Trivia / Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

• Approval of God: Lily Cowles wholeheartedly approves of the "Simp" meme that became popular after Park became an Ensemble Dark Horse. In a similar vein, both she and Damon Dayoub are onboard with the fans who choose to interpret Park and Lazar's relationship as being lightly romantic.
• Banned in China: The original official teaser trailer, according to CBR.com, had been banned in China due to a one-second depiction of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Later, Activision released an edited version of the teaser trailer worldwide instead.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Downplayed as he's not part of the game and he has genuinely wished his successor well, but Woods' original voice actor, James C. Burns, has gone on record to note that he's a bit disappointed he's not reprising the role of Woods in the game.
  • The "I'm a goddamn onion" line by the new Woods VA has been met with ridicule by James C. Burns himself, who claimed that he'd never say something like that. In a downplayed fashion, he's also of the belief that Woods' "Not a fuckin' word, Bell" quip during "Redlight, Greenlight" could've been replaced with something more "irreverent".
• Fake Nationality: Many of the voice talent doesn't match up with their characters' nationalities.
  • Helen Park, a British MI6 agent, is voiced and modeled after Lily Cowles, who is an American.
  • Vikhor "Stitch" Kuzmin, a Russian agent for Perseus, is voiced and modeled after MJ Kreyzer, an American.
  • Yirina Portnova, a Russian KGB agent, is voiced by the American Kari Wahlgren and modeled after the similarly American Julia Donnell.
  • Zeyna Ossou, a Sengalese agent for DGE, is voiced by Mara Junot, who is American.
  • Erica Luttrell is Canadian, and voices Jada Powers, an expat American.
  • Julie Nathanson, an American, reprises her role as the (now adult) German Samantha Maxis.
• The Other Darrin: The original voice actors for returning characters Mason, Woods, and Hudson have been replaced by other voice actors. Woods actually sounds very close to his old voice, Mason's voice is often noticeably higher but at least still has a similar cadence and accent (notwithstanding the absence of Sam Worthington's occasional slipping into his native Australian), while Hudson sounds much more in line with Ed Harris’ performance than Michael Keaton’s, albeit with a slight New York accent that was never used by either actor. Subverted with Weaver and Kravchenko, whose original voice actors Gene Farber and Andrew Divoff return to their original roles.
• Role Reprise:
  • Gene Farber reprises his role as Grigori Weaver in his appearance in Cold War Zombies.
  • Andrew Divoff reprises his role as Lev Kravchenko for his appearance in the Campaign mission "Desperate Measures".
  • Roger L. Jackson comes in to voice Ghostface, unlike John Rambo and John McClane, who both used archived audio from Rambo: First Blood Part II and Die Hard, respectively.
• Recycled Script: The campaign has many similar beats to the previous campaigns in the series, though some can be chalked up to intentional call-backs.
  • The very first mission, "Nowhere Left to Run", opens up with a lighter flame on a black screen, calling back to the first mission of Black Ops, "Operation 40". It also involves Alex Mason and Frank Woods attempting to assassinate a high-value target, which ends in a slow-motion tracking bullet shot and the mission going wrong somehow.
  • The concept of "Bell" being a sleeper agent manipulated and tortured by the CIA to take out and cough up information on Perseus is extremely similar to Alex Mason being a sleeper agent for Dragovich to assassinate John F. Kennedy and having been tortured by the CIA to decode the numbers station. Their memories of Vietnam actually being Adler's implanted into their heads is also similar to the plot twist of Black Ops III, in which "Player", for the most part, is actually just reliving the memories of John Taylor in a Dying Dream.
  • "Fracture Jaw" opening up with the player awakening from a tent, taking in the sights of the battlefield, and hearing some lighthearted exposition from your comrades is also very similar to "S.O.G." from Black Ops.
  • As said in the Nightmare Fuel page, the mission "Break on Through" features the same sort of Mind Screw present in the latter half of Call of Duty: Black Ops III.
• Troubled Production: Originally the game was to be co-developed by Raven Software and Sledgehammer Games, but creative disagreements and tensions between the two studios lead to Treyarch replacing Sledgehammer Games in early 2019. This led to a shortened development cycle and a split in roles with Treyarch developing multiplayer and Raven working on single player. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, which lead to the studios being forced to work from home without access to the superior studio equipment. On top of all that, the game had to be ported to 5 platforms (Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S).
• What Could Have Been:
  • As stated above, the game was originally developed by Sledgehammer Games and envisioned as being set during the Vietnam War instead of it being the setting of one mission at best and a background element otherwise. After some creative disputes with Raven, Sledgehammer was kicked off of the project while Treyarch was pulled from Black Ops 4 to salvage and rebrand the project as a Black Ops title.
  • Blackout was supposed to have a "sequel" in this game with its own battle royale mode. However, with the success of Warzone, Activision insisted on integrating Cold War progression and content with Warzone and Modern Warfare. A map based on the Ural Mountains was developed for the scrapped mode and cut into smaller maps for the "Fireteam" and "Outbreak" modes. Just like Warzone has many Mythology Gags based on the original Modern Warfare trilogy, the Ural Mountains map has a few areas based on classic Black Ops maps (for example, one area of "Duga" is based on "Grid" from BO1 and "Zoo" is obviously based on the eponymous map from the same game).

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