Characters / Call of Duty: Black Ops

A list of characters from Black Ops and Black Ops II. For Black Ops III, see the character page for that game. Some characters on this page also appeared in World at War, and can also be found here. For the characters that debuted in Cold War, they can be found here.

For characters in Call of Duty: Zombies, see here.

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Introduced in Black Ops

CIA

Captain Alex Mason

Mason in 1986.

^{Click here to see Mason in 2025}

Voiced by: Sam Worthington (Black Ops, Black Ops II, Black Ops 4), Nolan North (Declassified), Chris Payne Gilbert (Cold War)^note Other Languages: Kenyū Horiuchi (Black Ops), Shinshu Fuji (Black Ops II), Fumihiro Okabayashi (Cold War) (Japanese), Denis Bespaly (Black Ops), Peter Ivashchenko (Black Ops II, Black Ops 4), Mikhail Danilyuk (Cold War) (Russian)

Alex Mason is a CIA SAD/SOG operative, protagonist of Black Ops and deuteragonist of Black Ops II.

On February 25, 1968, Alex Mason was placed in an interrogation room and interrogated for his previous involvement in various CIA operations and his knowledge of a numbers station. The game then progresses through his memories about past events and uncovering Dragovich's plans.

In Black Ops II, he is the player character for the past sections of the game, and had fathered a son, David, in his time of retirement after the end of Black Ops. Coming out of his retirement to rescue Woods, he participates in multiple CIA operations against the rising Raul Menendez, forming the story for the past sections of the game.

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• The Ace: John F. Kennedy outright states, "I'm told that you are the very best we have, anywhere."
• Boom, Headshot!: If you take the appropriate course of action in "Suffer With Me", this is how he dies.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Due to numbers-based brainwashing by Dragovich.
• The Captain: Before joining the CIA, Mason was a U.S. Marine Captain.
• Character Death:
  • In Black Ops II, he ends up captured by Menendez and attempts to trick Woods into killing him under the belief that he is actually Menendez. If the player (as Woods) shoots Mason in the head, this is played straight.
  • While it's noncanonical, if Bell turns on Adler's strike force and leads them into an ambush, Mason dies alongside the rest of the team.
• Deprogramming:
  • Hudson helps him undergo this, but it doesn't fully work.
  • Black Ops II confirms that it doesn't work. Upon seeing Kravchenko, numbers fill his vision and the player must fight not to execute him partway through the interrogation.
  • And again in Cold War, when revisiting Yamatau and seeing the corpses of soldiers killed by Hudson during the mission "WMD" in Black Ops, as well as a picture of Steiner Mason will briefly see the numbers again.
• Determinator: Never gives up.
• Dual Boss: In Cold War, he is fought alongside Woods if you don't save Park or Lazar and then defect back to Perseus.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Prior to joining the CIA, Mason served in Force Reconnaissance in the United States Marine Corps.
• Final Boss: In Cold War, should Bell defect back to Perseus, Mason is fought in the final gunfight of the game alongside Woods and (if they survived) Park or Lazar.
• Fire-Forged Friends: He and Reznov became close friends after being embroiled in violent conflict beforehand.
• First-Person Peripheral Narrator: For the 1980s missions in Black Ops II. Although he is still the Player Character for three of the four '80s levels, this time Woods does the majority of the dramatic heavy lifting.
• Hand Cannon: His seems to prefer using the Colt Python as his sidearm during Black Ops. Notably, in Cold War, one of his Operator Missions in Zombies is to use the Hand Cannon support weapon.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Woods. He was also good friends with Bowman, unfortunately that was put to an end when poor Bowman died, meaning Woods and him are the only ones still active and alive from their old unit.
• Hidden Depths: A hidden room in the safehouse in Cold War indicates he's a fan of Interactive Fiction text adventure computer games, as his terminal contains a sizeable portion of Infocom's game catalog as well as the first Leather Goddesses of Phobos.
• Made of Iron: Both in gameplay, as is typical for a Call of Duty protagonist, and in the story, where he survives being captured, tortured, and brainwashed for two and a half years, gets blown up in Khe Sanh, gets captured and tortured again by the Vietcong, and finally can take two direct hits from a .50 cal anti-material rifle anywhere but his head and survive with seemingly no lasting effects.
• Madness Mantra: Mason begins repeating Reznov's Survival Mantra over and over as he sinks deeper into his hunt for Dragovich. This is revealed to have been caused by Reznov himself, who programmed it into Mason's head after hijacking Steiner's brainwashing in an attempt to overwrite Mason's sleeper agent coding and replace it with a desire to kill the three men who captured them.
  Mason: Dragovich. Kravchenko. Steiner. They all had to die.
• Manchurian Agent: The original plan for his brainwashing, until Reznov managed to subvert it.
• Not Quite Dead: If you shoot Mason in the legs instead of his upper torso and meet all of the requirements for the True Ending, you will be treated to a secret scene where it turns out he is alive and well, having come to visit Woods and reconcile with his son.
• One-Man Army: In "Rebirth" as Reznov is a hallucination during the mission, and probably has been one for the entire game past "Vorkuta". Mason destroyed that facility entirely by himself, long before Hudson's CIA mop-up crew ever even arrived. There's a reason why John F. Kennedy called him, "The best we have, anywhere."
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Sam Worthington doesn't always nail that American accent just right, it always feels a bit off. Especially when you're constantly complimented by James C. Burns' performance of Frank Woods. Averted in Declassified and Cold War as Nolan North and Chris Payne Gilbert respectively are both American.
• Older Than They Look: In 1986 and 1989 in Black Ops II, despite being in his mid to late fifties, he doesn't look like he has a lot of wrinkles and only looks like he's in his early forties at most.
• Pun: One of his lines he says to Zombies.
  Don't try "Russian" at me.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: During Black Ops, his sidearm tends to be the Colt Python.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In "Payback". As Woods and him put it, "For Bowman." You don't kill the buddies of two pissed off Marines.
• Rogue Agent:
  • In "Rebirth" as he and the hallucinatory Reznov hunt for Steiner on the titular Rebirth Island, which was how he ended up on the interrogation chair we find him in at the beginning of the game.
  • And in 1978 with Hudson and Weaver, pursuing the unknown lead. This becomes an Aborted Arc in Black Ops II.
• Semper Fi: Before joining the CIA, he was a Captain in the United States Marine Corps.
• Silent Protagonist:
  • Averted. In fact, Mason was perhaps the first consistently voiced protagonist in Call of Duty history (read; beyond the occasional grunt), leading to future playable characters being more talkative as well, though with exceptions.
  • Zig-zagged when it comes to Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, as he is silent when being controlled by the player in "Nowhere Left to Run" and the "Operation" side missions, but speaks as normal during cutscenes, interactions with Bell, and his other playable mission, "Echoes of a Cold War".
• So Proud of You: If he survives Panama, when he returns at the end of the game he reveals that he was very proud of David on the day of the first level; despite falling off of the tree he was climbing, he still got back up.
• Supporting Protagonist:
  • He serves this role during the 1980’s missions of Black Ops II, as 3 out of the 4 missions are played entirely from his perspective, but the narrative is focused solely on Woods and his dynamic with Raul Menendez. Mason’s personal arc is only briefly revisited to tie up a loose end from the previous game (Kravchenko).
  • He's the player character of the first level of Cold War, but he becomes a supporting character afterwards, with his Numbers Storyline only being revisited briefly during a second main campaign level in which he is playable.
• Talking to Themself: Since Reznov is a hallucination in Mason's mind he is technically talking to himself, or rather a mental construction of what he believes Reznov would act like from the confines of his own mind.
• Wolfpack Boss: In Cold War, he is fought alongside Woods and Park/Lazar if you save one of them and then defect back to Perseus.

Special Agent Jason Hudson

Hudson in 1968.

Voiced by: Ed Harris (Black Ops), Michael Keaton (Black Ops II), Edward Bosco (Black Ops 4), Piotr Michael (Cold War) (English)^note Other Languages: Kazuhiko Inoue (Black Ops), Kengo Tsujii (Cold War) (Japanese), Ilya Isaev (Black Ops), Roman Voskoboynikov (Black Ops II), Vasily Dakhnenko (Cold War) (Russian)

CIA special agent responsible for handling Mason, and deuteragonist of Black Ops, appearing as the player character for multiple levels. He leads one half of the hunt for Dragovich's project.

In Black Ops II, he appears in the past sections of the game as a supporting character to Alex, acting as his Mission Control.

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• Badass Bookworm:
  • Has a genius level IQ according to his bio.
  • He also graduated from Georgetown University with a double major in psychology and political science, in addition to serving with distinction in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division during the Korean War.
• Big Damn Heroes: He saves Mason from being executed by Dragovich by shooting the latter in the shoulder.
• Character Death: He is one of the six characters to die in Black Ops II regardless of the player's actions, and damn does he go out bad.
• Cool Shades: Wears them all the time, and does an awesome Glasses Pull in one of the later stages.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Menendez kneecaps him in both knees before slitting his throat with Josefina's necklace.
• Dark Secret: He has two, the first is that during the events of Cold War, he helped get Operation Greenlight, a program dedicated to wiping out Europe's major cities with nuclear weapons as a failsafe against Soviet invasion, up and running. The second is in II, where it's revealed during the Invasion of Panama in 1989 that he's working for Raul Menendez.
• Expy: Of Francis X. Hummel. Both characters even share the voice actor (at least in the first game).
• Face–Heel Turn: Unwillingly becomes The Mole for Menendez in Black Ops II.
• Fallen Hero: In Black Ops II, when he's been revealed to be The Mole in the CIA for Menendez.
• Fatal Family Photo: Hudson is murdered literally seconds after mentioning that he has two kids. Justified as he says it as an attempt to convince himself not to volunteer for death. It doesn't work, as he changes his mind seconds later.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Woods looks very annoyed by Hudson at multiple points, and when Bowman arrives in the aftermath of one mission he and Bowman ignore Hudson entirely. This probably has to do with the conception that "company men" (a nickname for agents within the CIA and the military-industrial complex) are pencil pushers that don't understand the plight of the common soldier, or that when the CIA is involved that things have escalated to the point where the shit is really about to hit the fan. However, Hudson does fight alongside Woods and Mason over the course of the game and he does eventually earn their trust.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: Did this to Mason prior to the final mission. He also does this to Woods in Black Ops II when Woods goes berserk after spotting Menendez.
• Glasses Pull: He does this a few times in Black Ops, and in Black Ops II, it earns him a (non-fatal) bullet in Angola.
• Good is Not Nice: When Mason doesn't give him and Weaver satisfactory replies in the opening cutscene, Hudson shocks him. About three times.
• Guns Akimbo: The first mission played as him in Black Ops has him start with dual pistols; notably, his missions are the only times in the first game's campaign where you get the chance to do this.
• The Handler: Hudson was this for Mason.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Hudson volunteers to be the one that Menendez kills so that Woods and David will survive.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • Hudson was forced to betray Alex Mason and Woods because if he didn't Menendez would have killed David.
  • He believes this about most of his actions, actually, to the point where he justifies nuking all of Europe if the Soviets invade as a necessary precaution.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Hudson looks just like a young Ed Harris. In Black Ops II his facial features and receding white hairline more reflect current age Michael Keaton.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: "Numbers" opens with him trying to get information out of Dr. Clarke by putting a large piece of glass in his mouth and punching him in the mouth repeatedly.
• Jerkass:
  • In this game, he starts off as this, but turns into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold in the second to last level. Mason does amusingly say that he likes Hudson's behavior, that even though he's "a fucking ice cube", that's exactly why he likes the guy. Apparently Mason likes his no nonsense demeanor.
  • Played straight in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, in that he is one to Bell.
• Jerkass to One: He has a special amount of vitriol and distrust towards Bell and Bell alone. Given that Bell is a brainwashed member of Perseus, it's no wonder he's suspicious of them.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: When interrogating Mason.
• Mission Control: Is this during Black Ops II's 1980s missions. He’s also the CIA announcer for Cold War‘s Multiplayer.
• The Mole: In Black Ops II, Menendez kidnaps Alex Mason's son, David and Hudson arranges for Mason's death and the kidnapping of Woods to save him.
• No-Respect Guy: Despite his status (or perhaps because of it), he gets absolutely no love from some of his colleagues. When Woods meets him in Vietnam, he happily greets Mason but coldly brushes off Hudson's introduction. Later, when Bowman shakes hands with Mason, as Hudson greets him, he completely ignores Hudson and shakes Woods' hand. Woods never really grows to trust him after, and for good reason.
• Not So Stoic:
  • In contrast to his personality as depicted in the backstory, he swears and yells frequently at Mason when trying to get the meaning of the number codes out of him.
  • One of the reasons for Woods to suspect that something is wrong with Hudson during his and Mason's mission in Panama is when he sounds...off, as if having a hard time deciding on what to do. Later, when Menendez has him tied to a chair, he begs not to be killed for the sake of his kids, then volunteers for it when Menendez threatens David Mason before reacting like anyone human would to having their kneecaps blown off with a shotgun at point blank range.
• Older Than They Look: Downplayed in 1986 and 1989 in Black Ops II, despite having white hair, he doesn't seem to have wrinkles on his face.
• Redemption Equals Death: Sacrificed himself to Menendez out of guilt for being The Mole.
• Rogue Agent: In 1978 along with Mason and Weaver while pursuing an unknown lead.
• The Stoic: He is, as Mason describes him, an "ice cube".
• Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: Goes from an upstanding agent during The '60s in Black Ops to The Mole during The '80s for Menendez with zero foreshadowing for his treachery in Black Ops II. Somewhat alleviated as of Cold War, where its revealed that Hudson has been keeping secrets from his team that he really shouldn't have.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He and Woods do not get along. At all. While they're professional enough to work capably on the battlefield, off the field, it's a completely different story. Woods physically attacks him in 1981 after learning the truth about Hudson's involvement in Operation Greenlight, and in 2025, he tells David Mason that he wishes more than anything that he'd simply shot Hudson in the chaos of the Tet Offensive.
• Vocal Evolution: Michael Keaton's performance in II is higher than Ed Harris' low voice, and Edward Bosco's take in IV is even higher. Piotr Michael brings it much more in-line with Harris' tone.
• Wham Line:
  ...I have two kids...

