Nightmare Fuel / Call of Duty: Zombies

Modern Warfare | Call of Duty: World at War | Call of Duty: Black Ops | Call of Duty: Black Ops II | Call of Duty: Black Ops III | Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War | Call of Duty: Ghosts | Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare | Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare | Call of Duty: WWII | Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) | Zombies Mode

They’re not even the worst of your problems.

“I know when you're sleeping
I know the things you're dreaming
I love when you're weeping
Even death can't stop this feeling
And I know you will never give up
No, you will never give up
You will never give up and… die .”

-Elena Siegman, “Lullaby for a Dead Man”

As befitting a zombie horde mode, Zombies has loads and loads of Nightmare Fuel for you to chew on.

That is, if the Nightmare Fuel doesn't chew on you first.

All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

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General

• Dr. Edward Richtofen, and what his occupation is. Especially how demented he was, first getting Maxis and his Daughter teleported to the Moon Base, perfectly willing to kill Samantha, him taking Tank Dempsey, Nikolai, and Takeo and experimenting on them in horrible ways, as well as on Samantha herself in secret. And then in Moon, he takes control of the Zombies by manipulating the other 3 into doing his bidding... all so he can live out his own sadistic pleasures. What a bastard. Even with the reveal that it was the Apothicons who drove him this mad with Element 115, Richtofen still comes off as unnerving.
• Samantha, period. Her creepy psychotic laughter, and her deep, raspy screams intertwining with her innocent voice as she sends zombies to kill the players.
• A subtle one, but the zombies start out in Nacht Der Untoten as simple pale skinned, orange-eyed Nazi soldiers... only Uncanny Valley at worst, right? But then the skin of the models slowly decays through each successive map...
• Starting with Mob of the Dead, a few maps have had jumpscares. Basic images you can only really access by sighting up a certain area with a sniper scope, but some of them are still pretty creepy...except for Classified's;
  • Mob of the Dead: Viewing the fireworks above the map gives you this terrifying, muted face◊.
  • Origins: Looking at the fire in the church tower gives you a grisly skull with the moon in one eye socket◊.
  • Shadows of Evil: A green light near the boxing ring will show you a still of the Ultimis!Richtofen from Origins, except...Zombified◊. Then the Zombies comic and Classified revealed this to actually be canon.
  • Zetsubou No Shima has several quirky jumpscares there and there, but the most unique ones involve your multiplayer companions when playing in co-op. Your partner might be standing in the distance, seemingly doing nothing... but if you approach him, he will grab you, his eyes and orifices will glow red and he will let out an unholy scream before disappearing in a flash of light
  • Blood of the Dead: A gap in the new area of the map you spawn in is perhaps the worst; it's the Shadowman, in his Apothicon form, lunging at you◊. Even locked within the Summoning Key, he's still with you. Watching you.
• The audio logs in the Nazi Zombies bonus mode In Call of Duty World at War, especially the logs in Shi No Numa and Der Riese.
  • And of course, the Hell Hounds. "FETCH ME THEIR SOULS!!". It does not help that they can easily kill you, and half of them EXPLODE.

World at War season

Nacht der Untoten

• Imagine this. You have just completed Call of Duty: World at War's main campaign. You, for some reason, feel like watching the credits until the end. Out of nowhere, this cutscene plays where you find yourself awakening from some kind of crash. Your vision is hazy and some figures are approaching you. The figures appear human at a glance, but their movements are just not right. Suddenly, one of the figures starts running towards you, and right before it attacks you, it cuts to black and the title card appears. This was how some players first experiences of Nazi Zombies was. Especially before Waw's first map pack was released.
• TheSmithPlays, a Zombies-geared YouTuber, admitted to playing the game at a friends house, and on the way home, he ran. Play the map and it’s not hard to see why.
• First of all, the moment the actual gameplay starts. ‘Round 1’ appears in blood red writing, and a laugh that can only be described as demonic is heard. For anyone who’s playing Nazi Zombies for the first time, that alone might tempt you to switch it back off again.
  • This is the only map where the laugh is heard on spawn
• The location. A random, half destroyed bunker located in an abandoned airfield in the middle of god-knows-where. You know you are alone; no one is coming to help you.
• Then, barely visible through the fog, the zombies come. No matter how many you kill, every round, more start coming. You realise this can only end one way.
• The writing on the walls, on the doors. ‘Help’, or at least what would be ‘help’ if finished, is scribbled on the door. You probably aren’t the first one to have this happen to them.
• With the future maps growing in complexity and size, Nacht Der Untoten (especially the original rendition) retroactively adds another layer of horror; the bunker is comparatively cramped, it lacks the resources everything after it has (no Perk-A-Colas, no traps, no monkey bombs, no Pack-A-Punch machines, no turrets, no craftable gadgets, no GobbleGum, and the only Wonder Weapon is the Ray Gun), and it's devoid of any real comic relief. The main protagonists are also just a simple four-man squad of Marines who never speak. The foundation for Nazi Zombies is a barebones onslaught with nowhere to run. A good camping spot, a machine gun of some sort, and the Ray Gun will all be your lifeline.

