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Modern Warfare
alt title(s): Call Of Duty4; Modern Warfare 2
The "Call Of Duty" is only on the box for brand awareness.
"Learning to use the tools of modern warfare is the difference between the prospering of your people and utter destruction."
—General Shepherd

Modern Warfare is a Spin Off of the WW 2-themed FPS series Call Of Duty, set Next Sunday AD or so. Technically, the two MW games are considered the fourth and the sixth installments of the main series, respectively.

The setting is best described as an Alternate History, with the divergence point lying somewhere before the Chernobyl disaster, when a powerful Russian leader Imran Zakhaev started a massive Ultranationalist movement in Russia. Said movement eventually initiated a civil war against the Loyalist pro-Western faction of Russia, which serves as the backdrop in the first game and the catalyst of the Middle Eastern rebellion, another of the original's plot lines. The second game, set five years later, sees the Ultranationalists in control of Russia and launching a "retaliatory" attack on the US.

Tropes found in the games:

  • Ace Pilot: Gaz in Modern Warfare, while not technically a pilot, he does hold the team record on the training course and is Cpt. Price's right-hand man.
    • Soap in Modern Warfare 2, as well. Clearing the Pit in under thirty seconds is a pretty impressive feat that Corporal Dunn says is amazing. But if you listen closely to the background conversations in that level, you can pick out the Rangers mentioning a "mohawk guy" who cleared the Pit in under eighteen seconds.
      • If you listen for longer, you get to hear about the 'creepy dude in a skull mask' who completed it in 18.2 seconds.
      • A shame they're never that good when you're with them (except for the fact that they're invincible)
  • AKA47: Mostly averted, only some weapons appear without their real names.
  • America Saves The Day: Subverted in both Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2. (While the details of the player character in Modern Warfare 2 are uncomfirmed beyond his name, rank and unit, his senior, the now-Captain "Soap" MacTavish, and the apparent Number Two "Ghost" are both from the Special Air Service.)
    • Modern Warfare's brutal, while still heroic subversion of this occurs when the American protagonist's team has been ordered to retreat because of the possibility of Nuclear arms on the battlefield. When an allied aircraft gets shot down, your team opts to land momentarily to save the crew, using the "leave no man behind mentality." For a second there it seems the ploy works and the Americans save the crew. Instead, the nuke goes off, the chopper goes down, everybody dies including the American player character, who while surviving the initial crash and explosion; dies of radiation poisoning.
    • Modern Warfare 2 when Pfc Allen, deep undercover with the Ultranationalists, kills civilians instead of, well, saving them. And to make matters worse, when Makarov kills him, he leaves the very American body to be found. Much later, you find out that Shepherd helped stage the conflict so that he could abuse it as a mad attempt to get himself written into history. Then he betrays both Makarov and you... and to get at Shepherd, Price lets Makarov go, albeit not on good terms.
      • Somewhat vetoed on this one: you never are FORCED to shoot, and you can choose to Kill Em All, Shoot only the armed guards, or never fire at all.
    • The main American character in Modern Warfare, played for three missions, is killed, as is the main American supporting character, and it comes down to the Brit to fire the last shot of the conflict.
    • Subverted hard when it turns out that Shepherd started the war with Russia in the first place in an insane attempt at creating a new era of American supremacy and getting his name written into history; moreover, the surviving American character Ramirez's unit seems completely unaware of this and all too happy to counterattack Russia.
      • As Russia has already attacked the United States and ransacked Washington D.C., the ball is already rolling and World War III is pretty much on the way. Even if the truth about Shepherd's plan got out into the public, it's highly doubtful the Americans would just let things slide with Russia after what they've done.
  • Anyone Can Die
    • NPCs: Vasquez, Gaz, Griggs, at least 30,000 Americans sent into Qurac, a lot of civilians in a Russian airport, Meat, Royce, Ghost... Ozone and Scarecrow are interesting as you can save one or if your really good both, but the will die shortly before Ghost and Roach.
      • Even more interesting with Ozone and Scarecrow, is that those two can show up as Red Shirt troops in earlier levels... so they somehow come back from the dead if they die there...
    • PCs: Al-Fulani, Jackson, Allen, Sat-1, and Roach. Averted with Soap, who survives being shot in COD4, and may or may not have survived being stabbed in the chest in MW2.
      • Soap does indeed survive his knife wound in MW2 (Price and Nikolai both say that he'll make it, though not in so many words). It appears Infinity Ward is setting him up as the more or less main or recurring protagonist of the series.
  • Armour Is Useless: In the Rio missions, the TF 141 red shirts who wear kevlar vests are only slightly more durable than the gangsters, who wear soccer t-shirts. Averted by the Juggernauts, who are just as durable as their appearance suggests.
    • Same goes for the Op For and Militia forces in multiplayer - despite a number of character models being unarmoured, they are just as durable as their armoured foes or allies (... not very.). Of course, PVP Balanced is not a bad thing.
  • Artifact Title: Kind of. Infinity Ward and Activision actually wanted to drop the "Call Of Duty" supertitle for Modern Warfare 2, indicating its status as a new IP, but Activision took some surveys and realized that doing so dropped brand awareness, so they stuck it on the game's packaging in order to keep it recognizable. However, the in-game menus and dashboard/XMB/desktop icons all drop the "Call Of Duty" supertitle anyway.
    • This troper who works at an EB Games and has had several customers (i.e. older adults) request "the new Call of Duty game" can second Activision's reasoning.
  • Asskicking Equals Authority: Captain "Soap" MacTavish in Modern Warfare 2.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Cpt. Price and his absolute inability to die throughout Modern Warfare (or due to being shot in the head aboard the Tirpitz during World War 2, for that matter). This carries over to Captain MacTavish in Modern Warfare 2.
    • Captain MacMillian in Modern Warfare. Not even breaking a leg when a helicopter falls on him can kill him... or even lower his sniping accuracy.
    • And also Modern Warfare 2's Big Bad, General Shepherd, who in the game's finale nearly kills Soap and manages to beat Price in hand-to-hand combat, despite that a senior officer versus two SAS-trained special forces guys wouldn't exactly be a fight.
    • Averted with Imran Zakhaev, the Big Bad of Modern Warfare. Despite surviving the loss of his arm in an earlier mission, in the final confrontation he goes down just as easily as any of his soldiers.
    • Averted with Al-Asad (newly-assumed leader of an unnamed Middle Eastern country) and Victor Zakhaev (son of the Big Bad and commander of the Russian Ultranationalist forces) as well. Al-Asad is captured as soon as you enter his safehouse, and is shot in the head after Captain Price questions him. At the end of "Sins of the Father," you corner Victor Zakhaev on a rooftop. He shoots himself in the head to avoid being captured.
  • Awesome But Impractical: Akimbo wielding, to an extent. With many weapons, it becomes so hard to hit anything to the point of uselessness. It does, however, make the shotguns more useful, especially the Ranger which might as well not even be used without akimbo. It's also very useful on the machine pistols with lower rates of fire.
    • An interesting class involves akimbo mini-uzis with the rapid fire attachment, and both the marathon and lightweight perks. You dash around the map at insane speeds, and pulling both triggers in the general direction of an opponent sprays more than enough hot lead to get the job done. Just don't try engaging anyone from more than around 75 feet away...
    • Throwing knives may be potentially usable for an entire match if you keep picking it up again, but are nearly impossible to hit with aside from close-range (and by then you'd likely be shot or stabbed), making all other equipment generally more serviceable... unless you are using a Riot Shield, which makes you are more capable of getting close enough to throw the knife effectively. The Riot Shield alone can be quite useful with teammates and in the right maps and places.
    • Minigun emplacements in multiplayer matches. While having tremendous firepower and a good player might be able to drop a couple of unaware enemy players, it has a limited field of fire and leaves you exposed. Staying on one for too long will generally end with you getting shot or stabbed by someone behind you, while getting on one in the middle of a firefight will generally get you shot, period.
  • Awesome Personnel Carrier: A lot of the real world carriers make it into the game like the BTR, BMP, M2 Bradley and Humvee.
  • Badass (Soap, Price, Gaz, Roach, Ghost, Griggs, Ramirez, Sgt. Foley)
  • Badass Beard: Price.
  • Badass Crew: Several, but Task Force 141 arguably plays the trope the straightest.
  • Badass Mustache: Shepherd.
    • Wait. Did you just fucking forget PRICE of all people?!
      • He has a beard. And in a way, yes, I did forgot about him. I have now rectified my error.
  • Bag Of Spilling: Most levels start you off with whatever weapons the game designers want you to have, even if you ended the previous level with a different loadout and there was no time or reason to change. "Takedown" -> "The Hornet's Nest" is the most obvious example. There are a only a few levels where your loadout carries over.
    • A particularly egregious example is near the end of "Loose Ends." No matter what weapon you had before getting knocked off your feet by a mortar, you'll have Ghost's AK-47 given to you by the end of the mission. Not that it helps.
  • Bash Brothers: Soap and Price. Epically so.
    • "Ghost" and "Roach" from Modern Warfare 2.
  • Beyond The Impossible: Modern Warfare 2: WASHINGTON DC IS TURNED INTO A WAR ZONE, WITH THE WHITE HOUSE AND WASHINGTON MONUMENT IN RUINS. The fact that it's clearly not the Capitol Wasteland is what makes it truly striking, with the White House mostly intact, except for the enemy combatants occupying it and shooting at the American troops storming up the front lawn. The rest of Washington, DC is full-on High Octane Nightmare Fuel, with fires breaking out everywhere, concertina wire strung out, Apache gunships in the air, and what looks like a casevac chopper taking off from the streets.
  • Big Bad: Imran Zakhaev in Modern Warfare,
    • Vladimir Makarov in Modern Warfare 2 seems to be this, but he is revealed to be a mere pawn in Shepherd's plan. Not even The Dragon, just an expendable pawn.
  • Big Damn Gunship: If you do well enough in multiplayer in Modern Warfare, you can call one of these down on the enemy. Multiple killstreak options in Modern Warfare 2's customizable rewards list are air support related, such as the ability to control a Spectre gunship for a few seconds after eleven consecutive kills without dying.
  • Bilingual Bonus: In the airport level, a poster with a picture of an aircraft and the word "Mukha" in Cyrillic letters. This word means "fly" as in "small and extremely common insect." If you are feeling charitable this could be seen as a inside joke; if you are not, then it is a Blind Idiot Translation.
  • Blatant Lies: During the cutscene preceding "Loose Ends," General Shepherd says "Despite what the world may think, we do not kill civilians, we use precision." Except, as shown by No Russian and Shepherd's explicit approval of what Allen does given the situation, the 141 will kill civilians if they feel it's the lesser of two evils. Not only is he in charge of it, the people he's talking to are other members of the 141 who themselves discussed the incident in an earlier cutscene.
    • There's also Shepherd's "The Navy isn't in a talking mood right now." and "One man doesn't mean much to the Navy at this point." Considering that you're told that "Makarov has a mad-on for Prisoner 627," I don't think that the Navy would just bombard the operation zone when the men deployed inside are still operational, the HVT is yet unconfirmed, and neither group is under any immediate time constraint. In fact, doing so would render the mission moot. Shepherd was trying to kill off TF141 already.
    • And who can forget "I Wnet ensures a cheat-free environment"?
  • Blind Idiot Translation: The Japanese version has multiple translation issues, especially the eponymous line in "No Russian". Instead of being translated to the Japanese equivalent of "Do not speak any Russian," it ended up as "Kill the Russians."
    • To be fair, this is because they were trying to translate a triple meaning ("speak no Russian" / "you are no Russian" / "leave no Russian alive") and picked the wrong one.
    • There are also moments where the Japanese dub does not match the Japanese subtitles in Modern Warfare 2. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in contrast was only subtitled in Japanese and kept the original English voices.
  • Boat Lights: It's very difficult to notice, but Makarov has a green left eye and blue right eye.
  • Bolivian Army Ending: In the end of one of the American missions in Modern Warfare 2, Private Ramirez and his squad are pinned in a crashed helicopter, completely surrounded and outgunned by Russian paratroopers, and running low on ammo. Their fate is left ambiguous until the plot jumps back to them, revealing that they were saved by a timely electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear warhead Price fired.
  • Brits With Battleships
  • Broken Base: Modern Warfare 2
    • The PC gaming community had a fit when Infinity Ward announced that there would be no dedicated servers for this game, and that's nothing compared to the massive, massive split between players who think the campaign is good and players who think it's rubbish.
  • But Thou Must: In MW2, The 'No Russian' level, even though you are heavily armed the game prevents you from trying to thwart the terrorist attack by giving you a game over and telling you that you must go along with the massacre should you try and shoot the terrorists.
    • The politically correct German version, however, turns this into "But Thou Must Not" by NOT allowing you to shoot civilians despite this being the whole point of the level (you get a Game Over for that). Considering that you still can't shoot your "allies," there's nothing much to do for you throughout the first half of the level, except perhaps shooting the skylights for the particle effects.
    • Justified in that killing your "allies" would obviously cause the mission to fail. Averted in that the player is not required to do this mission anyway. (It's hardly a "But Thou Must" if you can freely choose not to complete the mission, with no penalties at all for skipping it.)
    • Also, thou must reach the top of the White House to prevent the bombing run, even though when you get there there's already at least four other soldiers signalling, one from the same position as you, and Ramirez doesn't have any further role in the plot. So you could have died anywhere along the way and achieved the same result.
  • Butt Monkey: The United States. Seriously.
  • Call Back: Many of them in Modern Warfare 2:
    • Sneaking through the snow with Soap in "Cliffhanger" homages the level "All Ghillied Up" from the previous game, but the true call back comes in "Contingency," in which Roach and Price sneak around sniping soldiers and dogs. Price even says the dogs are nothing compared to the ones in Pripyat.
