Call of Duty: Black Ops series story recap

The Call of Duty: Black Ops franchise has a long and complex timeline that charts a course through our own real-world history, into a high-tech near future that's… very different to our own. And with six mainline games and a couple of handheld spin-offs, the series has a surprisingly dense timeline for you to wrap your head around.

Treyarch's twisty-turny series has a bombastic narrative that spans over 120 years and even overlaps with key historic events from our own real world timeline. But how exactly does it all tie together?

Well, it's certainly not straightforward, and in the case of Black Ops 3, it's downright confusing. In this gallery--which you can watch in video form here--GameSpot's Adam Mason (no relation to Black Ops' Alex Mason) breaks down the timeline so far.

Adam goes into detail about the popular Black Ops characters and the parts they have to play in the overarching story. Some Black Ops characters cross over into other Call of Duty franchises, but this piece is focused on the Black Ops franchise specifically and the games that definitely take place within its timeline.

And with Black Ops 6 further expanding the timeline when it launches on October 25, there's no better time to dive back into the lore of the series than now.

World at War - 1942-1945

The Black Ops timeline kicks off during the twilight years of the Second World War with an iconic character that will cast quite a shadow across a good chunk of the franchise.

World at War introduces us to Captain Viktor Reznov--voiced by the decidedly not Russian character actor, Gary Oldman--during the Red Army's brutal fight against the Nazis at the Battle of Stalingrad.

Alongside Private Dimitri Petrenko--who we first meet among the dead of a Nazi onslaught, the pair fight their way through the burning ruins of the Russian city while playing the odd game of cat and mouse with enemy snipers. Oh and Reznov gets a classic action movie escape from an exploding building. They eventually link up with their Soviet comrades and launch an attack that ends with the death of Nazi General Heimlich Amsel--the chief perpetrator of the massacres against the Red Army.

World at War - 1942-1945 (continued)

From here the Soviet campaign jumps forward to the tail end of WW2 with the Red Army pushing the Nazis back into the heartland of Germany. We catch back up with Reznov and Petrenko when the former saves the latter during an attack on Seelow Heights. From there, the pair command a tank and then board a train en route to their final destination of Berlin.

And across a brutal week of action in late April 1945, Reznov and Petrenko fight their way through hordes of Nazis all the way to the steps of the Reichstag Building where they finally reach the roof of the government building. But just as Petrenko is about to hoist the flag of the Soviet Union, he's shot and wounded by a Nazi soldier. Reznov jumps in to save the day, literally, by slicing the enemy to shreds before cutting down the Nazi flag and aiding Petrenko to raise the hammer and sickle of the Soviets. And that heroic conclusion brings the Soviet campaign in World at War to a close.

Before we move on, it has to be mentioned that World at War also has an American campaign, which sees the US army fighting across the Pacific theatre of war against the Japanese Imperial Army. But as none of the core characters ever appear again--that is except for a cheeky cameo by Sergeant Roebuck--and none of the action really has any bearing on the wider Black Ops narrative, I'm going to skip right past it here. Chances are you know what happened.

Black Ops - 1945

Next up on our timeline we have the original Black Ops, which largely takes place during the height of the Cold War in the 1960s. Except for one vital mission, which takes place in late 1945…

While the larger narrative of Black Ops takes place via a frame story, which sees the main protagonist, Alex Mason, regaling many of the game' missions via flashbacks, the first mission chronologically speaking is one called Project Nova. This 1945-set operation sees Reznov and Petrenko team up once again to track down a mad Nazi scientist who's been busy creating a bioweapon in the frozen wastes of the Arctic Circle.

The context for this mission has largely been established in the wider game's narrative by this point, but in short the mission centers around the backstory of how the game's big bads, Major General Nikita Dragovich, and his sadistic right hand man, Lev Kravchenko, come to get their hands on a deadly bioweapon simply known as Nova-6.

Black Ops - 1945 (Continued)

In the 1945-set mission, they team up with the lad who built Nova-6, Dr. Freidrich Steiner to complete an unholy trinity of bad eggs. In the process of storming the Nazi arctic base and securing Nova-6 for their treacherous superiors, Reznov and Petrenko suffer greatly, particularly poor Pretenko who is effectively used as a Guinea Pig for Dragovich to see the effects of Nova-6 first hand.

Reznov fares slightly better when he's able to escape during a British ambush on the arctic base. While escaping, he rigs the ship containing Nova-6 with explosives in the hope of destroying the bioweapon, but as we find out later on in the game, he's not exactly successful. Either way, he's eventually captured by his compatriots and for his supposed betrayal against his countrymen, he's locked away in the Vorkuta prison.

Black Ops - 1961-1963

From here we jump forwards 16 years to the year 1961 and the first mission of Black Ops. But first, as mentioned earlier, the bulk of Black Ops is told via flashbacks from the somewhat unreliable narrator that is Alex Mason. Mason has had a rough time of late, and he wakes up strapped to a chair and surrounded by screens with mysterious numbers on them. He's at the mercy of a pair of shadowy figures that demand the secret behind the numbers which will help give them information regarding the whereabouts and plans of Dragovich. And as a result, they hurl a metric tonne of questions at the confused CIA operative.

Their questions trigger a series of flashbacks, which lead us straight into the first mission of the game, which finds Mason, alongside Sergeant Frank Woods, another big player across the Black Ops timeline, tasked with assassinating Fidel Castro in Cuba.

