Some have likened the campaign to be a lite realistic horror, given the violence, lack of grandeur and an abundance of conflict in the dark as enemies try to get the drop on you. It also doesn't help that the very second mission of the game is a terrorist attack on London, except you're running through the carnage, seeing citizens and police getting mowed down and enemies suicide-bombing to try to kill as many people as possible instead of just simply through a cinematic. Seeing civilians and police officers being blown to bits will do that to the players.
Kyle is told to defuse a bomb vest strapped to a civilian in said mission by Captain Price but, as he's not a bomb tech, he doesn't decipher the trigger mechanism in the few seconds they have. Price immediately calls a grim audible and tosses the poor man over the railing in order to spare the other hostages that are surrounding him. It's a harsh, jarring reminder that not every life can be saved in a war that targets civilians.
The AQ attack on the US Embassy in Urzikstan and the Russian invasion (and subsequent military occupation) of Urzikstan also count, wherein the former you personally see embassy staff being gunned down mercilessly and the latter (as the players play the little Farah Karim and Alex) where the Russian forces under General Barkov's command had no qualms in using chemical weapons and conventional weapons to attack the innocent civilians indiscriminately.
The mission "Clean House," in its entirety. You play as an SAS team breaching a house in stealth that holds a bunch of terrorist sympathizers in the UK. You go through the house mostly through night vision, and all of the terrorist sympathizers use a variety of tactics to try to kill you and your squad. This includes holding a woman at gunpoint, note If you kill the man and not the woman, the woman lunges for a gun, too. and hiding in rooms with doors shut, making for some jumpscares. Possibly worst of all is how it takes place in a normal British household, with people who otherwise seem normal, if it weren't for the goddamn terrorist sympathizers. And to top it all off, there's no music throughout the entire mission. It's pure ambience and sound effects.
Crossing over with Tear Jerker, there's another woman who, in a panic, seems to run for something. New and jumpy players, having had to deal with the potential for resistance throughout this mission, may end up taking her down. However, it turns out she was running for her baby in its crib, and you just shot her, dropping the baby to the ground, it screaming bloody murder all the while. It's probably one of the most shocking moments in the entire game note Fortunately, cautious players or players replaying the mission can opt to spare the woman and her child and let them live. On top of that, any attempt to hurt the baby itself will result in a Non-Standard Game Over.
The "Highway of Death" mission starts out innocuously enough, testing out a sniper rifle in preparation for enemy forces to approach and fighting off a fair number before it seems like you get a break point for calling reinforcements. Then without warning a rebel right next to you has their head explode into meaty chunks, likely in your face at that, as the enemy forces send in counter-snipers and then begin to swarm you with seemingly insurmountable numbers.
It doesn't get much more unsettling than the flashback mission where Farah is eight and forced to escape from the Russian forces occupying her town. The mission opens in the aftermath of a strike that levels the building she's in and kills her mother. She's dug out and reunites with her father. He leads his daughter through the streets right as a chemical attack begins to return home and rescue Farah's brother who was still at home. However when they get home and regroup with Hadir, a Russian storms the house and kills her father, forcing Farah to stalk around the house and slowly take him down progressively until she finishes him off with his own gun. Finally, she and Hadir have to cross lots of open ground to escape, avoiding Russians committing all manner of atrocities along the way, and one man who is slowly dying from exposure even attempts to take Hadir's gas mask. The mission finishes with Farah gunning down two Russian soldiers blocking their way to a vehicle they plan to escape with, only for it to turn into a "Shaggy Dog" Story when Barkov captures the pair and incarcerates them for the next 10 years. Again, all this happens to two children who are at most 11.
Most chemical attacks in this franchise don't usually show the effects of the chaos besides the infamous NOVA-6 of the Black Ops titles. Here, not only do Alex and Farah nearly die from intense exposure, but the younger Farah and Hadir have to wander through the chemical gasses. People are choking to death, unable to move or fight back and inevitably going to die slowly on their own, resulting in a haunting cacophony of death as the Russian forces just casually walk around and plant a bullet in still-moving victims with self-justification of them all being terrorists. This especially becomes nightmarish when you briefly crawl through a playground, passing by a dead child with their empty eyes as well as having to ignore and walk over a dying dog that's also choking to death.
The Tactical Nuke is back as a secret killstreak in Multiplayer, and it's more terrifying than ever. Unlike past games, there is very little warning to when it's activated. You only hear a nuclear siren faintly in the distance, so you may initially think it's just background noise until the pop-up message appears telling you that a Nuke is imminent. Once the timer hits zero, the entire map will burst into light before cutting to black and giving you a victory or defeat message. After certain recent update, however, it cuts to white before showing a picture of the devastated map within a giant mushroom cloud.