Master Sergeant Frank Woods

Woods in the 1960s.

Woods in 2025.

Voiced by: James C. Burns (Black Ops, Black Ops II, Declassified, Black Ops 4), Damon Victor Allen (Cold War, Modern Warfare) (English)^note Other Languages: Rikiya Koyama (Japanese), Alexander Gruzdev (Black Ops), Vadim Maksimov (Black Ops II, Black Ops 4), Alexander Matrosov (Cold War, Modern Warfare) (Russian)

SOG operative and Alex Mason's colleague.

He appears in Black Ops II future segments as a retired old man, retelling Alex's actions and the rise of Raul Menendez to Alex's son, David Mason. He assists Alex in the past segments of the game.

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• Arch-Enemy: He and Raul Menendez have a special hatred for each other. On Menendez's end, Woods killed his sister. On Woods' end, Menendez tortured him, killed Hudson and possibly Mason, kidnapped David, and crippled him.
• Atomic F-Bomb: In the beginning of "Payback" when forced to play Russian Roulette.
• Badass in Distress: In Black Ops II, he was captured by Raul Menendez in Angola, and the first mission involves finding and rescuing him. The circumstances of Woods' capture - being tortured, having his men killed right in front of him, and locked in a shipping container with his dead comrades and left to die of starvation and dehydration - are why he hates Menendez so much, to the point of being driven into an Unstoppable Rage at the sight of him.
• Berserk Button: In Black Ops II, Woods goes completely berserk when he sees Menendez in "Time and Fate." He becomes so obsessed with killing Raul that he accidentally kills Josefina with an errant grenade toss.
• Blood Knight:
  • Actually volunteers to fight in Vietnam, which Hudson says would be "like a day at the beach" for him.
  • He signs up for the events of Cold War the moment the mission is presented to him, unlike everyone else, who takes a moment to consider the mission parameters before accepting the task.
• Boisterous Bruiser: He's an incredibly lethal commando who hits like a truck, but is also very jovial and more than willing to joke around during a fight.
• Breakout Character: He's to Black Ops what Captain Price is to Modern Warfare, more or less the face of the subseries. To the point he has appeared in every BO game but III, is playable in Blackout and Mobile and even crossed over with the Modern Warfare reboot^note a rarity for the franchise, which generally likes keeping subseries separate entities with no overlap. He's also heavily marketed for Cold War.
• Broken Ace: He's one of the toughest commandos on the planet, but his anger issues and impulsiveness lead to his emotional and physical crippling at the hands of Raul Menendez.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: Even while tearing through squads of Spetsnaz operatives, he'll gleefully discuss his love of Burgertown.
• Catchphrase: YOU CAN'T KILL ME!
• Character Death:
  • Should you fail to save Karma in the Black Ops II campaign (and thus fail to stop Menendez's cyber-attack) and choose to spare Menendez at the end of the game, he will escape from prison and travel to the Vault, where he kills Woods with Josefina's necklace after he has a small talk with him.
  • He dies if you choose to side with Perseus and set up an ambush for Adler's team at the end of Cold War, along with Mason, Park or Lazar depending on who you chose to save in the prior mission, and Adler himself.
• Cool Old Guy: In Black Ops II. The man is 95 and he's still the same rough-and-tumble guy that he was back when he was young.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Incarnate.
• Dual Boss: In Cold War, he is fought alongside Mason if you don't save Park or Lazar and then defect back to Perseus.
• Expy: Being a nigh-unstoppable Force Recon Marine and Vietnam veteran with massive anger issues, he bears more than a passing resemblance to another famous Frank.
• Final Boss: In Cold War, should Bell defect back to Perseus, Woods is fought in the final gunfight of the game alongside Mason and (if they survived) Park or Lazar.
• Friend to All Children: There's only one real child he's shown interacting with, but both of his interactions with young people seem to imply that he has a bit of a soft spot for them. When the young soldier dies during "Crash Site", he very likely sobs out of sight of his comrades, and when a 10-year old David Mason ends up in his care, he is shown to be very sweet and gentle with him, which, needless to say, is a far cry from his usual demeanor.
• Game-Breaking Injury: In the beginning of Black Ops II, he's seen in a wheelchair. While he is an old man by the time the game's story takes place, what happened was he was shot in the knee by Menendez while in Panama. Menendez purposely let him live, after killing Hudson in front of you while you're assuming Woods' role, and having shot your best friend Mason. He does it so that Woods would know some of the pain that Menendez himself endured after his sister suffered grave burns while they were children, and was later killed when the CIA tried to capture him.
• Genius Bruiser: This video by James C. Burns shows that using an elevated platform as a makeshift grenade sump to survive Kravchenko's Taking You with Me was an incredibly intelligent and badass move on his part.
• Grumpy Old Man: Unsurprisingly, being cooped up in the Vault all day while being confined to a wheelchair and having to deal with Raul Menendez has made him a little salty in Black Ops II. A good portion of his dialogue is ordering Harper or his caregivers to grab him drinks or smokes. At least he's affectionate to Section.
• He Knows Too Much: For his "retirement," the U.S. Government had Woods taken to an isolated area called the "Vault" where he would live the rest of his days rather than kill him.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Throws himself and Kravchenko away from Mason when the later tries to blow them all up, but a secret file in the game outright says that he's still alive and is being held in the infamous Viet Cong prison Hanoi Hilton. He shows up alive and well in subsequent games.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Alex Mason. He even becomes David's guardian after Alex's (presumed) death.
• Honorary Uncle: David Mason considers him an uncle due to being his father's closest friend and the one who raised him after Alex's death/injury.
• Hot-Blooded: He's seriously angry most of the time. Notably, this bites him in the ass several times, most notably when he throws an errant grenade that kills Josefina, kicking off Raul Menendez's campaign against the U.S.
• Ink-Suit Actor: His appearance pre-Cold War was based primarily on James C. Burns, who voice-acted and motion-captured him. This is best exemplified in his old age during Black Ops II.
• The Lancer:
  • In this game, he acts as one to Alex Mason in several missions.
  • In Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, he is one to both Alex Mason in the first and fifth missions, and also to Bell in the fourth mission.
• Lancer vs. Dragon: Woods' conflict with Kravchenko, with the former being The Lancer to The Protagonist, Alex Mason, and the latter being The Dragon to the Big Bad, Dragovich.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: In Cold War during "Redlight, Greenlight", upon seeing that the enemy he snuck up on was a mannequin, he only has this to say:
  Woods: Not a fuckin' word, Bell.
• Manly Tears: When an anonymous young Marine is killed in the mission "Crash Site", Mason comments to his interrogator that he believed Woods to be crying after it.
  Mason: That young kid didn't make it. I swear to God that Woods was crying, but he never let us see no tears.
• Married to the Job: Unlike Mason and Hudson, it appears as though Woods never married and started a family.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In Black Ops II, when Woods threw the grenade to try and kill Menendez, the grenade ended up killing his sister instead. Even as an old man, Woods is still haunted with guilt.
• My Greatest Failure: He has three in Black Ops II: Throwing a grenade at Menendez, which resulted in his innocent sister being killed. Additionally, being the unwitting assassin of Alex Mason, and failing to realize that Hudson was being manipulated by Menendez until it was too late.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In his haste to get Menendez during a raid on his house, he winds up throwing the grenade that killed his sister. Needless to say, this sparks Menendez's anger and his motivation to cripple the U.S.
• Not Quite Dead: Late in Black Ops, he shoves Kravchenko off of a ledge and is presumed killed by the latter's explosive vest. However, a note in Mason's computer account reveals that he is alive and incarcerated in the Hanoi Hilton, and he turns up alive (if not exactly well) in Black Ops II.
• Not So Above It All: Repeatedly during the events of Cold War.
  • Woods and Bell move through a mockup of an American town, getting into a gunfight with the local Spetnaz troops conducting a training exercise in the area. Woods takes offense to the stereotypicality of the mockup, alternating between mourning how the Russians have "ruined" his love of his favorite burger joint to declaring that he intends on conducting urban renewal on the area.
  • He also seems to have a love of arcade games, as if Bell lingers around and chooses to play said games, he will provide running commentary on Bell's progress and demand he be allowed a turn.
  • A good chunk of his dialogue with Bell is flippant and teasing, and he's clearly having a good time giving the rookie of the CIA Strike Team a bit of a scare every now and then.
  • He loves burgers, and expresses visible, childlike glee at fighting through a Soviet-fashioned replica of Burgertown, going so far as to profess his love of Bubby, the Burgertown Mascot, though he may also lament that the Soviets have corrupted Bubby's image for their own purposes.
  • He takes an ungodly amount of joy in driving a tank around, referring to the havoc he wreaks with it as "urban renewal".
• Older Than They Look: In 1986 and 1989 in Black Ops II, despite going through a mid-life crisis and hitting on sixty, Woods does not look like he aged as much.
• Promoted to Playable: After spending the first Black Ops entirely as an NPC, Woods is the player character of the mission "Suffer With Me" in Black Ops II.
• Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": One of his lines in the Zombies mode for Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War when you start to rack up the kills.
  Woods: Ha ha ha, that shit was funny !
• Rapid-Fire "No!": Utters one when he realizes he was just tricked into shooting Alex Mason.
• Retired Badass: An elderly Woods appears in Black Ops II to explain the back story of the Big Bad via a series of flashbacks set in the 1980s.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • The "Payback" mission.
  • And again in Black Ops II when he tries to go after Menendez for killing his squad in front of him and leaving him to rot in a container with their corpses. This winds up having consequences that ultimately drive the plot of the game.
• Say My Name: "MENENDEEEEEEZ!"
• Scatterbrained Senior: Averted. Harper thinks he is at the beginning, but Woods proves him wrong only seconds later.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Even as an old man, he's still as rude and crude as he was during his fighting days.
• Semper Fi: Like Alex Mason, Woods was in the United States Marine Corps.
• Sergeant Rock: Woods is tough-as-nails, a competent leader, and charismatic, making him a natural contender.
• Serkis Folk: The first Call of Duty character to have a voice actor also provide motion-capture performance, which would later become standard in Black Ops II for the principal cast members and for later Call of Duty titles.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: He hates Hudson, physically attacking him in Cold War, forcing Hudson to draw his gun in self-defense, with Adler barely preventing the two of them from getting into a proper scrap. In 2025, forty years after Hudson dies at Menendez's hands, Woods still holds a lot of anger towards Hudson and outright starts yelling at the top of his lungs that he wishes he killed him back in Vietnam.
• Trademark Favorite Food: A keychain recovered in the "Redlight, Greenlight" mission during Cold War has a description that reveals Woods has a love of burgers and fries.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Played for Drama. Hudson was forced to strike a deal with Menendez in which Woods executes Mason, believing him to be Menendez himself, as he was holding David hostage. Even after Hudson sacrifices himself to spare him and David, Woods looks back on this with seething hatred for Hudson, even wishing he'd have killed him when they served together back in Khe Sanh.
• Unwitting Pawn: To Menendez, who tricks him into shooting Alex Mason. Played straight if Woods headshots him, but subverted if he realizes that something's up and instead aims for the chest or limbs.
• What the Hell, Player?:
  • Shooting Woods will cause him to angrily shout "You do that again and I'll kill you!"
  • If Bell presses a button that sets off base-wide alarms during "Redlight, Greenlight", Woods will angrily demand to know what Bell was thinking when they decided to press buttons at random.
• Wolfpack Boss: In Cold War, he is fought alongside Mason and Park/Lazar if you save one of them and then defect back to Perseus.