      • That in itself is a shoutout to the fanbase, with whom the dogs had a rather... tenuous relationship in Call of Duty 4.
      Soap: I hate dogs...
      • Price's lines during this level also reference many of Captain MacMillan's in "All Ghillied Up." Specifically "Don't do anything stu-pid," "gooooodnight," and "this one's mine."
    • Modern Warfare 2's final level is one huge homage to Call of Duty 4's final level. Both have "game" in the title ("Game Over" and "Endgame"), both involve a vehicular chase (in CoD4, the player is being chased in a truck; in MW2, the player is doing the chasing in a boat); both involve said vehicle being destroyed and the player (Soap in both levels) being wounded, and then even more badly injured; and both involve Soap desperately using an emergency weapon (pistol in CoD4, knife in MW2) to kill the Big Bad before he kills Price.
    • MW 2's Ghost is a callback to Gaz from MW 1. He's voiced by the same actor, you never see his face behind his skull and his name is "Ghost". As in dead.
  • Cash Cow Franchise: In spades. 2 had the largest first-day gross in entertainment history. Not just video games — all of entertainment, including movies and music.
  • The Cavalry: Normally, the extraction copter has a squad of soldiers inside it that immediately pours out and begins shooting anything that moves. This is normally when you're in a tight spot, as in the second part of the Pripyat sniping mission in Modern Warfare.
    • Also played straight by Nikolai in Modern Warfare 2 when he saves Soap and Price three times, first in Brazil, again in the boneyard and once more after Shepherd's death.
  • Cavalry Betrayal: General Shepherd and Shadow Company.
    • While he had it spoiled for him beforehand, when this troper played the level himself, as Shepherd and his troops' helicopters touched down he pretended to be Roach and thought, "Waitaminute, those aren't TF 141..."
  • Chaotic Evil: The Ultranationalists in both games. In the first, they're all too happy to kill villagers and launch nukes at the U.S. In the second, they're all too happy to kill American civilians and put SA Ms on oil rigs while taking the workers as hostages.
  • Chekhovs Skill / Fore Shadowing: In MW2, the much advertised knife-throwing feature of multiplayer is what Soap uses to kill the Big Bad. Also, the wall climbing with icepicks that you learn in the first mission as Roach is reused to crawl on the ground in the final mission of the game.
  • The Chessmaster: Modern Warfare 2's General Shepherd appears to have been outmaneuvered when his deep cover agent is used by Makarov to frame America and set off a war. And then it turns out Makarov was playing into his hands, and Shepherd is using the resultant chaos to cover his tracks.
    • Arguably, Makarov was hired by Shepherd to kill Allen and precipitate an invasion of the US by Russia. He certainly seems to think it would happen at the end...
  • Chuck Yeager: A lot of them in Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2.
  • Cold Sniper: Cpt. MacMillan in Modern Warfare, though he is also brilliantly ironic and averts this when it comes time to high-tail it out of the sniping position.
  • Complete Monster: Al-Asad and Zakhaev in Modern Warfare, and Makarov and General Shepherd in Modern Warfare 2.
  • Contested Sequel: It may have set records in sales, but whether the removal of many PC tools for or the more major use of Rule Of Cool for Modern Warfare 2 is debated hotly.
  • Continuity Nod: When the team first rescues Price, the first thing Soap does is hand him back the pistol he used to kill Zakhaev at the end of the first game.
  • Controllable Helplessness: The level "The Coup" in Modern Warfare.
    • And the "Aftermath" level, where you get to control the dying American protagonist after the nuclear explosion, as well as the Fission Mailed sequence near the end of the game, at least until Price throws you a pistol.
    • The ending sequence in Modern Warfare 2 has your character watching Shepherd brutally beating Captain Price in hand to hand combat, with you not being able to help because of a rather large knife in your chest. At least, until you realize that you have a rather large knife in arm's reach.
    • And a bit before that, you get to see through the eyes of the mortally wounded Roach, Ghost being killed, and being burned alive after Shepherd has their bodies tossed in a ditch and doused in gasoline.
    • And being an astronaut witnessing a nuclear 'splosion In Space, then get blown away from the space station. Even if you survive the force of the blast, you're dead from the big panel that you can see hurtling towards you before the screen goes black.
  • Cool Guns: Obviously.
  • Crapsack World: Hoo, boy. Aside from multiple nuclear detonations and an army of West-hating psychopaths in control of Russia, there's also more subtle indicators of just how screwed up MW-Earth is, like how even private terrorists have access to large amounts of heavy-duty military hardware, and the sheer size of the favela gangs in Rio leaves you wondering just how bad things are down there.
  • Crazy Prepared: Every single weapon in MW2 comes with Picatinny rails. Even the Russian ones.
    • That's less crazy-prepared and more Genre Savvy, as many long guns already in the real world now use accessory rails. Though what the rails are doing on an AK-47 is anyone's guess.
      • Kalashnikov-type rifles with Picatinny rails already exist in the United States, but in real life there are corresponding accessories for Russian weapons, i.e. optics being on top but tending to be connected at the receiver's left side instead of also on top, a possible holdover from World War II.
  • Creator Worship: Don't you dare suggest it's possible to enjoy both the fourth and fifth games in the series. One of them wasn't made by Infinity Ward, after all.
    • Of course, the fans turned on them in a fit of rage when it was announced that there would be no dedicated servers for Modern Warfare 2. Hardcore PC fanboys just got angry about console fanboys in another case.
  • Crowning Moment Of Awesome: The series is this trope.
    • Most notably Soap pulling a knife out of his own chest to kill Shepherd.
    • Reclaiming the bombed out White House from the Russians in Modern Warfare 2.
    • "The Navy isn't in a talking mood."
    • SGT Foley: "Shut up Corporal! Our weapons still work, which means we can still kick some ass!"
  • Crowning Moment Of Funny:
    Worm: "Who the hell is Soap?"
    • The snarky CPL Dunn finally snapping and starts panicking in "Second Sun." Even more hilarious when you realize that his voice actor, Barry Pepper, played Pvt. Daniel Jackson in Saving Private Ryan. To be fair, it was literally raining aircraft.
  • Crowning Moment Of Heartwarming: In Modern Warfare 2, when Soap realizes that Price is still alive, he immediately returns the pistol Price gave him at the end of the first game.
    Soap: I believe this belongs to you, Sir.
  • Crowning Music Of Awesome: Modern Warfare 2 has music composed by Hans Zimmer. This is inevitable.
    • The first game's music was composed by Harry-Gregson Williams and Stephen Barton, and it's awesome. Especially the battle theme in "The Bog."
    • For this Troper one of the best is "Boneyard Flyby," for the sheer dissonance of its mournful, even rousing tone with the complete and utter chaos and insanity going on around the player as Soap runs to link up with Captain Price, despite still wearing a ghillie suit, through an ongoing firefight between Makarov's men and Shepherd's just-revealed Shadow Company.
    • The music of "No Russian", which creepily/awesomely illustrates the utter chaos and sheer terror of the situation. Also somewhat evocative of "Why So Serious?" from The Dark Knight , which is also composed by Hans Zimmer.
    • Close your eyes, put on a good pair of headphones and listen The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend. Or Loose Ends. Or Zodiac Chase and Waterfall. Or... heck, the entire soundtrack. And have some tissues ready, 'cause you will cry at the majesty of Hans Zimmer's music.
  • Curb Stomp Battle: In "Heat": 6 SAS operatives vs. an army of angry Ultranationalists. The SAS lost a man from tank fire. The Ultranationalists lost several hundred men, five tanks and eight helicopters. The Ultranationalist leaders must be pissed off.
    • Oh, they were.
  • Cycle Of Revenge: Zakhaev hated the Americans and Britons for ruining his country, so he started a terrorist campaign against them. They blew his arm off. He gave Al-Asad the nuke that killed thousands of American Marines. They killed his son. He launched more nukes at them and when that failed, killed whoever he could. Soap killed him for that. Now Makarov and the whole Russia hated Americans for it, complete with Makarov revealing photos of three SAS troopers and a US Marine involved in his death. Also, Shepherd hates the Ultranationalists for killing 30,000 of his men. The subsequent Russian-American War results in thousands of civilian deaths on both sides (though more on the Americans'). Soap and Price kill Shepherd in retaliation. But someone else will surely pick up the command of the American forces, now targeting both the Russians and them two... And let's not forget that Makarov is still on the loose.
  • Darker And Edgier: Modern Warfare was a Darker And Edgier version of the rest of the Call Of Duty, while World at War went down the Bloodier And Gorier route for World War II with the Pacific Campaign, as well as a very graphic take on the Eastern Front. Modern Warfare 2 took it further, what with Washington, D.C. becoming a war zone, with the White House taken over and the infamous playable "terrorist" level. The Moral Guardians were not amused.
  • Death By Disfigurement: Subverted with Zakhaev's assassination attempt. Turns out, "shock and blood loss" didn't take care of him as expected.
  • Death From Above: The level Death From Above in Modern Warfare, as well as the gameplay moments where you can call in airstrikes and/or artillery barrages.
    • 25 kill streak in Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer drops a tac nuke, winning the game for whoever achieved the streak, regardless of score.
      • Other kill streak rewards do this to a lesser degree by calling in Predator UA Vs with missiles, Harrier Jets, helicopters or an AC-130 'Spectre' Gunship.
    • Two of the Co-Op levels in 2 involve one player in a Big Damn Gunship clearing a path for a 2nd player on the ground; however the player on the ground is no more durable than he would be otherwise, and friendly fire is not disabled.
  • Demonic Spiders: Those blasted Riot Shield users in Modern Warfare 2. This is about half the reason the Shower Block of the Gulag is so damn difficult to get through, with around 5 or so of them in there. The fact that they get to shoot ''while'' receiving frontal protection of the riot shield, which is impossible for players (who must switch to the other weapon though as a result they gain rear protection), only makes it worse.
  • Determinator: Soap, who doesn't let having just gone over a frickin' waterfall or being stabbed stop him when he's after Shepherd; even after the aforementioned stabbing, Soap still pulls himself across the ground toward a gun while Shepherd and Price duke it out. When the gun is kicked away, Soap resorts to pulling Shepherd's knife out of his gut and throwing it into his head.
    • The US military during the battle of Washington DC. One of the most memorable lines is:
    Sgt. Foley: [after the helicopter is hit by a missile] Then take us up! If we're going down, we're gonna take as many of those SA Ms with us as we can!
  • Department Of Redundancy Department: The South American arms dealer that Task Force 141 chases in Rio is known to the men as "Alex the Red." This is said by Shepherd after he dramatically gives the man's real name as "Alejandro Rojas," which, in English, means..."Alex Red."
  • Disproportionate Retribution: The Russians want a thousand dead Americans for every civilian killed in the airport attack; thank gosh this isn't literal.
    • And they cross the Moral Event Horizon while doing it. You do NOT shoot at evac choppers! Never, never, NEVER, NEVER!
      • Could be that they didn't notice that it was an evac chopper.
      • Yeah, and their BTR-80 obviously didn't notice that they were firing on civilian houses.
  • Downer Ending: Modern Warfare ends with most of the SAS/USMC joint task force dead and the Ultranationalist leader taken out, but as Modern Warfare 2 shows, that just makes things worse...
    • Modern Warfare 2: Yes, you stopped Shepherd, but Task Force 141 has been destroyed, Price and Soap are internationally wanted fugitives for "treason" — despite having done nothing against their home country — along with "global terror" and "violent acts against the government," the East Coast and Washington in particular are devastated, the US is going to war with Russia without a commander (the SECDEF having given Shepherd "a blank check"), Makarov is still on the loose, and as noted on Fridge Brilliance below, Shepherd already won even in death.
      • There is a bit of a high note, though: Shepherd was presumably going to use his hero status and unlimited budget to perform unilateral military actions across the globe (as evidenced by his very well equipped "Shadow Company"). Even if he ends up a martyr, his death prevented his plan from going any further. Price and Soap are still alive, and as Price admitted, the key was both for Shepherd to die and for them to live.
      • And, if nothing else, at least Shepherd would not live to see his dream carried out in full...
  • Drill Sergeant Nasty: Cpt. Price acts like this towards Soap in the prologue, but this attitude doesn't survive the first mission where he saves Soap from sliding off the helicopter's ramp to his doom.
    • While Price quickly drops the attitude once the real mission starts, even a nasty superior isn't going to let one of their men fall to their doom - he's vitriolic but a true leader.
  • Dynamic Entry: Soap tackles Rojas off a first floor balcony and onto a wrecked car.
  • Easy Logistics: The invasion of Washington DC in Modern Warfare 2.
    • However, one interpretation is that the Russians resupplied by using stolen American equipment. There's really no way they'd have access to Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles and Javelin missile launchers otherwise.
      • Not to mention the fact that American National Guard facilities are lightly guarded, but very well-stocked. Who's going to attack the US anyway? Oh. Wait.
    • It's worth noting that the Russian government in the time of MW 2 is dominated by the Ultranationalists, who already showed in the first game that they have no qualms with using NATO and even US weapons. And five years later, the Ultranationalist government could have been stockpiling tons of US-made weapons in preparation to invade the United States. When you consider the Fridge Brilliance that the Russians had to have been preparing to invade the US for a while before they attacked, it makes a scary amount of sense....
  • Elites Are More Glamorous: In Call of Duty 4, you had the U.S. Marine Corps' Force Recon and the British S.A.S. In Modern Warfare 2, you have the international special ops unit Task Force 141, and the U.S. Army Rangers. And one mission for the CIA... Oddly enough though, the Force Recon and Ranger appear no different from 'conventional' infantry from their service branches in both kit and missions.
  • Elite Mooks: Shadow Company in Modern Warfare 2.