The Warzone gamemode itself has some in game story when it’s introduced. Ghost notices that for some odd reason the soldiers in Verdansk are fighting amongst themselves and he has no idea why.
Warzone in general, especially compared to its predecessor Blackout. Unlike Blackout, which has a somewhat lighter aesthetic due to being billed and treated as merely a simulation, Warzone truly lives up to its name and makes no attempt to hide how utterly hellish such a situation would be. You are dropped into a desolate land currently under siege by terrorists. The imminent threat closing in around you isn't just a circular boundary: it's chemical gas, and it hurts like hell if you're unfortunate enough to get caught in it. You have no futuristic equipment to aid you on short notice, so no Sensor Darts to let you know where enemies are and no Grappling Hook to quickly zip away to safety or a more advantageous position. This makes high ground especially sought after. You will quickly learn to fear the sight of a glint in the distance, because it means someone is using a sniper rifle, and there's a high chance that they're looking at you, waiting to strike. Not only is the audio louder, making stealth a necessity and placing emphasis on being attentive to your surroundings, but the environment itself actively plays upon your paranoia. Sometimes you will hear strange, creepy noises that will distract you and make you think someone is nearby, when there isn't anyone there. And all of these paranoia-inducing things are amplified tenfold if you choose to play Solos, because it's you vs. 149 other people who will settle for nothing less than your death in order to take 1st place.
The May 19, 2020 update has added an Easter Egg to Warzone involving access cards, telephones, and nuclear bunkers scattered throughout the map. While the access cards simply allow you to open the various bunkers which contain extremely rare and valuable loot, there is one specific one that's a lot more complicated to unlock: Bunker 11. To access Bunker 11, you need a 3-digit number code. This is obtained by answering 3 of 10 telephones scattered across Verdansk, and the order changes every match. When you interact with a phone to start the Easter Egg, a mysterious Russian man will be on the other end reciting the number code in Russian. Sound familiar? It gets creepier. Going to the wrong telephone gives you an error tone on the other end, followed by the voice denying you access from progressing further. Going to the correct phones gives you the same Morse code and the confirmation chime from earlier, with the voice permitting you access. Once you have completed the phone game, accessing Bunker 11 will reveal a starkly different bunker compared to the rest, with a series of crashed computer screens everywhere that need to be rebooted. Once rebooted, a countdown will start from 10, but reset endlessly. In addition, there's a crawl space that leads to a mysterious, shiny red button. Pressing it defogs the room directly to the right, revealing a nuclear warhead. Fortunately, the nuke cannot be accessed or used to end the game in victory...yet. There is actually a message written on the wall in one of the rooms saying "Resume coverand wait for further instructions." Nothing new came of this...until Season 4 Reloaded, which added a mysterious, inactive keypad to unlock the 2nd door of the bunker that was blocked off previously. Season 5 activated the keypad to coincide with a new Easter Egg involving the newly-opened Stadium, but as of yet there is still no known way to open Bunker 11's secret door.
The keypad Easter Egg has just gotten a little creepier. In a mid-August 2020 update, a mysterious set of locked doors with keypads suddenly appeared in Warzone. Coinciding with this, several content creators received a mysterious package from Activision themselves, sparking a chain of events that eventually led to a strange site showing an antiquated TV that, at a specific time, began playing a series of videotapes showing footage of the Cold War. During these videos, a sequence of numbers flashed on the screen, and the tapes themselves had a code on them that, when deciphered, correspond to locations on the Warzone map and a set code to unlock the keypads. When these doors are unlocked, mysterious ciphers can be found along the corners of each room. As many have noted, the aesthetics of this sequence of events is chillingly similar to that of Call of Duty: Black Ops. And sure enough, it turns out that this series of events is actually an Alternate Reality Game leading to the reveal of Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War.
The final part of the keypad Easter Egg (thus far) involves the previously locked door in Bunker 10. Entering the correct keypad code allows access at last to the area which at first could only be glitched through with the Recon Drone. In this room is a command center for a functional nuclear missile. Thus far, there is no way to interact with any of the phones or buttons on the command center, and there is also a mysterious second door that so far cannot be opened and has no keypad attached to it.
One of the ciphers has been decrypted, and it directs to a phone number that can be called in real life. When called, you are prompted to enter a 6-digit code that is as of yet unknown.
