"Where are we going from here?"
Mob of the Dead is the second Downloadable Content Call of Duty: Zombies map for Call of Duty: Black Ops II. It was released in April and May 2013 as the main feature of the "Uprising" DLC pack.
Mob of the Dead is a unique entry in the Aether Story Arc of Zombies, focusing on a cast of characters exclusive to the map with a self-contained story (at first). In prohibition era San Francisco, four gangsters - mob boss Sal DeLuca (Chazz Palminteri), his favored leg-breaker Billy Handsome (Ray Liotta), gambler-in-chief Finn O'Leary (Michael Madsen), and con artist Al "The Weasel" Arlington (Joe Pantoliano) — form a daring escape plan to break out of Alcatraz Penitentiary. On the night of their escape, however, the guard they kill to break out, Stanley Ferguson, suddenly reanimates as a zombie, and is joined by countless others. As Alcatraz transforms into a nightmarish hell of its already hellish self, the four mobsters try to fight their way out, but are quickly overwhelmed by the horde and devoured.
... And then, the four wake up as spirits who must re-enter their bodies, having no memory of their demise.
As they resume their attempt to escape in the prison that is now filled with only the undead, and a rampaging, hulking prison guard named Brutus (Nolan North), the four mobsters must find a way to escape the island, unearth the secrets of what's really going on, and discover where they are going from here.
The story of Mob of the Dead is followed up on in the quasi-sequel, quasi-remake "Blood of the Dead", released in 2018 as part of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.
Mob of the Dead contains examples of the following tropes:
- Abandoned Hospital: The prison's infirmary is accessible on the way to the roof.
- Ambiguous Situation: Ultimately, whether or not the cycle is broken or not is left unclear, since it's up to the players which path they take. "Blood of the Dead" shows the group still imprisoned as spirits in Alcatraz — even Al, who now is a seagull spirit called Icarus, suggesting that either they never broke the cycle, or that even if Al did, he was still trapped in Alcatraz, just with more freedom.
- Blood Bath: The player requires this to get the Golden Spork, which is then extracted from a bathtub full of blood.
- Breather Episode: Played With. Mob is the only map of Black Ops II to not be a part of the main arc of Maxis and Richtofen's war, telling its own self-contained story, but it's also the darkest map of the game. Later Arc Welding would tie it into the larger mythos of the series, but from a Black Ops II-only perspective, it's almost completely on its own.
- Came Back Wrong: Brutus has several quotes that directly reference lines from the intro cinematic, and several that are direct quotes from Stanley Ferguson. This causes Sal to reason that Brutus is actually a horrific reincarnation of Stanley. "Blood of the Dead" would later reveal that Brutus and Stanley are two different individuals.
- Cruel and Unusual Death:
- One trap put in the way towards the Warden's office consists of two fans that gib any zombie that passes through them. The other trap is located in the Cafeteria and rains pure acid onto the zombies.
- Weasel suffered this fate in the real world, dying a slow, painful demise when he was jumped by his former cohorts with knives and left to bleed out slowly.
- Cryptic Background Reference: One of Weasel's random quotes is that he can't get the name "Nikolai" out of his head. The significance of this is completely unexplained in both this and the follow-up Blood of the Dead, but it's one of the very few explicit ties to the larger Zombies mythos in the self-contained map.
- Darker and Edgier: The darkest Zombies map to date. A hellish setting, protagonists who are almost entirely evil, and one hell of a Morton's Fork for them no matter what happens. It's telling that the good ending is simply Al getting to pass on peacefully while the others die or go to hell in full.
- Deliberate Monochrome: To fit with the old gangster movie vibe, the intro cutscene starts out in black and white before transitioning to color once the zombies rise. Black and white later returns during the endgame of the egg when the mobsters listen to the audio logs.
- Evil All Along: Sal, Billy, and Finn are all hardened criminals to begin with, but it's revealed that they turned on Weasel out of frustration and spite in the real world. In the final step of the Easter egg, they turn on him once again.
- Evil vs. Evil: The mobsters are legitimately bad people who spend most of the game going up against Brutus, the leader of the zombies.
- Fire and Brimstone Hell: Given the lava and flames, Alcatraz has this look going for it. It's actually purgatory, but the set dressings are a friendly reminder to Billy, Finn, and Sal what awaits them if they die for real.
- Foreshadowing:
- Throughout the prison you can see various regulations with firm guidelines and warnings for prisoners, but one stands out among the rest — Regulation #666. "They are not your friends" is likely addressed to Al, who was killed by the other three in real life, but the 666 is foreshadowing what's coming for the other three.
Regulation #666: DEAL WITH IT. Do not get too close, they are not your friends. Destroy their brains for quick extermination. If you are bitten, please kill yourself.- The dials on the clocks continuously kick back after a certain amount of time, and the Perk machines phase in and out of reality, foreshadowing the map's nature as a "Groundhog Day" Loop.
- One of Brutus' death quotes has him bemoaning how he's trapped in Alcatraz just like you, foreshadowing the prison's true nature.
- The Warden's office has newspaper clippings of the word "-gatory" and a picture of lightning striking the Golden Gate Bridge, foreshadowing Alcatraz being turned into Purgatory and what is waiting at the bridge.