    • Juggernauts in the same game, but only in Special Ops. They take a ridiculous amount of damage... and that's not counting the fact they take five .50BMG rounds to the face before dying.
  • Emergency Weapon: The knife, although several of the Modern Warfare 2 perks and the Tactical Knife 'attachment' make it less so.
    • Easily subverted in multiplayer, where many veteran players have a gear and perk configuration based entirely around running around and stabbing people, and one of the more infamous issues with Modern Warfare 2.
  • Empathy Doll Shot: Heck, there's an abandoned teddy bear in just about every single multiplayer level of CoD4. One even pops up, prominently lit, in a empty safehouse in MW2. MW2 also has one pinned to a wall with a knife through its head.
    • There is also an inflatable sex doll found in a bathtub in Makarov's hideout. No telling whose it was.
  • Enemy Chatter: After a Deal With The Devil, Price somehow manages to score not only Shepherd's location but also a "decryption code" allowing himself and Soap to tap into Shadow Company's wireless voice communications.
  • Enemy Mine: After Shepherd's betrayal, Price invokes this to get Makarov to divulge the location of Shepherd's hideout.
  • Everybodys Dead Dave: Everyone but Soap and Price dies at the end of Modern Warfare. And again (though only for Task Force 141 this time) in Modern Warfare 2.
  • Every Car Is A Pinto: If a car gets shot enough, it explodes. Naturally, tanks and other armored vehicles are immune to this, which is why you have RPGs.
  • Everyone Calls Him Barkeep: A lot of the guys you hear from, you'll only know them by their callsigns. And even if you know their names, chances are the other guys they'll be talking to will only know them by their callsigns. Examples include: Overlord, Baseplate, Honey Badger, Excalibur, Gold Eagle, Disciple, Oxide, Avatar, Sat1, Hunter 2-1, Thunder 1-1 and almost the entirety of Task Force 141 and.
    • Lampshaded later: "Who's Soap?"
  • Evil Versus Evil: Modern Warfare 2's relevant level is called "The Enemy of my Enemy", and is caused by Shepherd deciding that Makarov, as well as everyone else, has outlived his usefulness as a Xanatos Sucker. It's notable that Infinity Ward could have covered all the necessary plot points in a cutscene, but chose to make a full level instead.
  • Evil Is Sexy: There's a disturbing amount of people who think Makarov is "sexy." To some, he looks an awful lot like Michael Emerson
  • Evil Sounds Deep: The Shadow Company soldiers' voices, which are pretty damn scary.
  • Exactly What It Says On The Tin: The Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare games are... Call Of Duty in a modern war setting. Pretty self-explanatory.
  • Expy: Ghost to Gaz, they play the second-in-command to the captain of their respective squad, played by the same actor, and are executed by high-caliber pistol.
  • Eye Scream: In Modern Warfare 2, Soap kills General Shepherd by throwing a knife at him. It hits him in the eye.
  • Face Heel Turn: General Shepherd in Modern Warfare 2.
    • Debatable, since he was a bad guy from the beginning, but was duping you as your CO.
  • False Flag Operation: In Modern Warfare 2, Makarov kills a known American agent after said agent takes part in an civilian massacre without realizing his cover's already blown, leaving the body so the Americans will be blamed. In a variation, the evidence is not forged, just taken out of context.
    • Then it happens again when Price launches the nuke to send an electromagnetic pulse over Washington, D.C. Before the missile has even hit its target, even though there might have still been time to shoot it down, Shepherd is blaming Makarov in order to get his blank check.
  • Fan Dumb: When Infinity Ward announced the changes to the PC version's online matchmaking system, fans cried "Ruined FOREVER!", and many formed groups swearing to boycott the game. This screencap was taken the day after the game's release.
    • Then again, it's now believed that quite a few ended up choosing to "protest" by hacking the PC game, so this may have been a sign of them getting started on it right away.
  • Field Promotion: After the events of Modern Warfare, Soap has been promoted all the way from Sergeant to Captain.
  • Fission Mailed: The missions "Shock and Awe" and "Game Over" in Modern Warfare.
    • There are many more of these sequences in Modern Warfare 2. The most notable examples: Roach is nearly blown up by a mortar, but survives it...just long enough to get shot in the chest and killed off for real. A little later, Soap is slammed over the head, stabbed in the stomach, and stamped on the face all in a row. None of these actually kill him.
  • Foreshadowing: There's actually a decent amount of this regarding General Shepherd's Face Heel Turn:
    • Shepherd notes in the second cutscene that "We can't give you your freedom, but we can teach you how to acquire it for yourselves, and that, my friends, is worth more than a whole Army base of steel." This seems forgettable at first because the Justified Tutorial takes the form of the player training local milita but he's actually talking about the American population and his goals for using an invasion to galvanize the nation and inspire a huge boost in enlistment.
    • He also repeats "History is written by the victors" several times before The Reveal, even going so far as declaring his intention to write history in his own favor.
    • Finally, Shepherd's Blatant Lies detailed above demonstrate that he's untrustworthy.
      • A creepy bit of Fridge Brilliance sets in when one re-plays "No Russian." Shepherd introduces Makarov by noting repeatedly that he's in it for the money. And then he says "You have no idea what it cost to put you next to him." The Player assumes this means dead informants or whatnot, but Shepherd could just as easily be referring to the literal financial cost and/or the cost to his own soul.
    • He also warns that yesterday's ally may be today's enemy. Guess what happens?
    • As an Easter Egg, In S.S.D.D, there is a single enemy intel laptop. Guess who the one enemy in the base is? (Sadly, even though you can shoot him when you enter The Pit, you just get the "Friendly Fire will not be tolerated!" message.)
  • Fridge Brilliance: Some of this in Modern Warfare 2 once the smaller details add up, and it all makes the storyline more depressing: General Shepherd doesn't die until after he's executed his main plan. His stated goal of galvanizing America into fighting for itself must succeed, considering the Russian invasion has already happened and been turned back. The only difference is, the job of heading up America's military response will go to someone else. It doesn't help that Price and Soap never actually clear their own names and kill Shepherd while being considered terrorists themselves.
    • Especially depressing considering that both Soap and Price know all of this and decide to proceed anyways. Killing Shepherd is the only form of payback/justice they know how to do.
    • Private Allen is more tragic than he appears at first; because Shepherd's been orchestrating the whole thing, Allen was dead from the get-go, and committed an atrocity he thought would help prevent something even worse down the line, only for it to be part and parcel of Shepherd's Batman Gambit.
    • When Soap returns Price's pistol, it's a touching scene. Then, you realize that he's been carrying that same pistol for FIVE YEARS, which speaks volumes of the amount of respect and loyalty he still has for his former CO.
    • How does TF 141 turn into a Redshirt Army, despite being made of the best fighting men on the planet? Note how Shepherd uses MacTavish and Roach's assault on the Ultranationalist base as an example to the rest of the men - "Two men take on an entire base. I expect more from you." An excuse to constantly have them sent against overwhelming odds (and have them nicely cleaned out when he finally brings in Shadow Company).
    • PFC Allen joining Makarov's gang seems to move too fast. The Russians react to Makarov's killing of Allen too quickly. The Russians mobilize for the invasion of the United States too quickly. Then it becomes apparent that Makarov was working with Shepherd to skew Russian opinion against the United States, and the Ultranationalist-oriented government of Russia was preparing to invade the United States long before Allen was killed, as the Russians were already finished cracking the ACS module well before Soap and Roach got there - and Shepherd may have in fact deliberately delayed their retrieval so the Russians could pull it off. Looking at the entire game through the lens of Shepherd betraying the United States to Makarov and the Russians in a heavily-prepared gambit puts the entire game in a vastly different light.
      • Another bit of Fridge Brilliance, regarding "No Russian": despite the obvious implications that it's being framed to look like an American attack, your weapons are an American weapon — the M 4 A 1, with M203 underbarrel grenade launcher, and M240, the American designation for the FN MAG general purpose machine gun.
    • Remember, during "The Gulag," when Shepherd said "The Navy's not in a talking mood"? Imagine if your home country was just invaded by fanatics of a military superpower and have murdered thousands of civilians and you're finally being given a chance at revenge (a running theme in this game). Shepherd's not stalling them; they're too blinded by revenge and anger to lay off.
    • The helicopters that the Russians fire at in "Exodus"? They are evacuating civilians.
    • Why did the Russians attack Washington D.C. and random civilian-heavy areas along the East Coast? Shepherd used Makarov's influence to set them up to fail, so the safety of the plan is ensured. Plus the Russians are furious about the airport attack and it's stated that they wanted a thousand dead Americans for every victim of the attack.
      • Don't forget that the Ultranationalists already have a history of committing massacres on their own populace, and they actually hate Americans.
    • The Americans seem awfully hesitant to nuke Russia in retaliation for a land invasion. Except that thirty thousand Americans have already been killed in nuclear fire five years previously. That kind of an atrocity leaves a serious mental scar on the collective American consciousness, and it may explain why the US didn't nuke Russia, for fear of MAD.
      • Also, Shepherd does tell his superiors that Makarov, not Russia as a whole, is responsible for the nuke. Regardless of how badly the grunts want to counter-invade, it would make sense that Shepherd's sold the people who actually make decisions on the idea that despite everything, Makarov is the enemy and not Russia.
  • Fridge Logic: See the JBM page.
  • A Friend In Need: Nikolai comes to Soap's rescue in Brazil and then remains the only one to stand by Soap and Price when they are framed as terrorists. Guess he takes care of his friends, too, even when the whole world is against them. The fact that it isn't pointed out anywhere in the game, makes it ever more awesome.
    • Then again, five years before, guess who personally "walked him out of there" when he had been caught and tortured by the Ultranationalists? That's right, Soap himself.
  • Funny Background Event: If you stealthily approach the VIP's house in Arcadia, you can surprise one of the Russian soldiers inside, who is busy raiding the fridge, despite wearing a full gas mask.
  • Gatling Good: You know the part in Co D 4. Also, Modern Warfare 2 seems to be in love with this trope. Gatling guns as sentry guns, Gatling guns on helicopters, Gatling guns on planes, player-used Gatling guns, Gatling guns on SU Vs, Gatling guns on Humvees, about the only thing a Gatling gun isn't attached to is tanks or being as a BFG.
    • This is a bit of truth in video games (except sentry guns) as Humvees, helicopters, planes, and even SU Vs can be equipped, or are equipped with Gatling guns. There are in fact real-life SU Vs with Gatling gun roof-turreted exactly like the ones that Shadow Company use in.
  • Game Breaker: The grenade launcher. It's basically a bolt-action rifle... that fires grenades (with the predictable accuracy of one) that detonate on impact. With predictable results of general rage and gnashing of teeth for the other team. Affectionately called "n00b tubes" by many players.
    • Less so in Modern Warfare 2, as were (supposed to be) explosives in general... due to there being so much other stuff that might be more game-breaking.
      • And Game Breaking has just reached its peak with the development of the One Man Army exploit: watch as the guy uses his grenade launcher and claymores to earn easy killstreaks, uses those killstreaks to get a Chopper Gunner, then proceeds to lay waste to the enemy team. The final result? Over 100 kills and 3 deaths in about 5 minutes, in a game where getting 30-40 kills with 10 or so deaths is considered to be pretty damn good. Ouch.
    • Grenade launchers in Modern Warfare were a minor annoyance when compared to the "3x frag" perk. Smaller maps were literally unplayable due to grenade spam.
  • Game Breaking Bug: Players have discovered how to glitch the console versions to allow unlimited ammo and no need to reload, ever. This leads to a More Dakka grenade spam fest the likes of which the world has never known.
    • Ok, the Dakka bar has been raised. The glitch works on the AC-130 Killstreak Reward, meaning that it can fire its 105 mm cannon (the size of an artillery shell) at machinegun speed. ...My god (4:00).
  • Gameplay Ally Immortality: Only for major characters, whereas New Meat dies just as easily as the protagonist.
    • A mixed bag in the case of Task Force 141 — certain men are almost guaranteed to die, although it is possible to prevent this, while other operators are outright Redshirts; on the other hand, during "Loose Ends" both Ozone and Scarecrow have this until you plant the DSM. Makarov's partners during "No Russian" also are almost guaranteed to die, and if you somehow manage to prevent this will actually stop and disappear at the end of the level.
  • Giant Mook - The Juggernauts. They soak up .50BMG rounds like a sponge, and nearly everything else is useless.
  • Gondor Calls For Aid: After the EMP strike, the Rangers encounter a fellow soldier acting as a "runner," who has been sent to regroup the remaining soldiers to retake the White House.
  • Good Bad Bugs: In the finale of Modern Warfare, a bug occasionally triggers where one of the random AI Marines doesn't die as scripted. When Zakhaev slowly moves down the bridge, he gets up and kills the Big Bad all by himself.
  • Gosh Dang It To Heck: "Sarge? Did HQ just tell us to go "F" ourselves?"
  • Guns Akimbo: In Modern Warfare 2, where you can get dual weapons in Story and Spec Ops Mode and unlock them in Multiplayer. And you can get dual Desert Eagles.
    • Dual Desert Eagles as 'More Dakka'? Please. Dual P90s (there's a reason it's called a "bullet hose") w/ the "Rapid Fire" and (if you have the Bling perk)/or "Extended Mags" attachments. That's More Dakka.
    • Dual lever action shotguns. Try not to think about it too much.
      • But how do you...with the hands...what's pulling the...Ow.
      • The Rundown figured it out...
      • This particular combination ended up being one of the iconic multiplayer "wrongs," alongside the Javelin and infinite glitches, noob tubing, and knifing, to the point that when Infinity Ward finally released a patch to reduce their effectiveness, hackers promptly got to work trying to circumvent it.