Chief Petty Officer Joseph Bowman

Voiced by: Ice Cube (English)^note Other Languages: Daisuke Namikawa (Japanese), Oleg Kutsenko (Russian)

SOG operative and Mason's colleague.

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• Black Dude Dies First: Is the first major character on the protagonist's side to die.
• Break the Badass: In "Payback" before his last moment of defiance he's completely broken.
• Defiant to the End: He insults his Russian interrogator by calling him a "Communist piece of shit." The Russian retaliates by bashing Bowman's head in with a piece of pipe.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: According to his dossier, he's a Navy SEAL.
• Generation Xerox: His father was a veteran of World War II, which influenced him to join the Navy.
• Heroic BSoD: In "Payback" due to Russian torture.
• I Have a Family: The "Pawn Takes Pawn" viral campaign for Cold War reveals that he had a wife and son at home. This could be why his capture in "Payback" broke him so badly.
• Ink-Suit Actor: It's Ice Cube.
• Religious Bruiser: In "Crash Site", Bowman crosses himself after the anonymous young marine is killed.
• Token Minority: The only non-white American of the protagonists.

Special Agent Terrance Brooks

Voiced by: Troy Baker (English)^note Other Languages: Keiichi Takahashi (Japanese), Sergey Kolesnikov (Russian)

CIA special agent who assists the player in two missions, "Executive Order" and "WMD".

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• Ascended Extra: Of a sort. He's playable and has a surprising amount of alternate skins in Call of Duty: Mobile.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality
• Mauve Shirt: Gets a few bits of characterization here and there, but gets much less focus compared to the protagonists.
• Sympathy for the Devil: He laments the horrible death of the Soviet scientists burning alive.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He's nowhere to be seen in the second game.

Special Agent Grigori Weaver

Voiced by: Gene Farber (English)^note Other Languages: Hiroki Yasumoto (Japanese), Alexander Golovchansky (Russian)

CIA operative and defector from the Soviet Union to the United States, Weaver appears in multiple missions assisting either Hudson or Mason.

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• Arch-Enemy: Lev Kravchenko seems to serve as this to him, being the one who took out his eye and later becoming the leader of Omega Group.
• Big Good: Of the Dark Aether storyline in Cold War Zombies alongside Requiem and Samantha.
• The Bus Came Back: He is reintroduced in Cold War Zombies as the leader of Requiem and your Mission Control.
• But Not Too Foreign: His mother defected to the United States during World War II, and he seems rather assimilated in American culture. His official bio states he was born in the Soviet Union but the cutscenes of "Numbers" and "Redemption" claim he was born in Portland, Oregon.
• Canon Foreigner: He and Kravchenko are brought in from the campaigns of the first two games into Cold War Zombies.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Initially played straight in Black Ops II and III, but averted in Black Ops 4 and especially Cold War.
  • Weaver is the only major character from Black Ops still alive at the end of that game to not make an appearance in Black Ops II. Even Kravchenko and Reznov, who were both presumed killed, still manage to make appearances. Not only is he completely absent in Black Ops II, he is never even mentioned.^note  He is alluded to in "Old Wounds", however, when Woods asks Kravchenko if, "He believes in eye for an eye", referring to Kravchenko ruthlessly gouging Weaver's eye out back in "Executive Order" in Black Ops.
  • Intel in the first game shows that he, Mason and Hudson were being hunted during Operation Charybdis when they went rogue. Only Mason and Hudson are seen in Black Ops II.
  • The Black Ops Cold War Zombies story ends with Requiem being dismantled and detained in 1985, a year before II's first 1980s mission; alongside in-game intel, particularly in Zombies Onslaught, indicating at least part of the Zombies story line takes place roughly alongside the seasonal story, this likely explains his absence afterwards.
• Deadpan Snarker: Is this in spades in Cold War, evoking the likes of Ultimis with some of his quotes in Zombies.
  (Spotting Tombstone Soda) "Tombstone Soda. Hope you don't need it, but..."
  (Spotting Stamin-Up) "Stamin-Up here. They don't get tired, why should we?"
  (Picking up a gun) "We've got PLENTY of weapons!"
  (Gunning down a horde of Zombies) "You have to go to hell. But you can't stay here."
• Eyepatch of Power: After his first appearance.
• Eye Scream: He is first seen in-game taking a knife to his eye. He survives, though.
• A Father to His Men: Whenever he sees the gruesome remains of Requiem agents in the Outbreak Zones, he gets particularly angry and demands the Strike Team hunt down their killers.
• I Owe You My Life: To Mason after he helped rescue him in Russia. He tries to partially pay Mason back by setting him up on a date with a hot CIA secretary. It did not go well.
• The Lancer: To Jason Hudson.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: Is one of the interrogators alongside Hudson in Black Ops.
• Mission Control: For Cold War Zombies.
• The Mole: Served as the CIA's mole in Dragovich's organization, but was discovered.
• My Greatest Failure: During the Iranian Revolution, he burnt down a house which had a little boy in it, of whom he thought was with his mother. This is where he met Samantha Maxis, who, even years later, gives him grief about it.
• Papa Wolf: The way he threatens Peck concerning Samantha's safety definitely gives off this vibe.
  "If you're lying to me, if you betrayed her, if any harm comes to her.. I'll kill you myself."
• Parental Substitute: Intel recordings found in Firebase Z imply that Weaver is some sort of father figure in Samantha Maxis' life, as his concern for her rushing out into enemy lines on her own has a certain "concerned parent" undertone to it. His aggression towards Peck reinforces this.
• Porn Stache: Just look at that caterpillar. It becomes a bit of a beard in Cold War.
• Promoted to Playable: For the first time in Blackout, then in Season 4 Reloaded of Cold War.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: His pursuits back in the '60s and '70s earned him the position of commanding officer of Requiem, a team assembled to counter zombie outbreaks all over the globe.
• Rogue Agent: In 1978 along with Mason and Hudson while pursuing an unknown lead.
• Russian Guy Suffers Most: Closely averted, as he does get captured before we're even really aware of his existence and loses an eye, but he does survive the mission, and just about every other primary character except for Hudson goes through similar levels of torture at some point.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Omega Group in Firebase Z. He's only playing along since they caught Sam snooping around. His aggression becomes a bit more understandable once we get to know Doctor Peck, but he's nice enough to Ravenov, who is a fellow Russian and a trusted ally of Sam.
• Token Enemy Minority: Due to Reznov being a hallucination, Weaver is the sole Russian on the American side.
• Vocal Evolution: His accent is much more subtle and his voice in general is much less bombastic in Cold War than it was back in Black Ops. The closest he gets to sounding as fierce as he did before is when he raises his voice, begging Samantha to work with the CIA. His voice actor even lampshades this. His playable counterpart in Cold War, however, has him relapse into his heavier accent from the first Black Ops, alongside his default skin being based on his appearance from that game.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Samantha was understandably shaken by Weaver accidentally killing a boy in a house fire he caused when he thought he was with his mother. Even a decade later, she brings this up and is still quite angry with him.
• Would Hurt a Child: Accidentally. During the Iranian Revolution, he burnt down a house in which, unbeknownst to him, had a boy he thought was with mother in there. He was quite torn apart by this incident and actually sobbed to Samantha after visiting her apartment.

Soviet Union

Major General Nikita Dragovich

Voiced by: Eamon Hunt (English)^note Other Languages: Norio Wakamoto (Japanese), Sergey Kolesnikov (Russian)

A cold-blooded Soviet General with a plan to attack the United States with Nova 6.

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• Asshole Victim: Given everything he did, his incredibly cruel death was fully deserved.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Despite being the poster child of the Dirty Commies, he saw his own comrades as expendable when he tested Nazi gas on them during WWII and is quick to work with the ex-fascist Steiner. Reznov doesn't consider him comrade-worthy at all.
• Bad Boss: He cares little for his own men, which he brutally demonstrates when he turns his own subordinates Reznov and Dimitri into guinea pigs for Nova 6 at the end of WWII.
• Big Bad: Of the first game.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Mason drags him to the floor and then proceeds to choke him to death while holding him under water, meaning he either died by drowning, or asphyxiation.
• Dirty Communists: Has a deep hatred for "the West." In contrast to Reznov, who cares deeply for his men and wishes only to protect his country from harm, Dragovich sees his men as expendable and only cares to elevate his position within the military and destroy the Soviet Union's enemies through increasingly questionable methods.
• Disproportionate Retribution: It is heavily implied that he chose to gas Dimitri Petrenko first out of no reason than to have Reznov watch his friend die, even though he had no quarrel with Petrenko.
• Evil Is Petty: He decides to use Reznov and Dimitri as guinea pigs simply because he had a petty dislike of Reznov.
• Forced to Watch: Chooses to have Reznov watch Dimitri die before he gasses him as well. The British arriving saves Reznov's life.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's polite, but that's the only nice thing about him.
• General Ripper: Cares little for the lives of his own men.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Of World at War, as it was revealed he abandoned Reznov and his platoon for dead at the hands of the Nazis in Stalingrad in the level "Vendetta."
• Hero Killer: Kills Dimitri Petrenko with Nova 6.
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: He chooses to take his grudge against Reznov out by gassing Petrenko.
• Knight of Cerebus: He and The Dragon Kravchenko are the first major antagonists in the Treyarch-produced games and are much darker characters to a point that Dragovich manages to execute Dimitri Petrenko and try to do the same to Reznov, as he was trying to eliminate all of the Chummy Commies that were the "good guys" in WWII to pave the way for the Dirty Communists to be the new enemies in the Cold War and attempted to use a deadly toxin to wipe out America just to invade the land. Plus, he puts on a chilling, charismatic Faux Affably Evil personality when facing Mason and dies with a smile when he implies that Mason's brainwashing programming to kill JFK worked.
• Lack of Empathy: Dragovich cares about nothing but advancing his own position within the Soviet leadership. He even abandoned his men at Stalingrad to have them butchered by the German forces.
• Large and in Charge: Is about 6'5", making him even taller than Kravchenko.
• Manipulative Bastard: He has turned many American soldiers against their own country through his "numbers" program.
• Not Quite Dead: Mason thought he killed him when he blew up his limousine in "Executive Order", but he shows up in "Crash Site" alive and well. It's entirely possible he wasn't inside the limo to begin with.
• Remember the New Guy?: He and Reznov have history, which makes them distrust each other. However, he makes no appearance in the previous game, though at least Treyarch keeps things consistent by showing that Dimitri doesn't know him either.
• Sadist: He clearly shows to be this when he decided that the best way to see the effects of the poison of Nova 6 was to gas his own men. He also displays his sadism when he captures Mason.
• The Sociopath: He's less personally violent than Kravchenko, but no less of a sociopath due to not thinking twice about killing innocents.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He almost and politely never raises his voice whenever committing atrocities.
• Villainous Legacy: Despite dying in the first game his influence is still felt in II, (where Mason's brainwashing programming by Dragovich still had an effect on Mason in the Afghanistan campaign upon facing his surviving protege Kravchenko), III (where it's revealed Nova-6, the chemical weapon he had developed for its usage by him, has been used by the Big Bad virus Corvus for its own evil plan in Singapore), and Cold War ( Where the Big Bad Perseus obtains a list of Dragovich's sleeper agents from the ruins of Yamantau in order to use them for his own scheme, while his surviving protege Kravchenko ends up a member of the KGB).
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He orders his men to round up and execute all the Project Nova researchers on Rebirth Island once they're no longer essential to his master plan.

Colonel Lev Kravchenko

Kravchenko in the 1960s.

^{Click here to see Kravchenko in the 1980s.}

Voiced by: Andrew Divoff (English)^note Other Languages: Taiten Kusunoki (Black Ops), Keisuke Tokumori (Cold War) (Japanese), Alexander Kovrizhnykh (Black Ops), Grigory Shevchuk (Black Ops II) (Russian)

Dragovich's Ax-Crazy right-hand brute.