- Genre Shift: Zombies has slowly been introducing more explicitly supernatural elements, but Mob of the Dead is when the series more firmly embraces it due to the afterlife being one of the main themes and mechanics of the map and indeed, the actual setting. This map also sees more of a cinematic presentation of a more dedicated story, a trend that would continue for the rest of the series to date.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: While this becomes apparent from the get-go that the mobsters are trapped in an unending loop, the real plot twist is why they are in a loop. After Sal, Billy, and Finn killed Weasel in the real world, the mobsters were sentenced to live in the purgatory as punishment for their sins, and it will continue unless Al successfully kills the other three.
- Hellgate: The Icarus turns out to be one, as it ferries the mobsters to the Golden Gate Bridge, where three of them will meet their final fates.
- Hellhole Prison: Subverted. Alcatraz looks downright horrific, but it's all an illusion. The Alcatraz in the real world is child's play compared to the purgatory dimension the crew is stuck in.
- Jumpscare: If the player looks through a scoped weapon from the rooftop to the direction of the fireworks, they are surprised by a scary face and a loud scream. This is notably the first of this trope in the series. Another one, which is extremely rare, is if you go to the window next to the Mystery Box spawn in the cafeteria and you'll see the scary face flash during some lightning.
- Lethal Joke Weapon: The Golden Spork; as ridiculous as this sounds, it's more lethal than the Galvaknuckles. Yes, a spork is more deadly than electric brass knuckles! Holy crap! To specify, the Golden Spork is five times more deadly than the Galvaknuckles. Getting it requires using the acid infused Blundergat in the laundry room after mixing the spoon in the bathtub of blood. A laugh later, and go back to bathtub. Have fun using it to Curbstomp zombies. It returns in Blood of the Dead with more or less the same method of creation, bringing some much-needed levity to the otherwise-morose map.
- Meaningful Name: This map has 'Icarus', a plane that is supposed to fly the Mobsters out of Alcatraz, but it crashes on the Golden Gate Bridge.
- Morton's Fork: Sal, Billy, and Finn can either continue the cycle forever, or Al can kill them and they either die for real or are sentenced to eternal torment in hell.
- Multiple Endings: Sal, Finn, and Billy turn on Al and attack him, and the story of the map ends with either the three successfully killing him (the "THE CYCLE CONTINUES" ending), or Al is able to triumph and kill them all (THE CYCLE IS BROKEN).
- Non-Standard Game Over: In a first for the series, the player can actually end the game without dying, so to speak. Additionally, if the player carries out the Easter egg to the final step, regardless of which ending they pick, the Game Over screen will instead say "Life Over".
- Nothing Is Scarier: Aside from the in-your-face horror throughout the map, much of the map runs on this especially for series veterans. Why are the zombies attacking Alcatraz and why are elements such as the Mystery Box in a location bereft of Richtofen, Maxis, and the other main cast members? Why are the players able to enter Afterlife Mode? Why are the players in this seemingly eternal cycle? Only a few questions get answered in the game, and many aren't. And it makes the map that much more terrifying.
- Not Me This Time: The other characters spend much of the map blaming Arlington for everything, and he has to insist that it's not his doing. They ended up dying in the real world after having fallen for Arlington's latest scheme, so their mistrust is somewhat understandable, but Arlington truly is innocent of getting them trapped in the purgatory.
- Not the Fall That Kills You…: The mobsters end up crashing into the Golden Gate Bridge support beam with their makeshift airplane and fall to the ground below, but they just merely get dazed as a result. Justified: they are not in the real world, they are in purgatory.
- Number of the Beast: Shows up twice. You must feed six zombies a piece to each of the three wolf heads — aka 6-6-6. Also, if you input the numbers "115" into the keypad, the numbers will flash to "666".
- Oddball in the Series: Aside from "Nacht der Untoten", which gets a pass since it was the very first Zombies map, "Mob of the Dead" is the first entry in the series to have absolutely no ties to the greater mythos beyond the presence of zombies and two nods to Group 935 and Element 115. This also means that there are no audio logs until the end of the Easter egg, notable as usually audio logs will explain the backstory of the map. It is also the only map of Black Ops II to not feature Edward Richtofen.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The zombies of this map notably have red eyes, a first for the series. Compare these two the yellow-eyed zombies controlled by Samantha, and the blue-eyed zombies controlled by Richtofen.
- Red Herring: Brutus is the default boss zombie that must be regularly faced, but ultimately he's not the Big Bad. The mobsters are responsible for their predicament, and Brutus is just the guard.
- The Reveal: The four mobsters are indeed already dead, condemned to repeat the cycle in the prison until Al potentially kills the other three.
- Room Full of Crazy: In a map already saturated with evidence of rampant human sacrifices and hellish imagery and graffiti, the Warden's office all but says that he was an insane devotee of Satan.
- Shock and Awe: Afterlife Mode gives the player the ability to shoot electricity from their hands as spirits, giving them the ability to turn the power on certain devices such as Perk machines. Drinking the new Electric Cherry Cola Perk drink also generates a shockwave of electricity, though this blast isn't sufficient to power up anything.
- Villain Protagonist: Thanks to The Reveal, Sal, Billy, and Finn end up becoming this as their murder of Al caused their imprisonment.
- Wardens Are Evil: Brutus the warden is actually not this, subverting this trope. The mobsters deserve their sentence, and he's just there to try to foil their escapes. Then it gets double subverted when "Blood of the Dead" reveals he truly is evil.
- "LIFE OVER."
