WMG / Call of Duty: Black Ops

Mason's Dad Was Australian

The dossiers simply say that Mason's dad demonstrated heroic action at Makin. To explain Mason's accent, perhaps after the war his parents migrated to Alaska where Alex was born. Having grown up in America, but with Australian family, he would then occasionally have an accent.

Dragovich was a Templar

He brainwashed Alex Mason to kill JFK so Lyndon could come in. And who were the guys who 'really' killed JFK?

Call of Duty Black Ops takes place in an Action Movie

This WMG is not saying "Call of Duty is more like an action movie than an actual war." I'm saying that Black Ops is IN an action movie. It is also not bashing War movies, Action movies, or Call of Duty.

First of all, it has one of the most developed plots in the Call of Duty series, this is complete with a kick-in-the-balls twist. Now, considering how there is a sudden leap between a massive nuclear threat in COD4, history in WaW, and a massive terrorist plot in Modern Warfare Two, this is suprising. There are also Mind-screwey missions that have no purpose except to show the plot, which would be a scene in a movie. Not to mention that it seems more of a premise of an action movie than a war movie: go behind enemy lines and fight the battles The Man doesn't want you to know about. Now that is done, it's time to go to stronger evidence that might actually mean something.

The weapons and equipment used in the multiplayer mode of Call of Duty: Black Ops reaches areas of Rule of Cool. While the series did do some slightly illogical leaps in the past, black ops takes it up to eleven with an arsenal that consists almost entirely of rare guns and equipment that's questionable to even be used in the military, such as RC-X Ds and crossbows. This seems to be what is used in an action movie rather than a war movie. I'm also not complaining about the realism of it and saying it's bad, but rather celebrating the Rule of Cool.

The reason why all of the weapons can be customized so much (site reticle, reticle color, lens color, camo, etc.) is because the movie director demands cooler weapons to be used. Carving a four-letter word into the side of your gun also seems to be something that the protagonist of an action movie would do.

This theory also supports the strange arsenal. The reason why there is so much Anachronism Stew is because the movie is modern and the director either didn't know that the FAMAS wasn't around in the 1960's or he just didn't care. This also explains the weapon balance, which, just so you know, is absolutely horrible. The reason the FAMAS is so overpowered is because it's the weapon the protagonist was using, and the weaker SMGs and lesser assault rifles were in use by mooks. It is also to be noted that the weapons are very rare and seem to be the ones you'd see in action movies.

• This can also be supported by some of Mason's Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping moments attributed to his voice actor being Australian. Maybe Mason's actor was really popular, and was cast for a role as an American. The accent slips just went by in editing.
  • Maybe the accent slips were deliberately left in because people are used to action heroes played by people with distinctive accents.

The Campaign level - Project Nova brainwashed the players.

The players who played World at War fell in love with the characters (Reznov especially). If the player hadn't felt the need to kill Dragovich and Krevchenko by the time the level happened, we would when Reznov himself tells us why he is a bad person. Best way to do that? Play through Reznov's eyes, and our watch our past selves (Dimitri) be brutally murdered while Reznov narrates. The music even kicks in from World at War. Someone we trust is talking the player into continuing the game, kill the Big Bad, and stop the toxin from being used, because that is the goal of the Developers.