Verruckt

• Verruckt as a goddamn whole. Compared to the ruined bunker of the previous map, this one is an abandoned, wrecked insane asylum with the sun peeking through the windows and torn roof. It carries a vastly different vibe - whereas the bunker had a Nothing Is Scarier atmosphere, this one makes it very clear what was going on before the player characters arrived. Torture was evidently the name of the game in this establishment, and even now, screams of pain and fear can be heard through the halls, as if there was so much pure EVIL that it's forever haunted the place. Hell, you can even hear a baby wailing at times.
• On this map only, some zombies become incredibly fast as the game goes. What's the most unnerving is their gait - while most other zombies are simply running at you while twitching, some of them are outright sprinting at you, closing the distance between you and them in less than a second and killing you unless you do something. Not to mention the expressions they have, showing a feral snarl full of malice.
• The Game Over song (an instrumental excerpt of "The One", Shi No Numa's Easter egg song) does not make the already terrifying map any more pleasant, either.
• Writing on the wall can be seen in some rooms, such writing may include a bible verse about death, a drawing of a man hanging himself, and various other disturbing things.
• Verruckt is based off of a real life place, The Wittenau Sanitorium, during World War II, The Nazis sent people with disabilities here where they would be mistreated, used for work, or killed.

Shi No Numa

• Shi No Numa has a man hanged by his parachute from the roof of the first room you start in (later revealed to be Peter McCain, a man who infiltrated 935). If you throw a lot of grenades at it, the corpse will eventually fall down. The more eerie part is that touching it is instant death, but instead of killing you it will restart the entire game over, including online multiplayer.
• Same map also features what can be presumed several American soldiers fighting a horde of zombies. It's hard to tell who is winning, and the audio ends without answering the question of what really happened.
  • The audio is used from the Verruckt trailer, and we do get to see the marines winning the fight... right before one of them utters that this is just the beginning.
• Another log has a man tell Peter McCain (the aforementioned hanged parachute guy) that the asylum was not contained, the experiments were carried into some sort of a factory (later revealed to be Der Riese), and there is something wrong about Element 115. It was even scarier back when there was no lore beyond "a group of soldiers fight zombies in an abandoned place without any explanation how did they get there in the first place". The scary robotic voice which announces numbers in a grim monotone also deserves mention. The numbers themselves are the coordinates of Tunguska and Area 51, making one wonder how would these places get involved, at least before the further maps established the lore.
• This map was where the infamous Hellhound rounds were introduced. Every five rounds or so, the area becomes shrouded in fog, while a Scare Chord cuts through the ambience to really spike up the dread. And then the announcer belts out the iconic "FETCH ME THEIR SOULS!" Suddenly, the air becomes filled with growls and bursts of fire as emaciated, flame-shrouded hounds manifest and rush towards you, eager to explode and take you down. At this point, it's not just undead humans you have to be afraid of - you will learn to fear the monstrous canines waiting to be sent out so they can claim your head.
• The Wunderwaffe DG-2 also made its debut in this map. A Lightning Gun designed by Richtofen, it fires powerful lightning bolts that invoke Chain Lightning on crowds, electrocuting and frying bunches of them with every bolt that connects. While undeniably awesome in the players' hands, it still serves as a haunting reminder of what Richtofen and Group 935 were capable of, and if not for the zombies, they would have unleashed untold destruction upon the world at large just by arming regular soldiers with these.
  • Look at a zombie as it gets zapped by the DG-2. It stops in place and quivers while screeching, reaching up for its head, only for it to explode in a burst of gore. It's rather nauseating.
• The player may notice a meteorite of element 115 around the map, It's oddly unsettling.
• In the Doctors Quarters, interacting with the blue book (Richtofen's diary) will cause a scary laugh sound effect to play.

Der Reise

• The final map of the World At War season does not fail to disappoint. It's set Where It All Began, that is, where Group 935 first began developing their Wonder Weapons and experimenting with Element 115 in earnest. It's shrouded in perpetual night, with a lunar eclipse always visible in the sky. And of course, the zombies and hellhounds return to menace you.
• The Monkey Bomb gets introduced here. A cymbal monkey toy with dynamite sticks and a timer strapped to it, it can be deployed to force zombies to gather around it as it plays its obnoxious music... then detonating and taking them out in the blast. Not only is it creepy to look at when you wind it up, but even its voice sounds unnerving.
• Curious about the origin of the hellhounds? Samantha, child of Ludvig Maxis, once owned a Canine Companion named Fluffy. Richtofen and Maxis experimented on her to determine if animals could be teleported around like with humans. As part of Richtofen's betrayal, the experiment went sideways, and Fluffy was turned into the first hellhound... oh, and she was pregnant. Every single hellhound that menaces you? They're all the progeny of Fluffy.