  • Guns Are Worthless: One of the more popular multiplayer setups is marathon/lightweight/commando. The high movement speed works with lag to make the user very difficult to hit, while commando effectively renders the user invulnerable for a brief period when stabbing.
  • Harder Than Hard: The "Veteran" difficulty level. Technically subverted as of Modern Warfare 2, where the four difficulties roughly equate to "Very Easy" (not available in Spec Ops), "Easy," "Normal," and "Hard." It won't stop Veteran from sniping you in the crotch from halfway across the world.
    • It also subverts Easier Than Easy (assuming Recruit equates to Very Easy, which is implied at the difficulty select screen which describes it as "casual") because even on Recruit, you will die. A few times. Maybe even a lot.
  • Hatedom - The rage about the Dedicated Server brouhaha and the infamous multi-player lack of balance aside aside, this hatedom is one part Hype Aversion, one part "lol it's the same game," and one part "it's not realistic."
    • But they all bought it anyways...amazing how that brouhaha failed, isn't it?
  • Hate Dumb - Despite having boycotted the game and saying it was going to ruin gaming forever, a bunch of gamers all bought it anyways - even the PC version.
  • Hell Is That Noise: The distinctive *clink* of a grenade landing nearby. Better get used to it...
  • Heroic Mime: The player character never speaks while you are playing as him. However, a flashback mission in Modern Warfare has you playing as the otherwise-talkative Captain (then-Lieutenant) Price. In Modern Warfare 2, Soap, the PC from the previous game, is now your team leader, though he stops talking when you play as him. On the other hand, Private Allen speaks in a cutscene, but not during missions.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: In Modern Warfare 2, it's very evident that Price is now just as crazy and ruthless as the terrorists he hunted. Guess time in a Russian gulag will do that to a person.
  • He Who Must Not Be Seen: The case for all of the playable characters, although subverted by Call of Duty 4 with "Death From Above" where you can see your SAS team and usual character as little splotches of black or white (depending on whether you chose a "black hot" or "white hot" thermal setting), and turned around in Modern Warfare 2 where you're a newer operator and the player character in 4 is now your NPC team leader.
    • Also used with your Mission Control: Baseplate in MW, and Overlord in MW2. Worth noting is that they're both played by the same voice actor.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: British players above a certain age may realise that Captain Price is voiced by DC Don Beech in Call of Duty 4. In Modern Warfare 2, U.S. Army Ranger squad leader Sgt. Foley is played by Keith David. So yes, as Pvt. Ramirez you have The Arbiter/Captain Anderson leading your squad. Also, Bishop/Admiral Hackett plays General Shepherd.
    • Also worth noting is that the HQs (Baseplate and Overlord for MW and MW2, respectively) are played by the same guy. The same guy (Dave Mallow) also voices most of the helicopter pilots.
    • "Hey, Cpl. Dunn, you sound famila-OH MY GOD ZEUS HAS BEEN SPOTTED! OPEN FIRE!"
    • Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson did some voice acting for the game. Cue Fan Dumb declaring they would not buy the game.
    • Soap MacTavish is played by Kevin McKidd. In what would be a somewhat recursive instance, McKidd has stated that Infinity Ward expressed interest in having him play Soap in a movie adaptation, but since the movie is still hypothetical, it's not a certainty.
      • Hell, the game itself could be a movie!
    • Also, Will GOB Arnett also lent his uber-husky tones, having publicly professed his love for the series. Damned if I can tell who he is from the morass of gruff and husky voices that proliferate the soundtrack.
    • Overlord is Agent Aaron Pierce.
  • Hey You Haymaker: Captain MacMillan does this to a soldier (who drops the only accessorized P90 in single-player) with his rifle during the level where you play as Captain Price in the past during CoD4.
    Captain MacMillan: Oi! Suzy!
    • Captain Price has his own variation in "Just Like Old Times"... with a knife.
  • High Octane Nightmare Fuel: "Shock and Awe", "No Russian", and the Washington, D.C. missions.
    • After all the Tranquil Fury and general badassery by Price, in both games, General Shepherd hands him his ass in a fist fight. Seeing someone like that receive a No Holds Barred Beat Down is SCARY.
      • Hands him his ass in a fist fight after crawling out of a helicopter's flaming wreckage you just shot down!
      • Watching you (as Roach) and Ghost burn. The only consolation? Ghost dies instantly from his gunshot wound. Unfortunately, Roach didn't'
  • Hoist By His Own Petard: Soap kills Shepherd by pulling out the knife which the latter just stabbed him with and throws it into his head while he's distracted.
  • Hold The Line:
    • In Modern Warfare, after killing al-Asad you have to defend your position against enemy troops until your ride out of there arrives, steadily falling back after to more defensible positions towards the primary landing zone (LZ). This is turned around later in the mission, where you have to advance through the same territory you'd conceded to the enemy earlier, and reach the new LZ before the helicopter reaches "bingo" fuel. Gaz is not happy.
      • Neither is the player in Veteran mode. 3 minutes to get to the LZ, and a nonstop pit of super-accurate Russian soldiers swarming from across the only two stretches of land you can pass through. You could expend 30 rounds killing 10 soldiers in front of you only to get shot dead by 10 more arriving on your flank.
    • The ending of the mission "One Shot, One Kill" has you and a paralyzed-from-the-waist-down Captain MacMillan defending a fairground in Chernobyl against an endless spawn of baddies until the helicopter arrives to get you out of there. It's very difficult.
      • In a bit of a subversion, you can actually get past that level by crouching down in the empty booth to Mac Millan's left and just waiting for the helicopter to arrive.
      • No... you can't... even on regular... the Russians find you... and kill you. Although, that's not saying you can't run into the little alley behind where they spawn and lay some claymores and chill, which you totally can.
    • "Wolverines!" in Modern Warfare 2 features a sequence where you have to defend a restaurant containing a VIP from Russian soldiers, who will climb onto the roof from two separate ladders while you're supposed to have a sentry gun pointed elsewhere.
    • "Loose Ends" has you holding a mountain estate while a portable hard drive with the worst transfer speeds ever takes anywhere from twenty-eight hours to four minutes to perform a file dump. It actually only takes around five minutes, but the file transfer status shown on the HUD makes you wonder why the manufacturer's building hardware for TF141.
      • It doesn't help that fellow TF141 operator Scarecrow, the main NPC guard for the portable hard drive, simply stands next to it in a de facto hallway and fires towards the front door despite his complete lack of cover or even concealment, while the layout of the ground floor allows two or three routes for enemy troops to reach the DSM. Fortunately, two of those routes merge directly in front of his fire arc, and the enemy helicopter-inserted troops can be interdicted, i.e. shooting them down once they fast rope down or even shooting down the helicopter in midair. With
  • Homage: Zakhaev's son's tracksuit is a homage to Behind Enemy Lines.
    • A lot of the American campaign in MW2 uses elements from Red Dawn.
  • Hope Spot: "Checkpoint Reached." The game's auto-save feature is pretty good at avoiding "unsurvivable" moments.
    • Story-wise, there's a small moment in "Loose Ends" after Roach has been hit by a mortar, where it seems like he's going to make it out alright, complete with the enemy suddenly going [1] while he's magically handed a whopping nine magazines of AK ammo and 40mm grenades to go with his new AK. Then Shepherd shoots him.
  • HSQ: Modern Warfare 2's controversial "No Russian" mission where the player is undercover as a terrorist group massacring an airport. Turns out the whole thing was a Batman Gambit to frame America for the attack. By leaving the Player Character's body behind.
    • "Wolverines!" involves the US being invaded. Imagine intense fighting house-to-house in the suburbs of frakkin' Virginia. Special note should be given to the player's first glimpse of "Raptor". It's just a guy in a suit, and you wonder who rates all the effort to prot— OH MY GOD. And that's before we see Washington, D.C. The D.C. missions Of Their Own Accord, Second Sun, and Whiskey Hotel ratchet that up considerably, especially post-nuke.
  • Hypercompetent Sidekick: Ramirez! Add another trope entry!
    • In military theory, this actually makes sense: the squad leader should rarely do any of the dangerous work, because his job is to lead his squad, so getting incapacitated would reduce the effectiveness of the squad as a whole. When the time comes for someone to do something that needs doing, the first person the squad leader should choose is the person most likely to accomplish the task (otherwise, what's the damn point in wasting the life of a soldier?). Who continually demonstrates that he's up to the task again and again, no matter what's asked of him? Why, Ramirez, of course.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Averted, as you can only carry up to two weapons. The first Modern Warfare limited it to a primary and a sidearm, with heavier weapons requiring a Perk slot, or the Overkill perk used to equip two primaries. In Modern Warfare 2, still averted, but while the Overkill perk is gone the secondary weapon may be a sidearm, a shotgun, or an explosives launcher. The Riot Shield counts as a primary weapon, while the One Man Army perk (change classes without having to die first) prevents you from equipping a secondary weapon. Oddly enough, in 3rd Person mode even sidearms will be carried on the character's back. In the story modes and co-op mode though the player character may carry any two different weapons (or weapon configurations) of any type, and will do so several times through the story.
    • You can also see every weapon on your fellow NPCs during the story mode.
    • There are some single-player story mode weapons that mount more attachments than they can have in multiplayer; for example, the M4A1 SOPMOD (Red Dot Sight, Suppressor, M203 Grenade Launcher), or the special ACR from Modern Warfare 2's "Cliffhanger" level: Red Dot Sight, Suppressor, and Heartbeat Sensor.
    • Step 1: Select a class with One Man Army. Step 2: Use all your ammunition. Step 3: Use One Man Army to switch to a class with One Man Army. For maximum fun, equip both classes with grenade launchers.
  • Identical Grandson: Modern Warfare's Captain Price looks just like (right down to the righteous mustache) Captain Price in Call of Duty 2 who looked like Captain Price in Call of Duty.
    • Also, Sgt. Reznov in World at War is an ancestor of Zakhaev from Modern Warfare.
    • As this seems to be a theme of the series, identical names could carry the same weight even if one of the characters in question is never shown by his face: Dimitri Petrenko is both the Red Army player-character in World at War and the Loyalist medic trying to revive Price at the end of Modern Warfare.
    • Also, Foley, who was present in the first game, makes a reappearance in Modern Warfare 2. However, the first Foley was white while the Modern Warfare 2 version is black.
  • Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Recruit, Regular, Hardened, and Veteran. Modern Warfare 2 suggests these translate to "Very Easy," "Easy," "Normal," and "Hard," respectively, due to the exclusion of "Recruit" from the difficulty list in Spec Ops.
  • Implacable Man: In multiplayer, anyone who knows how to properly use the riot shield. Quickly becomes the bane of the other team in Headquarters Pro matches, as the headquarters may only be captured or destroyed if no opposing players are within range. This Troper has personally found incredible frustration playing on teams that could not deal with a riot shielder who simply crouched in the corner next to the headquarters captured by, completely immunizing himself from direct fire or stabbings while racking up points for his team.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Completion achievements in MW2, such as Soap On A Rope? Really?!!
  • Inferred Holocaust: With the degree of surprise the attack took place, there's no possible way the US Army could have evacuated all of the civilians from Washington DC, to say nothing of the EMP likely hitting before all the evac choppers would've been out of range. Finally, how many civvies are going to die on account of the East Coast being hit by the EMP? Watch how much of the country goes dark when the nuke explodes. It's possible Modern Warfare 3 might go the route of No Endor Holocaust depending on how much of a Crapsack World the writers came up with.
    • Also, you can see a few friendly helos going down. And a few minutes later you see what looks like a crashed Boeing 737. Uh oh.
  • Insurmountable Waist Height Fence: it gets worse in CoD4: you cannot even open any doors, so your superiors must do it for you.
    • Though the game notably allowed you to mount over near anything that looks like you could... well, as long as it was within the boundaries of what was supposed to be the map you play in.
      • MW2 allows you to smash through windows that are big enough, either with gunfire (a single bullet will crack it, a .
  • Instant Death Bullet: Subverted; sometimes in campaign, if shot once in the leg, enemies will crawl around or draw their guns when downed. With the Last Stand perk, someone taking will receive a chance for payback by drawing their sidearm while downed. With the Final Stand deathstreak, your character will draw their primary weapon, and if they manage to survive long enough, will be able to pick themselves up and return to the fight.
    • Watching two players with Last Stand incap each other at the same time, and then begin wildly trying to finish the other off with their sidearms first is awesome.
    • This Troper has been on the receiving end of Last Stand from both NP Cs and players, and remembers two times where an enemy player actually killed his character with Last Stand. Karma perhaps for all the times he would deliberately try to cause NP Cs to go into Last Stand (by making sure to damage them only once, with a bullet in the leg, and prevent his NPC squadmates from finishing them off) and thus give him a "free" sidearm, perhaps?
  • Invulnerable Civilians: Averted. The level "The Coup" in CoD4 shows civilians fleeing from and subsequently being gunned down by Al-Asad's soldiers.
    • Part of "Takedown" in MW2 has civilians fleeing the battle between your unit and Rojas's militia, and said civilians will be killed if they're caught in the crossfire. Killing one yourself is a Non Standard Game Over; in "O Cristo Redentor" (a Special Ops mission using this map) each difficulty has a certain number of acceptable civilian casualties.
    • Also averted hard in "No Russian," where killing civilians, or at least allowing it to happen, is part of the entire point of the mission.
  • Internet Backdraft: Modern Warfare 2 has two different flavors, even —— "No Russian," and the lack of dedicated servers on the PC version. For the latter, much like Spore's DRM debacle, irate gamers are giving it bad reviews and downvoting even the videos on Gametrailers.
    • Of course, this didn't stop the game one of the highest selling games of the year.
      • Well, it wasn't like the console users were going to care.