Oswald was the backup plan if something went with Mason

• Reznov knew that Mason was brainwashed, so he contacted America to tell them Mason would be a threat to Kennedy. Mason was contained the day of the assassinaion, but Reznov didn't know that Oswald was also active in the area. Reznov cut a deal with the Americans: he'd be safe from the Russians if he helped stop Dragovich. In return, Hudson told Mason (the last person who believed Reznov was alive) that Reznov was dead so Reznov could go by a new alias and continue to work against the USSR. Also, Mason would not be killed immediately: he was too important to Reznov's plans. Besides, he had the information about the numbers. Why would the Russians kill Kennedy? To keep them from being friends with China. Kennedy was on the verge of a breaktrhough with China, and the USSR wanted all communists in one alliance. By putting a much less charismatic president in office (LBJ), they prevented Sino-American relations from improving for another decade. Indirectly, this also lead to Vietnam, something the Russians didn't anticipate but enjoyed anyways. So this means Reznov was actually in Vietnam and Rebirth Island and Mason did not actually kill Kennedy.
  • That assumes a lot, most notably that Reznov was able to contact someone after the Russians kicked the shit out of him for trying to escape from Vorkuta. It's incredible unlikely.
  • He's REZNOV! That man can escape anything!
  • There was actually a series Emails sent to Hudson by someone by the name of John Trent, regarding Mason. This Person also sends an email to JFK the day before his death saying "Victory cannot be achieved without sacrifice." Sounds Famillar ?, it should because Reznov is known for saying this and because it is sent the day of JFK's Death it's quite possible that Reznov sent this. An Email send to Hudson by "Trent" after the final mission says "Please tell Mason one last thing. This time it's freedom for both of us." If this "John Trent" is Reznov then this theory is True.

Dr. Clarke is Marty McFly

• Marty McFly stole the DeLorean and met his future self. The two halves fused, creating a human that looked 40, had grey hair, and was mentally unstable (including getting a British Accent). Then, Marty McFly took the DeLorean to the 70s and 80s, stole many prototype weapons, and then went to 1965 Hong Kong. He worked with Dragovich for 3 years, until the CIA caught him and interrogated him. Marty was able to help the CIA escape with various weapons FROM THE FUTURE. More evidence? Both Clarke and Marty have the same vest.

Bowman is Black Dynamite

• They both were members of the CIA, both with licenses to kill, and what's more, they were both in Vietnam. The timing works as well, since Black Dynamite takes place during the Nixon administration. He survives the Russian beating him in the back of the head in the tunnel (because come on, he's Black Dynamite), makes his way out of Vietnam and back to the States, and from then until the movie he builds up his massive empire of ladies and kung fu and kung fu ladies. When he wasn't running ops with Mason and Woods, he worked with O'Leary, who was also stationed in Vietnam.

Dragovich's ideology and methods served to inspire the Ultranationalist movement and such figures as Imran Zakhaev and Vladmir Makarov

.

• Dragovich's influence on his modern-day counterparts is clearly evident, from adherence to Communism, fanatical nationalism and hatred of the West, to complete willingness to commit genocidal acts or atrocities to advance their political goals. General Dragovich himself was killed at the height of the Cold War, but decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, his supporters still pose a grave threat to global stability. In particular, Makarov finally managed to bring about what Dragovich did not: the Invasion of the United States.

Alex Mason never existed.

• It's all a dying dream of Reznov who actually died when he was exposed to Nova 6. He just dreamed of getting revenge for what they created.
• Jossed. Many parts of BOII scarcely have anything to do with Reznov himself, Steiner, Dragovich, or Kravchenko- not to mention the fact that Mason has a child.

Reznov never existed.

• It's all a dying dream by Petrenko, fatally wounded in Stalingrad by the Germans. He just dreamed of his death meaning something.

JFK never existed.

• It's all a dying dream by Dragovich, having been mortally wounded by the SAS attempting to secure the Nova-6 weapon. He just dreamed of getting to be the Magnificent Bastard instead of the butt-monkey of the Great Patriotic War.

The Player never existed.

• It's all a dying dream by a Treyarch developer, having been mortally wounded due to the decision to move Call of Duty to the Civil War era.

The sequel to Black Ops will be about a massive zombie outbreak caused by the Nova-6 Gas.

• That's what causes the zombies. The new strain of Nova-6 causes zombification.
  • Jossed.
• Funnily enough, Warzone toys with this concept.

The second part of the Black Ops series will take place during the 70s, much like how BO1 took place during the 60s..

