Bell's memories were actually Adler's memories of the events of Black Ops.
Because Mason and Woods say that Adler's team was "right beside them at Hue", it strongly implies that Adler and Sims were fighting in the same Vietnam missions in BO1 but as NPC allies. The Mind Rape scenarios in "Break on Through" all can be inserted into the BO1 missions but happening elsewhere while Mason (the player), Bowman, and Woods were doing whatever they were doing. For example, the scenario where "You woke up in a crashed helicopter at night and had to evade the Viet Cong" could have happened in "Crash Site" after the moment the US helicopters about to extract Mason were shot down. Mason, Bowman, and Woods had no time to find any survivors, but Adler's team could have been in those helicopters and forced to evade capture.- Confirmed, more or less, by an optional conversation with Mason and Woods.
The Soviet defector trapped in Hue city that Mason and Woods were trying to rescue possessed information about Perseus.
A Safehouse interaction with Mason and Woods reveals that Adler and Sims were fighting alongside Mason and Wood's team in the Battle of Hue during "The Defector" in Black Ops. The premise of that mission was that a Soviet defector was trapped in the city being overrun by the NVA, forcing Mason's SOG team to attempt to rescue him. Adler's team was helping Mason's in the Battle of Hue because - unbeknownst to Mason, Bowman, and Woods - the Soviet defector had information about Perseus and Adler's team shared a mutual objective in rescuing the defector. The plot twist in Black Ops revealed that the actual defector was killed and Mason imagined Reznov being him, but the dossier that "Reznov" handed to Mason likely had information about Perseus that was useful to Adler. Perseus is a collective identity, and Mason was the first Perseus.
If you go along with the fan theory that "Perseus" is actually an elite Soviet team of brainwashed operators, then Mason perhaps was the "original" Perseus who was defective. After all, Mason's actor did play Perseus in Clash of the Titans (2010).- In the Golden Ending, where all side missions are completed, and Bell sides with the CIA, Hudson notes to his superior that the Kremlin is in a state of confusion surrounding the firefight in "The Final Countdown". This seems to indicate that "Perseus" is not acting under their authority, and is instead a rogue element. It can be surmised that Perseus is instead the progenitor to the Ultranationalist Party, given the appearance of Imran Zakhaev.
- Confirmed. Siding with Perseus in the game's bad ending reveals that the codename does not belong to one person.
Modern Warfare (2019) and Cold War are within an "Ultimates" style canon
Given that both games have access to Warzone and Cold War doesn't have Blackout, along with all the shared content (Zakhaev and Kastovia) it can be assumed that they take place in the same universe. On the flip side, Cold War is not in the same timeline as Black Ops and BO2, because of Woods and Kravchenko. The team don't discover that Kravchenko is alive in the main universe until '86, while in CW he is alive and well in the KGB HQ in '81. One would think that a list of key players in the KGB would be pertinent info for a double agent to pass on to his handlers.- Alternatively, the CIA simply did not alert Mason and Woods to Kravchenko's survival and promotion to the upper echelons of the KGB. In one Safehouse interaction, Hudson tells Bell that he only informs his agents the bare minimum of information needed to complete a mission. Therefore, Belikov (one of Hudson's contacts) may have informed Hudson of Kravchenko's survival, but Hudson decided not to share it with Mason and Woods to prevent them from getting too emotionally invested in their next missions.
- Pretty much confirmed at this point. Imran Zakhaev was involved with Perseus and even shows up in the campaign.
We're not done with this story yet.
For having been made such a large deal, Perseus himself gets away unharmed even if his network has been crippled. Alex Mason apparently rejoined the military for a short while between this game and the next one according to David Mason. Hudson and co could act as mission control once more. Perhaps he rejoined the military for one more set of missions, to finish off Perseus. This game could also involve Helen Park's new MI6 task force tasked with finding Perseus, and could probably show what gets Wood's team captured in a way that made Mason believe he was dead. How Bell, Adler and Sims would factor into a story like this is beyond me for the moment. Like in Modern Warfare, Multiplayer and Warzone will be used to continue the story.
Hanging plot threads will include..- A continuation to William Bowman's quest for answers.
- The events of Declassified will be referenced at some point, like the death of Jose Menendez in 1982.
- Confirmed. "Cartel", the Multiplayer map, takes place on the day of his assassination, and his corpse can be found lying in a bed.
- A lead-up into the events of Black Ops II.
- Bell's exact fate. Adler is alive and kicking in Multiplayer, which starts off in 1982. This implies that either he killed Bell or just wounded them, possibly to keep them as an asset.
John Baker is Battery's grandfather.
Erin "Battery" Baker comes from a long lineage of military personnel, and even shares her catchphrase. In Baker's bio, it's stated that his military service was influenced by his veteran father. It wouldn't be farfetched to guess that Battery's military service was influenced by her dear old grandpa. Black Ops II, and maybe even the entire universe moving forward will be retconned in some way.
- Now that Black Ops shares a universe with Modern Warfare (2019), whose universe is taking place in real time, let's face it, 2025 in real life will not look like the 2025 of Black Ops II. Unless Modern Warfare decides to introduce all of that extremely advanced technology, this is going to cause a massive contradiction with the established Black Ops lore. It would need an equally massive retcon to patch all of this up. This would also be a good opportunity to fix all of the instances of Technology Marches On in Black Ops II, such as the extremely outdated YouTube and Twitter interfaces.
- This gives us a great opportunity to fix the problem of Petraeus appearing as a Secretary in 2025.
- But in all seriousness, this provides Treyarch a shot at the unpopular BO3 campaign. Now it's just the question of whether they care.
Bell will become an Operator, canonically or not.
- Considering how much of an Ensemble Dark Horse they have become, Treyarch might cave in and make "Bell" an Operator for Multiplayer/Zombies/Warzone, complete with light customization options. It will either imply that Adler did indeed keep Bell around as in the above theory, or it could simply be a non-canonical instance of Pandering to the Base.
- Also the addition of a Bell Operator could fix the minor issue of NATO having no Operators of Warsaw Pact origin (Warsaw Pact on flip side has Powers and Stone), if we're going along with the assumption that Bell has a fixed identity and is Russian.
The entire multiplayer mode, including Warzone, is happening in Adler's head.
- Given how there's a massive Continuity Snarl between the 1984 and 201X versions of Verdansk, particularly considering Cold War Season 6, at least the Warzone 1984 storyline might be Adler acting as an Unreliable Narrator.
- The Cold War Season 6 map "Deprogram" supports this, being a psychedelic mashup of single-player levels and containing Warzone's Red Doors.