    • A particulary amusing case is outrage of Russian gaming community about the "No Russian" level. Everyone screamed "Damn Americans! How dare they let player kill our innocent countrymen!" - but they had no qualms whatsoever about Washington DC being set on fire.
      • Maybe because it was Russia being behind that and mudstomping the U.S. military on the way?
      • Might also qualify as Completely Missing The Point. You're SUPPOSED to think this is an absolutely horrific, disgusting thing to do.
      • Interestingly, Russian politicians have taken issue with the game for suggesting that even a fictional version of their country is run by batshit ultranationalists who would instigate the attack in the first place, up to and including depicting their army shooting at noncombatants.
    • A hacker later found Dummied Out code apparently for multiplayer modes not in the final game, and posited that the modes would be "released" as DLC later. PC gamers, already angry over the server thing, embraced this theory wholeheartedly.
  • In The Back
  • Ironic Echo: "Since when does Shepherd care about danger close..."
  • The Ishmael: Arguably Roach in Modern Warfare 2; while badass, he still mostly serves as a third-person viewpoint on Captain MacTavish. Until you take over as Soap again for the last few levels, that is.
  • It Got Worse: Invoked twice in CoD4. The first time is just after you've rescued the downed American chopper pilot, then as you're being evac'ed, a nuke goes off, crashing your helicopter and killing the Marine character Sgt. Paul Jackson. The second time is when the joint S.A.S.-Marine squad is making their way toward Zakhaev at the missile silo, only to watch in horror as two ICBMs launch and head toward America, where the projected casualty rate will be almost 42 million instantly killed.
    • Arguably the point of Modern Warfare 2.
  • It's The Same Now It Sucks: Some people criticized the second game for not vastly improving on the first, even going so far as to complain about Sequelitis.
  • Its Up To You: Many, many examples. Let's just say that unless the player moves their ass and gets across the room, the enemies will usually keep spawning at the far end indefinitely. Though, to be fair the NPCs, especially the unkillable ones, sometimes act useful to the plot, too. Fortunately, in some case, it only looks infinite... particularly if you're just picking a really suboptimal approach to the objective. The first game has more justifiable examples in certain spots.
    • There are certain infinite spawns in MW, but MW2 does away with them: if you kill enough people, they will stop coming in every instance. That being said, there's a lot of places that have a lot of guys attacking from a lot of directions, possibly more than you have ammunition... the Gulag (and its Spec Ops counterpart "Breach and Clear") includes vertical flanking, but at least it's generally in one direction, while the favela missions "Takedown" and "The Hornet's Nest" are all about this.
  • Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Shown in Call of Duty 4, where Price is beating the crap out of Al-Asad for info.
    • Done twice in the Rio missions. In "Takedown" you capture Rojas's right-hand man and MacTavish and Ghost torture him for info. In the next mission, you can see a post-torture Rojas chained to a wall with a power drill, car battery, cigarettes, etc, on a table nearby. Making this doubly creepy is that MacTavish apparently just tortured Rojas in a public street.
      • Much of the creepiness of the latter is undone by the hilarious presence of a plunger next to him, however. They plunged the information out of him!
      • Plungers are fucking scary.
  • Justified Tutorial: In both games, the tutorial is presented as having your character on a shooting range and training course where an instructor gives you a run-down on what are obviously game mechanics, with dialog carefully written to be a reasonable mock-up of what an actual instructor would say despite the inherent unreality. The player's performance in the training course prompts the game to suggest a difficulty setting. In Modern Warfare 2, it's even more convincing on account of Sergeant Foley lampshading how people new to guns don't shoot accurately when they fire from the hip like in the movies. The illusion is somewhat stretched on the console versions when the instructor covers the aim-assist feature with a straight face Metal Gear style, though it ultimately doesn't break.
  • Kill Em All: Modern Warfare does this twice, first to almost the entire American cast halfway through the game, then nearly all of the SAS characters at the end of the game; Soap survives, as does Price.
    • Modern Warfare 2 kills off almost everyone in Task Force 141 other than Soap, Price, and possibly Archer and Toad (Sniper Team One).
  • Knife Nut: One of the dominant playstyles in online games (alongside akimbo shotguns and infinite-ammo grenade launchers).
  • Left Hanging: Who was the VIP in Arcadia and why was he important? It's implied he was killed by someone from Shadow Company, after he got the guy to open the door but you never find out what was in the briefcase or who he was.
    • It would not be too far fetched to speculate that he was the Vice President. Since Shepherd later is seen getting orders from the Secretary of Defense, and not the President, we can assume that "Raptor" was the President himself and that his convoy didn't make it/he too was killed by the Shadow Company as a part of Shepherd's plan. Likely because he had to be certain that whoever was in command would be willing to give him loose reins.
      • Except you'd think the American troops would say something along the lines of "holy crap that's the Vice President" on seeing him....
      • To be fair, he's got the better part of his face blown off. There's also the matter of the Seal of the President being on his briefcase.
    • Probably not the VP (who's official quarters are the Naval Observatory in real life), but actually the guy in charge of the nuclear "football".
    • It gets weirder — CPL Dunn draws attention to a nearby corpse as "not your average trooper," due to the body's tattoos... making him none other than Viktor, the surviving shooter from Makarov's airport attack.
  • Made Of Iron: Soap has had a tanker blown up at his back, went over a waterfall, got stabbed in the chest and stomped on the face. It's a goddamn miracle that he's still alive.
  • Meaningful Echo: "History is written by the victors." Interestingly, one instance is spoken by the Big Bad while another comes from a protagonist, but they're both making the same point: the victors wrote their history.
  • Meaningful Name: Mocked. Gaz was an extremely popular character in MW1, and so many players came up with elaborate Epileptic Trees to justify how he could have survived being executed right in front of you. So Infinity Ward added a Suspiciously Similar Substitute of him, who uses the same voice actor and performs the same role on the team. His codename is "Ghost."
    • Since we never see Ghost's face, he COULD still be Gaz, but be forced to cover his head because it's terribly messed up from events of the first game. Right? Right?
      • Meaning he would have gotten shot in the face, twice.
      • According to the official comic miniseries, the "Ghost" who appears in Modern Warfare 2 is a separate and clean-shaven British operator named Simon Riley.
    • It's played straight with Roach and the absurd amount of abuse he endures to that the rest of TF141 either avoids or is killed by. He nearly falls to his death after missing a jump between cliffs, then doesn't make a subsequent jump and gets knocked out from the fall, flees a horde of angry gunmen on foot while unarmed after waking up and with no support at all (he to literally jump off of a rooftop again, this time into the air from even higher up, towards a flexible ladder suspended below a helicopter), has part of a gulag collapse on him, gets punched in the face by Price, survives a minefield ambush, and holds out for several minutes against ongoing siege with only small arms and claymore mines, and still manages to sally from the building and break through. He only dies after being clipped by a mortar blast — from which he wakes up and is still able to aim and fire a weapon — being shot in the stomach with a high-caliber handgun, and being set on fire.
  • Memetic Badass: Captains Price and MacMillan in Modern Warfare.
  • Memetic Mutation: "Grenade of Grenade: Grenade Grenade" (when referring to Modern Warfare)
    • In general, it's Grenade of Grenade. some popular subtitles are Modern Grenades, More Grenades, Grenades Grenades, Grenade Warfare, and so on. If you haven't caught on yet, this game has quite the thing with grenades.
    • Since the inclusion of authentic military dialog like saying "Oscar Mike" for "On The Move," and "Hooah" for "Affirmative," and the sheer amount of times you hear those two words when playing as a Ranger, MW2 has come be known as "Call of Oscar Mike: Modern Hooah."
    • Or hell, "Stay Frosty." Even Shadow Company uses it! ("Stay frosty, hunt them down!")
      • The worst part about this in this troper's opinion is the probability that quite a few future soldiers may have already been introduced to these terms and the air of absurdity surrounding their use in the game.
    • Thanks to Arby N The Chief, there's also "Cock of Doody 4: Modern Gayfuckstupid" (coined by Master Chief, who in that series is a parody of your typical Halo fanboy).
    • A scan of the Game FA Qs message board would suggest Foley's usage of the term "Oscar Mike" (On the Move), alongside the fact that he pretty much entrusts everything to Ramirez, is becoming one.
      • RAMIREZ! DO EVERYTHING!
    • Infinity Ward briefly released a mock-PSA (starring Cole Hamels!) about Grenade Spam, but then pulled it because of their juvenile Fun With Acronyms (The Fight Against Grenade Spam)
    • And on a bit darker side, MW2 being "not balanced for lean" is nearly the new Sony's 2006 E3 in a way.
  • Memetic Sex God: Captain Mac Millan, mainly because of his extremely sexy Scottish accent.
    • Everyone drops the soap for Soap.
    • As mentioned above, a disturbing number of players think that Makarov is sexy.
    • Captain Price's Porn Stache symbolizes this trope.
  • Mercy Invincibility: The "Pain Killer" Deathstreak perk in MW2, except it's simply increased health for the first ten seconds after respawning. Unfortunately less than completely effective, as while spawn-camping is not necessarily rampant nor possible, spawn-kills are very possible, especially from player-controlled air support.
  • Military Alphabet: Military game. Natch.
  • Misblamed: "No Russian" in MW2. The general consensus, before release, is puzzlement at an already wildly popular, M-rated game series going the Rated M For Money route, some even demanding that IW should remove it from the game. The game allows the player to choose to skip it right at the outset or during the mission, which does not count towards any Achievements/Trophies or towards the completion percentage, and no one would even think about making that demand of a book or a movie. The idea that they're doing it for the sake of the narrative barely seemed to cross anyone's mind. To quote Destructoid;
    Brad Rice argues that such a harrowing scene takes the will to fight out of him, that it makes him question if such a fight is worth the lives as stake. I can only see that as statement in favor of the game, rather than in condemnation of it. That a game could so powerfully affect Rice's state of mind, simply through watching it passively, is quite an amazing achievement if you ask me. Perhaps Infinity Ward hopes to raise and possibly answer the questions Brad throws up — is such sacrifice worth it? Should we fight such dirty battles for the greater good? How much loss of civilian life is acceptable in the name of American security?
  • Monumental Damage: Look no further to Washington D.C.
  • Moral Dissonance: Subverted in Modern Warfare 2. It initially looks like Price fired the nuke at Washington to wipe out the invading Russians, but instead he detonates it in the air, setting off an EMP which turns the tide for the Americans... albeit at the cost of their own electronics too.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • The player character in the level "No Russian" of Modern Warfare 2. You can either play straight this trope by shooting civilians or avert this trope by just staying out of the terrorists' way. If you shoot the civilians and laugh it up, you've pretty much crossed the Moral Event Horizon yourself. No matter what you do during the level, it ends with the Big Bad figuring out that you were a CIA agent and shooting you down as he gets away in a ambulance. It can be averted by skipping it whenever asked if you want to play this level or not, such as at the beginning of the game, and may be skipped during the level.
    • Nothing compares to General Shepherd shooting Roach (who you are playing as) and Ghost, and then having his men dump kerosene on the two of you, and burning you alive. Regardless of his motivations, after that scene it's nearly impossible to have any empathy whatsoever for him. After tracking him down, he stabs Soap (you) in the chest with a knife and nearly kills Price in a fistfight. Thankfully, you rip Shepherd's knife out of your chest and throw it right at his face, killing the bastard with an Eye Scream.
    • And if Loose Ends didn't drive the point home how willing Shepherd is to sacrifice his men, in the attack on his base, he gives the order to have his base bombed, killing any of his men inside...just to get at two, count 'em, two men after him.
      • In fairness, by then the base had been effectively cleared out anyway by the only two men aware of his treachery; with the possible exception of a particular guard, all of the Shadow Company troopers encountered indoors by Soap and Price were definitely killed; four of them had been preparing a detonation charge when their room was breached, possibly causing the process to start way earlier than planned. When it turns out that Price and Soap got out in time, Shepherd then orders a "fire mission" less than a hundred meters from himself. However, the smoke and dust clears to reveal multiple Shadow Company troopers, slumped against the terrain or crawling about in a daze, at the mercy of the unharmed Price and Soap...
      Price: Shepherd doesn't care about danger close, huh?
    • The Russian military crosses it when they attack evac choppers. There are few violations of the Geneva Convention worse than attacking non-combatants, and in-game could have caused any international sympathy for them to evaporate.
      • Unfortunately, if the world really was apathetic enough to "just fuckin' watch" when 30,000 troops were nuked five years before... probably not.
  • More Dakka: They really didn't tone down the dakka. In many ways there's even MORE in MW2.
  • Motive Rant: Shepherd gives one after stabbing Soap in the chest and pulling out his revolver.
    "Five years ago, I lost 30,000 men in the blink of an eye... and the world just fuckin' watched. But after today, there will be no shortage of patriots, no shortage of volunteers. I know you understand."
  • Multinational Team: Task Force 141, as well as the "Joint Operation" team from near the end of COD4. The COD4 team is made up of SAS and USMC Force Recon, TF141 is made up of US, British, Australian and Canadian special forces, and modeled on real-life special operations task forces operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and probably elsewhere.
    • Of course TF141 ends up being Red Shirts and cannon-fodder for Shepherd's plans, with only two Brits left and everyone else either dead or completely unaware of what Shepherd did.
  • Mythology Gag: In the intro to the final mission in MW2 it becomes clear that Price is carrying three weapons, one of which is his pistol. This is a rather crafty joke about his origins; he's such an old hand, he still has his CoD1 dedicated pistol slot, which contains the same incorrect-for-his-country M1911!
  • Narm: Soap's haircut, but Your Mileage May Vary. Ditto on his accent.
  • New Meat: Soap starts off like this in Modern Warfare, as he's whisked off to his first mission hours after reporting to Captain Price on his first day in the Regiment. Ironic to be treated so, considering that he'd had gone through and passed Selection.