• Okay, hardly a stretch here, but when one considers the whole "Operation Charybdis" thing as well as some of the e-mails on the CIA systems easter egg, it is a near given. However, here's some elaboration:
  • The SAS will be a playable faction, with the PC quite possibly being MacMillan or "Jonathan" Price. The other playable factions will be CIA (where you will finally meet Ryan Jackson face-to-face) and "men without a country" (Alex Mason and friends, who have gone rogue, but whether this is for "good" or "evil" reasons would be up for heavy debate).
  • Levels will include (in order of stuff that pops into my head) a "Fall of Saigon" level, a level where you break Woods out of the Hanoi Hilton, missions in a divided Berlin, the Middle East during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and Apartheid-era South Africa. The final level would would see the factions having to come together against the true antagonists, who launch a ICBM (containing a nuke stolen from the Israelis during the Yom Kippur War) from the vicinity of the Prince Edward Islands. Our heroes will narrowly stop the launch, causing the nuke to detonate high in the air, the only record of it's existence being that the American satellite "Vela Hotel" detected it on September 22, 1979. After the credits will be a news report that Iranian revolutionaries have stormed the American embassy in Tehran, and that there are rumblings of a buildup of Soviet troops near the Afghan border...
    • Which leads up to a young Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defending the American embassy from zombies.
    • Well, I was actually more thinking along the lines of Richard Nixon (connecting it to the CODBO zombies), Leonid Brezhnev, Chairman Mao and Golda Meir holding a secret early 70s summit that is interrupted by Zombies. That'd be a funny bunch.
    • My two cents: Nixon, Kissinger, Carter, and Chomsky. Just for the lolz.
    • Also Entebbe. You can't forget Entebbe. Heck, there'll probably be an Israeli protagonist who will get the game banned in the middle east. Also you hunt down the traitor who sabotaged Apollo 13.
    • A nuclear missile launched from the vicinity of Prince Edward Island would hit almost any Eastern Seaboard target within fifteen minutes, and would be completely impossible to cover up. Especially if it were detonated prematurely to prevent a nuclear explosion.
    • I said Prince Edward Islands, not the Canadian province, but the islands in the southern Indian Ocean that are technically part of South Africa.
  • They're skipping straight to the 80's for the actual Black Ops 2's first act.

The launch trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will feature a montage of tense gunfights set to the tune of ABBA's "SOS"

• Furthermore, there will be a level where you burst into a South African nightclub, guns blazing, with Dancing Queen blasting in the background
  • Obviously Jossed by the revelation of what the real Black Ops 2 was actually like, but one weirdly specific detail did end up coming through in the end— the special trailer from E3 did, indeed, feature a firefight in a nightclub. The difference is that said nightclub is located on a floating platform over the Cayman Trench, rather than in South Africa.

While I'm at it, the third Black Ops would take place in the 80s.

• Missions would be in Afghanistan (where you have the uneasy situation where you are helping the guys who will become the Taliban), Iran (where it is revealed that Operation Eagle Claw involved more than what was revealed), London (the Iranian Embassy Siege), Iraq (during the Iran-Iraq War), the Falkland Islands, Grenada and various Eastern European locales.
• And they'll sabotage Chernobyl, inadvertently starting the plot of modern warfare
  • Oh, and the Zombies characters: Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher and George H.W. Bush
    • Reagan could tell Gorbachev to "tear down that wall" to reach a new part of the map.
    • There'd be a Russian campaign in Black Ops 3 where you'd play as Nikolai from the Modern Warfare series. He mentioned in Modern Warfare 2 that he was in Afghanistan with the Soviets.
    • And the above Iranian Embassy level could have the player as Price, since he was based on one of the SAS soldiers involved there.
• The debut interviews for BO 2 indicate that the first part of the campaign will take place in the 80's, and the Soviet-Afghan War was confirmed to be present in the game at E3. Maybe we'll get our Nikolai backstory yet? Aside from Afghanistan, other 80's Cold War locales that have been confirmed include Angola, Panama, and possibly Nicaragua.
• If you want to skip over the two sequels (don't worry, most do), Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War technically counts.

