A series as lore-heavy as Call of Duty: Zombies is chock full of foreshadowing. You can find it in character quotes, hidden ciphers, hell even the musical score can hint to the future if you listen carefully!
- On the Wii version of Kino, one can find a very poor quality video clip revolving around the Great Leap Forwardnote . In Black Ops II, the first DLC map is in a location called "Great Leap Forward" in Shanghai, China.
- In the intro cutscene of Five, John F. Kennedy nonchalantly acknowledges the invaders as zombies and reveals a full stash full of loaded weapons, which invokes Rule of Cool at the first glance. Come Classified, and we learn that the Pentagon scientists took part in experiments with Element 115 after World War 2, and Kennedy himself was aware of the whole thing, which also explains the reason behind so many weapons (and Pack-a-Punch) secretly being stored in the walls of the entire building.
- Takeo muses in Ascension that the zombies are the greater threat than Richtofen and resolves to focus on the former. In a way, he's right: whatever force controls the Zombies and is the source of power behind whoever is the Demonic Announcer is a far greater threat than Samantha, Richtofen or Maxis. This evil entity turns out to be the Shadow Man and the Apothicons.
- In Nacht, Der Riese, Ascension, and Shangri La, the Moon is clearly visible. You can just see a red smudge that grows more and more visible with each map. The final map of Black Ops and the Wham Episode of the story takes place on the Moon.
- In Shangri La, Takeo and Dempsey both realize Richtofen is up to something big. Turns out in Moon, everything so far has been a part of his grand scheme to take over the Zombies.
- In TranZit, Samuel is often complaining about being hungry, especially when killing zombies. This is because as Die Rise reveals, Samuel was a member of The Flesh, a cult that consumed zombie flesh to survive.
- Some of the survivors of Black Ops II seem to realize Maxis intends to destroy the Earth, although considering all the insanity and hysteria of the apocalypse, the player probably didn't take them too seriously. They should have.
- In the trailer of Der Eisendrache, Dempsey calls the titular map "a suicide mission". He ends up being the one to kill his WW2 self at the end of the Easter Egg.
- The voices Richtofen and other characters have been feeling since the beginning of the series? Revelations confirms this to have been the voice of the Shadow Man, who's bent on letting his masters, the Apothicons, destroy this dimension.
- Notice how the plot of the series really started when a meteor of Element 115 landed in the swamps of Shi No Numa? That's because Element 115 is a material created by the Apothicons, who speak to whoever comes in contact with it via the Shadow Man and direct the listener towards bringing about the destruction of their dimension for them. Richtofen and Maxis eventually destroyed the Earth in the original timeline after the insanity of exposure to Element 115.
- In Der Eisendrache, Nikolai voices his hope to Dempsey that he never sees the day when the crew turns on each other. Come Blood of the Dead, and Nikolai is the one who outright schemes to overthrow Richtofen's leadership, and ultimately succeeds him as the leader of Primis.
- The board in the Warden's office in Mob of the Dead foreshadows what's really going on in the map. A picture of the lightning striking the Golden Gate Bridge is seen, as well as newspaper clippings about the Warden and "GATORY". While the former foreshadows the mobsters' true fate, the latter is a hint to the fact you're in purgatory.
- Originally thought to be a Breather Episode from the current Story Arc, Mob of the Dead turned out to be perhaps the most important game in the entire series with numerous clues to the endgame.
- Weasel complains that he can't get the name "Nikolai" out of his head for some reason. This turned out to be important especially for Blood of the Dead (see below).
- The opening cinematic of The Giant (and the map itself) uses the Mob of the Dead round music when 2.0 Richtofen emerges from the teleporter. Later, the same cue is used during the first trailer for Revelations.
- If you listen closely to the theatrical mix
of "Dead Again", the musical Easter egg for Der Eisendrache, at 0:55, you can hear the same tune heard in Mob of the Dead's "Where Are We Going" during the cipher that translates to "Let go and the beginning will become the end". - In the end cutscene, after the Apothicons are defeated, Richtofen reveals that he took vials of blood from the Mob gangsters, as their dimension had been sealed off from the Apothicons, creating a paradox that allowed the crew to survive the resetting of the universe. Monty initially moves to erase them from existence, but realizes that the four characters still have a purpose in that they must become Primis, who will save the universe from the Apothicons in Earth's Middle Ages and pave the way for their present selves to do the same. Monty let go, and the beginning (as in, Primis' first battle with the Apothicons) became the end (of the storyline to date, since the cycle is complete).
- Whereas Mob foreshadowed the end of the cycle, it also foreshadowed the breaking of the cycle. The mobsters eventually realize the futility and permanence of their predicament and try to escape and survive, but ultimately, they're forced to accept that the only way the cycle will end is if most of them die, as Weasel breaks the cycle by killing the others. This is ultimately how the Aether story ends. Ultimis and Primis, and indeed everyone else in the series except for Samantha and Eddie all die, so that the latter two can leave the cycle behind and pass on to whatever is next.
- In Revelations, Monty muses about how when you cut a worm in half, the two halves will keep living. He then talks about how eventually, one of them inevitably dies, but seems to lose his train of thought. He's actually hinting that Primis is due to be erased from existence once the battle with the Apothicons ends, them being the half of the worm that dies (with the children in The House being the ones who get to live).
- In Origins, we see strange statues in the likeness of the crew in the Crazy Place. Ultimately, the Origins crew is allowed to live out the rest of their days as the heroes and leaders of the human-Keeper alliance to fend off the Apothicon invasion in Primis, making it clear why there were statues of the crew in the Agarthan place.
- Blood of the Dead:
- Nikolai asks Dempsey to help him overthrow Richtofen so that they can take command. At the end of the map, Nikolai is appointed the new leader of Primis after leaving Richtofen to die (ironically enough, it was post-Revelations Richtofen who put him in charge.
- In radio logs, the Warden is heard conversing with his unseen Satanic master, who demands that Richtofen must suffer. Brutus later speaks in the Apothicon language, expresses a desire for "he"/"they to be freed, and several Apothicon symbols appear in the boss arena. It's pretty clear his master is the Shadow Man. It was later discovered that the player can actually hear the Shadow Man conversing with the Warden if they listen while aiming through the charged Spectral Shield.
- It seems we now know the reason that Weasel knew Nikolai's name. The end of Blood sees the souls of Sal, Finn, and Weasel return to help fight off Brutus, and presumably, this is how he learned of Nikolai, who became the new leader of Primis.
- Die Maschine
- One of the Dark Aether audio logs added involves a German man recounting how he, among others, willingly entered the Dark Aether as part of a plan. It would later be revealed that he was referring to Task Force Baldr, a contingency plan involving a battalion of Nazi soldiers who would hide out in the Dark Aether and then re-emerge to secure Germany's victory in WW2. Unfortunately, they would fall under the influence of the Forsaken.