Black Ops - 1961-1963 (Continued)

The squad storm Castro's complex in Cuba and eventually corner and kill the Cuban President--or so they think. Yep, in the aftermath of the mission, Mason is captured and comes face to face with the real Castro, who's happy having a chit chat with Dragovich and Kravchenko. And for his efforts, Mason is carted off to Russia and chucked into Vorkuta Prison and a fortuitous meeting with one Viktor Reznov…

While in Vorkuta, Mason and Reznov become close acquaintances and the pair manage to escape the prison during a prisoner uprising. While Mason is able to get away on a motorbike, Reznov lures the pursuing Russian soldiers away on a truck.

Either way, it's 1963 by this point, and a newly freed Mason links back up with his CIA handler, Jason Hudson, and the pair head to the Pentagon for a meeting with none other than JFK himself. The President gives Mason fresh orders to assassinate Dragovich, and dispatches the operative to Russia to sabotage the Russian space program and kill the Soviet terrorist.

But before he's sent packing on his mission, Mason has something of a brief blip whereby he envisions himself killing JFK--all will be revealed in time. Hudson and Mason ship out to the Soviet’s space port in Kazakhstan and successfully destroy the Soviet's rocket, but during the mission, Dragovich manages to escape, and he goes into hiding for the best part of five years.

Black Ops Cold War - 1968

But before we jump forward those five years to the Vietnam-set missions, there's a level from Black Ops Cold War that forces its way onto the timeline just ahead of Mason's search for Dragovich.

In an operation recalled from the memory of Cold War's main protagonist, Bell, this Vietnam-based interlude sees a squad of marines led by Russel Adler tracking down important intel on another Soviet ne'er do well who goes by the name of Perseus.

In short, they're able to secure the intel, which alerts them to the fact that Perseus and his troops are mounting an ambush to steal an American-made nuclear bomb. Adler, Bell and co. hightail it over to the US base that’s babysitting the nuke, which they secure, only for their chopper to go down in Viet Cong territory. And in a final last ditch effort to rescue the nuke, the team orders an air strike near to their position, which sounds like a recipe for disaster if you ask me. Either way, the strike lands, but the nuke somehow survives. Anyway, we'll catch up with these fellas in the 80s, now it's back to Mason and co.

Black Ops - 1968

Okay, we're back with Mason and Hudson in 1968, and the pair are deployed to Vietnam to join up with their old mate, Frank Woods…

And so from here, Black Ops really plays out the greatest hits of cinema's rendition of the Vietnam War. Huey helicopters blasting out rock music? Check. Russian roulette? Check. Anyway, Mason and co. are there to seek out any leads to Dragovich, and they eventually discover that there's a Soviet defector knocking about, and it only bloody turns out to be Viktor Reznov.

The defector hands over intel that leads Hudson on a merry song and dance to Hong Kong - all in pursuit of a scientist called Dr. Clarke who worked under Dragovich. They manage to reach the mad doctor, who reveals to them the whereabouts of one of Dragovich's secret bases in the Ural mountains. But before they can get the meaning behind the damned numbers broadcast that is at the heart of Dragovich's game plan, Dr. Clarke is shot and killed.

Anyway, back to Vietnam we go as Mason and Woods continue their quest to track Dragovich down. After fighting their way through Viet Cong territory, they're eventually dispatched to check out a crashed plane that supposedly contains a batch of the Nova-6 virus. But in the process of their mission, they're captured by the Viet Cong and taken deep underground.

Meanwhile, Hudson is busy following up on the lead from Dr. Clarke, and this leads him deep into the Ural Mountains and into contact with Dr. Steiner, albeit remotely. Steiner is looking for a back door out of his work with Dragovich and he cuts a deal with the Americans to trade intel about Dragovich's comings and goings in exchange for his own safety. Back with Mason and Woods--they naturally escape after a botched game of Russian roulette, and make their getaway in a daring chopper escape en route to Kravchenko's base. And who does Mason bump into once again at the base? Yep, his mysterious mate, Vikor Reznov.

Black Ops - 1968 (Continued)

Mason, Woods, and Reznov race through the base and eventually confront Kravchenko who gets stabbed by Woods. But the sneaky Soviet has pulled the pins on a quartet of grenades, and Woods sacrifices himself by throwing himself and Kravchenko out of a window to their supposed deaths via a big bang. From here, Mason and Reznov discover the location of Dr. Steiner separately to Hudson--and they set off for a spot of revenge on Rebirth Island--home to the facility creating Nova-6. And so Black Ops speeds towards its conclusion - well, one of them at least - as we get the action that unfolds on Rebirth Island told from 2 different perspectives. The first sees Reznov and Mason storm through Steiner's base en route to the doctor who is promptly shot by the vengeful Russian.

Well, no. You see, this is where Black Ops' narrative pulls the rug out from beneath our feet with the big reveal that Reznov has been a figment of Mason's imagination all this time.

You see, in the second version of events that we see on Rebirth Island, we see Hudson's perspective, and, well, he witnesses Steiner's death at the hands of our hero, Mason. And from here we finally discover the mysterious people behind Mason's interrogation with all the screens and numbers and whatnot.

Hudson unveils himself as one of the interrogators and gives Mason the mother of all info dumps. It turns out that nobody has seen Reznov since the escape at Vorkuta, and he's assumed to be dead. But his impact lives on in what happened to Mason during his time at Vorkuta prison. You see, during his incarceration, Mason was effectively brainwashed by Dragovich and Steiner in a bid to turn him into a sleeper agent that can then cause a bit of chaos stateside.