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• Arch-Enemy: Is this to Woods. He could also be considered one for Weaver after taking out his eye and founding Omega Group.
• Ax-Crazy: He's a violent sociopath. In "Project Nova" he can be seen executing SS soldiers with a pistol. When he finds out that he's out of bullets upon reaching the last one, he takes out a knife and slits the man's throat. He can even express this subtly without having to engage in combat with his intimidatingly threatening tone of voice and also keeping poison in his office in Cold War in KGB headquarters.
• Big Bad: He could be considered this for Cold War Zombies. As the post-easter egg cutscene for Firebase Z shows, he is a leader of Omega Group, and takes out Peck's eye.
• Big Brother Bully: He mangled and murdered his own sister for giving Dragovich's romances the cold shoulder.
• Breakout Villain: He makes more appearances in the games after his debut, making him a walking Villainous Legacy of his CO Dragovich following the latter's death.
• The Brute: Is mostly Dragovich's muscle.
• Cain and Abel: The Cain to his murdered sister's Abel.
• Character Death: Despite surviving his apparent death in the first game, he doesn't get out of Black Ops II without half his head getting blown off by a .45, making him one of six characters in the game to die regardless of the player's actions.
• Colonel Kilgore: Cares little for the lives of his men.
• Defiant to the End: Is seemingly unphased by Woods' Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique, and shows nothing but contempt for Woods and Mason right up until one of them shoots him in the face.
• Die Laughing: Smirks in the face of death in Black Ops II.
• Dirty Communists: Like his master.
• The Dragon: To Dragovich, which is ironic considering that "Dragovich" is Russian for "son of the dragon".
• Dragon Their Feet: It turns out he managed to outlive Dragovich by a good 20 years, showing up as a high ranking member of the KGB in Cold War, and eventually ending up working for Raul Menendez in Black Ops II.
• Dying Smirk: Dies with a smug look on his face in Black Ops II.
• Establishing Character Moment: In "Executive Order", Kravchenko is introduced having captured Weaver (with Mason identifying the former as Dragovich's second-in-command), demanding that Mason and his team show themselves and surrender. Kravchenko then proceeds to gouge out Weaver's eye with a radio antenna, grinning malevolently as Weaver screams.
• False Flag Operation: He's revealed to be conducting such operations in Vietnam and Laos. Using American-made cargo planes and the corpses of US servicemen, he makes it look like that the gassings and human experimentation being done to the villagers are the fault of the US.
• Faux Affably Evil: Not to the same extent as his superior officer Dragovich, but has this condescending polite charisma aura around him and can be a Soft-Spoken Sadist, which Cold War showcases these aspects the most in contrast to his other appearances.
• Husky Russkie: He's a heavyset Russian.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: For Woods, at least. Woods has never met Dragovich nor does he even know he exists, while he has met Kravchenko and personally witnessed Kravchenko’s acts of cruelty, earning his spot as Woods’ Arch-Enemy, with Woods even going so far as placing blame solely on Kravchenko for Alex Mason’s brainwashing.
• Knight of Cerebus: Sharing this with Dragovich, however, he is declared to be one of the most evil and brutal characters in the COD games due to his bloodthirsty Ax-Crazy nature, disfiguring/disabling Weaver by stabbing out his eye in '63 while sporting a Slasher Smile, his brutal No Holds Barred Beatdowns given to his enemies and how the profiling states him to be a cold-hearted Soft-Spoken Sadist Made of Evil and his Dark and Troubled Past that implied him to be a serial killer in his village starting with inflicting a Cruel and Unusual Death on his sister Irina for spurning Dragovich's advances before joining the Red Army. The chilling performance by his voice actor Andrew Divoff (aka the Djinn) further helps.
• Lancer vs. Dragon: Woods' conflict with Kravchenko, with the former being The Lancer to The Protagonist, Alex Mason, and the latter being The Dragon to the Big Bad, Dragovich.
• Last Villain Stand: Has one with Mason in II before getting captured and killed by him and Woods.
• Not Quite Dead: Kravchenko, like Woods, survived the explosion and took the latter to the Hanoi Hilton to be imprisoned. He shows up commanding a superheavy tank in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, only to run right into Mason and Woods again...
• Not So Stoic: He spends a good ten seconds being genuinely taken aback if Belikov chooses to frame Charkov as a way of getting his card key from him.
• Plot Armor: Even if the grenade belt was out of range, there's no in-game explanation for how he survived a knife through the back and a fall that would likely have broken his neck. This is lifted in the sequel where he gets shot in the head.
• The Sociopath: His intel file notes he is utterly without feeling unless he is inflicting suffering on someone. He even murdered his own sister because she rejected Dragovich's advances.
  Kravchenko: I'm not a patient man, Belikov. Or a compassionate one.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He rarely ever raises his voice, but is monstrously cruel and brutal either way.
• Taking You with Me: Attempted, but doesn't get Mason thanks to Woods's Heroic Sacrifice. At least, that's what they thought.
• Too Kinky to Torture: His dossier outright states that he's a classic sociopath, and Woods' attempt to beat information out of him doesn't even come close to succeeding.
• Villainous Valor: Monstrous brute aside, Kravchenko isn't one to cower when the odds are against him. When Woods stabs him, he merely pulls the grenade pins from his belt in an effort to kill Woods and actually survives Woods' attempt at his life. Kravchenko manages to survive 20 years after his master dies and makes a Last Villain Stand towards Mason in the sequel and isn't deterred by Mason and Woods brutal interrogations methods, merely giving them one more fuck you before they kill him.

Doctor Friedrich Steiner

Voiced by: Mark Bramhall (English)^note Other Languages: Nobuo Tobita (Japanese), Vladimir Antonik (Russian)

Nazi scientist and creator of Nova 6, who quickly defects to Dragovich after the Soviets showed up at his submarine.

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• Asshole Victim: The CIA's only concerns when Steiner gets murdered is how they're going to stop Dragovich rather than the fact that Steiner dies.
• Boom, Headshot!: Mason as Reznov shoots him in the head.
• Bookends: Steiner's first chronological appearance in Reznov's flashback has him sitting on a chair, greeting Reznov. In his final appearance, Mason, who believed he is Reznov, putting him on a chair before executing him. Both missions are also quite similar as both involve the protagonist racing towards Steiner while he is trying to switch sides.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Turns on Germany for the Soviets, and later on attempts to defect to the CIA in the 60s.
• Commie Nazis: He was the latter before he defected to the former. He's most likely non-ideological though and even tries to defect to the USA when he was targeted by Dragovich.
• Dirty Coward: Didn't think twice about throwing his comrades under the bus to save his own ass.
• Evil Genius: The mastermind of the Nova 6 project.
• Hate Sink: He's a smug cowardly nazi Mad Scientist. He's clearly not meant to be liked and killing him is very satisfying, even if it deters the American's plans to stop Dragovich.
• The Heavy: While Steiner isn't the main villain, the fact that he created Nova-6 and gave Dragovich the means to use it is what creates the whole plot in the first place.
• Herr Doktor: An evil Nazi scientist.
• Mad Scientist: He invented the poisonous gas Nova 6 as one of the Nazi Wunderwaffe projects.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: As you’d expect from a Nazi scientist, he considers Russians to be filth and calls Reznov a “Russian Dog” despite the fact that his associates are Russians.
• Smug Snake: His first appearance has him calmly propped up against a chair with a Luger admonishing Reznov as a "Russian dog" before having him take him to Dragovich and Kravchenko.
• Those Wacky Nazis: According to Reznov, anyway.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The reason Dragovich's men are in his facility is because he thinks that He Knows Too Much and wishes to silence him.

Other Characters

Viktor Reznov

Voiced by: Gary Oldman (English)^note Other Languages: Hōchū Ōtsuka (Japanese), Leonid Belozorovich (Black Ops), Alexander Bobrovsky (Black Ops II), Yuri Malyarov (Black Ops 4) (Russian)

A Red Army veteran who Mason befriended during his time in the Vorkuta Gulag. He leads the uprising in Vorkuta and helps Mason escape. He later seemingly appears as a defector from the Soviet Union to the United States, and works alongside Mason.

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• Big Damn Heroes: Often shows up through the campaign to provide assistance to Mason when he needs it. At least, that's how Mason perceives it.
• Blood Knight: Hell, he makes Woods look like a hippie by comparison.
• Breakout Character: Initially appearing in World at War, he was so well received by the fans that Treyarch made him the central character (albeit not the protagonist) of the main plot of Black Ops.
• Broken Pedestal: After being betrayed by his country, Reznov has lost the patriotism he had for Russia back in World at War.
• The Captain: In Black Ops Dragovich refers to him as "Captain Reznov", implying that he was promoted following the Battle of Berlin in World at War.
• Chummy Commies: A sharp contrast is made between Reznov's and his WWII comrades' amiable desire to protect the Soviet Union from harm by the Nazis and Dragovich's ruthless persona that sees even his own men as expendable.
• Dead All Along:
  • After "Vorkuta". Or is it?
  • He appears in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to rescue Mason and Woods, but it's intentionally left unclear if he was real or merely a hallucination. Woods lampshades it by saying that it is absurd that Reznov would come back to save Mason and just disappear without explaining where he had been all that time (ironically, Alex Mason himself would end up doing the exact same thing himself if he survived the events of "Suffer With Me"). Still David insists that his father honestly believed that it was Reznov, either way it is heartwarming to see that Alex Mason still thinks of Reznov as his friend after all those years.
• Expy: He is basically the Good Counterpart Foil of his voice actor Gary Oldman's Big Bad / The Heavy character Ivan Korshunov from Air Force One, simply both characters being Russian combatants who are Large Hams, Ax-Crazy, Blood Knights and Sociopathic Soldiers, except if Korshunov was a good guy rather than a psychotic bad guy. To further hit it home, in the Black Ops level "The Defector" (as seen in the photo), Reznov is seen carrying an M16-derived carbine, which was Korshunov's primary weapon of choice in the film.
• Fire-Forged Friends: He and Mason became friends in Vorkuta after originally being in violent conflict.
• Imaginary Friend: All of his appearances from "The Defector" onward are hallucinations.
• Large Ham: The biggest, bloodiest ham of the whole game, and it is delicious.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: When he (or rather, Mason) finally confronts Steiner, he gives the former Nazi a blast from the past with a Badass Boast:
  Reznov/Mason: My name! Is Viktor! Rrrreznov! And I will HAVE! MY! REVENGE!
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: After deciding on his feet to destroy the Nova 6 shipment for being a terrible weapon that shouldn't be left in his people's nor the British's hands and for being one of the Chummy Commies in general, he gets locked up in Vorkuta as a traitor to the Soviet Union that he once served for prior to its historical Face–Heel Turn.
• Nominal Hero: Can be seen as this. He doesn't care about Nova or the Cold War. His sole focus is avenging himself on the men who killed his friend and doomed him to two decades in a gulag. If that requires subtly tweaking his friend's mental conditioning to make him a Sleeper Agent to accomplish this, so be it.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Said word for word during the Vorkuta breakout, regarding Mason:
  Reznov: He and us are not so different. We are all soldiers, without an army. Betrayed. Forgotten. Abandoned. In Vorkuta, we are all brothers.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: He really hates the Nazi's to the point where he doesn't care about them being killed indiscriminately even after they surrender.
• Promoted to Playable: After being solely an NPC in World at War, Reznov is the player character of the "Project Nova" mission in Black Ops.
• Revenge: His entire motivation.
• Rousing Speech: Spends most of the breakout from Vorkuta giving an epic one to his fellow prisoners, encouraging them to rise up and slaughter the guards.
  Reznov: Never lose faith, my friends, NEVER! Months of planning, Mason. We will not pause. We will not falter. We will be free, or die trying!
• Sergeant Rock: In World at War he has the rank of Sergeant in the Red Army.
• Spanner in the Works: He managed to reach out to Mason during his brainwashing at Vorkuta, and subtly "reprogrammed" him to seek revenge against their mutual enemies.
• Survival Mantra: "Dragovich... Kravchenko... Steiner... All must die."
• Thanatos Gambit: Reznov knew he was unlikely to survive the breakout from Vorkuta. He placed all his hopes on Mason as his instrument of revenge, and did everything to ensure Mason would escape.
• The Unfettered: He became significantly more unhinged after Project Nova, compared to his WWII-era self who still obeyed orders he hated because he was a soldier.

Doctor Daniel Clarke

Voiced by: Gary Oldman (English)^note Other Languages: Kosei Tomita (Japanese), Sergey Gabrielyan (Russian)

English chemical engineer who had worked with Steiner to help develop the Nova 6.

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• Badass Bookworm: for a chemist, Dr Clarke is extremely competent at killing Spetsnaz with the guns he methodically stashed all over Kowloon Walled City.
• Boom, Headshot!: Gets shot in the head while dangling from Hudson's arm.
• Crazy-Prepared: He has stashes of weapons all over Kowloon and enough explosives in his lab to take both it out and a nearby helicopter trying to steal his research. Lampshaded by Hudson:
  Hudson: You're very well-prepared for a "dead man."
  Clarke: Just because I accept the inevitability of my fate does not mean I'm in any hurry to embrace it.
  • Complete the level's Easter Egg and you'll even find that he has a Thundergun stashed.
• Enemy Mine: He teams up with his CIA captors Hudson and Weaver in battling and escaping the Soviets, in exchange for a chance at asylum in the US. This happens just minutes after the the latter two were in the midst of torturing him for intel.
• Human Notepad: Has multiple tattoos on his face and body related to Nova 6.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: "Oh yes! The numbers... they're the key to... *bang*"
• Mad Scientist: Decides it's a good idea to throw in his lot with Dragovich and help perfect Nova 6.
• Properly Paranoid: Knows people are out to kill him and has prepared for it completely.
• Too Kinky to Torture: "I'm already a dead man!"
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He knows it as well, and already prepared a lot of things for it.