    • The reason Price seems to have no respect for Soap at the beginning of the game is because he doesn't seem to believe that a guy like Soap could pass Selection. Suffice to say, Soap proves his worth.
    • Ironically, there's a new minor character in MW2 called "Meat" who accompanies you and Royce in the Brazilian favela. He dies first.
    • Roach doesn't get the same treatment, as he's already an operator from whichever parent unit he was in before TF141.
  • Next Sunday AD: The Chernobyl disaster took place in 1986. Price's mission with Mac Millan to Prypiat to attempt to kill Imran Zakhaev take place "a decade" after the disaster (in game, it's explicitly stated that this is 1995). The "present" takes place 15 years after that. This means if Price meant a literal decade, the events of the game more than likely take place sometime in 2010.
    • And Modern Warfare 2 takes place 5 years after the first one; the Call of Duty Wiki puts them at 2011 and 2016 respectively.
  • Nice Job Breaking It Hero: In Modern Warfare 2, the current Big Bad's reign of terror is attributed to the fact that, without the previous game's Big Bad, no one is around to "keep him in check." As it turns out, "No Russian" was a Batman Gambit; Makarov knew all along the player was a spy, and kills him at the end so the Russians will find the body and blame it on America, touching off a war.
    • Essentially what Captain MacMillan says after you kill the lone dog in the ruins, right before you get swarmed by a ton of dogs that will most likely kill the good Captain.
  • Nintendo Hard: Veteran difficulty. Crazy accurate baddies, your aim is thrown off moreso and the screen bloodied more quickly when you get hit, no blindfiring, painfully short time limits... Ouch. It's so hard, it could be called I Wanna Be The Soldier.
    • The Call of Duty franchise's Veteran mode is truly Nintendo Hard: The Next Generation. The ferris wheel stage in COD4 was quite literally the only case where the only chance of survival came from acting like a devil or a moron, as in abandoning the sniper and rushing enemies with an AK-47. The only solution which worked was hiding in a one-person booth the entire time while grenades came by the DOZENS every second.
    • Modern Warfare 2 is mostly better about it. The more 'special' sequences in the game where you must go though it in a particularly different manner than the rest of the game tended to be still enraging, though. You will probably still die at least once every level, so get used to that fact.
  • No Communities Were Harmed: Played straight in the missions 'Wolverines!' and 'Exodus' taking place in "Northeastern Virginia". Averted once you get to Washingon DC.
  • No Holds Barred Beatdown: Shepherd beating the hell out of both Price and Soap in the climax of Modern Warfare 2, by himself.
  • Nominal Importance: Every friendly soldier has a name. Members of the Redshirt Army have randomly-selected ones. Don't bother learning them.
    • A somewhat mixed bag in the case of Task Force 141,
  • Nonstandard Game Over: When you get killed by a grenade ("Watch for the grenade danger indicator") or accidentally shoot one of your teammates ("You are a traitor to the motherland!" and/or "Friendly fire will not be tolerated!"), or seem too hesitant to attack after moving forward when fighting .
    • Modern Warfare 2 is a bit more lenient, especially on lower difficulties.
    • Also, the trailer for Modern Warfare 2 shows Captain MacTavish being gunned down if the player fails to rescue him.
    • Same goes for letting one's target (i.e. Faust or Shepherd) get away, Price if you fail to crawl for Shepherd's revolver, then to retrieve and finally throw the knife from your chest at Shepherd.
  • Noodle Incident: During Sergeant Kamarov's first appearance in COD4, Captain Price brings one up before he runs off ("Remember Beirut? You owe us one!").
  • No One Gets Left Behind: it ends badly for the Americans in Modern Warfare.
    • Oddly averted in the case of Task Force 141, where every casualty seems to be left behind except for Rook, the incapacitated driver of Price and Soap's getaway jeep after Shepherd's betrayal whose body happened to remain in the driver's seat, and Roach up until that betrayal.
  • Notice This: Important stuff is often glowing.
  • Nuke Em: The ending of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and in Modern Warfare 2, if a player manages to achieve a very difficult 25 kill streak, a tactical nuke drops on the battlefield, killing all the players. Maybe the only winning move is not to play? The player who initiates the launch gets XP for the players it kills and has their team win. Think it as winning because it was launched on your terms.
    • Yeah, but good luck getting a 25 (or 24 with the Hardline perk) killstreak.
      • Turns out you only need 4.
      • If you're doing that well, it's probably better to end the match early.
      • But in most cases 25 kills is PAINFULLY easy to get with some killstreaks, especially Chopper Gunner, which is why a lot of people call it an I Win button. (As if it wasn't already...)
      • A forgotten, unused gametype appropriately titled "Global Thermonuclear War" has you holding down a nuke in the middle of the battlefield like Headquarters. When you capture it, it goes off like a normal nuke. It may yet be implemented in the new patch headed this spring.
  • Oh Crap: In multiplayer, your announcer is usually calm and collected; but when the opposition roles out a higher-end Killstreak, he loses it.
  • Older Than They Think: It's surprising how many fans of the first game think the term "noob tube" is unique to the series; in fact, it's been around since the M203 first started appearing in multiplayer games. The classic noob tubes were actually worse, typically being an instant-access alt-fire with a huge, totally lethal blast radius that sometimes even ignored walls. Picture the Javelin glitch being how the game is supposed to work. Ironically, this is actually more realistic; forty-milimeter grenades are actually less tame than they appear in Modern Warfare.
  • One Man Army: Averted... in theory.
  • Painting The Fourth Wall: In Modern Warfare 2, the between-mission briefing is at one point replaced with an "EMERGENCY BROADCAST" for several minutes. It works as High Octane Nightmare Fuel. In fact, every cutscene qualifies as this trope, they're presented as an information system displaying relevant details about the mission in an unrealistically efficient manner while the characters all talk over it off-screen, as if they're standing next to the player watching it. The emergency broadcast cutscene just kicks it up a notch. These type of cutscenes were also used by Treyarch in their Quantum Of Solace game.
    • Price doesn't think someone like Soap could pass Selection for the Regiment. Hey, wait, you're playing Soap...
    • The first game is known for the degree to which it uses this trope as a part of its anti-war themes. Throughout the game, you play as:
      • A dethroned president as he is manhandled, beaten and ultimately executed.
      • The gunner of an AC-130 gunship providing support to the main characters, showing how easy and detached the experience of killing may be.
      • A USMC Force Recon grunt who gets blown up by a nuclear warhead. Then you [[spoiler: see through his eyes as he desperately crawls through the nuclear wasteland.
      • A sniper in a flashback mission, which explores the origin of the Big Bad.
      • An SAS operative watching helplessly as his comrades are gunned down, then personally kills the Big Bad.
  • Personal Space Invader: The attack dogs, and sometimes the Russian soldiers, from which this◊ can be a common occurrence.
    • In one mission in Modern Warfare 2, Soap mentions that he hates dogs, echoing the feeling of many players. Captain Price says that they were nothing compared to the ones in Pripyat.
  • Playing Both Sides: General Shepherd and his pawn, Makarov in MW2.
  • Playing Possum: In the single-player campaign, when critically wounded and grounded, some enemies will keep shooting at you with their sidearms. (This only applies if they only take a single bullet to the leg that drops them fully and manage to crawl away long enough to turn over and draw the sidearm, as opposed to simply staggering them; a subsequent hit would kill them them.) In multiplayer, the "Last Stand" perk allows the player to do so, and in Special Ops the player(s) can do this... albeit it's not exactly "possum" against the AI.
    • Played with near the end of "Endgame," when Soap starts staggering towards the Pave Low crash site; as you reach it, a lone Shadow Company trooper lays on his back next to the wreckage, and as you get closer you realize that he's pointing his G18 machine pistol at you — but after a few squeezes of the trigger just result in empty clicks, he tilts the weapon and takes an almost surprised or exhausted look at it before collapsing against dirt and rock behind him and going limp. Other than seeing his comrades' pitiful fate at the end of "Just Like Old Times," possibly the only truly sad moment for Shadow Company.
  • Porting Disaster: To many, the PC version of Modern Warfare 2. While it was still a fun game in its own right (to some...) the PC version removed lean, the console, dedicated servers, admin powers, mod support, in-game voting (although vote to skip map remains in the lobby) and added in a matchmaking service much like the consoles. The developers claimed this would reduce lag, stop cheaters, and prevent piracy, but the game was cracked soon after its release and for a time, legit players and cracked players could play on the same game. Generally, this could not be done on Modern Warfare 1 without some good cracks. Because of the matching making service, for some, games are laggy, disconnect a lot, and if one has a cheater or a griefer in the game, the most that can be done is muting them, they can't be kicked.
    • To add insult to injury, the pirated version, whose owners paid $0.00 for, has re-enabled the console, allowing pseudo-dedicated servers. Along with dedis, the host of games can function as an admin of sorts, kicking griefers and cheaters from the game, as well as extending the time limit, what map is being played, to even adjusting the gravity. The legit version, $59.99, has less functions than the cracked version.
  • Precision F Strike: Shepherd at the end of Modern Warfare 2.
    • Also, Corporal Dunn during the MW2 level "Second Sun" (well, a Precision S Strike, really); considering that he and his squadmates (including Ramirez/you) were running for their lives as, thanks to an EMP, it was literally raining aircraft all around them.
  • Pre Order Bonus: Modern Warfare 2 has two special versions, the Hardened Edition and Prestige. Hardened contains an art book, steel case and other bonus content, while the Prestige edition contains an IW-branded EyeClops Night Vision toy. The word "toy" is not a baseless insult- the manufacturer really does advertise it as being for children. To be fair, real night vision goggles would simply cost too much to include with the game.
    • That being said, the NVGs do work as advertised: they're effective up to 30 feet or so.
  • The Present Day
  • President Evil: Al-Asad.
  • Press X To Die: The Big Red Button in Modern Warfare 2's "Museum" level. It will make all the people in the exhibits in the room come alive and attack you.
    • They do warn you, though. Go up to the button and a little message will pop up on screen that tells you NOT to press the button.
  • Press X To Not Die: After a dog knocks you down and rears its head back your throat, a message appears telling you to press the knife button when it lunges at you to bite, which will get your character to snap its neck if done correctly. Quite a few others are scattered throughout Modern Warfare 2.
    • The same mechanic was used for banzai chargers in World at War between the Modern Warfare games.
  • Previous Player Character Cameo: Soap MacTavish of Modern Warfare is the Player Character's CO in Modern Warfare 2.
  • Qurac: At least in Modern Warfare they don't bother naming the country. The pre-mission briefings show where in the Middle East various missions take place, but they take care to spread them over the geographic locations of several different real-life countries.
    • And its overthrown president, Al-Fulani, is named the Arabic equivalent of "John Doe".
    • Averted in MW2, though, where you're fighting in Afghanistan. But that's of little importance to the plot.
  • Prop Recycling: Closer looks can reveal where Infinity Ward re-used various models to fill out levels. Of note are crashed Technicals in Washington D.C. (oh, those crazy Virginia rednecks), and American police cars on the tarmac at the Russian airport.
    • This troper was extremely jarred by the US-Style taxicab appearing in the first mission, set in Afghanistan. And not like it was hidden in a corner or something. Nooo...It was right on our path. I actually took a few minutes to inspect the thing to make sure if it was a case of Prop Recycling.
  • Ranger: In Modern Warfare 2, SGT Foley, CPL Dunn, PVT Ramirez, and PFC Allen are from the 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment (1/75).
  • Rated M For Manly: Well, given the target demographic...
  • Real Is Brown: In full force in Modern Warfare, but GLORIOUSLY averted in the sequel.
  • Redshirt Army: Seriously, someone everyone on your team non-important to plot, not a central character is going to die.
    • Interestingly, this means the important characters can't die. If one of them gets hit, especially in MW2, they'll stumble, they'll fall, they'll take cover and they may even seem to be dead, but they will just. Not. Die. Even when they're dressed identically to their redshirt comrades. (See SGT Foley and CPL Dunn, in particular.)
      • Central characters aren't immune at all... They just have to wait until the plot demands it.
  • Reds With Rockets
  • Renegade Russian: Zakhaev.
  • Reporting Names
  • Reverse Grip: The only way a knife may be held and used. Unless thrown.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: Shepherd's personal weapon of choice, though Your Mileage May Vary in multiplayer (the .44 Magnum revolver is the only usable revolver).
  • Rocks Fall Everyone Dies: The mission "Shock and Awe" in Modern Warfare, in which a nuke goes off, killing the American player character and his squad.
    • In All Ghillied Up if you ignore MacMillian and shoot the lone dog in the ruins, you get attacked by a pack of dogs which, if they kill him, will result in a Nonstandard Game Over.
    • Get a 25 Kill Streak in Modern Warfare 2 Multiplayer and use the killstreak reward if you have it. This is what happens for everyone. But for whoever used the nuke, it's also a "I Win" button.
  • Rouge Angles Of Satin: For God's sake, the General's name in MW2 is Shepherd, not any of the following: Shepard, Sheperd, Shephard, Shepperd or Sheppard.
  • RPG Elements:
    • You get to "Create a Class", where you get to choose a primary weapon, sidearm (or Machine Pistol, or Shotgun, or explosives Launcher), as well as a primary grenade Equipment, a special grenade, and three perks. And a deathstreak reward. It overlaps with Archive Panic quite a lot- especially in Modern Warfare 2.
    • The Modern Warfare series actually has a unique system for it, though. Besides standard level ups, there is also a system where for each kill you get with a specific weapon, you get to unlock one of its many attachments. So get ten kills with the M4A1 in Modern Warfare 2 and you get to attach a grenade launcher to it. However, if you decide to switch to a different assault rifle, you lose that attachment and must get ten kills for your new AR before you can attach a grenade launcher to it. (Fortunately, you don't lose the grenade launcher for the M4A1.)