We already saw a glimpse of this when Mason daydreamed the act of shooting Kennedy. But somehow Reznov has at some point managed to override the programming of Mason’s brainwashing to give him new orders: kill Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner. And Mason has been a good little soldier by following his orders to the letter.

We're not at the game's main conclusion yet. After Hudson gets Mason back on side, he reveals that Dragovich has actually got a load of sleeper agents across the US, and they're all primed to unleash Nova-6 across the country. With Mason their only lead to Dragovich, he finally recalls some long lost intel in his brain that leads them to Dragovich's base of operations aboard a ship. And with all the might of the US Navy backing them up, the team moves out to cut off the head of the snake. Hudson and Mason eventually corner Dragovich, and Mason confirms the kill by simultaneously strangling and drowning the man. Yeah, that'll do it.

And while that's basically the end of the game, there are a couple of little teases that close things out. Firstly, we get a reel of archive footage of JFK with one of the images showing Mason suspiciously close to the US President. While Black Ops doesn't out and out say that Mason killed JFK… it doesn’t say he didn't. And then on top of that, we get confirmation that your friend and mine, Frank Woods survived his encounter with Kravchenko, but is now detained at the Hanoi Hilton, and with that the original Black Ops comes to a close.

Black Ops DS - 1967-68

Happening concurrently to the events of Black Ops are the small screen special ops of the Nintendo DS game of the same name.

While Black Ops DS largely takes place in 1968 during the Vietnam War, there are a few missions that take place in the years preceding the United States campaign in South East Asia. For starters, there's a mission set in 1967, which sees a US Strike Team heading into Cuba to rescue our old mate, Alex Mason, as well as Black Ops DS' chief protagonist, Sergeant Michael Shaw. While the rescue mission is something of a failure, the pair both manage to escape on their own steam.

From here, Black Ops DS sees Shaw head to Vietnam to join the search for Nova-6, which sees him link up with a Russian defector called Yuri Raslov, who has a handful of 1963-set missions, and Captain Patterson. They come up empty handed on the Nova-6 front, but after fresh intel comes their way, they're re-routed to sabotage a Soviet submarine base, which is primed to transport Nova-6 to its final destination in the USA. And with that, the Black Ops timeline is done with the swinging '60s.

Black Ops 2 Prologue - 1973

With the '60s behind us, we enter into a new decade, and our first port of call is the origins of a future villain: Raul Menendez.

Only 10 years old at this point, Raul Menendez is a scared young boy who comes up against the might of the US-backed Contras in his home country of Nicaragua. In an incident that kick-starts his deep hatred of the United States, Raul and his sister Josefina are trapped in a warehouse that is then set alight by an American contingent in a bid to claim the insurance money.

The resulting fire completely disfigures poor Josefina to the point where Raul thinks she is dead. And believing her dead, Raul then seeks to take his own life by slitting his throat with Josefina's locket, only she awakes to stop him before he can see it through. While Raul escapes the warehouse with a deeply scarred Josefina, the experience firmly sets him on a warpath against anything and everything American.

Black Ops Declassified - 1975-1982

Next up on the timeline is the '70s spanning mini-missions of the handheld title, Black Ops Declassified.

The story is framed by a set of investigations held in 1990 by a CIA analyst called Ryan Jackson, which is an incredibly on-the-nose reference to Tom Clancy's fictional agent, Jack Ryan. The ten core missions of Declassified largely take place across the 1970s, except for one, which dips its toes into the 1980s. First up we have a pair of 1975-set missions that take place in Vietnam and star our surviving friend, Frank Woods. Then the game jumps ahead to 1976 where the still-employed brainwashed operative, Alex Mason is tracking down intel from a defector behind the Iron Curtain in East Berlin.

Next up w'’re back with Woods for a trio of USSR-set missions in 1977 that sees an attempt to revive the dormant Project Nova. Woods puts a stop to the attempts and destroys the facility for good measure. And lastly for our time in the '70s, we have another pair of Alex Mason missions - the first an escort mission taking place in Nicaragua, and the second a search and rescue mission in Afghanistan.

And Declassified rounds out its tiny campaign with the aforementioned 1982-set mission that stars an unnamed CIA operative. This mission directly ties into the future events of Black Ops 2, and sees an infiltration of the Menendez Cartel, which leads to the assassination of Jose Luiz Menendez. But with Menendez Sr. out of the picture, it leaves space for his son Raul to step up.

Black Ops Cold War - 1981-1984

Now it's time to rewind back the clocks to 1981 for the events of Black Ops: Cold War.

A new decade requires a new team--led by the aforementioned Russel Adler, who here looks like a sort of Robert Redford on steroids. He drafts in a new look team, which alongside the new recruits, includes a few familiar faces in the likes of Mason and Woods.

The main protagonist of the game is a mysterious new player-created CIA agent simply codenamed Bell who's been brought in due to his past experience encountering the big bad new threat at the heart of the Cold War during the Vietnam War. Said threat goes by the name of Perseus--who in this instance is less Greek hero and more Soviet villain--as the mysterious Russian terrorist is on the war path to undermine the free world.

And so Black Ops Cold War launches into a globetrotting espionage adventure, where Adler and his team systematically hunt down Perseus. They take in the sights either side of the Berlin wall while tracking a Russian mob boss with ties to their quarry; they get embroiled in a bizarre Soviet training regime in a mock Americana; hell, Mason and Woods even visit the old haunt of Dragovich's base in the Ural mountains. Time and again they come away empty handed in their search for the illusive Perseus.