Introduced in Black Ops II

SEAL Team Six

Lieutenant Commander David Mason (callsign: Section)

David in 2025.

Voiced by: Rich McDonald (2025), Hayden Byerly (1980s), Liam O'Brien (2012 E3 demo) (English)^note Other Languages: Shinshu Fuji (Japanese), Sergey Chikhachev (2025), Natalia Gracheva (1980s) (Russian)

Son of CIA operative Alex Mason, member of SEAL Team Six, JSOC commander, and protagonist of Black Ops II, player character in all future segments of the game.

Following the rise of Raul Menendez and Cordis Die as well as the beginning of the Second Cold War in 2025, David and SEAL Team Six goes through much of the game to track down Menendez's plans and stop him.

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• Artistic License – Military: Between his very high rank of Commander and his age of forty-six, in real life, David would be participating in the game's storyline from a command center far away from the action, directing men half-his-age over the radio. Seeing as Call Of Duty is a First-Person Shooter and not a Strategy Game, he follows the traditional standards set by the series and proceeds to rampage about the front lines in typical Player Character fashion. He does, however, remain in the command center for the strike force missions, where he acts as Mission Control for the playable JSOC operators.
• Bond One-Liner: At the end of "Karma", if he successfully catches up to and kills DeFalco:
  "Lights out, fucker."
• Commanding Coolness: As mentioned above, he's currently the highest rank out of all CoD PCs, essentially in command of DEVGRU, a.k.a. SEAL Team Six and doing a fine job of leading his men in battle.
• Cool Shades: Wears them during most missions. His sunglasses also function as a combat heads-up display and allows him to receive video feeds.
• Cruel Mercy: Menendez inflicted this fate upon David when he was a boy, when he manipulated Woods into killing David's father, and killing Hudson, leaving Woods and David to wallow in despair, hoping that this might mold him into someone that could understand his vision. David in the final mission has the choice to either spare or kill Menendez, in the event he spares him he dismisses his "vision" as just "a sad old man talking to himself", and places him into American custody hoping that the man will rot away in jail for the rest of his life. In the golden ending where Menendez's plan to instigate global anarchy and destroy America's computer networks fails, the man has an epic Villainous Breakdown in his prison cell. Looks like David's choice to spare him was indeed a Cruel Mercy.
• Determinator: Not even losing almost all those he cares for could stop him from taking down the bad guys.
• Disappeared Dad: His father was killed by way of manipulation from Raul Menendez... although it's possible to avert this.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Not only is he a U.S. Navy SEAL, he commands SEAL Team Six, widely considered to be the elite of the elite.
• Frontline General: As a Commander, David should be well behind the scenes, managing the fray by safely observing it from a distance and giving commands to troops in the field. He opts to personally lead his men into battle wherever possible, getting in on the action and racking up his fair share of kills.
• Generation Xerox: Like his father, he finds himself fighting a new Cold War, this time with China. Also like his father, he was subject to programming that makes him an Unwitting Pawn of the Big Bad, although in his case it's a much weaker form of hypnotism, rather than the sophisticated brainwashing Alex was subjected to.
• Happily Adopted: After Mason goes missing or is killed by you in Panama, Woods adopts and helps raise him.
• Heroic BSoD: David has one when he learns that Woods is the one who shot his father.
• Improbable Age: In real life, a man of David's age and experience would be directing men half his age from some command center, not rampaging about the front lines with them.
• Ink-Suit Actor: David physically resembles his actor, Rich McDonald, who also provided his motion-capture performance.
• Like Father, Like Son: Much like his father before him he too is subjected to subliminal messaging by the Big Bad, though luckily David's is relatively more benign than Alex's kill compulsion.
• Mission Control: He plays this role naturally during the Strike Force missions.
• Missing Mom: The dead kind.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If he chooses to execute Menendez in "Judgment Day", a final video release is triggered on Cordis Die's YouTube channel, sparking riots throughout the world.
• Older Than They Look: He appears to be around early to mid 30s. Following the timeline, he's about 46.
• Raised by Dudes: David was raised in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness by an ex-spec ops leatherneck (and after his father's (apparent) death, he is raised by his dad's best friend who happens to be a Sergeant Rock). It's no big surprise he's tough. Notably, he's a lot more well-balanced than most other examples of this trope.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Just because he bears the chains of command, and faces the responsibility of leading his men into battle, doesn't mean he's any less of a front-line soldier as he gladly fights alongside his men during the campaign. He's also particularly high in the "authority" department; at the rank of Lieutenant Commander, behind Commmander-in-Chief John F. Kennedy in the Zombies level "Five", he is the highest-ranked protagonist in the series. Until his rank is beaten by Nick Reyes, being a Commander.
• Sole Survivor: If things go that badly, he can end up being the only major character in the cast of the second game to make it out alive.
• Super Wrist-Gadget: His wrist-mounted OPSAT computer has a number of functions, including calling in airstrikes, remotely hacking enemy networks, video recording and live analysis, and even firing grappling hooks and grenades.
• Unwitting Pawn: As part of Menendez's Trojan Horse plan to be captured, he implanted young David with a hidden drive to seek out and capture Menendez, through mild hypnotism and the extreme trauma of watching his father die.

Mike Harper

Voiced by: Michael Rooker (English)^note Other Languages: Kenta Miyake (Japanese), Nikolai Bystrov (Russian)

SEAL Team Six member and David's close teammate.

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• Artistic License – Military: His knee-jerk decision to execute Salazar in response to his betrayal would likely earn him an arrest and a very long prison sentence. On the other hand, given exactly what the traitor did in the first place, it's not like anyone present to witness the execution really cared about granting safe conduct to the executed in the first place.
• Blood Knight: Much like Woods, despite his gruffness he can be pretty jolly much of the time, but when provoked his temper is incredible. Also like Woods, he has a tendency to pursue Revenge Before Reason.
• Boom, Headshot!: If Farid executes him. Also how he kills Salazar if he isn't killed by Farid.
• Book Dumb: It's pretty clear that he's a shoot first, ask questions later kind of guy, and that his social manners and education level peaked somewhere in high school.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Harper has two weapons, his very, very big mouth, and whatever futurized BFG he happens to be toting that day. He uses both in equal measure to rather liberal degrees.
• Casanova Wannabe: On board the Colossus, he declares he's going to hit on the first girl he bumps into, and proceeds to do just that. She shoots him down immediately with much annoyance. It turns out to be Karma he bumped into.
• Character Death: It's up to the player, but he has to die in order to get the Golden Ending. Poor guy.
• Defiant to the End: When it comes time for his optional execution, he doesn't beg, he doesn't plead, and he doesn't try to bargain his way out. He goes down struggling and cursing Menendez to his last breath. Subverted if he survives that, however.
• Generation Xerox: He fulfills the same role for Section as Woods did for Alex Mason. Right down to pulling a Heroic Sacrifice, although unlike Woods, he doesn't come back from his. Humorously, he and Woods spent most of what little shared screentime they have insulting each other.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Depending on how well you drive, half of his face can be burned during the vehicular battle in "Fallen Angel".
• Heroic Sacrifice: Harper encourages Farid to shoot him rather than let Farid's cover be blown. And if you want the Golden Ending, Harper unfortunately has to die.
• Hidden Depths: Beneath the manly-man exterior is a guy who legitimately cares about and respects his friends and teammates. He shows legitimate concern over how the events of the conflict are affecting Mason, is legitimately distraught when he learns that Salazar has betrayed the team and he reassures Farid in the latter's character-centric mission. He also takes a moment out of his time to express pity for the civilians during the adventure to Pakistan and he consistently puts his teammates before himself. On a more comedic note, he expresses a desire to take a vacation at the Colossus resort one day. He's also a bit defensive of his looks if he gets half his face burned off in "Fallen Angel."
• Hot-Blooded: Oh yeah. Harper is not a man who does things by half-measures, period. He's either pleasantly jolly or howling mad, and there is absolutely zero in-between.
  • His very first major action is getting into a verbal fight with Woods.
  • He kicks a malfunctioning CLAW drone to get it to work. It does.
  • He immediately advocates for killing DeFalco in violent fashion, though in all fairness the man is shooting up a nightclub filled with innocent civilians when Harper and him meet face-to-face.
• Ink-Suit Actor:
  • Harper bears a strong resemblance to his voice actor, Michael Rooker, well specifically Rooker in his youth back in the late 80's and early 90's.
  • He also shares his actor's first name. invoked
• The Lancer: He's basically to David Mason what Frank Woods was to Alex Mason.
• Made of Iron:
  • Relatively early on in the campaign, Harper can get half his face burned. It doesn't really seem to bother him as much as it really should, and he's up and running just fine by the next mission.
  • If he lives past his optional sacrifice, over the course of the rest of the game (which takes place over about a day and a half), he proceeds to be in two plane crashes, two car crashes, get caught in an explosion, take a really bad fall and impale himself on a giant piece of sharp metal. He survives all of this, though depending on whether Menendez lives or dies, he either staggers out under his own power to go find medical help or has to be carried by David to get medical attention.
• Mission Control: He acts as this for Farid during "Achilles Veil".
• Number Two: David and Harper spend a lot of their screentime operating as a duo, with Harper picking up in the areas that Mason fails to and vice versa.
• Sacrificial Lion: The Golden Ending requires Harper to die so that Farid maintains his cover and is thus able to save Karma later on.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Mike Harper is basically the 2025 version of Frank Woods: both of them are Blood Knights, both of them are heavily tattooed, both have beards, both of them are foul-mouthed, and both of them are the best friend of a Mason family member.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Downplayed, but his decision to roughly manhandle Chloe Lynch and demand she follow him immediately, rather than calmly explain why she needs to follow the guy she called a creep not a half-hour ago, is part of the reason why the very bloody chase through the floating resort happens in the first place.

Javier Salazar

Voiced by: Celestino Cornielle (English)^note Other Languages: Takayuki Kondō (Japanese), Radik Mukhametzyanov (Russian)

SEALs member who accompanies David through much of the game.

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• Anti-Villain: His comments in "Odysseus," particularly his description of the revolution as "a difficult day" and admonishing Menendez for killing Briggs (if the player chooses to do so), seem to indicate that Salazar was very reluctant to betray his comrades.
• Badass Spaniard: He is actually Nicaraguan, just like Raul Menendez.
• Character Death: If Harper survives "Achilles' Veil," he executes Salazar for his betrayal. If Harper is dead, then Salazar is probably just in jail, as Commander Mason just orders him to be taken out of his sight.
• Exact Words: After revealing his betrayal, he states that he will surrender when Menendez does what he needs to do. Afterwards, he surrenders without incident.
• Foreshadowing: Drops subtle hints throughout the game of his allegiance to Cordis Die. First, he tells Harper not to underestimate Menendez when the latter insults him. There's also the fact that, according to Section, he knows more about Menendez than anyone else and grew up during his rise to power. Then, there are a few of his comments during "Karma" - "So this is how the 1% live." and "No wonder Menendez attracts so many followers." in particular - and the fact that he refuses to shoot DeFalco during that same mission, using the excuse that there are too many hostages when DeFalco only had one hostage and was standing far away from the other ones (though this is partly justified because DeFalco's men were present).
• Hypocrite: If Menendez kills Admiral Briggs, Salazar will scold him for unnecessary killing, despite the fact that he kills Chloe (if she's present while Farid or DeFalco aren't) after she surrenders, though later it can turn out that killing Chloe is very necessary, as she can stop Menendez's escape plan should Section capture him whilst she is still alive.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Physically resembles his voice actor, Celestin Cornielle. Additionally, Cornielle also provided the motion-capture performance.
• The Mole: For Menendez. Though a more sympathetic one since he requested Menendez to spare Admiral Briggs, and also surrenders immediately after finishing his work instead of trying to escape with Menendez.
• Token Enemy Minority: Salazar is Nicaraguan, just like Menendez. He's also the only major member of Section's team to be obviously Latin American, while the bulk of Cordis Die's fighters are former Cuban special forces working as mercenaries. He also turns out to be The Mole.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Salazar genuinely seems to believe Menendez's actions will help the oppressed people of the world. He expresses some sorrow for having to betray his friends and even tries to convince Menendez to spare Admiral Briggs.

Farid

Voiced by: Omid Abtahi (English)^note Other Languages: Fumihiro Okabayashi (Japanese), Radik Mukhametzyanov (Russian)

SEAL Team Six tech officer and undercover in the Cordis Die.