The "Know Your History" Warzone event, coinciding with the official reveal of Black Ops: Cold War. When you are dropped into Verdansk, all of the location names are redacted. Intermittently while traversing the map, you will see random static effects that cloud your vision and disable your HUD, as if you were hit by a Counter-UAV. Your objectives are, in order: find 5 various codes, locate a mysterious key card hidden within one of the 11 bunkers which have been opened automatically, locate a supply box and retrieve the pamphlet within, and finally go to a specific location to retrieve a weapon, a 190s era variant of the SKS called the Bay of Pigs, which you receive from an old friend, Sgt. Frank Woods. Once all 4 steps are completed, you must wait until the incoming transmission is finally decoded by your faction's announcer. Once all the numbers are recited, your screen will black out and it will play the "Know Your History" teaser. In the middle of it, you will suddenly respawn near the Verdansk Stadium, but as you approach it, you will hear a very familiar, and very terrifying sound: a Tactical Nuke has been launched. Once you reach the Stadium, the official Campaign reveal trailer for Black Ops: Cold War will play.
The Halloween 2020 event, "Haunting of Verdansk". Everything terrifying about Warzone gets cranked up several notches. For starters, the entire map is now set at night. The barren ghost town that is Verdansk now fully lives up to that description. There are even creepier ambient noises to raise your paranoia even further. Your visibility is significantly reduced, with only the light of a full moon to guide you, meaning you'll have to be even more careful when moving and keep an even sharper eye out for anyone lurking in the shadows. The Sickly Green Glow of the gas permeates the night sky, giving it a very hellish look as your imminent doom closes in around you. But that's not all: there's a chance that when you open a supply box, you'll receive a Jump Scare from one of several ghosts lurking inside them, after which the box completely disappears. The ghosts all have very Uncanny Valley designs, some appearing humanoid with shadowed out eyes, and others appearing completely demonic in nature with no faces.
The Halloween 2021 event, "Ghosts of Verdansk". Following up on the previous year's event, this time there's much more than just the Jump Scare supply boxes (which now have more variants). Now, Verdansk is set in an even more dreary and terrifying nighttime environment, where everything is cloudy except for faint traces of moonlight here and there. Things get even worse in the special event playlist, where now you have a fear meter that causes you to hallucinate when it gets too high. That's right, now you can get jumpscared at any point during the course of a match. Sometimes you'll see a skull-faced spirit pop in out of nowhere and fly towards your face, Ghostface popping in from the bottom of the screen to slash you with a scythe, or a fake blue screen of death that turns into a demonic face.
With the launch of Black Ops Cold War, a brand-new map has been added to Warzone: Rebirth Island. That's right - the birthplace of the horrific Nova 6 gas bioweapon has made its way to the world of Modern Warfare. And even worse, the area from the original Black Ops campaign has been heavily expanded...to include Alcatraz, the infamous Zombies map and alternate setting from Blackout. In contrast to Blackout's depiction of Alcatraz, which was shrouded in eerie, seemingly-supernatural fog and had you entering the area through a demonic portal, in Modern Warfare the location is very realistic. The map is set at a very dreary looking twilight hour, the skies practically covered by an equally eerie, dirty-colored fog. The houses and facilities are much more modern and sleek looking, and the prison has an even darker, more terrifying aesthetic. All these new design elements work to show the evil history behind the island and the sickening, inhuman experiments that went on there.
In addition, completion of the intel missions will result in a cutscene that finally resolves the Bunker Easter Egg subplot. Viktor Zakhaev was using the Bunker 11 phones to rally his own forces, and was going to launch the nuclear rocket in Bunker 10 until Captain Price foiled his plan and seemingly kills him by throwing him off the ledge where the rocket was. Although Zakhaev has been stopped, however, Price notes that this is far from over and introduces an old friend to the viewers and a new member of Task Force 141, John "Soap" MacTavish, to investigate further. Worse still, even though the nuke has been stopped, it is still active. This means that in the future, triggering a Tactical Nuke to achieve victory may still be possible.
The Destruction of Verdansk event, and everything leading up to it. Remember the Halloween event and how there were zombies everywhere? It's canon, and Verdansk is now contaminated. In the weeks leading up to the event, a sudden Jump Scare from the Emergency Alert System would randomly pop up alongside a broadcast stating the name of an area that had zombies in it, with varying levels of protocol depending on how many zombies there were in that area. These zombie infestations gradually increased in intensity until April 21, 2021. With Verdansk completely overtaken by zombies, there is only one option left: launch the Nuke. The instant the Nuke warning pops up, you can hear various soldiers understandably angry and hurt about being left to die either at the hands of the zombies or by the Nuke, while others are resigned to their fate.
There is an Easter egg on the farm map “Livestock” that can only be accessed through a very complex ritual involving finding various animal plushes around the map and destroying them. Once all steps are complete, a pentagram can be seen on the ground in one of the barns. Soon after, demonic goats with glowing red eyes (who are unkillable, of course) appear before ending you in one shot.