The next "series" in CoD (after WWII, MW and Black Ops will be a "Hard" Science Fiction set in the 2040s or later

• Rumors are going around that a forthcoming CoD will take place IN SPACE!. However, CoD isn't Halo, and the people involved in making it generally try to do things a bit different. Instead, it'll take place in the 2040s or so (100th anniversary of the events of WWII) and will be a "hard" science fiction dealing with a conflict between a alliance of democracies (thus continuing how most of the CoD games have been, where you play as either an American or a Brit) and the Chinese (or, depending on how Modern Warfare 3 turns out, Russians). The battles will take place on Earth (on land, in the air and even under the sea), in orbit and on the Moon. The fights in space would be reasonably realistic (although with some artistic license like lasers being visible and such) and will be unlike anything seen in a mass-market game.
  • Gamespot is thinking the same thing.
  • The revelation of Black Ops 2 suggests that the shift to a futuristic setting will indeed come to pass, though the timeframe is the 2020's rather than 2040's.
  • This is quite Hilarious in Hindsight now that we know it wasn't in Black Ops 2, but rather, part of the prologue mission and a later mission of Call of Duty: Ghosts do indeed take place on orbital space platforms.
  • Off by 2 "series" and several years, but finally confirmed

Additionally, the next series by Treyarch will take place in World War I, and the PC will be a young Reznov

• Moving the story into the past would nicely mirror the other developer moving the series into the future. Furthermore, while most people don't consider WWI to be as interesting from a technological perspective, there is vast room for story telling in a basically untapped historical period. The reliance during that time period on bolt action rifles might explain where Reznov got his skills with the Mosin Nagant (before his hand injury in WaW).
  • This is flat-out impossible. In one of the cutscenes in Black Ops, there is a very brief glimpse of a dossier on Reznov. His date of birth is April 20, 1913: he'd still be a child by the time WWI ended.
  • Definitely not happening anyway, as the actual Black Ops II is going to first wrap up the Cold War plot of the first game before flashing forward to a newer, parallel conflict in the 2020's.

McMillan will appear in Call of Duty: Black Ops

Why waste an awesome character on two bloomin' missions?

• One of which he has an injured leg (not that he was any less awesome at that point, he just needs more appearances where he can walk).
  • Sadly, no. But what was really unexpected was seeing Dimitri Petrenko return, even if only for one level.

Reznov isn't dead.

Hudson is lying - Reznov's death is faked, twice (one for the escape, the other for the "real" informant who "died" during the attack on MACV). They're trying to jostle Alex out of his number programming by claiming Reznov was Dead All Along - and Reznov actually does contact Alex when he ascends from the Numbers Station. In addition, Mason can take the blame for killing Steiner - Reznov is too important to be blamed for Steiner's death, so why not have some grunt who's been going off the rails recently be blamed instead?

• Not to mention we never actually see his supposed death at the hands of the Red Army— the scene simply cuts away as Mason stares at Reznov's truck from the train. If Woods can survive by virtue of his body not being found, so can Reznov. Furthermore, Hudson doesn't really have any way of backing up his claim that Reznov is dead; after all, he wasn't there at Vorkuta, and there's no way he could have gotten any kind of documentation for the death of a single Soviet prisoner. Besides, he's WAY too tough to go down so easily...
• And there's also the fact that sticking too close to Reznov during sneaking about on Rebirth Island will have him physically move you about - not to mention that Reznov needs to translate for Alex when the Russian guards speak. [Even if Alex knows Russian from his time in Vorkuta, he only knows some. Note that he doesn't speak when undercover. Ever.]
  • Something else about "Rebirth": Reznov lost his right index finger in Stalingrad. However, most times he appears in Black Ops he has it. The exceptions are "Vorkuta", "Project Nova", and "Rebirth". While there's obvious reasons for the first two, the third has no real explanation (every other hallucination had the finger, why doesn't this one?).
  • More additions: Reznov knifes a Viet Cong too far away for Mason to hallucinate, especially in the tunnels.
  • In the same sequence, he tells Mason things he could not possibly have known for himself: as far as Mason and Woods knew, the rat tunnel was just like any other one of its type, but Reznov somehow knew that Kravchenko's forward compound was down there.
• More proof: one of the emails on Hudson's account has a man under the alias of John Trent say, "Please tell Mason one last thing. This time, it's freedom for both of us". Well, gee, where have we heard something like that before, huh?
  • Ahem.
• Further evidence: In the intel files for Vorkuta, Ryan Jackson compiles a report on Reznov that is dated in 1966 - three years after Reznov was supposed to be killed. Yet the report does not include a date of death and speaks of Reznov in the present tense, as if he is still alive .
  • Furthermore John Trent, who is heavily implied to be Reznov working under an alias, speaks of secret power players who have plans to change the world as it currently exists and gives Hudson a cryptic message days prior to John F. Kennedy's assassination that on November 22nd 1963, "things will change" and that he should be ready. The CIA Database even has a picture of Reznov in clothes that he is never seen wearing in the story and is listed with the codename of "Wolf", implying that Reznov is still alive and working as a spy behind the scenes of the story.
  • Treyarch mentions Reznov in preview material for Black Ops II, bringing up the notion of him being a figment of Mason's imagination in the first game and then immediately challenging it. Seems likely that we might get to see what really happened to him during BO II's first act, set in the 80s.
    • Reznov's sole appearance is at the end of "Old Wounds", wherein he apparently shows up to save Woods, Hudson, and Mason after the Mujaheddin leave them for dead in the desert— only Mason thinks that their rescuer was actually Reznov, while Woods dismisses the notion as absurd. It's worth noting that Woods and Hudson were unconscious when he showed up, though, so it's left ambiguous as to whether Mason was just talking to himself again or if Reznov really was there.