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• Badass Bookworm: He's SEAL Team Six's tech officer, assisting Section and his team during "Karma."
• Break the Badass: He has to shoot his teammate/handler Harper in order to maintain his cover, having a very serious case of Heroic BSoD afterwards. He also dies in all endings, though his sacrifice in the Golden Ending path manages to save Karma. Guy can't catch a break.
• Character Death: Either he is killed by Menendez in "Achilles' Veil" for not killing Harper, or he dies protecting Karma in "Odysseus".
• Heroic BSoD: Even though Section told him he did what he had to do, Farid is visibly broken after being forced to kill Harper.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Can choose to sacrifice himself rather than maintaining cover and killing Harper. He will also sacrifice himself to save Karma if he does survive.
• I Did What I Had to Do: He has to kill many U.S.-allied Yemeni soldiers during the raid on Menendez's compound, since they're shooting at him due to his cover as one of Menendez's men. This causes him noticeable distress, but he's able to continue his mission. However, if he's forced to kill Harper to maintain his cover, he finally succumbs to a Heroic BSoD.
• Insult of Endearment: Harper often calls him "Egghead". Which comes in handy during "Achilles' Veil" when Farid is still acting undercover within Cordis Die, Harper's VTOL is shot down, and Menendez asks Farid to execute Harper in his name.
• The Mole: As a CIA field agent, he has managed to infiltrate Menendez's inner circle.
• Playful Hacker: Has a few Deadpan Snarker moments. If Farid had survived in "Achilles' Veil" but Chloe wasn't rescued, he'll be at the terminal at the moment of Salazar's betrayal.
• Senseless Sacrifice: If he chooses to try and take out Menendez instead of executing Harper; it doesn't work, and he is executed on the spot. "Senseless" in that, if he dies during "Achilles' Veil," Farid isn't around to take the bullet for Karma, or save her from DeFalco.
• The Smart Guy: Is DEVGRU's tech guy.
• Taking the Bullet: If he survives until "Odysseus" and DeFalco is dead, the cause of his death.

Crosby

Voiced by: Michael Rodrick (English)^note Other Languages:Alexander Voronov (Russian)

Another member of SEAL Team Six.

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• Expy: He bears quite a resemblance to Frost from Modern Warfare 3.
• The Faceless: Always has his helmet on.
• Mauve Shirt: He's a permanent member of Section's team alongside Harper, Salazar, and Farid, and shares their Story-Driven Invulnerability during gameplay. However, he gets no real characterization and doesn't appear in any major cutscenes, making him something of an odd man out.
• The Quiet One: He only speaks in the first level he is in.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He appears very briefly at the end of "Odysseus", getting shot in the shoulder, but he never gets mentioned again.

Admiral Tommy Briggs

Voiced by: Tony Todd (English)^note Other Languages: Kenji Nomura (Japanese), Yuri Malyarov (Russian)

Commander of SEAL Team Six and JSOC operations. He briefs the player in the Strike Force missions.

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• Boom, Headshot!: How he goes out if Menendez kills him.
• A Father to His Men: Salazar thinks so, which is why he asks Menendez not to kill him. You decide whether he lives or not.
• Hot-Blooded: Albeit a more downplayed version.
• Ink-Suit Actor: He looks a lot like Tony Todd. Additionally, Todd also provided motion capture for Briggs.
• Knee-capping: If Menendez spares him, he shoots Briggs in the knee instead.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He gives Commander Mason a lot of leeway in accomplishing his missions.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Very profane, with his favorite word being "cocksucker", which he uses especially in reference to Raul Menendez and Tian Zhao. He won't even hesitate to swear in front of the Secretary of Defense, of all people.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: If Menendez spares him, he never appears again.

SDC

General Tian Zhao

Voiced by: Byron Mann (English)^note Other Languages: Kosuke Toriumi (Japanese), Nikolai Lazarev (Russian)

Leader of the Strategic Defense Coalition planning on expanding his influences. He had also appeared in a single 1980s mission.

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• Big Bad Duumvirate: Forms one with Menendez.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Initially appears to be an ally towards David Mason just like how he was for his father Alex, but in reality he has sided with Menendez.
• Character Death: If assassinated in the last Strike Force mission.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Seen fighting alongside Alex Mason in Afghanistan.
• Face Death with Dignity: If killed in the last Strike Force mission, he'll straighten himself up before the player shoots him in the chest.
• Face–Heel Turn: It's revealed that Menendez is using him to prevent the Americans and Chinese from forming an alliance.
• Fallen Hero: A former ally of Alex Mason, Frank Woods and Jason Hudson in their fight against Menendez in 1986, who becomes a General Ripper puppet for the latter amongst the SDC later in life.
• Four-Star Badass: A General of the PRC Army and a former field operative.
• General Ripper: According to Briggs, Zhao defies the Chinese government in his pursuit of SDC dominance in the region.
• The Heavy: For Menendez, in a way. His amassing of SDC military forces plays into Menendez's plans for the superpowers to wipe each other out.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Physically resembles Byron Mann.
• Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: A singular installment Time Skip game level take on this trope, goes from an ally for Alex Mason in Afghanistan in their fight against Menendez during the 80s in one level to a crony of Menendez in the Strike Force missions without any clear explanation why.

Cordis Die

Raul Menendez

Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

Voiced by: Kamar de los Reyes (English)^note Other Languages: Hiroshi Shirokuma (Japanese), Nikita Prozorovsky (Russian)

The overall antagonist of Black Ops II. When he was young, Menendez witnessed his father, the leader of the powerful Menendez Cartel in Nicaragua getting assassinated by the CIA, causing him to grow up with resentment towards to United States. In the 1980s, Menendez began a gunrunning operation against the US, triggering another CIA operation against him that killed his sister Josefina by accident.

Fueled by his hatred over the west, he worked over the next thirty years to create a world revolution. Using his wealth and charisma, he creates the militant populist movement of Cordis Die under the alias Odysseus, striking riots across nations. By 2025, Cordis Die has over two billion followers, and Menendez is further planning on cyberattacks against US and China (who are currently in a Second Cold War) to plunge both into a destructive war.