Black Ops season

Kino der Toten

• Nova Crawlers, hoo boy. From their Gollum-like posture and physical appearance to a large toothy mouth that covers most of their face, their wall-crawling abilities and habit of letting out a disorienting Nova-6 gas whenever they die, unless killed with a headshot - these enemies are very horrifying in nature. And on Five these tend to appear in very cramped and narrow hallways of the lab facilities.
• Kino Der Toten is an abandoned, run-down theater filled with zombies. Very little light makes it's way inside, so for the most part, you will be fighting in low-light conditions, against your standard zombies and the newly introduced Crawler Zombies. Between the darkness, the tight corridors, and the map's design, you'll be happy to be in a straight up firefight with the zombies, because that means you know where they are, rather than worry every moment of the match that if you turn a corner you'll run right into a horde.

Ascension

• Ascension is a Soviet cosmodrome that has been overrun by the undead, and the map certainly goes out of its way to emphasize the horror of the apocalypse to come. The skies are a cloudless grey, the moon the only thing in the sky, and bloodstained walls and burning debris are everywhere. Whatever happened before Ultimis arrived on the scene...wasn't pretty.
• The atmosphere is made worse by the whole screen turning grayscale shortly after you arrive at the starting room. When you finally do turn the power switch, the power is brought back on and the color along with it - yet things don't get exactly better thanks to...
• The Space Monkeys. Just like the Hell Hounds above, they get a special round, with the strange red fog descending upon the map and a security alert going off. The monkeys that arrive on lunar landers are not out to kill you, at least not directly. They will instead attack the Perk-a-Cola machines and attempt to steal your perks and leave you vulnerable against the upcoming zombie waves. The more perks you gain, the harder it will be to keep them all under constant check, and if they happen to steal your Jugger-nog on the higher waves and you cannot get it back in time, then you are likely boned beyond recognition, be it lack of points or inability to get to the room in question.
• The audio logs are just as creepy - a researcher is gradually driven mad by Samantha's haunting and ends up sabotaging an experiment and sending his own director Gersh to God knows where. Then, as Black Ops IV reveals, he was sent to the Pentagon to assist in another outbreak roughly happening at the same time... as the Pentagon Thief!

Call of the Dead

• Call of the Dead is mostly a love-letter to horror films and the works of George Romero, and it comes with plenty of Nightmare Fuel to go with it. The setting is an eerie, abandoned Group 935 outpost in the middle of a Siberian wasteland. The zombies emerge from the freezing water, as does George himself. When it's quiet, all you can hear is the sinister ambiance track, "A Cold Wind Blows", aside from George's ever-persistent moans and taunts as he keeps hunting you.

Shangri-La

• The Napalm Zombie and the Shrieker from the map Shangri-La. ESPECIALLY the character models for them.
• The loading screen of Shangri-La, which shows a tornado tearing apart the temples of the supposed paradise, whilst an eclipse is in the background, hanging ominously over the scenes of destruction. The imagery may be confusing, but the piece of music that plays is terrifying. It really gets across the feeling of this being the penultimate map of Black Ops, and how everything is about to come to a head, whether you're ready or not.
  • Further adding to the horror of the loading screen is that the temples are shown being lifted into the air and flung away, and lightning is sparking out of the tornado as it rampages through the would-be paradise. That tornado isn't ordinary, not by a long shot.

Moon

• Moon is an appropriately quiet and eerie map given its set in the cold vacuum of space (on the Moon, of course). There's little sound, and the mysterious MPD that you know is not of this Earth and soon enough discover is how Richtofen plans to take over the zombies and succeeds.
  • The Game Over music. Or, rather, lack of thereof. All you get to hear is two demonic laughs in a complete silence as the camera pans over Area 51 or the Moon surface (depends on where the players died). In addition, the second laugh is much deeper than the first.
  • The Easter egg also gave us the first direct hint at the hidden evils of the series, far greater than Richtofen. Samantha warns him, "The darkness will swallow you whole! Something far more terrible than you lies here!" We later learn that terrible "something" is the Shadowman and the Apothicons.
  • The backstory in the audio logs is pretty creepy as it shows how Richtofen became insane: he teleported to the Moon and touched the MPD, and began to hear voices from the Aether. He lost his mind and we later learn the Shadow Man was manipulating him all along to bring about the destruction of Earth. After you complete the Easter Egg, if you are playing as Samantha in Richtofen's body, and go near the MPD, you can hear the incessant whispering from the Aether.
  • Maxis comes up with a way to save Earth from Richtofen: blow it up. He has the gang launch three nukes laced with 115 at Earth, reducing it to a crumbling, lava-filled wasteland. We get to see more of the pleasant scenery in the next game.