In Black Ops, Reznov wasn't a hallucination

He was a ghost. Helping Mason from beyond the grave, to ensure that the mission he left him is completed. When Mason executed Steiner while claiming to be Reznov, that was because Reznov (ghost) possessed Mason, so that he could take revenge personally. Reznov's final congratulation to Mason after the underwater broadcast station is destroyed was Reznov thanking Mason for finishing what Reznov started, so that he could finally pass on and rest in peace.

Reznov was brainwashed himself or worked with Dragovich to kill all people related to Nova-6

The Maverick Code when spelled out says "Reznov is dead, or is he dead. There was no body. Is he who he says he is." Reznov was either manipulated by Dragovich or somehow came to work with him, and assigned Mason not to kill Kennedy, as Mason believed, but to kill all of the individuals related to Nova 6 once they have completed the project. Dragovich has a pattern of killing everyone related to Nova-6. So once the plan began, he would start the broadcasts, which would tell Mason to begin his work of killing everyone related to Nova-6. This explains how Reznov knew that Dragovich wasn't trusted in Moscow, unless that was in the dossier. Why would Dragovich kill himself after his plan? So he would never be captured and his plan would continue since if everyone related to the plan, including him, was dead, there would be no way to stop it. His plan was only half-way successful in this regard since Mason did shut down the project, and the Rusalka was destroyed.

'Sergei' was the real Reznov.

Alex Mason saw the true Reznov die as Sergei. The 'Reznov' seen 'wielding the fist of iron', and such, was really some other random prisoner, if he did in fact exist at all. Mason's brainwashing and whatnot stopped him from realizing that Reznov died holding open the door at Vorkuta.

Black Ops was originally going to have a mission where you assassinate JFK

Given how peripheral to the main plot that twist is at the end, it seems like they were originally going to make a much bigger deal out of it. My guess is that Treyarch originally wanted to have a mission where you shoot from the grassy knoll to have their own "No Russian"-type shock level but that Activision eventually told them not to put it into the game, as it would be far too shocking and controversial.

Reznov and Jonathan Price will face off.

Presuming that John Trent is indeed Reznov and Jonathan's last name is indeed Price, then the two baddest asses in Call of Duty will eventually face off as Reznov defends his friend Mason while Price attempts to kill him.

Dragovich dug up a Marker.

• Long before the 'original' Marker was dug up on the Yucatan Peninsula, Dragovich got a hold of a Marker, which he gave to Steiner to help in brainwashing Mason. The flashes of numbers Mason sees slightly resemble the various symbols seem by Isaac Clarke, and the 'steps' Reznov uses during the escape from Vorkuta resemble the steps that an insane Stross murmurs during Dead Space 2. It is possible that Dragovich's Marker affected him slightly.