That is until they venture into the belly of the beast by infiltrating the Lubyanka Building--the HQ of the KGB. With help from a Russian double agent called Dmitri Belikov, they finally discover the full ramifications of the threat posed by Perseus, and it goes by the catchy name of Operation Greenlight. Adler, Bell and co. learn from the CIA's very own Jason Hudson that Operation Greenlight is in fact a US-led initiative, which saw bombs planted in every major European city as a countermeasure against a potential Soviet expansion across the European continent. Perseus has managed to find his way into the launch codes for the bombs, which means he can effectively blow up the entirety of Europe and blame it all on the US.

And all of this leads to the shocking revelation behind the true identity of Bell when Adler tries to push the agent for more information on Perseus from the Vietnam War. Reality and memory come crashing together in a bizarre sequence where Bell tries to recall his meeting with Perseus in 1968--only for a far stranger truth to emerge.

Black Ops Cold War - 1981-1984 (Continued)

You see, Bell was never in Vietnam, including that operation to save the nuke mentioned earlier, and that's all because Bell is actually one of Perseus' key agents. In an earlier mission to capture a terrorist on a Turkish airbase, Adler, Mason and Woods all witness Bell being shot and left for dead. But despite this, they retrieve Bell from the wreckage and nurse him back to health--and by nurse him back to health, we mean brainwash him. And so we get the neat twist that Bell has been going through the whole game brainwashed with the aim of coaxing critical intel on Perseus out of him.

When Bell's memory finally comes back to him, he has a simple choice: to reveal the whereabouts of Perseus or to trick his new team with a false location. The non-canon ending--the one in which you lie to your new team--gives us a bizarre conclusion, which sees you gunning down Mason, Woods and all en route to a victory for Perseus.

But the canon ending sees the team all travel to the Solovetsky Islands to dismantle Perseus’s plans for Operation Greenlight by destroying the transmitters he intends to use to blow up the bombs. And with his plan foiled, Perseus goes back into hiding--with the main team never truly coming face to face with their adversary across the game. And Black Ops Cold War's campaign comes to a close with a final clifftop scene between Adler and Bell.

While Adler admits that Bell is a hero for what he's done to counter Perseus, the niceties come to an abrupt end there when Adler whips out a pistol and supposedly shoots his new recruit dead. The screen cuts to black before we can confirm the kill though.

There's one great big elephant in the room that needs to be addressed before we continue.

There is a certain character that pops up during the KGB infiltration mission that, well, kinda throws a few major spanners into the works of this timeline. In the section of the KGB mission where you play as Belikov, you're invited to a little chinwag with the big brass of the Soviet Union--a meeting with Gorbachev no less.

But who else is in attendance? One Imran Zakhaev--who you might know as the main villain of the original Modern Warfare game. To confuse matters even more, he's also in the rebooted Modern Warfare but in a less prominent role.

Now this opens up a whole can of worms for the Black Ops timeline as it potentially suggests that there's a shared universe between Black Ops and Modern Warfare. There's a few problems here though, as the two distinct branches of the Call of Duty franchise don't exactly sit well on the same timeline, largely because of the wildly different world politics and events at play in the two series, and the differing technological advancements as well.

We also see a photo of Imran Zakhaev in the rebooted Modern Warfare, which shows him looking roughly 30 years older than he does in his Cold War cameo despite him only being a year older, so chalk that up as another inconsistency. Most crucially though, Activision hasn't confirmed a connection between the two separate brands either, and, well this leaves Zakhaev's cameo as a KGB bigwig as something of a curiosity.

As for this timeline, we will stick with just the main Black Ops games, and won't speculate as to how the Modern Warfare trilogies fit into the chronology.

Black Ops Cold War multiplayer - 1984

Anyway, with that little detour out the way let’s move further into the 1980s with the multiplayer component of Black Ops Cold War.

The seasonal content for Cold War moves the action ahead to 1984 and sees a new faction of Perseus's operation emerge, led by the fella who was in charge of the Nova-6 production line on Rebirth Island.

This guy goes by the name of Vikhor Kuzmin - or more commonly by his codename Stitch--and in short he's after revenge on Russel Adler who captured and tortured him in the wake of the CIA's strike on Rebirth. Stitch and his team raid the CIA's West Berlin safehouse for intel on Adler, and Stitch ends up leaving a message that coaxes the team to a shopping mall in New Jersey. Oblivious to the fact that it's a clear trap, Adler and his team take the bait and naturally they get ambushed with Adler himself getting kidnapped.

Woods mounts a rescue operation, which sees a CIA strike team assemble and travel to the jungles of Laos in search of their missing leader. Only when they get there, they're drawn into a false hunt for a local Nova-6 production line by one of Stitch's agents called Naga. The team eventually rally and figure out the deception of the Nova-6 fakeout, but it’s too late to rescue Adler, who's been moved onto a new location: Verdansk, which is the original Call of Duty: Warzone map.

Verdansk aside, Stitch's plan moves up a gear when he sends two of his agents--Wraith and Knight--to infiltrate Yamantau in the Ural Mountains. They manage to gather some crucial intel before they nuke the base to kingdom come. Back at their base of operations in Verdansk, Alder is rescued by Woods, but it's of no concern to Stitch who begins to move forward with his ultimate plan of creating a "Greater Russia."

He kicks his plans into gear by forcing a satellite constellation known as Jumpseat to crash in two specific locations--Verdansk and Algeria--which will free up a broadcast frequency that he plans to use. Adler and team scramble to the Algerian crash site and after some gung ho heroics from Adler, he's able to nab one of the data recording devices from the crashed satellite , although he lies about its existence to his team.