Nintendo DS port

• The Nintendo DS version of the first Black Ops game also got its own Zombies mode, and, suffice to say, it's very different. The gameplay style is more similar to Nacht der Untoten from World at War than the mainline game, both in terms of difficulty and the overall setting.
  • You thought being taken out of action with two swings from zombies? Here, have fun going down in just one hit, no matter what.
  • Perk-a-Cola machines are gone entirely, making the survival even more tense than usual. No traps either, only barricades and a good firearm to keep the dead away from you.
  • Zombies have red eyes and let out downright inhuman groans while also being much harder to put down for good. The Demonic Announcer is still present, making it hard to guess if Samantha is the one in control or someone else took the place.
  • The laugh at the beginning of the first round may give the demonic cackle from Nacht der Untoten a run for its money due to sounding even more deranged.
  • The player characters do not speak at all, just like in Nacht der Untoten, and you can have only two players in party when playing co-op. We can only assume they are the two protagonists from the single player campaign of that DS port.
  • Good news: the Mystery Box is still there and won't move anywhere since it has only one spawn location, one door away from you on all maps. Bad news? Said door costs 5000 points, you will automatically take any weapon the box gives you, no matter how useless it may be, there are no Wonder Weapons (not even a Raygun) and there is no Pack-a-Punch either. Good luck, you're gonna need it very bad.
  • Hellhounds are back, and now you have to aim down specifically to kill them; good luck doing so with DS control scheme. They spawn along with normal zombies and do not have a special round, but at least they spawn outside your position alongside other enemies and will have to knock the barricade down first.
  • The controls are much trickier, requiring you to aim carefully to knock the zombies down before they get to you, and one mistake may well cost you the whole game. The cramped layout of all four levels is just another addition to the whole list of things stacked against you.
  • One map, Temple, has Viet Kong zombies with rifles impaled through their bodies. Either they were already dead before being brought to life or someone tried to bayonet the dead and it didn't work. Both possibilities are equally disturbing.
  • The power-ups are still here, but they are spoken out by a different announcer, and you can't have more than one at the same time.

Black Ops II season

TranZit

• The view of post-apocalyptic Earth provided by the mode’s menu. Gone is the blue and green we know, having been ruined by black rock and hellish lava exposed by the destruction wreaked by the rockets. The oceans are gone; the Pacific Ocean in particular is littered with giant stretches of nothing but lava, and the Atlantic Ocean has been completely vaporized, in its place vast oceans of lava. And this is all your fault.
  • Someone actually managed to extract an in-game texture of what the world looks like after Richtofen's Grand Scheme. It is not pretty. The hemispheres have been sundered by the missiles, leaving nothing but rivers of lava hundreds of miles long to scar the surface of the Earth, entire continents have either been badly torn apart by the rockets or vaporized entirely, and the ash that covers the planet is so thick that the world we know is barely recognizable beneath it all. And that was from just three missiles empowered by Element 115. Had there been more on hand, Earth would've been vaporized outright and the post-Moon storyline never would've happened, period.
• The radio logs on some of the maps are pretty creepy, thanks to a combination of Apocalyptic Log and Nothing Is Scarier that really puts Richtofen's Grand Scheme into perspective.
  • A drunken man smugly calls bullshit on Maxis' plans, and states that him and his crew are destroying all electronics to prevent people from hearing his voice. The kicker is that he's completely right. He claims that Maxis wants to "destroy [the] planet and kill [them] all" which, he technically tried to back on Moon, but, indeed, after Victis carries out all of his orders on each map (which is the canon route), Maxis does indeed destroy the planet to reach Agartha and reunite with Samantha.
  • A man nervously asks a hushed voice who he is, while trying to make sense of what he's saying. Eventually, it seems to ask him to harm or kill his friends, and he starts to "see" what it's saying, to which he states that he'll do "it", for "The Flesh".
  • In another, a man tries to make a distress call, as two factions are fiercely at war with one another, with one side taking orders from an electronic voice (Maxis) and one literally hearing a voice in their heads (Richtofen). Eventually, one or both factions finds this man, and seems to kill him in some sort of electronic blast as the signal cuts out. The official timeline only made things worse by revealing that eventually both factions massacred each other, and then zombies joined the fray and finished most of survivors.
• Hanford, Washington is a good look at how most of the world has looked for the last ten years. The sun is barely visible through a constant cloud of debris from the missiles, there are lots of stretches of lava and no water in sight. And of course the unending hordes of fast, hungry zombies just to make it all the better who aren’t slowed down by any of the natural hazards. It’s literally hell on earth, and honestly one has to wonder if the ones who died when the missiles hit were the lucky ones.
• The Nothing Is Scarier factor when you play one of the Survival or Grief maps as the generic CDC and CIA characters. And whereas Victis and other past survivors at least heard the voices promising things could be fixed, since Richtofen and Maxis are busy with Victis, the generic characters never hear from them besides Richtofen's standard announcer quotes. There's also no quotes from the player characters, and no music, just the deafening silence of the hellish landscape of Hanford and the sounds of the zombies coming for you. This is, unfortunately, what every other survivor on Earth outside of Victis had to go through. No promise of anything getting better, just the same sense of inevitable doom that the Marines of Nacht and Verruckt had.