Treyarch's next game series will take place in World War I

• Treyarch loves making things Darker and Edgier, and what better way to do that than the most pointlessly bloody war of all time? For added Squick it could even switch back and forth between the sides and show your friends from each side killing each other.

Captain MacMillan killed General Amsel.

He went back in time, dressed up as a Soviet soldier, stole a PTRS-41, and then sniped Amsel with Reznov.

I have no evidence for this but it would be epic.

Dragovich is not as intelligent as he wants people to think.

Mason is the only man who knows of the Rusalka's existence and isn't actually in on the Nova 6 plan. Dragovich refuses to actively hunt him down when he escapes Vorkuta. And then he broadcasts his intentions, including to Mason, from the Rusalka, which he has not yet actually moved away from where it was seven years prior when Mason actually saw it. He's not a super-genius, he's your everyday American-hating Soviet officer who just got lucky and grabbed a Nazi superweapon at the end of the last war.

• The Rusalka actually was moved away from the Cuban docks and to somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. And the actual transmitter station was on the bottom of the Gulf anyway. And he knew Mason was still brainwashed enough to kill Kennedy.

Mason will have a relapse

A few months after the numbers station is destroyed, Mason will snap back into his "Kill President Kennedy" state. And while Kennedy may no longer be president, there is another one who is running for it. Could "Presidential Candidate Robert Kennedy" be enough to set him off? After all, he was assassinated four months after Black Ops ends.

• For that matter, Sirhan Sirhan and Lee Harvey Oswald were also brainwashed sleeper cell agents.

The first level of Black Ops 2 will be Dallas '63

• Think about it, Mason was in Dallas to stop the assassination of JFK since Reznov more or less tried to deprogram him. This could led to a grand chase between Mason, Lee Harvey or any other shooters.
  • Not likely, given the whole 20 Minutes into the Future thing that Black Ops 2 is going with.
  • Jossed.

Captain Price will appear in Black Ops 2.

When it happens, you'll hear a sound. That sound will be every Call of Duty fan from every inch of the globe having a mass orgy of rejoicing.

• Following from this, concrete ties between the stories of Black Ops and Modern Warfare will finally be laid down in Black Ops 2, with the events of WWIII 9 years prior to the game being mentioned, among other things. It's certainly a possibility, based on the recently revealed fact that Treyarch had wanted to connect their games to IW's since before the first Black Ops was finished— its originally pitched title was "Modern Warfare Origins".

Hudson and Weaver were brainwashed too.

Okay, bare with me on this one— it's gonna sound crazy, but it's straight from the horse's mouth (the horse, in this case, being James C. Burns, Woods' voice actor, in this interview). Now, according to Burns, at the end of "Payback", Mason's brainwashing caused him to confabulate Woods and Reznov into the same person within his mind. So, if we're to take that literally, that would mean that Mason was not alone on Rebirth Island, and that the person he thought was Reznov (and by extension, the person Hudson thought was Mason himself) was actually Woods. However, as I'm sure you're going to ask, "How does that explain Hudson and Weaver finding Mason alone in Steiner's office?". That's where the main point of this theory comes in— somehow (don't ask me how), at some point, Hudson and Weaver were themselves brainwashed. That's why when they caught up to Mason, they saw him declare himself to be Reznov before shooting Steiner, when in reality, it was actually Woods who did the deed, and no one present actually said "My name is Victor Reznov, etc..."— it was just part of everyone's programming. When Mason said he saw Reznov kill Steiner right in front of him, as far as he knew, he was telling the truth, since in his fucked-up mind, Woods was Reznov. And since no one on the scene could see him, Woods could simply slink off into the shadows, for reasons unknown. On top of that, them sharing the same programming could also explain why Hudson and Weaver were immediately willing to follow Mason when he ran off in search of that "unknown lead" in '78.

At any rate, an already Mind Screw-y game just got even screwier.