With the broadcast frequency cleared for business, Stitch sends another of his team--an agent codenamed Kitsune--to a NATO broadcast station in Germany, where she uploads a new numbers broadcast sequence. As she's initiating the sequence, Woods and a CIA strike team arrive to intercept her, but just as they arrive, the sequence activates, and awakens a pre-programmed signal buried within a handful of sleeper agents on Woods' team. In the ensuing carnage, Woods is shot, but he's ultimately able to escape by the skin of his teeth.

Somehow still living and breathing, Woods meets up with Hudson to discuss the mysterious circumstances behind the missing data recorder from the Algerian crash site, and this leads them to the conclusion that Adler is somehow implicated.

With Adler compromised, Hudson orders Woods to bring Mason into the fold for a cosy reunion with their rogue CIA colleague, and they eventually bring Adler in for questioning in a familiar looking interrogation room. And it's here that everything starts to become clear. You see, while Adler was imprisoned by Stitch, the Perseus agent had him brainwashed with the numbers broadcast to do his bidding, hence the rogue data recorder in Algeria. With Mason on the scene, he helps decode the programming of Adler's brainwashing to bring the agent back to his senses.

Black Ops Cold War multiplayer - 1984 (Continued)

Meanwhile, Stitch has problems back in Verdansk courtesy of a few explosives left by Adler while he was on a secret project in the Soviet territory. While Stitch is able to defuse one of the bombs, a handful of explosives still go off, laying waste to a good chunk of Verdansk. And with Adler rid of his brainwashing, he joins a strike team, which comprises Woods, Hudson, and Mason with the goal of dismantling Stitch's best laid plans.

The team eventually track Stitch down to a gravesite in Verdansk where Adler confronts the terrorist. And it's here that we learn that Perseus has supposedly been dead for over a year, having died from cancer in 1983. Stitch regales Adler with a good 'ol bad guy monologue about how Perseus is more than just one man, and that his actions have now changed the face of the world. And in response to his little speech, Adler gifts him a bullet in the head--although the cutscene cuts to black like it did with Bell's death, so who knows whether Stitch is dead or not.

And Black Ops Cold War rounds out its seasonal content with another character cameo that further confuses the timeline and again hints at a wider Call of Duty shared universe.

Yes, we get another clashing of worlds as Adler and co. bump into one Captain Carver Butcher--an ex SOE operative who also founded the Task Force Vanguard during WW2. While this is his first and only appearance in the Black Ops timeline to date, the character played a prominent role in both Call of Duty: WW2 and Call of Duty: Vanguard, which has led many to speculate that both of those games are also a part of the Black Ops timeline.

They might be--there is no real argument for or against them being folded into the Black Ops chronology. But neither game has any real bearing on the wider story at play in this timeline--hence why they were not included earlier. And more likely, Butcher's inclusion at this point was probably intended as a wider connection within Warzone between Cold War and Vanguard as Butcher goes on to talk about an island called Caldera, which became the main theatre of conflict in Warzone.

Black Ops II (Past Missions) - 1986-1989

Okay, we now reach the decades-spanning events of Black Ops 2, which is set across two distinct time periods - and two different Cold Wars.

While most of Black Ops 2 takes place in 2025, there are a handful of missions that take place in the twilight years of the Cold War between 1986 and 1989. These missions, told via flashback by an aging wheelchair-bound Frank Woods detail the CIA's run-in with the Nicaraguan drug lord and terrorist, Raul Menendez. And so the '80s-set story kicks off in 1986 when Hudson visits a retired Alex Mason who's living with his son, David, in the wilds of Alaska.

Mason the elder is out of the game by this point, but Hudson tempts him back in with a rescue mission in the heat of Angola. You see, our old pal Frank Woods has gone missing during a mission to dismantle an arms smuggling ring, and with the life of his former colleague on the line, Mason agrees to re-enter the fray.

Hudson and Mason eventually track Woods to a pretty grim container floating down the Cubango river. Woods is basically half dead, and so the mission takes on an extra level of difficulty as Woods and Mason race to get the hell out of Angola. En route though Mason bumps right into Raul Menendez, and in an altercation with the Nicaraguan, Mason shoots and deforms the drug lord. The trio manage to escape Angola, and Woods reveals that Menendez was responsible for the capture and torture of his team.

From here, the action relocates to Afghanistan with the CIA actively seeking to capture and kill Menendez, who's in the Middle East to profiteer from the Soviet-Afghan war. With support from the Afghans, the CIA strike team is able to capture one of Menendez's key agents - who only bloody well turns out to be Lev Kravchenko.

Seriously, that man keeps cropping up like a bad habit. Woods interrogates the hell out of Kravchenko, while Mason is gripped by some side effects triggered by Reznov's re-programming of his brainwashing, specifically the orders to kill Kravchenko.

And here’s where Black Ops 2's choice-based gameplay starts to make itself known. If you resist Mason's urge to kill Kravchenko, the Russian reveals that Menendez has moles within the CIA. But the end result of this encounter is the same--Woods straight up murders Kravchenko. In the ensuing chaos, the Afghans betray the CIA team and leave them for dead in the desert. They are eventually rescued by two mysterious travelers, one of whom Mason hallucinates as his old mate Reznov, because that mad bastard will never likely leave him.

With Menendez still at large, the CIA teams up with the Panamanian Army to launch a full scale attack on his Nicaraguan compound. While they manage to fight through his huge private army, they are ultimately unsuccessful in their goal of capturing Menendez, and that is largely down to the rogue actions of Frank Woods, who justifiably wants to get revenge on his past tormentor.