Die Rise

• George Barkley, Assistant Director of the CDC, explains that the infection is now airborne, rendering exposure inevitable. He also lists the symptoms of an infected person, which includes psychosis, delusion, short-term memory loss, and paranoia. The problem is that he himself shows all of these symptoms. He repeats the symptom of short-term memory loss immediately after first listing it, advises survivors to watch their fellow survivors closely, frantically asks them if they could possibly be plotting against them, and explains that he was "forced" to murder fourteen members of his team.
• A woman tearfully begs for help as her group left her all alone. They left her over creative differences, and she explains that "the German man" (Richtofen) has stopped speaking to her. Taking what we know from the lore so far, this likely means that her former team wanted to follow Maxis' orders while she wanted to follow Richtofen's. This also likely means that she ate zombie flesh to even hear his voice personally.
• A member of "The Flesh" attempts to convince listeners to join the cult, promising it's the only way to survive in the new world. He has all the insane rambling and rapturous charisma of any real-life cult leader worth their salt. Notably, this is the same group Stuhlinger broke away from and claims the others members of Victis would execute him if they found out. This is also the same group that recruited that poor sap from Tranzit's radio channel - and it seems to be the same guy who agreed to follow Richtofen's orders for the Flesh, now having lost all his sanity in the process.
• In Shanghai, China, the debris has cleared up for the most part letting sunshine in, thankfully. But you still get an excellent view at the absolute flood of debris from the Earth’s destruction now orbiting the planet, with pieces of it constantly raining down.
• The Jumping Jacks are like unholy cross breeds of the Nova crawlers and Xenomorphs, relentlessly swarming you. In the intro cutscene, one of them messily eats Russman! Fortunately, he gets better, courtesy of Richtofen.
• The fact that Richtofen traps the Victis team in a time loop until they either die or complete the mission he has set out for them. This is even after, canonically, they've already lit the first tower for Maxis. He was not kidding when he said that he would make the Earth his plaything, starting with the (unlucky) survivors.
• As Samuel is established to have eaten zombie flesh, he can hear voices from the Aether. He doesn't just hear Richtofen's, either; he hears incessant moaning and wailing. He could be hearing the cries of the lost souls now transformed into zombies, or the something much worse than Richtofen hiding in the Aether that Samantha warned him about. We'll never know.

Mob of the Dead

Mob of the Dead is probably the darkest Zombies map ever, and needed its' own page on its' own work page.

Buried

• Picture this: You listened to Dr. Maxis' commands throughout the whole Black Ops II storyline, right? After all, he was as much a victim of Richtofen's machinations as you were, so surely he's the Big Good out to save the world, right? So you complete the final Easter Egg of Buried, a very difficult one, and think that it's finally done, you can fix this. Unfortunately, Maxis' plan ends with Earth being destroyed...just so he can reunite with his Daughter...bummer, man! Even worse? This was the canon ending, until Monty reset everything.
  • Not that Richtofen's ending is much better. If you've completed the Easter Eggs in his favor, he assumes ultimate power and declares the entire Earth to be his plaything. Maxis is helpless as Richtofen kills him, and eternally damns Samantha's soul. Even worse? Richtofen begins possessing Samuel's body and can't get out. Essentially, either choice would not really benefit the Victis group.
  • When all four players have successfully completed Maxis' quests, and you completed the last step, Maxis ominously roars for you to press the button, and to commence "the purge". That more than anything signifies that you have made a grave mistake, but even still, you might as well press the button since you've come this far, right?
• Buried is notable for being the defining example of a Downer Ending in the series. It's the canonical end of the Ultimis timeline, meaning that despite everything, Earth is destroyed and humanity with it, all because of two scientists at war with each other's egos. But even worse? Neither wins, because both are just pawns for the Apothicons and the Shadowman, who have been manipulating them to help destroy the Earth from the start.
• The setting by the time of Buried in general. The Earth has been a wasteland for ten years, and the debris from the missiles is only just clearing up. Most of humanity is dead by this point, which means that for once, there's a very real and frightening reason why you don't encounter any other people. Buried is in general a desolate, hopeless place and ultimately where the Earth suffers damnation. Even the sight of the Pack-A-Punch is unnerving, since it's nestled in the gazebo, lonely for decades and powered by a giant battery (we don't learn it was Monty who put it there and Jebediah Brown who originally crafted it until much later). The whispering from the mansion is also creepy, as is the creepy ambiance since you're literally at the end of the world.
• The haunted house. Inside are ghosts that can steal the players points, not to mention the ghosts can appear scary to some players.
  • When standing outside the haunted house, the player can hear unintelligible whispering
• In the spawn room, looking to the right of the hole that leads underground, the player can see a large hole, this is the rift. It can trigger some people's fear of heights.

Origins

• In Origins, Maxis began to succumb to 115 infection. Richtofen's solution? Lobotomizing him and putting his brain in a jar. You can find Maxis' emaciated, gnarled corpse with its' scalp missing, and Maxis' head empty and his face frozen in a scream.
  • The opening cutscene of Origins, when it isn't being epically awesome, anyways. The first minute or so depicts an army of German Army redshirts digging into some old caves under Richtofen and Maxis' direction, and to say that they Dug Too Deep would be a big understatement. Samantha mentions that the crew of the dig site had no idea what their efforts would unearth, and they were right. About five seconds after the miners break through into an old, sealed tunnel, Templar zombies swarm out and proceed to kill everyone there in a very short Curbstomp Battle. However brief the scene is, the sight of zombies chasing down and eating the miners is pretty freaky.