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• The Ace: Not only is he insanely wealthy and an exceptionally charismatic leader, he's a good enough fighter to hold his ground against Mason, a highly-trained SOG operative who is credited by JFK himself as America's best killing machine. Even when he hits his 60s, he has no trouble killing rank-and-file soldiers and prison guards. He's also likely the most powerful playable character in a Call of Duty game when you briefly play as him.
• Affably Evil: He is genuinely polite to his enemies, in spite of having done many terribly things.
• Alas, Poor Villain: In the bad ending, where he immolates himself on his sister's grave, he is portrayed very sympathetically as a tragic figure that had lost everything.
• All for Nothing: Even if Menendez is killed, setting of his decades-long gamble, Call of Duty: Black Ops III reveals that it backfires horribly. His death instead fractures Cordis Die and winds up ironically reinforcing the First World.
• Anarchy Is Chaos: As hinted at in the game and elaborated on in the short story Rightful King, ultimately Menendez is an Anarchist in the traditional sense of the word; he's against both big government and big capitalism, with the motto of "less power, less problems".
• Authority Equals Asskicking: For a short time, the player gets to control him on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. He's faster and stronger than standard protagonists, and there are several moments where you get to use nothing but a machete to slice through a squad or two.
• Badass Bookworm: He's a well-learned man who's extremely badass.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: In the 2025 missions, though like Vladimir Makarov he seems to abhor neckties.
• Badass Spaniard: He's Nicaraguan.
• Bad Boss:
  • In "Pyrrhic Victory", while what he says in Spanish to his men while being used as a shield by Mason isn't subtitled, part of it roughly translates to, "The American knows nothing about loyalty. Let's show him." He then promptly pulls the pin on a grenade, which forces Mason to let him go...and also forces two of his soldiers to sacrifice themselves by dogpiling on said grenade when it falls to the floor, lest Menendez be blown up himself.
  • In "Time and Fate", he is the only player character in Call of Duty history who can kill his own soldiers without causing a Non-Standard Game Over. Looking at them doesn't show a name, implying that he doesn't even remember his own minions by name (or he can't remember due to his sheer rage).
• The Bad Guy Wins: Unless Chloe survives, Menendez's revenge against the U.S. is a success.
• The Berserker: Just play through "Time and Fate". It's really easy to mistake him being on crack because he just takes bullet after bullet without seeming to notice.
• Big Bad: He is, after all, the one behind the widespread hacking of drones and their subsequent attacks on the US and China. His real plan, on the other hand, is to destroy the drone armies and allow Cordis Die to rise up and finally put the First World on even terms with the downtrodden masses.
• Big Bad Ensemble: In Warzone: The Last Stand, alongside Khaled Al-Asad, Gabriel Rorke, and Seraph.
• Broken Pedestal: According to Black Ops III he became this to Cordis Die following his canonical death during the CIA raid on his safehouse; despite Cordis Die's promise to burn the world down if he were ever killed, his death by having having been shot while attempting to flee disguised as a soldier caused many in his organization to ultimately view him as having died a coward's death and lose faith in the movement; by the events of Black Ops III, Menendez and his Cordis Die organization and their activities are essentially minimized to a single webpage, and the only person to speak of him in game sees him as an egotistical maniac. Ultimately, his only real legacy was spurring the development of Directed Energy Air Defense Systems (D.E.A.D.S.) to counter further attempts at hacking drone networks.
• The Chessmaster: This guy has a contingency plan for everything.
• Cruel Mercy:
  • David has the choice to either spare the man or kill him, in the event he chooses the former option Menendez goes into American custody and rot in a jail cell. David even lampshades it by claiming that he's just "A sad old man talking to himself.", meaning he will have no one's company but his own as he suffers in his defeat. Menendez will have to rot away in a prison cell for the rest of his life knowing that all of his efforts amounted to nothing, and the audience can agree the man deserves it. This cruel mercy can be subverted in the endings where Menendez escapes from prison, or his plans succeed anyway despite his death.
  • He gives this to David Mason as a child, when he kills Hudson right in front of him and manipulates Woods into killing his father, by letting him survive but feel the despair he felt. Menendez refrains from killing David even in the present day, even after David has fulfilled his role as an Unwitting Pawn in Menendez's master plan.
• Cutting Off the Branches: While the player may choose whether or not to kill him (despite the warning that his death would spur worldwide anarchy in his name), additional material and dialogue in Call of Duty: Black Ops III reveals that he was indeed killed during the raid at the end of II. However, due to the nature of his death (shot while trying to escape disguised as a soldier) a rift formed in Cordis Die, between those who believed he died a coward's death and those who tried to martyr him anyways; the controversy pretty much snuffed out the organization by itself.
• Cycle of Revenge: The CIA killed his father, so he captures Woods and kills the rest of the unit, sticking him in a storage container with the corpses of his men. Due to this traumatic experience, Woods goes berserk with rage during a later mission to capture Menendez; this leads to him chucking a grenade at Menendez, which instead ends up killing his sister Josefina. Josefina's death causes Menendez to seek revenge against Woods and Mason (who shot out his eye); he holds David Mason hostage, kidnaps Hudson, manipulates Woods into killing David's father, and lets David survive all of this so he would understand Menendez's vision. David grows up to be a Navy SEAL Commander, becomes the key figure in the fight against Menendez's master plan, and after a final confrontation must choose between either executing Menendez or capturing him so he can spend the rest of his life in prison. If David chooses to kill Menendez, Menendez's death serves as the catalyst for the uprising of the 99%, leading to the fall of the First World. The only way to stop Menendez is to break the Cycle of Revenge and capture him alive.
• Dark and Troubled Past: He grew up in the war, his family lost everything in an earthquake, he and his sister, Josefina, were caught in a fire, leaving Josefina permanently scarred and disfigured, his father was assassinated by the CIA, and then his sister was killed by an errant grenade toss by Woods, cementing his hatred towards the First World.
• Dark Messiah: His backstory is sympathetic enough and you can tell that there is some form of a good man buried deep inside, but the darkness obviously consumed his soul a long time ago and all that's left is his ruthless, single-minded drive to bring down the First World through violent uprising.
• Despair Event Horizon: The death of his sister drove him to rise from a mere drug lord to a Dark Messiah hell bent on getting revenge.
• Determinator: He survives multiple attempts on his life, several of which are by characters you're playing as. Additionally, in the first section of the "Time and Fate" mission where you play as him, he has an incredible amount of health and can survive quite a few hits on his body solely based on his motivation to get back to his sister.
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • No matter which way you look at it, he is willing to bomb Los Angeles and start a world revolution that could potentially kill millions of people just to avenge the deaths of his sister and father.
  • The intro to the first 2025 mission mentions that he had his Twitter account shut down by the US Government. His response was to roast the Director of the FBI alive.
• Doomed by Canon: Zigzagged. On the one hand, the player can choose whether to kill him or spare him at the end of the game. On the other, dialogue from the third game states that, canonically, he was killed.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • In the Black Ops II intro he prepares to slit his throat with Josefina's necklace while they're trapped in a burning warehouse before she tells him to stop and not leave her alone.
  • If Menendez is spared at the end of the game but Karma didn't survive, Menendez will successfully escape from prison with the help of the Celerium Worm. He will then kill Woods and travel to his sister's grave site, where he douses himself in gasoline and sets himself on fire.
• Establishing Character Moment: Alex Mason goes to threaten a guy he most likely thinks is just a radio operator, only for this radio operator to destroy the radio with his bare hands, overpower the trained SAD operative considered among the best of the best, and almost kill him with a knife stab to the gut, all without a hint of fear or intimidation. That scene also ends with Raul eating a bullet to the head that he survives with only an Eye Scream, which further establishes Menendez's almost preternatural resilience (and luck).
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He greatly cared about and loved his sister Josefina. In fact, her death is one of the major reasons that Raul held a strong hatred against the United States and the First World. He even goes to the extent of burning himself to death in one of the bad endings near her grave.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Though it's entirely up to you, if you choose to shoot Admiral Briggs in the leg instead of in the head. Menendez will then comment that perhaps the Admiral will see things their way if you let him live. Salazar even mentions that Briggs is a good man and shouldn't be executed.
• Eye Scream: When Alex Mason shoots him in the eye in the first mission.
• Freudian Excuse: The actions of the United States and their corrupt capitalist system led to his family losing his their home and his sister being horrifically scarred, thus forcing him and his father into a life of crime to make ends meet.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Tragic as his upbringing may be, he ends up ruining another kid's life, and taking many others.
• Foreshadowing: The very first words uttered in gameplay are from Jonas Savimbi to Alex Mason; Savimbi sees Mason trying to save a comrade from burning to death inside a wrecked vehicle, but he tells him to stop, saying, "The fire finished him. Sometimes it is too late to save a man." These words could easily be applied to Menendez; the fire claimed his innocence a long time ago and the ravaged soul that came out of that fire is too far gone to save from his inevitable damnation.
• Friendly Enemy:
  • In the '80s missions, Menendez is a hateful, furious man only reigned in by obvious Tranquil Fury. By the 2025 missions, Menendez is calm, polite, and friendly around Mason and Woods, and in the ending where he lives and escapes, when he confronts Woods, they simply have a short, almost amicable talk before Menendez slits Woods' throat, then gently sets the body down on his bed.
  • Even in 1989, moments after threatening to kill him, Menendez sounds like he almost has some sympathy for the young David Mason when he tells him to seek him out in the future. In the 2025 missions, he acts borderline fatherly towards him.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: As a child he was just another third world starving refugee, his home destroyed by an earthquake and the reconstruction stymied by an American-backed banana dictatorship. To survive, he and his father became drug runners and eventually drug lords, and he ultimately rises to become the number one global threat to western civilization.
• Hero Killer: He directly kills Hudson and possibly Farid (should Farid attempt to make an attempt on his life in "Achilles' Veil") and Briggs (should he simply shoot Briggs in a fatal spot under the player's control), as well as Woods in one ending, and is responsible for the deaths of Mason (provided you take the headshot in "Suffer With Me"), Chloe (if you don't rescue her in the mission "Karma"), and Harper (by making you kill him to protect Farid's cover).
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Sort of. For most of the game, everyone assumes he's just a standard Nietzsche Wannabe Modern Warfare villain whose master plan is simply to use a superweapon to kill as many Americans as possible. He actually self-destructs the re-programmed drone army instead of using them to destroy the West, as his endgame wasn't simple mass destruction, but rather to genuinely pave the way for a global revolution (albeit a violent uprising that would probably kill lots of people on its own).
• Hypocrite: His whole Cordis Die stint is one big cover up for his very out-of-control Disproportionate Retribution against America and the First World. For all his talk of being a messiah for the 99%, he's a sociopathic drug lord with a lot of money who really doesn't seem to give a damn about helping the downtrodden so long as they take everything down with him. In Black Ops III, Hendricks straight-up calls him a hypocritical egomaniac when he comes up in a conversation.
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten!: Menendez tests Farid's loyalty by ordering him to execute Harper. Doubly cruel because Menendez already knows Farid is a double agent (Salazar knew, which means Menendez knows).
• Improvised Weapon: He's fond of using his sister's necklace for slitting people's throats (apparently the edge is really sharp).
• Ink-Suit Actor: Menendez looks almost exactly like his actor, Kamar de los Reyes.
• I Was Quite a Looker: That's the older Raul Menendez above who you see for most of the game. This is Raul Menendez when he was young and unwounded.
• Knight of Cerebus: He is introduced ignoring Alex Mason's attempts to get him to surrender and would've killed him had he not gone for a gut stab, and is one of the most dangerous villains to ever grace the Call of Duty franchise.
• Knight Templar: He fully believes that he is in the right in overthrowing the First World, and no amount of wrongdoings committed in the way will dissuade him.
• Large Ham: Many of his cutscenes have him chewing the scenery with every line.
• Leitmotif: Noticeably plays during the attendance in "Achilles' Veil", his playable scene in "Odysseus", and when his videocast plays near the end of "Judgement Day". Here it is.
• Lightning Bruiser: In the level where you play as him, he can survive about as much damage as a friggin Juggernaut, and moves significantly faster than a normal player character. He's also able to instantly reload his shotgun, seemingly through the power of sheer rage. Assuming it's enabled, the controller will rumble when he moves.
• Made of Iron: Very little seems to stop him, including being shot in the eye, and being caught in a grenade explosion (twice!). In the final confrontation Section jams his knife into Menendez's knee all the way to the hilt, then slams it into his chest, lodging it just below the shoulder. Despite this, if David chooses to take Menendez alive, Menendez is able to stand up and calmly walk to his fate, despite having a stabbed knee and a knife sticking out of his chest.
• Manipulative Bastard: Is very skilled at using people as pawns in his schemes.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Torturing Woods was a major factor in his sister's death.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • In "Odysseus", if he spares Admiral Briggs when the player has beaten all of the Strike Force missions and Chloe is still alive, Briggs is able to reactivate the ship's defenses, saving Chloe, who goes on to stop Menendez's attempt to escape from prison in the Golden Ending.
  • In Black Ops III, Menendez's cyber-attack on the superpowers' drone armies is credited as the impetuous for the creation of the D.E.A.D.S. defensive systems, which essentially bring about the end of large-scale warfare, with the nations of the world relying on small-scale covert operations to act against each other instead of using large standing armies which the D.E.A.D.S. have made obsolete.
• Not Hyperbole: In the end, if David captures Menendez alive, Menendez tells David that he will see him one year from now, and that David should study Ulysses and be ready. David quite sensibly dismisses this as an idle threat, even telling a Marine not to bother with gagging Menendez, as he's simply "a sad old man talking to himself". As it turns out, Menendez actually does have a viable plan to escape from prison after one year should the virus uploaded in "Odysseus" remain rampant (although whether or not he paid a visit to David isn't shown).
• Older Hero vs. Younger Villain: In the 1980s missions, in which he is pitted against the middle aged Woods, Mason and Hudson, but inverted in the 2025 missions, where he, now over his sixties, faces off against the younger David Mason, who is in his forties.
• One-Man Army: In "Time and Fate". The player (controlling Menendez) rampages through his compound, slaying Panamanian soldiers with nothing more than a machete and a shotgun, attempting to reach his sister.
• Pet the Dog:
  • In "Odysseus", he has the choice of wounding Admiral Briggs instead of killing him. This is entirely up to the player.
  • During his rampage in "Time and Fate", he attacks some PDF soldiers who have taken innocent civilians hostage.
• Revenge: His entire motivation due to the fact that it was US-backed Panamanian soldiers who destroyed his home and killed his sister. He personally targets Mason and Woods for their involvement in it.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Subjects Farid to one of these after he attempts to shoot him to save Harper but gets mortally wounded in the process, Menendez telling him that no one will care if he dies before finishing him off with a headshot.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: In "Time and Fate", he goes on a player-controlled killing spree in an effort to reach his sister Josefina and rescue her from PDF soldiers. Then Woods accidentally kills her with an errant grenade toss.
• Saved by Canon: Although Hudson informs you that the prisoner in "Suffer With Me" is Menendez, and that you should kill him with a headshot, it obviously isn't. That mission is in 1989, while Menendez is certainly alive in 2025.
• Sadistic Choice: He enjoys forcing this on the protagonists:
  • He offers one to Hudson in the "Suffer with me" level. Hudson can pick who Menendez will kill, either himself, Woods, or a young David. And if he doesn't decide within ten seconds, Menendez says he'll just kill all three of them. Hudson ultimately chooses himself, and suffers getting shot in both knees with a point-blank shotgun blast, and then gets his throat slashed with Josefina's heart-shaped necklace.
  • He gives one to Farid as well in the "Achilles' Veil" mission. Farid can either shoot Harper, and prove his loyalty, or he can attempt to kill Menendez. Farid suffers a Heroic BSoD if he takes the first choice, and ends up getting killed by Menendez if he tries the second one. Either way someone ends up dying.
• Say My Name: "JOSEFINAAA!"
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: In the short story Rightful King, this is used to contrast Raul with his father Jose Menendez. While Jose's primary goal as a drug lord is financial security for his family, Raul wants to devote their cartel's resources to achieve political action.
• Self-Immolation: If he's captured alive without Karma being around to prevent his escape, he kills Woods before visiting Josefina's grave, digging up her body, and committing suicide in this manner.
• Serkis Folk: In addition to voicing Menendez, Kamar also provided the motion capture performance.
• Strong Family Resemblance: His father, Jose Luiz Menendez, looks exactly like his son in Declassified.
• Tranquil Fury: Back in the '80s, this was what was keeping him vaguely sane, as well as the love for his sister. But skip to the 2020s and we see that he has mastered it. Not raising his voice for even a moment and keeping himself disturbingly pleasant. But he still remembers who killed his sister and his anger over it has not abated. Not. One. Bit.
• Thanatos Gambit:
  • Choosing to kill him in "Judgment Day" has severe consequences. His followers are sparked into uprising, following the (assassination-triggered) release of Menendez's final video on the Cordis Die YouTube channel... causing worldwide riots, and accomplishing his entire mission.
  • Background material in Black Ops III reveals he WAS canonically killed at the end of II, but the nature of his death (shot while trying to escape disguised as a US soldier) stirred up controversy among his followers as many saw his death as cowardly rather than dying as a martyr, and ultimately Cordis Die fractured, so the promised reprisals never came.
• Tragic Villain: Very much so. This is lampshaded by David Mason where he describes Menendez as "a sad old man" if you decide to spare his life. The "tragic" part of him is highlighted further in one of the bad endings when he visits his sister's grave.
• Unstoppable Rage: In "Time and Fate" Menendez goes completely berserk when his sister is threatened by Panamanian soldiers. The player even gets to control him during this rage.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: He apparently (and sincerely) believes in his own rhetoric on leveling the world and toppling the First World down to equal footing with the "downtrodden masses." On the other hand, his idea involves mass destruction, indiscriminate killing and said masses being more like Angola and Somalia...
• Vengeance Feels Empty: If he kills Woods, he's able to get away with it and manages to go to Josefina's grave. But apparently, his vengeance was his only reason to live. So instead of hiding his identity and escaping to a more peaceful life, he opens the grave and immolates himself inside it.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the Golden Ending, Menendez's attempt to escape from prison by unleashing a computer virus is stopped by Karma. She then goes on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and mocks Menendez for his failure, causing him to completely lose it and bash his head against the television monitor repeatedly. Counts as Cruel Mercy on David's part.
• Villainous Legacy: Though he's long gone by the time Black Ops III rolls around, Raul's actions in the second game continue to haunt the world. In essence, the fallout from his actions leads to the end of large-scale warfare, with countries instead relying on small-scale Black Ops using augmented special forces to achieve their geopolitical aims.
• Villainous Valour: Menendez is a man of great resolve, from the moment he breaks the radio before Mason could even state demands to overthrowing the West by dismantling its infrastructure. Instead of using the drones to destroy the United States right then and there he has them explode in the air to show the world they can be overthrown and encourage uprisings to in not only the United States but most governments by evening the playfield like he promised with the Celerium Worm so there is also some honesty to him if solely to hurt people more.
• Villain with Good Publicity: In the outside world, he's regarded as a sort of messiah figure by many third-world nations as well as those living below the poverty line in first-world nations. The military, on the other hand, knows better.
• Visionary Villain: Claims to want to level the playing field between the 99% and the 1% by taking away all the infrastructure that the ones in power in the United States use to control the masses. Sounds good in theory but in practice the man is a psychopath that just wants revenge on the West and his plans will ultimately kill millions of innocent people (along with bring about global anarchy that would just as likely kill said 99%). Ironically ,being a wealthy man himself he is part of the so called 1% that the 99% seeks to overthrow, a good deal of his plan being funded by drug money. If the man does want change, he's certainly willing to exploit the current systems of power to do so.
• Warrior Poet: He quotes extensively from the poem "Ulysses" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, and states that much of his plans and philosophy are based on the poem.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: While his uprising against the U.S. is mainly to avenge his sister's death, it's clear that Menendez genuinely believes that capitalism is a corrupt system that destroys the lives of those underneath it, thanks in no small part due to him witnessing how it scarred his sister and forced his father to become a drug lord just to make ends meet.
• We Will Meet Again: Should he be captured instead of killed by Section, he promises him that he'll escape from prison. Whether or not he actually does depends on whether or not Chloe's alive to stop his computer virus.
• Why Won't You Die?: It is positively stunning the sheer number of times this guy meets with the protagonists face to face and comes out alive. Woods himself feels ashamed of this fact because he felt Mason and him were the very best and yet they still weren't capable of taking him down. This can be subverted of course in the ending with David Mason who can finally take him out.
• Wicked Cultured: Menendez is a delusional terrorist and a brutal crime lord, but he's remarkably well-read, fluent in English, dresses stylishly, and waxes poetic while conversing with his enemies.
• Worthy Opponent: Considers David this, going by how he treats him.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • Menendez was willing to kill David in "Suffer With Me", despite David only being nine years old at the time. Lucky for David, Jason Hudson volunteered to be the one that Menendez killed.
  • In the game's first mission, he pulls the pin of a grenade and drops it on the floor despite the presence of child soldiers in the room.
• Xanatos Gambit: No matter what happens, Menendez has planned for it and comes out ahead. Both times he is captured are traps, and if he potentially dies during either instance, Cordis Die would rise up upon his death and wreak havoc across the world. Ultimately subverted, however, by the events of III; he didn't forsee that the nature of his death (being shot while attempting to flee in disguise) might be seen as cowardly and hypocritical by a significant portion of Cordis Die, and the resulting disillusionment would fracture and ultimately kill the movement as a whole.
• You Are What You Hate: Despite being considered "The Messiah of the 99%", with the goal to end the reign of the corrupt, rich 1%, he is extremely wealthy and corrupt himself.

