I've played every Call of Duty: Black Ops game, and will now attempt the impossible: Explaining all of the lore so you can understand Black Ops 7

"The year is 2035," reads the official description for the next Call of Duty. "The world is on the brink of chaos, ravaged by violent conflict and psychological warfare following the events of Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 6."

Hang on. Black Ops 2 and Black Ops 6? That's a red flag, surely. A warning. The shark fin that splits the water in the shallows and lets you know that, right beneath the surface, all is not well.

Yes, the chronology of the Black Ops series is an ungodly mess. Perhaps it was inevitable that a set of stories rooted in breathless cork-board conspiracy would wind up this way. Nevertheless, it falls to maniacs like me who've played every game in the series to pick up the threads and try to knot them into something resembling a timeline. Wish us luck.

But first, a little housekeeping: they didn't bother putting a campaign in Black Ops 4, and Black Ops 3 is set in 2065, so likely has no bearing on the next game. Frankly, I'd happily be brainwashed into forgetting it. It might be no worse a memory than killing JFK, but, well. We'll get to that.

Call of Duty: World at War

(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

Year(s) the game takes place: 1942-1945
Released: 2008
Flags raised over the Reichstag: 1
Is Gary Oldman real? Yes

It bodes dangerously, doesn't it, that the first game in this roundup doesn't belong to the Black Ops series at all. But it must feature, because it co-stars a crucial figure in later BLOPS: one Viktor Reznov. Played with scenery-chewing gusto by Gary Oldman, this Soviet sergeant represents a discomforting thirst for retribution that descends on the Allied armies as they storm into Berlin.

It's his half-crazed fervour and declamatory disdain for empire that stuck with players, and was carried over into future Treyarch games. The vast majority of which would go on to have Black Ops in the title.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

Year(s) the game takes place: 1945-1968
Released: 2010
Is Gary Oldman real? It’s complicated
Is Fidel Castro real? No

Told through flashbacks during an interrogation, Black Ops mostly explores the memories of CIA heavy Alex Mason. I think of this campaign as Forrest Gump with more guns: You're there at the centre of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, taking potshots at Castro; on the launchpad sabotaging the Soviet space program; shooting up 'Nam to the tune of the Rolling Stones.

Throughout you're pursuing an elusive Russian villain named Dragovich who is determined to unleash Nova 6, a chemical weapon stolen from the Nazis, via sleeper agents planted in the US. Eventually, of course, you catch up to him—decoding a broadcast set of numbers and returning to Cuban waters to drown Dragovich personally. "The numbers, Mason!" remains a familiar refrain to Black Ops fans.

Besides the image of bright-orange digits flashing across our eyelids, Black Ops also introduced a couple of key characters to the series. Namely Frank Woods, Mason's throaty partner in war crimes, and Jason Hudson. The latter is Mason's handler, interrogator, and at times, replacement protagonist. In this game, you steer him through a snowy mountain satellite station that would later reappear in the campaign of Black Ops Cold War. His distinctive bald head and shades have seen Hudson survive in the popular memory despite numerous casting changes—switching from Ed Harris to Michael Keaton, and then a succession of less-famous actors.

Viktor Reznov, though, is the strange spirit animal of this story—locked up with Mason in a gulag (you're welcome, Warzone), before leading a breakout and defecting to the US. At least, that's how Mason initially remembers it. As it turns out, Mason was brainwashed during his imprisonment—originally by the Soviets, then by Reznov—and reprogrammed to enact revenge on Dragovich. Reznov was actually killed during the escape from the gulag, and all subsequent Gary Oldman appearances are a figment of your overactive imagination. It's also strongly suggested that you grassy knolled the president, but it's best not to dwell on that blip in an otherwise exemplary career.

"It's a labyrinth of a story," Oldman once said of this campaign. "I'm in it and doing it and even I'm not sure of the outcome. They tried to explain it to me, and it's very, very… it's not confusing, it's just complex."

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War

(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

Year(s) the game takes place: 1968-1981
Released: 2020
Secret services: 4
Is there brainwashing? Yes

It's 1981, a decade or so after the events of Black Ops. Though in reality, more time has passed—Cold War was in fact a throwback campaign, conceived by Raven Software during the Covid pandemic.

In its storyline, Ronald McReagan has authorised a black operation to neutralise Perseus, a Soviet spymaster and boogeyman to keep the Americans up at night. Though the team assembled by ruthless CIA handler Russell Adler is enjoyably international: MI6's Helen Park, Mossad's Lazar and a handful of Vietnam vets. That means more flashbacks, to seed the idea that Perseus has been around for yonks, burrowing under the American intelligence establishment.

Specifically, Perseus has seized control of Operation Greenlight, a damn-stupid US initiative to plant neutron bombs beneath major European cities, so that they could be detonated in the event of a Soviet invasion. Handily for the baddies, Dragovich left a bunch of sleeper agents behind, which Perseus has been able to exploit in furthering his plot.

Assisting from the sidelines are the stars of the original Black Ops—though Mason and Woods mostly sit in the back of a van in your Berlin safehouse, shooting the shit instead of shooting at shit. There's something sweet and almost puppy-dog-ish about them in this configuration, despite their close involvement in some of America's worst moments.