Black Ops III season

Shadows of Evil

• The Shadows Of Evil, the whole thing. This game mode has a 1930s Lovecraftian tone to it. You know what this means.
• Even the good bits aren't exactly good either. For example, you can access a sort of Super Mode by "cursing" yourself, briefly turning you into a floating, tentacled, chaotic mass of eldritch destruction that leaves a trail of shadows, that aside from using Shock and Awe to power things up, can also tear through pretty much anything in your path.
• Dead Ops Arcade 2: Cyber's Avengening is normally a fun little 80s-game-inspired top-down romp a la Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon... up until you get to the fourth round of an area and find the First Person powerup. Gone is the awareness you had because of the top-down view, allowing the bad guys to ambush you more easily. Gone as well is the upbeat, synthesized music - replaced with nothing but the screaming of the enemies that you couldn't hear before. Grabbing the powerup is essentially 30 seconds of changing from Dead Ops Arcade 2 to Nazi Zombies.
• Some of the jumpscares the maps like to pull. More often than not they will put something in the far distance, which requires a sniper rifle scope to see. You scope in, look at the scenery, and then the jumpscare appears. Most of the time they aren't that creepy, they just surprise you. Shadows of Evil?◊

Zetsubou No Shima

• So, you don't find zombies scary anymore? Well, Zetsubou No shima has dog-sized spiders, one the size of a truck, plants that eat zombies and a giant zombie/plant hybrid thing that will eat downed players. Not to mention the whole thing happend on an island where Division 9 had been experimenting with plants. The atmosphere is such that you'll be glad zombies are attacking because you won't be alone anymore.
• For bonus points? One of those zombie/plant hybrids (named Thrashers)? It's the original Takeo after Division 9 experimented on him.
• If the player survives up to Round 50, they're rewarded with a glimpse of something huge and monstrous living out in the swamps beyond Division 9's facility.
• Another horrific Easter Egg may pop up when you notice a fellow player standing there in the distance - but should you approach him, he will grab you and let out an unearthy shriek as his eyes and his mouth will both glow red. Good luck playing the map in co-op!

Gorod Krovi

• Gorod Krovi is a city that's in the midst of a massive war, with artillery fire constantly firing up into the sky, massive dragons flying around (and some even perching in places to temporarily lock them off with fire breath), Russian Manglers that wear heavy armor and bear an Arm Cannon, and large drones firing lighting bolts from their tendrils serving as the special round enemies. This map definitely has a theme of War Is Hell, and makes it clear that Primus may be badasses, but they're still a small group caught in the crossfire of a huge, brutal battle, one where the outcome may not be in their favor.
• As awesome as the intro cinematic is, playing the map proper makes for some prime horror, because this time you're not fighting the undead menace well after the place has fallen - instead, you've arrived while in the middle of a brutal war where it's hard to tell who's got the upper hand. It gives the feeling that while you're busy trying to help Ultimis!Nikolai, the conflict could abruptly shift over to having you in the crosshairs of both forces and then getting torn apart before you can mount a response. And indeed, the Ultimis!Nikolai does turn on you once you are done with most of the Easter Egg.
• The safehouse where the Pack-A-Punch machine is located. You can only get there via a tamed dragon mount which takes you well away from the main area to a desolate, but still standing building. You're still not safe from zombies, of course, but nothing different happens here... unless you wish to retrieve the Dragon Strike. If so, once you begin the sequence, suddenly you're forced to Hold the Line against waves upon waves of zombies and Manglers back to back, with little breaks in between. It starts with them going after one side of the building, then switching over to another, and another... and then all sides are suddenly under siege. Even if you picked up Wonder Weapons from the Box, there's still the feeling of having to fight tooth and nail to avoid being overwhelmed by the horde, the likes of which haven't been seen before until this point. It doesn't help that there's klaxons blaring during this whole sequence which can add to the panic. By the time you get to the end (if you don't die that is), you're likely to want to just leave the place altogether. And you have to do this every time you play the game if you want the Dragon Strike...

Revelations

• The entire concept of this map. The perfect world of the House is torn to pieces by the Shadow Man, and now, numerous segments from previous maps in the series are scattered around the void of the Aether while the Apothicons lurk about. One even outright eats the Pack-A-Punch machine at the start of the match, and you have to chain it down with a device in Nacht Der Untoten in order to enter its stomach - where there lies more zombies (who look partially digested and emaciated), spiders, and other monsters waiting to destroy you. Luckily you can jump back out after using the Pack-A-Punch, but it's still a frightful experience.
• The Apothicons, period. Not only do they turn out to be the most evil entities in all of the zombies story line, but they're also colossal monstrosities that put the dragons from Gorod Krovi to shame.
• The House was supposed to be a perfect world, right? The Shadow Man completely shatters it, reducing it to small islands floating in the Aether without any sun or peace in it, in a few minutes.
• The new version of Mob of the Dead really plays up the hellish atmosphere of the map (since it pretty much was set in Hell to begin with). When you are on the second floor and are standing over the dark, inaccessible area (on the other side of which is the open jail cell), you hear nightmarish moans and cries from the damned. And you just know three of them are inevitably Sal, Billy, and Finn, now condemned to suffer for all eternity. It's really quite horrific to listen to and also rather heartbreaking since you can do nothing to help them (even if they deserved it or not). With the way the below area is all dark and you only hear the wailing while standing over it, you could easily interpret yourself as standing over the brink of hell itself.
• In the ending cutscene, we get a stern reminder of how powerful Monty really is. As he talks to the four, he says that they have no place in his world and he should erase them. Which he then does, without changing his expression, tone or anything while we see our four heroes completely powerless to stop him. Thankfully, he changes his mind before they are completly erased.