In a fit of pure rage, Woods storms through the compound before confronting Menendez with a live grenade, which supposedly kills the drug lord in a vast fireball. But despite Woods and Mason being led to believe that Menendez was the one carried away in a body bag, it's later revealed that it was in fact his sister Josefina who died in the explosion. And that's all down to the fact that Menendez and the Panamanians--specifically their General, Manuel Noriega--are in league together.

Black Ops II (Past Missions) - 1986-1989

And that leads us right into the final--and most devastating--'80s-set mission of Black Ops 2. You see, Woods and Mason are tasked with capturing Noriega during a sting in Panama, but nothing is as it seems.

When Woods and Mason are separated, Woods is tricked into shooting and killing Mason, who he's tricked into believing is Menendez. Naturally, all of this has been orchestrated by the Nicaraguan terrorist who has kidnapped both Hudson and Mason's son, David.

It turns out that the whole mission was a fake, set-up by Menendez who has coerced Hudson into getting Mason and Woods where he wants them. With Woods believing he has killed Menendez, he goes to confirm the kill, only to get the shock of his life when Menendez himself shows up and shoots Woods in both kneecaps, crippling him for life. And this horrifying turn of events ends with Woods witnessing the death of Hudson as well, only to be spared alongside David--although Menendez promises to come back for him at some point.

Now, as Black Ops 2 has various different endings and outcomes, there's actually a version of this scenario where Mason survives, leading to a lot of speculation that the character could still be alive for future games. But with Black Ops 6 being set in the early 1990s, and the fact that we see a wheelchair-bound Woods in the trailers, it all but confirms that the true canon version of events is the one in which Mason dies.

But the tagline for that game is The Truth Lies, so maybe Mason is alive after all and we're all being played for fools. Anyway, speaking of Black Ops 6…

Black Ops 6 - Early '90s

Yep, Black Ops 6 slots its way into the timeline here in the wake of the devastating conclusion to the 80s flashbacks from Black Ops 2.

As of the making of this timeline, Black Ops 6 has not yet released, but Activision has confirmed that the game is directly tied to the '80s flashbacks of Black Ops 2, which means Mason is dead--or is he? The truth lies, remember? And Woods is now confined to a wheelchair. Black Ops 6 takes place in 1991 in the midst of the Gulf War--the Cold War is over and Saddam Hussein's invasion into Kuwait is in full swing. And with the classic characters taking a back seat, Black Ops 6 introduces us to a new team of fresh recruits.

With Woods taking a more behind-the-scenes role, he works with his new protege, a guy called Troy Marshall. And as Jason Hudson is also dead, Black Ops 6 introduces us to a new CIA Handler, who goes by the name of Jane Harrow. And this trio are thrown into your classic conspiracy spy thriller, when an operation goes sideways, and forces the team to go rogue against a mysterious force that has infiltrated the CIA.

In order to get to the bottom of the shadowy conspiracy, Woods, Marshall, and Harrow recruit a new team, which includes tech expert, Felix Neumann, and assassin, Sevati Dumas. And of course, there's the much-vaunted return of one Russel Adler. He's back after going AWOL for a good chunk of time, and, well, can't be trusted. With Adler back on the scene, he brings intel about the mysterious powers within the CIA--who go by the name of Pantheon--and their ultimate game plan of triggering a devastating weapon.

Naturally, for a Black Ops game, there are numerous player choices and decisions to be made across its barnstorming campaign, which will likely lead to different narrative outcomes. What those outcomes are though, we'll just have to wait and see when the game launches.

Black Ops 2 (Future Missions) - 2014-2025

Okay, we're finally to the near future sections of Black Ops 2, which largely take place in 2025, but first some important build up.

Black Ops 2's future sections start in earnest in 2014 with the founding of a revolutionary movement called Cordis Die, which is led by a figure calling himself Odysseus. You have precisely no guesses for who that mystery person is.

It's Menendez. Obviously.

Oer the next decade or so, Menendez slowly grows the ranks of Cordis Die to the point where they are strong enough to basically trigger a second Cold War between the superpowers of China and the United States--or more accurately NATO and the Chinese-led Strategic Defense Coalition or SDC.

Menendez manages this by destabilizing the Chinese stock exchange via a cyberattack, which forces the country to start throwing its economic weight about. And by 2025, Cordis Die has become so vast that it boasts over two billion members, which is frankly terrifying.

And so with the Second Cold War heating up, a now fully grown David Mason and his colleague, Mike Harper travel to The Vault, which is basically a retirement home for ex-CIA operatives to chat to our old mate, Frank Woods about his run-ins with Menendez. And it turns out that his last run-in with the Nicaraguan was actually quite recently as Menendez actually visited him in the Retirement Home for Old Spies, and this catch-up spurs Woods into a good old fashioned reminiscing session with Mason Jr. and Harper.

The future sections of Black Ops 2 kick off properly--and a lot of it boils down to key choices that the player makes along the way. In short, it follows the Joint Special Operations Command--or JSOC for short--as they try to track down and apprehend Menendez in a bid to stop Cordis Die from tearing the world apart.

At the pointy end of the blade are Mason--who goes by the codename of Section-- and Harper and they kick things off by raiding a Cordis Die compound in Myanmar, which brings them the intel behind Menendez's core plan. You see, Menendez has unearthed a relatively new element by the name of Celerium, which through science is capable of causing some pretty severe computer viruses. The kinds of viruses that Menendez could harness for another cyberattack.