• This is certainly an interesting theory, but why would Woods go to Rebirth Island? He wasn't brainwashed like Mason to be all "MUST KILL STEINER", and he wasn't ordered to like Weaver and Hudson.
  • I admit, that's a bit of a mystery— I'm just trying to reconcile what we saw with what James C. Burns said. Perhaps Mason somehow strongarmed Woods into following him, but remembered it as Reznov telling him where to go?
    • Now that the game's actually out, it seems as though James may have been intentionally misleading us— as it turns out, both Woods and Kravchenko survived the blast, with the latter apprehending the former and dragging him back to imprisonment while Mason and "Reznov" ran off to Rebirth on his/their own.

Black Ops 2 will feature World at War's Miller in a supporting role

• Much like the first Black Ops featured Dmitri Petrenko as a Sacrificial Lamb, Miller will be an elderly non-player character, hoping to find out why Mason is MIA.
  • Miller actually had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it namedrop in the first Black Ops as the guy who gave Mason his psych evaluation after Vorkuta— if he does indeed play the role described above (presumably in the 80's flashback missions), it would actually make a lot of sense.
    • Highly unlikely, Miller would be 105 years old if he were still alive.
    • In the 1980s? I don't think so— I was referring to the possibility of him being in the flashback missions.
• Jossed, shamefully. Though Reznov's appearance during Old Wounds may serve as Fanfic Fuel for anybody, including Miller, to fill up.

The events of Apocalypse Now are canon to the Call of Duty universe

• If you read the intelligence report for the mission Crash Site then there is a part of the report that talks of a mission that occurred where an agent was sent on a PBR boat up the Nung River to kill a Rouge Special Forces Colonel. This is clearly a reference to the assassination of Colonel Kurtz by Captain Willard. This also shows why the CIA is so willing to kill Alex Mason, they have killed rogue officers before and so believe they can get away with any assassination no matter how little justification there is for it.

Private Miller in World at War is Alex Mason's father

All of the facts lead to it: Mason's father was a recipient of the Purple Heart for his actions in the Makin Raid in 1942, according to the intel from "Operation 40". The Purple Heart is awarded to soldiers who've been wounded during combat in line of duty. The Makin Raid is the first level of World at War, and at the end, Miller is attacked and wounded by a banzai attacker. There's no other reason why Treyarch would choose the level for a backstory to Mason and his father. Plus, it is common knowledge that World at War is the prequel to Black Ops. In short, Miller moved back to the States(i.e. Alaska), married a woman named Mason, and had Alex.

Alex Mason's father is Hollis Mason

This explains not only Mason's physical abilities as a One-Man Army, but also where his unusual resistance to Soviet brainwashing comes from: he's part metahuman. Hollis had a relationship with a woman in the late 1930s but eventually broke it off, and she subsequently moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, where Alex was born. He was more receptive to Reznov's brainwashing because he simply wanted to be: he had his own mental barriers to Dragovich's brainwashing because he abhorred the idea of killing Kennedy, but was much more eager to take out Dragovich himself. It might also justify how he (possibly) survived Panama and how he's able to use a rocket-launcher on horseback with one hand.

Frank Woods is asexual

There are no references to any sort of romantic partner as opposed to the other characters (Alex fathers a son, Hudson's two kids, etc.) His dialog shows that he is extremely devoted to his country, and never takes his eyes off the task at hand. With these beliefs, it is possible that he views romance as a waste of time and energy that can be used for being the fuckin' badass that he is.

The bonus intel is all faked

In 1978, supposedly, Woods is a POW in Vietnam, still, and Mason, Hudson, and Weaver are burned agents, marked out by their own men. Black Ops II disproves this, as Woods, Mason and Hudson are still around and working for the CIA in the 1980s. It's likely that with the events of the original Black Ops, especially considering that Woods, Mason, and Weaver are all captured in the course of the game, that the Soviets know who they are. So the CIA and MI6 hide some intelligence to claim that they're going to leave Woods to rot and that the other three are soon to be assassinated, intel that will "accidentally" be leaked to the Soviet Union at some point in the future, leading the Soviets to believe that these four agents are out of the picture and freeing them up to be used again, especially in areas where they would be less likely to be recognized, such as Angola or Panama.