Zombies Chronicles

• The Zombies Chronicles map pack spiced up some of the classic maps, and by spiced up, we mean "made more frightening".
  • Shi No Numa gets a greatly enhanced ambiance with incessant, eerie laughs and cries from hyenas and other animals.
  • Kino gets more stylized, saturated lighting that makes it look creepier and more psychedelic. Worse? If you listen closely, you can hear an infant crying out from somewhere within the theater.
  • Moon gets some kinda cheesy sounding round music, but the enhanced visuals make the MPD and space look more imposing.
• The loading screen after you end a match of Zombies in Black Ops III. It’s shots of the woods, in the dead of night, with the sounds of the zombies moaning. That’s it.

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Black Ops IV season

Chaos story

• Thought everything was okay after the Apothicons were defeated? Nope, turns out in another universe, the zombies are still very much a problem even without the Apothicons and 115.
• The new Mystery Box appears to be formed by the corpses of petrified, innocent people. At stations where the box is absent, you can see those poor souls helplessly still flailing around slowly.
• In IX, a man is sacrificed by some ruler and a horrific, visceral boss zombie monster erupts from his chest, Prometheus style.
• The ending cutscene. The golden masked man who has been announcing the entire thing gets pissed off at Scarlett after she demands freedom is denied and spat in his face. Cue him ordering their execution, and everyone except Bruno panics as the axe wielder raises his axe. Cue a swing and a cut to black, whereupon we see Diego's severed head, bleeding, as well as the other's corpses.

Blood of the Dead

• Primis arrives in Alcatraz, which is even scarier than before thanks to next-gen technology and rendering. The ensuing chase as Primis attempts to flee the horde contains numerous close calls as they try to fight off the zombies in such tight quarters. And ultimately, they're in the same situation as the mobsters were - they're trapped in Purgatory, with no way out.
• The cinematic trailer for Blood of the Dead really plays up the hopelessness of the situation Primis finds themselves in. It shows many awesome moments, but the overall tone of the trailer is despairing as each of the characters are desperate for a way out; they are tired of fighting and all are on the verge of giving up. Richtofen looks lost for answers and a plan, Nikolai is upset to the point of throwing down his weapon and letting the zombies tear him apart, Dempsey sits alone in the warden's office looking at a revolver in a shot eerily similar to contemplating suicide, and Takeo screams in rage drenched in the blood of countless demonic zombies. Blood of the Dead plays up all the horror of Mob of the Dead but makes it clear that, unlike the unrepentant mobsters, Primus are losing their will to continue in this unrelenting nightmare... and that this might be the end. Accompanying it are scenes of Brutus dumping Takeo's dead body into the sea, chaining Nikolai up over a river of lava, Dempsey slowly crawling over a pile of fallen corpses, and Richtofen sticking his hand in lava, covering it with horrendous blisters and bloodied skin. Have it all played to a redux of "Where are We Going" with a sombre choir and new lyrics and you have a trailer which effectively emphasises "This is Hell".
• The new radios recorded by the Warden, who is revealed to have killed himself so he could revive as Brutus in the purgatory dimension. He heard a voice from the Shadow Man in his head, who instructed him to kill Sal, Finn, Billy, and Weasel (though by this point Weasel has already died), and also to capture and make Richtofen suffer. It's truly unnerving to hear the Warden come unraveled due to his delusional loyalty to his evil master.
  • If you don't fulfill the right conditions, you will only hear the Warden's voice, without the Shadow Man's responses. While the Shadow Man is still scary, hearing the Warden converse with an unheard voice is arguably far scarier, especially if it's before you figure out that the Apothicons created and are behind the purgatory dimension.
• We get to see the Warden's human corpse in his bedroom and it's nothing short of horrific. His body has been fried by the electric chair he used on himself, and there's barely any skin left. His rib cage has been ruptured as well.
• One step of the egg makes every single soul currently trapped in Alcatraz visible. And we mean ALL of them. Every single cell is bursting to the seams with crying, shouting and screaming human souls. It wasn't just the four mobsters trapped here, it was everyone.
  • During one of the latter steps when you need to use Morse code, if you fail, you get to hear slow, distorted, deep evil laughter. Even if we now know the Apothicons are behind this Purgatory, it doesn't make it any less scary.
  • The "NO ONE ESCAPES ALIVE" sign now appears on the roof, among the debris of the Icarus. Thought you could escape via plane? Think again.
  • And just to keep going, Blood reveals another grisly, and somewhat sad, revelation; Weasel never broke the cycle. It's him, Sal and Finn that attack Brutus at the end of the Easter Egg, not Sal, Finn and Billy. He's still there. Even with the Zombies and Brutus, he kept getting killed by the others. He had to keep repeating the cycle, over and over and over again. For god knows how long.