After spying on Menendez in Pakistan, the team discover that he's after something--or someone--known as Karma, who turns out to be an expert hacker by the name of Chloe Lynch. Section and Harper track Lynch down to a giant floating oasis called the Collosus, where they have to fight off an attempt by Cordis Die to kidnap Lynch. Section and Harper fight through and eventually rescue Lynch. There are alternative playthroughs where the hacker can be taken by Cordis Die instead.

JSOC are finally successful in their attempts to capture Menendez when they catch up tho the revolutionary terrorist in Yemen. And to be fair, the bulk of the work is done by one of their local spies--a lad called Farid--who then gets thrust into the awkward position of having to either kill Harper or give himself up and be killed.

And here's where the player's choice really starts to matter, as the choice made here really affects the next couple of missions--specifically who lives and who dies. The canon version of events however sees Farid kill Harper in this pivotal moment, and while he's wracked with guilt over what he's done, he’s calmed by Section when he arrives to apprehend Menendez.

But even with Menendez behind bars aboard the USS Barack Obama, a distinct threat still looms. And of course Menendez doesn't last long in cuffs as he’s freed by a mole that he’s placed within JSOC--one of Section's teammates by the name of Salazar. With Salazar's betrayal allowing Menendez to run free, a lot happens in a short span of time. Firstly poor Farid cops it at the hands of Salazar when he sacrifices himself to save Lynch.

And from here all hell breaks loose as Menendez hacks into Obama’s mainframe, overpowers it with one of his handy viruses, and then hijacks the US military's army of drones. He sends them all over the world, but specifically targets major cities in both the US and China, which leads to both nations going on high alert.

Black Ops 2 (Future Missions) - 2014-2025 (Continued)

And Black Ops 2 reaches its action-packed conclusion with an all out drone attack on the streets of downtown LA. Section and co. lead the charge by protecting the US President en route to hunting down Menendez himself, who they finally track down to another Cordis Die compound in Haiti.

Once Section finally confronts and captures Menendez, we reach the point that triggers Black Ops 2's many endings. They all differ depending on whether Lynch is still alive, and what choice you make regarding the fate of Menendez, but the canon ending sees Lynch survive and Section kill Menendez.

While his death and Lynch's survival ultimately sees Menendez's cyberattack fail, the Cordis Die leader becomes a martyr across the world. Wwith his death confirmed, Cordis Die releases a YouTube video of their leader inciting people to riot across the world--and with 2 billion members, that's one hell of a riot. This leads to a global revolution of sorts--with widespread anarchy across the world, and sets the stage for future events in Black Ops 3 and 4.

But regardless of that, the true ending of Black Ops 2 will always be the mid-credits joke one that sees Menendez and Woods--now free from his wheelchair--rocking out on stage with the band Avenged Sevenfold.

Black Ops 4 - 2040s

Now we're moving even further into the future with the next game on the timeline: Black Ops 4, which has an extremely messy narrative.

And that's saying a lot, as it doesn't actually have that much of a story, due to the fact that Black Ops 4 was the first Call of Duty game to forgo a campaign mode. Okay, so the story in a nutshell sees an overly confusing conflict between a pair of sisters, Savannah and Jessica Mason, who are the daughters of David Mason, and naturally the granddaughters of Alex Mason.

Savannah is in charge of a mysterious experiment called Project Blackout, which is toying with the concept of resurrecting the dead by creating Archetypes - which are basically clones to me and you. 5 of these Archetypes are classic Black Ops characters, including Frank Woods, Jason Hudson, Alex Mason, Viktor Reznov, and Raul Menendez --the latter of whom is somehow also involved in the running of Project Blackout.

Anyway, Savannah and Jessica come to blows over the morality of the project, and their fight escalates to the point where Savannah shoots and supposedly kills her sister. We say supposedly, as nothing is as it seems in this bonkers side story in the Black Ops canon.

Black Ops 4 - 2040s (Continued)

Of all people, it's Frank Woods who tells Savannah that her sister is still alive, and even more weirdly, Savannah and the Woods Archetype are in some sort of relationship, which just leaves me with a lot of questions. Anyway, Jessica does eventually emerge again, but this time as a threat, and this is where Black Ops 4 brings in its Specialists.

You see, the bulk of the game's cutscenes come in the form of intro videos for the 10 Specialists that Savannah recruits to help tackle the threat that Jessica poses. Chief among them are Donnie 'Ruin' Walsh and Erin 'Battery' Baker. Ruin and Battery have prior experience with the Mason family, having been on an earlier botched mission with Savannah’s sister, Jessica, although whether that mission ever took place is up for debate.

All of this leads to… well, nothing actually. You see, the core narrative throughline of Black Ops 4 never got a proper conclusion, so we never got to see the outcome of the battle between Savannah and Jessica.

And as we'll see in Black Ops 3, clones aren't a known thing, so who knows what happened to Project Blackout. There are also a handful of bizarre story threads that don't really go anywhere, most notably a weird dynamic between the Archetypes of Woods and Mason, which doesn't go anywhere, and doesn't make that much sense.

Black Ops 3 - 2065

We finally reach the furthest point on our Black Ops timeline--Black Ops 3. The game takes place in 2065, and is, well, something of a total mindf**k.

The world in Black Ops 3 has been heavily influenced by the fallout from the death of Raul Menendez at the end of Black Ops 2, and in the time since that pivotal day, the planet has found itself on the brink of ruin. With widespread anarchy, constant global upheaval and the ever looming threat of climate change, the superpowers of the world have united to form two key global alliances: the Winslow Accord and the Common Defence Pact.