DeFalco

Voiced by: Julian Sands (English)^note Other Languages:Grigory Shevchuk (Russian)

Menendez's sociopathic second in command.

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• Boss in Mook Clothing: If you do manage to catch up to him during "Karma", he will turn around and fight you. He has very high accuracy, and is capable of landing all of his shots on you at medium range. Nonetheless, he still goes down as easily as any other enemy.
  • Averted entirely if you have a ranged weapon and can pinpoint him during the chase sequence. Gunning him down at range while he's blissfully unaware of you is a lot easier than getting into a shootout with him.
• Character Death: He is one of six characters to die in the game regardless of the player's actions; it's possible to kill DeFalco in the mission "Karma" (making him the first major Call of Duty antagonist who is possible to kill outside of a cutscene). But if he doesn't die in "Karma," he later shows up in "Odysseus," where he can be killed by Farid if he is still alive. And if he survives that, in "Judgment Day," he is the last enemy Section kills, aside from the choice to kill Menendez, at the very end of the game.
• Cutscene Boss:
  • Probably the first aversion in the Call of Duty series. If you catch up to him fast enough in "Karma", you fight him and two mercs in a normal shootout instead of a scripted cutscene. He's no tougher than a normal enemy, though, but has laser-like accuracy.
  • Played straight if he survives "Karma". What happens to him then depends on whether or not Farid also survives. If Farid lives, he is killed by Farid. If not, he is killable at the very end of the game before confronting Menendez.
• The Dragon: He is Menendez's second-in-command and the leader of the mercenaries.
• Evil Brit: Speaks with a British accent and is plenty evil.
• Shoot the Hostage: He shoots a woman mere seconds after he captured her to force Karma to surrender.
• The Sociopath:
  • Has no qualms about killing innocents.
    Farid: The concept of empathy is understood by him, but irrelevant.
    • And indeed, he shoots a woman hostage within mere seconds of his arrival in Karma. He even has his army open fire on civillians in that same mission.
  • Strangely, he seems genuinely disturbed after cutting Chloe's throat in "Odysseus", which contrasts with how he was able to calmly execute random party-goers in "Karma" in order to get her to show herself. Salazar, in contrast, simply walks away if he's the one to kill Chloe or Farid.
• Token Enemy Minority: Inverted. Whereas most of the Cordis Die fighters are Hispanic or Middle Eastern, he stands out by being Caucasian. In fact, he is the only Caucasian enemy you can kill in the future levels.
• Token White: A villainous example. He is one for the Cordis Die leadership.
• The Unfettered: He crosses even more lines in his mission than Menendez does, which is quite saying something.
• Villainous Friendship: If he wasn't killed in "Karma" then the opening sequence of "Achilles Veil" has him and Menendez share a hug, showing that he isn't just a hired mercenary to Menendez, but a good friend as well. He also seems to genuinely believe in Cordis Die.

Other Characters

Chloe Lynch (codename: Karma)

Voiced by: Erin Cahill (English)^note Other Languages: Kana Ueda (Japanese), Natalia Gracheva (Russian)

A hacker formerly working for Menendez.

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• Action Girl:
  • If you fail to kill DeFalco and rescue Karma, you'll get a strike force mission where you can save her from a Cordis Die safehouse in Yemen. After releasing Karma, you can assume control of her and kill as many enemy mooks as you want. That's right, despite being a computer nerd, Karma is just as much of a badass as the Navy SEALs who were sent in to save her.
  • Even more significantly, she can be considered the second playable female character in a Call of Duty campaign.
• Boom, Headshot!: If Farid dies, Salazar shoots her in the head during "Odysseus."
• Character Death: Unless Farid and Briggs survive, Karma will die.
• Fanservice: She wears a short pink shirt and skinny jeans in "Karma" and is a pretty attractive Playful Hacker.
• Girly Bruiser: She's an Action Girl who wears pink lipstick and appears to have her nails painted pink.
• Killed Offscreen: If the USS Obama isn't sufficiently protected (if Briggs is dead and/or the task force missions are incomplete), it's implied that she drowned when the carrier sank into the abyss.
• Living MacGuffin: She's the only person who can crack the Celerium worm sucessfully.
• Older Than They Look: Wouldn't be able to tell that she's 31 from that picture alone, would you?
• Playful Hacker: She is quite friendly, when you get to know her that is.
• Save This Person, Save the World: The only way to truly stop Menendez and his followers is for her to survive, for only she is able to stop his Celerium worm.
• Slashed Throat: How DeFalco kills her if he manages to not die up to that point.
• The Smart Guy: Being able to crack the Celerium worm would certainly qualify her as this.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: This can happen if you let DeFalco get away in "Karma", and decide not to do the Strike Force mission that becomes available if you do so. She will never appear or be mentioned again. Also, a British CIA agent will take her place. To add, if the USS Obama sinks, her death isn't mentioned.

President Marion Bosworth

Voiced by: Cira Larkin (English)

President of the United States by 2025.

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• Big Good: For the United States.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Resemblance to Hillary Clinton? What resemblance to Hillary Clinton?
• Our Presidents Are Different: As a female US president.

Erik Breighner

Voiced by: Robert Picardo (English)^note Other Languages:Anton Degtyarev (Russian)

A Magnetometrist appearing in the mission "Celerium".

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• Character Death: He is one of six characters to die in the game regardless of the player's actions.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Dies early on, just as quickly as he is introduced.
• Heel–Face Turn: He's a former employee of Menendez's, hired to analyze the Celerium. By his comment about not being able to stop the cyberattack Menendez has planned, it's implied Breighner turned against him.
• Impromptu Tracheotomy: Dies from getting shot in the neck while talking.
• Mr. Exposition: Informs the squad about Karma and Menendez's plans to use a Celerium worm.
• Non-Action Guy: Does not appear to have any combat ability.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Doesn't seem to be a bad guy despite being a former Cordis Die scientist.

Jonas Savimbi

Voiced by: Robert Wisdom (English)^note Other Languages:Vadim Maksimov (Russian)

The leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) during the Angolan Civil War. He appears in "Pyrrhic Victory".

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• Blood Knight: Has shades of this.
  (To Hudson) "Haha! My friend from above! You killed many men today, eh? Yes! Hahaha! We all did!"
• Frontline General: Not only does he personally leads his troops into battle, he also joins in the fray with them, brandishing his MM-1.
• Gunship Rescue: He personally leads one at the end of "Pyrrhic Victory", rescuing Mason and co. from being overrun by Cuban soldiers.
• Historical Domain Character: One of the few non-fictional real people to appear in-game in the Call of Duty series.
• Large Ham: The man is so loud, Frank Woods thinks that he's crazier than himself.
• Token Good Teammate: The only foreign contact in the 80's missions that doesn't betray Mason and his friends.

Manuel Noriega

Voiced by: Benito Martinez (English)^note Other Languages:Artyom Kretov (Russian)

Commander of the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) and de facto ruler of Panama in the 1980s. He collaborates with Raul Menenedez and is the target of the mission "Suffer With Me".

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• Bad Boss: He routinely kills his own men to keep his dirty deals a secret and/or to save his own skin.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Ho boy. First he betrays the Americans in "Time and Fate" by freeing Menendez from custody and making a deal with him. He betrays them yet again when he claims Menendez is dead, only for the latter to turn up in Panama, alive and well. Then after getting captured in "Suffer with Me", he begrudgingly works with Woods to kill Menendez, only to trick him into shooting Mason.
• Historical Domain Character: One of the few non-fictional real people to appear in-game in the Call of Duty series. Apparently, the real Noriega did not take kindly to how he was portrayed in the game at all.
• Karma Houdini: Due to being a real person, he gets away with betraying Mason and Woods to Menendez. Possibly suffers an off-screen Karma Houdini Warranty as the real Noriega would later be arrested and died in 2017 of complications during brain surgery (which happened years after the game released but before the future segments chronologically take place).
• Troll: Smugly does this to Woods and Mason during "Suffer With Me", even when he's at their mercy. Menendez pulling the strings is what allows this confidence.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Historically, he gets captured by the SEALs after the events of "Suffer With Me", but how this happens after successfully trolling Woods isn't shown.

Mullah Rahmaan

A mujahideen warlord during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He agrees to give Mason, Woods, Hudson and Zhao intel on Menendez if they help him fight off the Soviet attack. He appears in "Old Wounds".

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• Bond Villain Stupidity: After betraying Mason and his group, instead of having them killed, he decides to dump them into the desert and let nature take care of them... only for a pair of Good Samaritans (who, judging by their paramilitary garb, may have been mujahideen that felt sympathy for the group) to come by and save them.
• Evil All Along: After Kravchenko is executed, he reveals his allegiance to Menendez, and has the mujahideen subdue the CIA agents.
• Foreshadowing: Because of the fact that Menendez and Kravchenko talk about collaborating with Rahmaan and the mujahideen when Mason first encounters the former, it's no surprise when he turns out to actually be supporting Menendez.
• Karma Houdini: He gets no comeuppance for his actions.
• Rebel Leader: He leads the mujahideen in their defense against the Soviets. Also, when you aim at him, his name is displayed as "Rebel Leader".

Agent Samuels

A Secret Service agent assigned to protect the president. He is part of the team that fights alongside David Mason and company during Menendez's attack on Los Angeles.

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• Ascended Extra: If Harper is around, Samuels' role in the story is protecting the president and having the occasional line of dialogue to remind players he's still around. If Harper is dead, Samuels' takes on the former's role in the mission, with a few major differences, the most prominent being that he doesn't personally fight alongside Mason, forcing the player to complete the mission without the aid of a well-armed, invincible ally.
• Mission Control: He acts as this to a limited degree, keeping Mason up-to-date on the status of the President and the overarching battle of Los Angeles.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: If Harper died earlier in the story, Samuels' basically substitutes for him in the mission, albeit over the radio rather than in person, leaving the player to fight through the missions on their own rather than accompanying them.

Mark McKnight

A U.S. Marine who accompanies Woods and Mason during the Invasion of Panama.

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• Awful Wedded Life: Implied to have one, judging by the argument with his wife, due to the fact that they moved to Panama.
• Friendly Sniper: He gives sniper support to Woods and Mason in Panama.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: McKnight just sort of... disappears midway through "Suffer With Me".

Josefina Menendez

Raul Menendez's beloved younger sister whose death serves as the catalyst for his plans for revenge.

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• Character Death: One of six characters to die in Black Ops II regardless of the players actions.
• Eyeless Face: Her injuries from a fire resulted in her losing both of her eyes, in 1986 her eye sockets have completely healed over, giving her this appearance.
• Facial Horror: She was badly disfigured in a fire prior to the events of the game, her face is only seen clearly during the ending where Raul immolates himself and it is not pretty.
• Morality Chain: Raul Menendez was already an ammoral drug kingpin before her death, but it was her death that sent him off the deep end.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Her death in 1986 is what serves as the catalyst for the events during 2025.
• Satellite Character: Her entire character revolves around her brother.

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