Alpha Omega

• Alpha Omega shows that, for all his efforts to keep the universe afloat and safe from the Apothicons, Monty is a power-hungry, selfish prick who is willing to keep the eternal cycle of torment of the Aether story going if it means he stays in control of the Aether. None of the suffering of the heroes means a damn to him since any escape from the cycle means that he loses his power. And if that wasn't enough, in the end cutscene, when he discovers Ultimis and Primis's new mission to overthrow him, he violently turns on Maxis (who had nothing to do with the group's mission, mind you), and transforms into his monstrous true form. Monty then tears Maxis to pieces and pretty much rips out the front of his body in his teeth. Worse? The subsequent map subtly implies that, in spite of all this, Monty is still not doing it out of malice, but rather believing himself to be doing the right thing.

Tag der Toten

• Would you like to hear the reason behind the Wild West town's presence back in Buried? Tag Der Toten has several phonograph messages recorded by Jebediah Brown, the town blacksmith, recording how one town resident went into a local mine, turned hostile and killed Jebediah's mother by tearing her throat out before being killed on the spot. After going into the mine himself, the blacksmith starts seeing and interacting with the Keepers. As they request him to build certain artifacts that would play the role in the future lore events, the man builds the Pack-a-Punch machine, followed by the Vril Vessel... and then everything goes to hell. First, violence in the town increases, then the blacksmith's dead mother starts appearing as a ghost. Finally, upon the man completing the final step, the whole town is transported underground, with zombies overwhelming the town population and eventually killing Jebediah himself.

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Black Ops Cold War

• The enhanced movement of the zombies to match yours. Because you now have much more verticality and flexibility with the new parkour system and unlimited sprint, the zombies are much faster and can flank you from pretty much everywhere. They are much smarter and more persistent at devouring you than ever before.
• The intro to the launch map, Die Maschine. An adult Samantha Maxis forces a disgruntled Grigori Weaver to watch a leaked tape with footage of "Projekt Endstation", an abandoned Nazi experiment designed to weaponize the power of the Dark Aether. A Russian fireteam is called in to investigate, but they quickly find out that they're in way over their heads and are promptly slaughtered. When the Russians come back for a cleanup operation, they send one soldier inside with a medal and a handshake, and when he walks inside, he looks back, hesitantly, and has the door closed on him, which gets welded. Considering we don't see him once Requiem touches down...
• Mystery Boxes can now Jump Scare you. Because of course they can.
  • To make it worse, it's not a picture like the jumpscares listed above. No. It's a full, 3D model, practically its own enemy. That jumps out and attacks you. And it even deals damage. The damn thing is REAL.
• Speaking of the Mystery Box, the laughter when you get the rabbit that replaces the Teddy Bear is so much worse than before. From Samantha's giggle to a bunch of creepy childish laughs that echo distantly, followed by what can only be described as a demonic machine laughing at you. Whoever this new Demonic Announcer is, from their deep voice to the above Jumpscare and this, their sadism gives Ultimis Richtofen a run for his money.
• The very first appearance of a Megaton Zombie elicits an Oh, Crap! reaction from all three announcers, who also comment on its high radioactivity.
  • The Megaton splitting into two upon being sufficiently damaged has an element of Body Horror to it. Which only gets worse after you learn that these monsters are clones of a Scientist who mutated into one of these.
• The "Mimics" of Firebase Z, as the name implies, is able to pretend to be an item of high value, like a Support streak or a Wonder Weapon. If you see one of these things just laying around an otherwise quiet spot, don't trust it! Lest you want to be treated to a good, old-fashioned Jump Scare and a very angry, tentacled abomination. Even worse in Outbreak, where they can pretend to be supply crates. You know, the things you open all the time?
• Firebase Z also brings back the Russian Mangler as its Elite enemy. It's battered, soaked in blood, and properly pissed off.
• While Krazny Soldats in round-based zombies are nothing more than a pain in the ass to fight, they're a different story in Outbreak. You might see one a couple hundred yards away, and you might have a high power sniper rifle, so that should be an easy kill, right? Doing so will cause you to get its attention, where upon it immediately jetpacks hundreds of feet to straight in front of you.
• The Disciples, the new Elite enemy of Mauer der Toten. They don't look too scary at first, but when you damage them enough, not only do they start to resemble the Apothicons of old, but take a look at their torsos..◊
• Pretty much the entirety of the underground portions of Mauer, especially the damn train. Turned somewhat into Nightmare Retardant, however, by one of Kravchenko's lines immediately afterward.
  Kravchenko: I hope you're smart enough to avoid being hit by a train.

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