On top of this, there have been huge technological advancements in the field of directed energy weapons, with the development of a system known as Directed Energy Air Defense--or DEAD for short-- which has rendered the world’s air forces completely useless. As a result of all of this, another Cold War has kicked off, the third in a century by our count, and covert operations are back on the menu, hence more Black Ops well into the 21st century.

Anyway, from here on out, things get confusing and convoluted. After the first two campaign missions, which are set in 2065--the rest of Black Ops 3 can be played in any order you choose--including the final mission of the game. And that's because it’s all a dream.

In short: AI simulations. The longer answer, naturally, will take a little more time to break down. For starters, in Black Ops 3 you can create your own character, and you jump into the shoes of this new recruit during a Winslow Accord Black Ops mission to rescue the Egyptian Prime Minister from a faction known as the Nile River Coalition

The player-character, who can be male or female depending on the player's choice, and their CO, Jakob Hendricks, are successful in rescuing the Egyptian leader, but things go a little sideways for the player during the exfiltration. And by sideways, we mean the player gets both of their arms ripped off by a robot. Oh yeah, there are full on robots knocking about now in the Black Ops timeline as well.

The player-character is rescued right at the last minute by a lad called Commander John Taylor, who is, well, the key to all of this. You see, despite their extensive injuries, the player-character is nursed back to health with a liberal dose of technology now augmenting their body.

And while the rest of the game seems to play out with your cyborg recruit running ops across 2070, the reality is quite different. That's because the player-created character actually dies as a result of their robot attack, and the rest of the game is basically an AI simulation playing out in their savior, John Taylor's consciousness.

So in short, the events you play out in Black Ops 3 are a simulation of Taylor's past adventures that take place before the game itself kicks off.

The key to how all of this works is a new piece of tech known as the Direct Neural Interface--or DNI--which sort of allows all the various CIA members to stay networked within their own minds. The DNI comes under attack by an AI system called Corvus, which basically came into being due to some shady human experimentation with the DNI by a tech company called the Coalescence Corporation.

In events that happen before the game in 2060, a massive explosion takes place at the Singapore HQ of Coalescence as a result of Corvus coming online, and this explosion leads to a chain reaction that pumps an unhealthy amount of Nova-6 into the surrounding areas. The net result of this? 300,000 deaths. Yikes. Fast forward to 2064, and Taylor and his team, made up of Jakob Hendricks, and Rachel Kane, are sent in to investigate a CIA Black Site in Singapore when another CIA team goes dark, and this leads them down the rabbit hole to discovering the truth behind Corvus.

In short, it hinges around the hunt for a lad called Dylan Stone and his missing CIA team who are all implicated in the deactivation of the CIA site in Singapore. In their hunt for Stone, Taylor and co. venture deep into the Coalescence Corporation HQ in Singapore where they discover that Stone is trying to leak intel about the CIA's involvement with the shady tech company and its links to the Singapore disaster. With the CIA compromised, Taylor and his team have to go it alone, and this sends them on a merry old adventure to track down Stone.

In the process of doing so, they methodically eliminate Stone's team members as they encounter them, which drives a wedge between Taylor and Hendricks, who starts to question the morality of their mission.

Black Ops 3 - 2065 (Continued)

It all comes to the boil in a final confrontation between Taylor and Stone at the top of the Lotus Towers in Cairo, where Taylor finally eliminates the rogue CIA agent, albeit with critical injuries that leave him near death. Hendricks comes to the rescue, and Taylor is saved and hailed as a hero within the CIA, and his devastating injuries are healed with the augmentation of cybernetics and a DNI implant.

Now we're coming back full circle to the rescue of the Egyptian Prime Minister, and hopefully things will start to become a little clearer.

Taylor becomes the head of a new Cyber Ops team, and is assigned a new crew, all of whom are kitted out with DNI implants. Only when the player-character dies at the hands of their horrible dismemberment, the AI Corvus is reawoken within their DNI. As Taylor had linked his DNI with the player-characters, and also with his whole Cyber Ops Team, the Corvus AI, is able to infect his entire team, which slowly leads to their deaths.

The Player-Character's consciousness lives on through Taylor's DNI and lives out a simulation of events that are similar, but also different to Taylor's hunt for Dylan Stone. And it's this simulation of events that makes up Black Ops 3's campaign. Only, events play out a little differently when the simulation gets to Lotus Towers, where Taylor fights back against Corvus by ripping out his DNI implant, but ends up getting killed by Hendricks, who has also somehow become infected with Corvus.

And this brings us to the mysterious--and very confusing--place that is the Frozen Forest, which is basically Corvus' attempts at creating a simulation of life after death. Taylor and the player-character reunite within the Forest and are finally able to successfully defeat Corvus to the point where the link between the player-character and Taylor is severed.

Black Ops 3 really is an absolute headache of a narrative to decipher, but there are a handful of clues to the true meaning behind the simulation. For starters, you might notice that each mission starts with a ream of text scrolling along the bottom of the screen, and if you pause during this, you can read the details that make up Taylor's story. Not only that, but each mission has its own protocol code--such as Alpha, Echo etc.--and if you put all of them together they give you the gibberish which is ORWEARETAYL. Or for fans of acronyms: We Are Taylor.

And with that bombshell, that's going to do it for the Black Ops timeline--for now! Black Ops 6 launches on October 25.

Watch the Black Ops story recap video

Check out GameSpot's full Black Ops story recap video, featuring Adam and his cat, to catch up on the entire storyline.