You mainly play as 'Bell', an agent operating under the supervision of Adler. Why is your handler keeping such a close eye on you? Because you're a Perseus agent reprogrammed to do America's bidding. In the closing stages of the campaign, you decide whether to join a CIA assault on Perseus HQ, or turn on Reagan and lead your friends down the garden path, enabling the detonations to go ahead. Your choice determines the outcome, but since there's still a Europe in Black Ops 6, it's clear which ending Raven treated as canon.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

Year(s) the game takes place: 1986-2025
Released: 2012
Retirements cut short: 1
Is Gary Oldman real? No

A sequel that's powerfully resistant to summary. Honestly, you may as well try and nail a shadow to the wall. For starters, Black Ops 2 is set across two time periods—the late 1980s, and the far flung future year of 2025. And that's before you get to the eight possible endings. Yup: this campaign from Treyarch is a bold and unlikely experiment in branching narrative.

Back in the '80s, we find Alex Mason bringing up his young son, David, in Alaska. That's before he's pulled out of retirement to save his old mucker Woods from a mission gone wrong in Angola. Wood has been imprisoned by Raul Menendez—a truly unhinged COD baddy who, if nothing else, sticks in the memory. That's saying something, considering the political assassinations Mason has forgotten about.

(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

Menendez has serious beef not only with America but Mason, Woods and Hudson in particular. That's thanks to a nasty bit of business with a bouncing grenade that killed his sister. And if that's ringing a little absurd, you're going to need to plug your ears for the rest of the paragraph. Because Menendez fakes his own death with the help of real-life Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. And from there, manipulates Woods into executing a kidnapped Mason. For a hat-trick, Menendez then cripples Woods by shooting him in the knees, and kills Hudson by slitting his throat with a locket.

Never, before or since, have I played a videogame quite so histrionic and gratuitous as Black Ops 2.

Deep breath. We're in 2025 now, seeing the world through the eyes of Mason Jr. These days, Menendez is leader of a global populist uprising dubbed Cordis Die. Using a cyberattack to stoke tensions between NATO and the Chinese, Menendez allows his own capture, in order to hack into America's drone fleet. If he's successful, the drones are then sent to Los Angeles to disrupt a G20 summit and upset the world's economy. For revenge! All with the flap of a butterfly's bouncing grenade.

But what actually happens in the end, depending on a variety of malleable factors throughout the campaign?

The drone hack is prevented, or isn't.The US and China patch up their differences, or Menendez breaks out of custody.Mason stays dead, or noncanonically, somehow lives.Menendez kills Woods, then burns himself alive at his sister's graveside. Or plays live onstage with Avenged Sevenfold.

God, I don't know. It's like being handed five possible scripts to the same episode of a soap opera written by Eli Roth. All I know is that afterwards, the director of this campaign joined a Washington thinktank to predict the future of warfare, and the world moved on.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

Year(s) the game takes place: 1991
Released: 2024
Missing kneecaps: 2
Clintons: 1

To recap: we're at least two protagonists down, and one in a wheelchair. It's 1991, and Russell Adler has fled the CIA, having been framed as a mole working for Menendez. He sends the now-wheelchair-bound Frank Woods a cryptic message—"Bishop takes Rook"—which leads to an empty KGB safehouse in Bulgaria.

There, Woods and a new team plot to break Adler out of a CIA black site—wait, was that Bill Clinton we just passed? Adler reveals that an American paramilitary group, Pantheon, has made weapons deals with Saddam Hussein. I'm starting to feel like a disavowed Forrest Gump again, crashing through every major political event in recent US history.

One Iraqi palace assault later, the team is led to a former CIA lab, home to a hallucinogenic bioweapon called Cradle. The trail ultimately winds up in Vorkuta—once the gulag that imprisoned Alex Mason and Viktor Reznov, now a manufacturing facility for Cradle. The virus payload is intended for a false flag attack on the Capitol Building, in order to oust the CIA's current leadership and install Pantheon spies in their place.

That cunning plan is thwarted, though, with a bout of strangulation in a helicopter.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 7

(Image credit: Activision Blizzard)

Year(s) the game takes place: 2035

Released: 2025

Number of days before Menendez burns the world: 3

Is that the dad from This Is Us? Yes

Gosh, who's left? Well: Mason Jr. A decade further into the future after the 2025 events of the 2012 Black Ops 2 campaign, he's now poised to take the lead role in the next COD. Only this time he's played by Milo Ventimiglia—a rare bit of fantastic celebrity casting, since Ventimiglia could absolutely pass as Alex Mason's son. He's joined by Michael Rooker, who is reprising a role from Black Ops 2 that wasn't quite significant enough to make the Previously On.

Hopes are high, though, honestly: Raven is returning to the hotseat after a couple of excellent campaigns in a row, and taking a leap from historical storytelling to science fiction. Mason's team faces a "manipulative enemy who weaponizes fear above all else". That'll be our old pal Menendez. Presumably on a break from touring with Avenged Sevenfold, the preeminent metalcore group of Huntington Beach.

Can't wait to see what he's up to.