  • Ruined FOREVER: Quite a large number, over 150,000 according the online petition, of PC gamers anticipating Modern Warfare 2 equate the news of the game lacking dedicated servers as Infinity Ward crossing the Moral Event Horizon. The obligatory Angry Hitler didn't take long to appear, although more rational objections exist.
    • Even better, the XBL list of players that are part of the "Boycott MW 2 (For dedicated servers)" group has about one third of their membership...playing MW2. Whoops!
      • Although it's been suggested that they were working on a way to hack the game, and someone certainly has, going as far as making an unofficial dedicated server.
      • The unofficial dedicated server was pretty much just someone using the console to modify that server for everyone. Edit this if I'm wrong, but the ability to access the console was removed in a recent patch. A fan-made mod being made here gives players similar abilities to dedicated servers. A Q A can be read here.
    • After release, the consensus among PC gamers who bought the game seems to be "It's functional and worth playing, just not as good as it could've been."
    • To be fair, there were a number of existing multiplayer FPS games on the PC that used p2p networking sucessfully. The real problem lies elsewhere.
  • Rule Of Cool: Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had its moments, but Modern Warfare 2 goes into it far more with the ability to go Guns Akimbo with pistols, submachine guns, Sawn Off Shotguns; throwing knives; and a plot more concerned with HSQ rather then sensibility and seeming possible.
    • Probably the main reason behind the whole scene where the player has to dodge tons of helicopters crashing into the ground. In all likelihood, they came up with that scene and later came up with a story-related explanation.
      • The problem though is that that seems to have been done across the board for Modern Warfare 2.
  • Sawn Off Shotgun: Which can be dual wielded. Tycho and Gabe agree; it's the mark of a dog rapist cad.
  • Schmuck Bait: The Big Red Button with the "Do NOT press X/Square/F" prompt in Modern Warfare 2's post-game museum. It makes the exhibits come to life and attack you.
    • Also a convenient way to test out some of the less common weaponry, all helpfully included in display cases.
  • Scenery Gorn: The nightime D.C. levels are breathtaking in how messed up the city looks.
    • The nuclear wasteland and Prypiat in the first game definitely count too.
    • If you didn't shed a few Manly Tears over it, then turn in your passport, tovarisch ("comrade").
  • See You In Hell: Price and Makarov wish each other good luck this way after Shepherd double-crosses both. Price even asks to give his regards to Zakhaev, if Makarov gets there first.
  • Sergeant Rock: Foley in Modern Warfare 2 is willing to put his squad (and himself) at great personal risk to get the job done, for instance, refusing to pull back when ordered, so that they could continue to cover evacuating civilians, and ordering that a crippled Blackhawk be positioned to take out as many surface-to-air missile launchers as possible before it could go down; he maintains his cool after the EMP starts causing aircraft to fall out of the sky, gets the squad under control, and continues to lead the squad through the rest of the Second Battle of Washington, D.C.
  • Sequelitis: What the second game comes across as to one side of the Broken Base. The negative interpretations of the points covered under Your Mileage May Vary all fit this.
  • Shooting Gallery: The opening levels of both games.
  • Shoot The Shaggy Dog: Potentially MW 2; Shepherd's plan succeeded although you killed him, Soap and Price are fugitives, and the USA and Russia are about to start World War III. Darned if there isn't a third installment.
    • Let's not forget, everything Jackson and the USMC did in the original MW was rendered inconsequential when that nuke went off.
    • Also the second game renders many of the first game's accomplishments moot, as more than one character mentions.
  • Short Range Long Range Weapon: The main reason helicopters were considered overpowered in the original was because of the notoriously poor accuracy of the rpg-7 (the only real anti-vehicle weapon available), making it impossible to reliably hit anything beyond 5-10 meters. Of course, the splash damage meant that using it at that range was a bad idea.
    • In real life, the RPG-7's range is... bad... compared to other launchers. In any case, inverted with the other weapons - you can shoot across the map with a pistol, and hit far and away in large maps with assault rifles.
  • Shout Out: Many, many references.
    Gaz: "We're going deep and we're going in hard."
    Price: "Surely you can't be serious."
    Gaz: "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley."
    • Alien a ton of them in the freighter level: "I like to keep this for close encounters." "Check those corners!" "We - are - leaving!"
      • Price gets back at it in 2. "What ever you're going to do, Soap, do it fast!"
    • Apocalypse Now - A level named "Charlie Don't Surf!"
    • Black Hawk Down - Modern Warfare has you landing to rescue a downed helo pilot in an obvious Black Hawk Down reference. In 2, you are briefly trapped in a downed helo, and for that time re-enact the Shughart/Gordon scene from the same movie, complete with a "last magazine." Fortunately it doesn't end the same way.
    • Dr Strangelove - A level named "No Fighting In The War Room"
    • Generation Kill - The level in MW2'' where you control the gun of a humvee is very similar to the end of the second episode, when the Marines of First Recon were shown being ambushed after leaving Nasiriyah. The sudden prevalence of the Military Alphabet compared to the first game, where no one ever even said "Oscar Mike," could be attributed to Generation Kill as well.
      • And the fact that every enemy infantryman is a "foot mobile."
    • Iron Man - The MW2 level "Just Like Old Times" has you fight through an Afghani cave network and base with a very strong resemblance to the Ten Rings camp.
    • Mass Effect - Shepherd is voiced by Lance Henriksen and is your overarching commander. Foley is voiced by Keith David and is your direct superior in the American campaign. With names, voices, and roles like that, it's too big to be a coincidence
    • Metal Gear With the Tactical Knife attachment, the player holds a pistol with one hand and the knife in a reverse-grip with the other hand underneath his gun-hand's wrist, rather like Naked Snake's CQC technique (albeit Naked Snake and later Solid Snake would clasp the knife handle alongside the pistol frame in a two-handed grip).
      • On that subject, the Shadow Company◊ soldiers bear more than a passing resemblance to Liquid Ocelot's PMC◊ troopers in Metal Gear Solid 4.
      • An American soldier, disillusioned by the death of his comrades for political causes, tries to build a future where soldiers are more respected and always needed. Oh, and he's killed by former subordinates that he betrayed earlier. Sounds an awful lot like Outer Heaven...
      • "Outer Heaven?!"
    • Night At The Museum - "A Night at Infinity Ward" a bonus level that takes place in a museum, has most of the exhibits be real, live characters, reminiscent of Night At The Museum. Pressing a button at the main desk will cause all of those said exhibits to charge and attack you.
    • Portal - The multiplayer title "Companion Crate."
    • Pulp Fiction - One of the achievements in Modern Warfare 2 is called "Royale With Cheese".
    • Red Dawn - One of the missions in Modern Warfare 2 is titled "Wolverines!". The acheivement for beating the level on Veteran is Red Dawn, as well.
    • The Rock - The Gulag mission is essentially a Whole Plot Reference which also involves breaking an SAS captain out of jail to stop a rogue American general motivated by others' callous disregard for his soldiers' lives. The shower room in the gulag is a recreation of a scene from the movie, and using green flares to avert an air strike during Whiskey Hotel references this movie as well.
    • Top Gun - A multiplayer title "Ghostrider", depicting a fighter plane.
    • Splinter Cell - In "The Only Easy Day... Was Yesterday", you have to infiltrate an oil rig, and can later acquire a F2000 assault rifle. The title itself is a motto of the Navy SEALs.
    • Super Mario Brothers - The emblem reward for getting ten kills in a row while having no killstreaks equipped (hence worth trying only for this) is an 8-bit image of Capt. Price that looks exactly like Mario.
    • Terminator 2 - There is a certain scene in Modern Warfare with Sgt. Paul Jackson entering a playground that looks eerily similar to the one seen in the dream sequence of Terminator 2.
      • The Winchester 1887 shotgun's most likely a reference to Terminator 2, being Arnie's choice of gun for half the film. Going Guns Akimbo with them results in the character working the lever action by flipping the whole gun around on his finger like Arnie did.
    • Transformers - An unlockable callsign title in Modern Warfare 2 is "Transformer" and depicts a Pave Low; it is unlocked for calling in a certain amount of the massive helicopters. In the 2007 Transformers film, Blackout transformed into a Pave Low.
    • True Lies - Calling in harriers unlocks the multiplayer title "True Liar"
    • X Men / Memetic Mutation - Your trophy for killing your first Giant Mook in Special Ops: "I'm the Juggernaut..."
    • In Modern Warfare 2, the restaurants are thinly-veiled Bland Name Product versions of Taco Bell, TGI Friday's, Starbucks and Burger King.
    • In the training mission for Modern Warfare 1, you melee a watermelon, probably a reference to R. Lee Ermey's hate of watermelons.
    • In series example; doesn't the attack on the Whiskey Hotel seem a little familiar to storming the Reichstag in previous installments?
  • Silliness Switch: Modern Warfare also has some silliness cheats like Ragtime Warfare, which is basically Soundtrack Dissonance on demand.
  • The Slow Walk: The first half of "No Russian" locks you and your "allies" into doing this. Also briefly forced during the "Suspension" Special Ops mission, after a fighter jet-launched munition hits the side of the bridge, though eventually you're able to continue sprinting towards the second part of the fight.
  • Sniper Pistol: Surprisingly, your pistols can reach a LONG way.
    • The 1887 shotgun in Modern Warfare 2 has been criticized for its unreasonably long range and accuracy. (In reality, shotguns are very accurate to about a hundred meters....) Thankfully, it is one of the last guns unlocked and has a shitty fire rate and reload time (compared to other shotguns), preventing most players from using it.
      • I think the reason for people hating on the 1887 is the fact that every other shotgun is atrocious at range. To the point that you can fire at someone across A ROOM and for some reason cause no damage whatsoever since all of your buckshot seems to have magically disappeared for no reason while the 1887 mysteriously lacks this problem. (Not to mention that the shotgun with the shortest barrel is somehow the most accurate when compared to even the M1014 which is one of the most accurate shotguns in use today...)
    • Pretty much all guns that aren't shotguns can be effective at all ranges with enough skill to use them at exceedingly long ranges - the bullets will hit whatever you aim at, with no bullet drop needing compensation for.
  • Sniping Mission: All Ghillied Up and One Shot, One Kill in Modern Warfare.
  • So Cool Its Awesome: Modern Warfare is considered one of the best games ever, ever. Its sequel broke the record for first-day entertainment launches alone. By 1.1 million. In a recession! IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!
  • Southern Fried Private: CPL Dunn in MW 2.
  • Spam Attack: More Grenades Modern Warfare frequently has the enemies constantly throwing grenades at you on Veteran difficulty. Averted in Modern Warfare 2, although now they sometimes resort to flashbang grenades instead.
    • This is a symptom of EVERY Call of Duty game on Veteran mode.
  • Spanner In The Works: In Modern Warfare 2, the only thing that Shepherd's Batman Gambit doesn't take into consideration is Price breaking out, going "off the grid," and being willing to do anything to succeed. Unfortunately, as fate would have it the only difference it makes is accelerating Shepherd's plans instead of stopping him.
  • The Squad: Too many to count.
  • Stay Frosty: Soap says this quite often in Modern Warfare 2, SGT Foley several times, and once by a Shadow Company trooper, to the point of absurdity.
  • Stealth Based Mission: the first parts of "Cliffhanger," of "Contingency," and the (intended) entirety of "Evasion" (based off of "Contingency") in Modern Warfare 2.
    • All Ghillied Up in Modern Warfare. Later recreated in the MW 2 Special Ops map "Hidden".
  • Stealth Pun: The snipers that are covering you in "Loose Ends" are named Archer and Toad.
  • The Stinger: The bonus level Mile High Club in Modern Warfare, and the museum in Modern Warfare 2.
  • Superdickery: Price appears to launch the nuke to demolish D.C., but he just used an EMP to destroy the Ultranationalists' air-support and transport. Unfortunately, this also destroys the International Space Station, kills a hapless astronaut in the wrong place at the wrong time, and might have brought down any American aircraft still in range when the EMP hit. To say nothing of anyone who had been on life support or a pacemaker, considering how the Modern Warfare EMP seems to work... heck, it even takes out the electronics of the American forces on the ground too, leaving you without any working optics or night-vision, and only spoken words within earshot for verbal communications, for the rest of "Second Sun".
  • Story Driven Invulnerability: Zakhaev in the flashback mission, and the Hind gunship in the final mission, in Modern Warfare. (The bridge goes down whether or not you connect with a shot against the Hind.)
    • However, it IS possible to, with timing and a foreknowledge (or just spamming rounds everywhere), to take out the RPG guy that shoots down Deadly, the Cobra that's been covering you the netire mission. Rescueing the pilot is what got your heli caught in the nuke in the first place. However, Deadly will still crash, and all that happens is your heli flies off the map and crashes the game.
  • Subbing Versus Dubbing: Japanese players saw themselves in the debate over Modern Warfare 2.
  • Taking You With Me: A Good Bad Bug taking over MW2 multiplayer at the moment involves players tricking the game into cooking a Javelin Anti-Tank missile. The second you die, it fires into the ground at your feet, killing everyone nearby.
    • Fortunately (for everyone ticked off about how a coding error turned half the players in any given match into running suicide bombs), the Javelin Glitch has been excised.
    • "Of Their Own Accord" from MW 2 gave us this awesome line:
    Sgt. Foley: [after the helicopter is hit by a missile] Then take us up! If we're going down, we're taking as many of the SA Ms as we can!
  • Tear Jerker:
    • Modern Warfare: The nuclear explosion and the ending.
    • Modern Warfare 2: Roach's and Ghost's deaths and the Washington D.C. levels.
