Raul Menendez absolutely run on this, due to his charisma, being an AffablyEvil MagnificentBastard and finally a TragicVillain. He was even ranked #1 on Game Informer's list of top 10 villains of 2012.

* MagnificentBastard: [[HeroKiller Raul Menendez]] was one of the most powerful drug kingpins in the world, constantly defending himself from the CIA while planting moles inside his enemy to expanding his empire. When Frank Woods kills his sister, Menendez [[{{Revenge}} vowed vengeance]], manipulating Woods with a captive Jason Hudson into potentially killing, Alex Mason before crippling Woods and killing Hudson. Use his wealth and resources to create the revolutionary movement Cordis Die, he uses his manipulations to turn China and the United States against each other, starting a second Cold War. Allowing himself to be captured by American Forces and brought to the ''U.S.S. Obama'', he orchestrates the ambush there while taking control of the military drones, using them to destroy the ''Obama'' fleet and distract American forces, before destroying them to cripple the American military so all his followers in Cordis Die can wreak havoc throughout America.

** [[Music/{{Skrillex}} "Imma Try It Out"]], which plays in Club Solar as you try to rescue Chloe. The music keeps playing as you start slo-mo shooting at Cordis Die mooks with a machine pistol. It also plays as background music in one section of the multiplayer map Plaza, and players often joke about hiding in the bar just to listen to the music.

* CrazyAwesome:

* FranchiseOriginalSin: ''Black Ops II' was the first ''Call of Duty'' game with a notable TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture setting, but kept the tech grounded - everything shown in the 2025 segment has some basis in something that was under development at the time - and mixed it with a historical storyline, with several missions set near the end of the Cold War in the mid- to late-'80s. Future entries in the ''Call of Duty'' series would get further and further into science fiction territories until people became sick of the theme when ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII Black Ops III]]'' had cyborg super-soldiers jumping fifteen feet in the air and most definitely when ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyInfiniteWarfare Infinite Warfare]]'' essentially turned the series into ''Franchise/{{Gundam}}'' with smaller robots.

* FranchiseOriginalSin: The futuristic setting. ''Black Ops 2'' was the first ''Call of Duty'' game with a notable TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture setting, but kept the tech grounded - everything shown in the 2025 segment has some basis in something that was under development at the time - and mixed it with a historical storyline, with several missions set near the end of the Cold War in the mid- to late-'80s. Future entries in the ''Call of Duty'' series would get further and further into science fiction territories until people became sick of the theme at around ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII Black Ops III]]'' and most definitely ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyInfiniteWarfare Infinite Warfare]]''.

* HilariousInHindsight: Kamar De Los Reyes portrays a BigBad who is a charismatic, dreaded drug lord with an army capable of taking on superpowers at his back. About a year later, he would portray Santana, a character with a similar background, on the TV Show ''Blue Bloods''. Unlike Menendez, however, Santana is not even remotely the kind of threat that Menendez is and he ends up getting arrested at the end of the two-episode story arc he's in.

* PortingDisaster: Despite getting the [[http://www.gonintendo.com/?mode=viewstory&id=234771 Nuketown 2025 multiplayer map]] almost two years later after other versions, the Wii U version never got all the major DLC packs and their game patches. Prior to Nuketown's arrival, the last game patch for Wii U was in March 2013. For context, that's a whole four months of patches - Black Ops 2 on the other platforms, just like every other ''[=CoD=]'' game before it, got all available DLC and newer patches all throughout the year until [[VideoGame/CallOfDutyGhosts the next game]] came out. With ''Ghosts'' since released, it's guaranteed the Wii U version will not be getting any of the promised DLC packs and game patches, despite the late arrival of the Nuketown 2025 multiplayer map. Even then, the EasterEgg on the map did not make the jump to Wii U for reasons unknown.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: Some fans weren't as pleased with Hudson being DemotedToExtra, nor with Creator/EdHarris being replaced by Creator/MichaelKeaton, nor with Hudson being ultimately killed off, and, unlike with Woods and Mason, a fate that can't be determined by the player.

* ToughActToFollow: ''Ghosts'' has received mixed reception from the fans, since it seems to be Infinity Ward just retreading old steps with their shooters again. To put it in an example of Tropes, when Black Ops 2 was first announced, it had a trope page within several days, and it was of a fair length by E3. In contrast, ''Ghost's'' page was only created four months before the game came out, and it did not receive any tropes until a month afterwards. Activision themselves acknowledged this and actually don't expect it to top Black Ops II's sales figures, and sure enough, other than false reports that it managed it anyway, it hasn't sold nearly as well as Black Ops II. It's also this to the series in general, as ''Black Ops II'' is the last ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty'' game that broke sales records. Subsequent games, despite visible radical changes, are criticized for being increasingly overboard in the futuristic settings so much that as of 2017, the series decided to return to WWII.

* ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyBlackOpsIII Black Ops III]]'': "Nightmares" campaign: [[HumanoidAbomination Dolos]] is the demigoddess of [[TheTricks