  • Testosterone Poisoning: Viewer discretion is advised when looking directly at Captain MacTavish. Pregnant women, non-pregnant women, all the geeks in high school, your average blue-collar worker, and Americans in general should all exercise caution when looking directly at Captain MacTavish. If Captain MacTavish looks directly back at you, contact your local poison control immediately.
  • That One Level: That Ferris wheel...
    • Mile High Club on Veteran.
    • There's a special level of hell reserved for the designer of the Rio levels in the second game.
      • Welcome to Urban Warfare, where you can and here will' be shot at from everyfuckingwhere at once''.
      • The Gulag's shower block. If you'd been breezing through Modern Warfare 2 to that point, those shower blocks will make you cry. Can you say vertical outflanking?
      • You think that's bad? Try defending a portable hard drive from constant Russians. They throw flashbangs, love to waste you the second you leave the house, will one-hit-kill you by striking you if you try to shoot them up front, and eat up all your claymores like there's no tomorrow. And after that's done, good luck getting to the escape chopper with mortars bracketing your path and swarms of RPG-carrying enemies bearing down upon you...
      • As frighteningly impossible as it may see once you see the data transfer rates early on, if you preposition claymores in the right place and put yourself in a good position with appropriate weapons (this troper prefers the L86 LSW from the top of the stairs facing the front door, albeit this leaves him vulnerable to flashbangs), defending the DSM can be quite simple, even easy. Getting the hell out isn't.
      • The very last level on the speedboat, once you exit the caves and are out in the open. Despite Price's remarks to stay out of the open, the only thing that seems to work is to go out in the open, and zig zag a lot. Even then, it's a crapshoot. It's safe to say that every Call of Duty game will have a That One Level for someone, especially in Veteran mode.
  • Theme Tune Rap: Sgt. Griggs raps over the end credits of Modern Warfare. Possibly an Expository Theme Tune as well.
  • Throwing Your Knife Always Works: This is how Soap kills Shepherd, using the knife lodged in his stomach.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Tactical Nuke killstreak reward in MW2, which instantly kills every player on the map and ends the game in victory for your team.
  • They Changed It Now It Sucks: Modern Warfare 2. Complaints include the shorter campaign, the Continuity Lockout, and most damning of all, the plot's resemblance to a Michael Bay film. Some even went so far as to complain about Sequelitis. See Your Mileage May Vary, below.
  • This Is SPARTA: Right before the last section of the last level, Captain Price ends his speech with a simple "We. Will. Kill him."
  • Throw Away Guns: Not only can the player drop his weapons to pick up others, he's often instructed by his superiors to do so.
  • Title Confusion: No Russian is often presumed to mean "don't kill any Russians," because Makarov and the Ultranationalists are themselves Russian, and the first line is Makarov doing a Title Drop, using the phrase as an order to the player and his other lackies before the shooting starts. The airport, however, is in Russia, and as such, the people waiting in line to pass through the metal detectors before boarding outbound flights are most certainly Russian, barring a few tourists or businessmen returning home. "No Russian" means "don't speak any Russian, use English," to disguise the fact that the attack is conducted by Russians because Makarov intends to frame the United States for it. The ambiguity of this line is probably responsible for the infamous (in Japanese) mistranslation of this line in the Japanese version of the game as "Kill them, the Russians."
    • It's also a REALLY dark piece of metahumour: Makarov's crew mow down the civilians at a casual pace, without any sense of urgency until the armed forces arrive. There's No Russian about with them...
  • Title Drop: From General Shepherd in MW2: "Learning to use the tools of modern warfare is the difference between the prospering of your people and utter destruction."
  • Token Minority: Sgt. Griggs.
    • Not just him, Sgt. Jackson is also black, although it's hard to tell with the gloves. Also, Lt. Vasquez and Pvt. Ramirez are Hispanic, and the randomly generated Marines and Rangers have no fixed ethnicity, although they mostly lean towards white (which is Truth In Television) anyway.
    • Partially subverted in Modern Warfare 2 with SGT Foley.
      • Not just him, you'll find guys like Worm, Meat (sometimes?) and the driver from TF141 and a few randomly generated Rangers and Task Force members are black. (Unfortunately, in "Takedown" the driver is the first to go... albeit at the hands of another black dude.)
  • Took A Level In Badass: Definitely Soap, or should we say, Captain MacTavish in Modern Warfare 2, who as your team leader is now way more hardcore than he ever was in Call of Duty 4.
  • Tranquil Fury: In the briefing for the penultimate mission of Modern Warfare 2, Soap angsts about how it's just him and Price up against Shepherd's entire Shadow Company. Price is simply checking inventory and explaining, in a voice so calm that it sends shivers down any player's spine, that there's a certain satisfaction to knowing when you will die, and that Shepherd's number is up.
  • Tricolours With Rusting Rockets
  • Truffaut Was Right: The series carries several themes that ultimately send an anti-war message; no one from the highest officer to the lowest grunt is spared the damage war does to a person, a Cycle Of Revenge leads to the people involved becoming less human and doing worse and worse things as they go back and forth, blind patriotism to the point of believing nothing bad will or should happen to you because your country is the 'best' one starts with Moral Myopia and just goes downhill from there. These themes are ofte-oooohhhhh this gun has an ACOG on it it's so pretty and the tracers are giving me a nice clean line to where I'm mowing down all the bad guys...
  • Uncanny Valley: Averted chillingly. In one sequence, the player rappels down right above a guard, and is prompted to silently knife him in the chest. Your character reaches around to cover his mouth, which lets you watch his eyes in utter shock as he bleeds out.
  • Unfortunate Implications: The change in a Modern Warfare 2 torture scene, where in early footage it showed a 'generic' Task Force 141 member preparing contacts from a car battery for use against a hooded captive, with another member shutting the gate; this wasn't so bad until the changes, where on the one hand, the captive is now the unit's target who shot/killed your driver at the beginning of the Takedown mission. On the other hand, the 'generic' TF141 member now the hapless driver, while in his place is Ghost, and the one shutting the gate was confirmed to be none other than Captain "Soap" Mac Tavish, implying that both of the game's resident badasses-at-first sight, and in Soap's case yourself from the previous game, are participating first-hand in Cold Blooded Torture.
    • One blogger found these in that Brazilian and Russian citizens can be seen (and shot) in the game, but there are no civilian casualties seen in the American levels, outside of one dead VIP.
  • Universal Drivers License: Averted, in that you can either fire weapons from a vehicle but not drive it (both games) or the vehicles you can control are relativly simple to do so in real life (MW2, using a snowmobile and a small boat).
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: All Ghillied Up and Death From Above in Call of Duty 4. Some of the levels in Modern Warfare 2 also qualify.
  • Unpleasable Fanbase: See It's The Same Now It Sucks and They Changed It Now It Sucks, above.
  • Unstable Equilibrium: The inevitable consequence of giving air support to players with long kill streaks. Because clearly the guy who got 11 kills in a row without dying needs ''more'' help getting kills.
    • The worst part is that kills from each killstreak count towards the next killstreak, meaning that the ac-130 and chopper gunner can often be obtained after only 5-7 kills.
  • Up To Eleven: Seems to be the line of thought behind development of Modern Warfare 2: "how can we take everything from the first Modern Warfare and make it AWESOME?" Whether the results are indeed awesome is in the eye of the beholder.
  • Urban Legend Of Zelda - "Sniper Frog" is a running meme within the MW2 community, after an unsourced Game FA Qs post claimed that spfg.exe was a program running in the background which essentially doled out luck to players who weren't doing well and handicapped those who were.
  • Urban Warfare - Most of the game, for better or for worse.
  • Verbal Tic - Let's get this page edited, hooah?
    • HOOAH!
      • HEY! TROPERS ARE OSCAR MIKE!
      • According to the other wiki, hooah is Army talk for "anything other than no." Which both explains why it's only the Army Rangers who say it, and why they say it constantly. Hooah!
      • Little known info: "Hooah" is actually derived from "HUA", which means "Heard, Understood, Acknowledged."
      • "Oscar-Mike" means "on the move", which makes sense to be said constantly considering how often you are on the move.
    • OORAH! in the first game.
      • But this is the Marines version of Hooah, so it's to be expected as you play "Force Recon" Marines for part of the game.
  • Videogame Cruelty Potential: Modern Warfare 2's level, "No Russian". If you choose to play the level, what you do with the citizens is entirely up to you — the game never gives you a single prompt to open fire.
    • This troper has a habit of deliberately shooting NPC enemies in the leg once, with intent to "fully" drop them (as opposed to simply staggering them), hopefully causing them to crawl away without being killed by the troper's NPC squadmates, so that when the enemy draws his sidearm, the troper can then kill them for it. Maybe that's why he's fallen twice to players using Last Stand?
  • Viewers Are Geniuses: Infinity Ward seems to have assumed every player is either in or at least has a friend in the military who can explain the Military Alphabet and the way its used to make abbreviations and say things with clarity, to say nothing of things like challenges and countersigns ("Say Texas, dammit!") As the linked article suggests, it's a milestone for those not versed in the topic to figure out that "Oscar Mike" means "On the Move."
    • Note that the article includes Bloody Yanks as military jargon.
    • Whiskey Hotel = White House
  • Violent Glaswegian: Arguably subverted with Captain MacMillan - he may be a man with a heavy Scottish accent in a military force, but his appearance in the game is of that of a sniper who tells you to stay cool and maintain stealth. Also subverted in Modern Warfare 2 with Soap MacTavish ("let's get the 'ell outta hayah!"), who in addition to commanding you during the campaign is your supervisor on the Stealth Based Mission "Acceptable Losses" on Spec Ops, and who will berate you should you fail to maintain the element of surprise in the mission.
    • Except with knives. Almost any time Soap uses a knife, it gets creepy.
  • Walk It Off: Both games have a now-standard regenerating health model.
  • War On Terror: Both games are somewhat veiled criticisms of the War on Terror and US foreign policy, particularly through Shepherd. Unfortunately, they seem to have inevitably fallen victim to Truffaut Was Right...
  • The War Room: the penultimate level in Modern Warfare.
  • Wham Episode: Modern Warfare 2 ups the ante with a seemingly endless string of these, but the biggest is probably Shepherd's betrayal at the conclusion of "Loose Ends."
  • Well Intentioned Extremist: Shepherd's end goal is to snap average American citizens out of what he sees as willful ignorance towards how much sacrifice is necessary to maintain everything they take for granted, giving him a near-endless supply of volunteers and the funds to load them out for bear with. To say he does some extreme things to achieve this, crossing the Moral Event Horizon multiple times in hindsight, is an understatement.
  • We Have Reserves:
    "Since when does Shepherd care about danger close?" - Captain Price
  • What Do You Mean Its Not Political: A lot of the death quotes in Modern Warfare 2 warn about the dangers of excessive patriotism.
  • What Happened To The Mouse: What exactly was in that briefcase in the panic room in Modern Warfare 2, and why do we never hear of it again?
    • Come to think of it, what was Viktor from "No Russian" doing all the way there? Apparently he's the body whose tattoos indicate, according to CPL Dunn, "not your average trooper."
  • What The Hell Player: Shooting your own teammates will give you a Nonstandard Game Over, giving you the message "Friendly fire will not be tolerated!"
    • Also, in Modern Warfare 1, if you instigate a fire fight during the first sniper mission and survive, MacMillan will chew you out with comments like, "The word stealth doesn't mean much to you does it?"
    • Going out of your way to shoot down a helicopter during a covert sniping mission will cause MacMillan to berate you for "showing off."
  • Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him: Averted in Call of Duty 4, when Soap does indeed "just shoot" Imran Zakhaev. That inversion is then deconstructed in Modern Warfare 2, where it turns out Zakhaev's absence allowed Makarov to gain power, set Zakhaev up as a martyr, and allow the Ultranationalists to take over Russia. Nice job dropping the Soap.
    • Presumably, in addition to Infinity Ward needing a way to make a sequel, they set up the martyr angle as a way of showing that problems can rarely if ever be properly solved with bullets.
  • World Of Cardboard Speech: Price gets two of these in the final two levels of MW2.
  • World War III: What this series is persumbly heading towards (or is already involved in), considering the events of MW2 involved Washington D.C. getting ransacked by the Russians in response to a terrorist attack they believed the U.S. sponsored.
  • Wretched Hive: The favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where hundreds of armed men are mobilized to hunt you down within minutes, rather reminiscent of Black Hawk Down.
  • Written By The Winners: The main topic of Price's final monologues in MW2.
  • Xanatos Sucker: Everyone but Price in Modern Warfare 2 is factored in Shepherd's Batman Gambit.
  • Yanks With Tanks
  • You ALL Look Familiar: Despite being an militia presumedly without a uniform, the Brazilian enemies in the sequel have very few variations in clothing and faces. Other enemies in the game are similar, but there are some which are just hard to tell, due to wearing face, mouth or eye covering clothing.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Modern Warfare 2 is a rare example of this being done not to minions, but to Xanatos Suckers.
  • You Can Barely Stand: Call of Duty 4 ends with a seemingly mortally wounded Captain Price tossing his sidearm to a likewise nearly dead Soap to deliver the final shots against Big Bad 0Zakhaev and his two bodyguards.
    • Likewise, the final battle in Modern Warfare 2 has a seriously injured Price and Soap taking on General Shepherd in a brutal hand-to-hand beatdown.
  • You Have Researched Breathing: The "Tactical Knife" addon is merely a different pistol stance, with your left hand primed for quick stabs. Your character can only do this when holding a gun with this "addon," once they pick up another handgun they will mysteriously forget how it works.
  • You Cant Thwart Stage One: One of the storytelling issues with "No Russian."
    • Thank god for video editing programs.
    • And they couldn't thwart the first/main stage of Shepherd's plot, although they killed him.
  • Zerg Rush: The main strategy of the Russians in the invasion of the USA.

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