The Call of Duty series is almost 20 years old now. In that time there have been 19 mainline game releases and 47 releases altogether. That is a staggering amount of games for just one series. Over the course of these many releases, the series has undergone changes and evolved over time in order to keep things fresh, meet player expectations, and more.
As such, it is understandable that some people, or even many people, forget certain things about the series over the years. With each major game coming out once a year, the Call of Duty franchise sometimes moves too fast to keep track of for very long. Here are a few details that some players may have forgotten after a while.
6 The Creepiness of CoD: WAW
Call of Duty: World at War is by far the creepiest game in the series. It's a game that makes a conscious attempt to portray WW2 as a kind of horror game much of the time, as a way of reinforcing the idea that war is and always will be a hellish nightmare of incomprehensible proportions.
The game can be even creepier than ones remembers, however. Aside from obviously creepy elements like the music, visual style, and of course, Nazi Zombies, WAW also often has little moments of horror sprinkled in for players to find. Many of these can be found on multiplayer maps where, if the player stands in a certain location, they can hear things like ominous whispering, children crying, blood-curling screams, and more.
5 It Used To Be a PC Exclusive
That's right, the franchise that would one day become the console juggernaut to unseat Halo as the premiere first-person shooter started out as exclusive to PC. It released for Windows on October 29th 2003 and on November 7th 2003 for Mac OS X. The game did technically release for mobile later in 2004, though it was on Nokia's N-Gage. The game wouldn't see a proper console port until 2009 with the release of Call of Duty Classic, which is an enhanced version of the game available for download on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 marketplaces.
Aside from being upscaled to HD, the game is virtually identical to the original PC version. This is especially true for some controls and design features, which likely felt alien to many veteran COD players on console. Glacially slow weapon swapping as a consequence of translating the game from M&KB to controller is one such example.
4 The Influence of Band of Brothers
Playing the original COD titles is an interesting experience because of how not-massive the series was in its infancy when compared to today. The games weren't as confident to try their own thing every time, and so they wore their influences on their sleeves. One such influence early on was the HBO miniseries, Band of Brothers, which focuses on Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division and their service during World War II.
The original COD also focuses on American Paratroopers, even making the first mission the drop into Normandy just before D-Day. The atmosphere, characters, missions and sound design are all clearly reminiscent of the show.
3 Call of Duty 3: The Forgotten Entry
Though it was a successful COD title, hardly anyone remembers this Treyarch developed game. COD games nowadays are typically media events and become culturally significant for at least a little while. COD 3, however, was just the stopgap on the way to the real media event and culturally significant, COD 4: Modern Warfare, which effectively deleted COD 3 from everyone's brains as soon as it released.
The game unfortunately has left almost zero legacy after its release. Even Treyarch's next COD game, World at War, would go in a completely different and unique direction, and introduce fan favorite modes like the Nazi Zombies mode. COD 3 doesn't have anything other sort. WAW reuses some assets from COD 3, but beyond this it's almost like the game never existed.
2 The Political Edge of Modern Warfare
While MW19 is a pretty politically charged game, COD 4: Modern Warfare was the first to truly experiment with political themes. Released in 2007, Modern Warfare took aim at the state of the world at the time in order to tell its story. At that time, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were in full swing, and frustration with America's foreign policy was growing fast. As a result, fighting against Nazis was becoming less relevant (although this theme would return with a vengeance).
In switching to current day, COD 4 is able to offer a reasonably effective critique of the Middle East centric foreign policy of the early 2000s, its roots and its failings. Later COD titles rarely got so direct with political themes as the first Modern Warfare did. Even its sequels buried those themes under a heap of Hollywood action setpieces and melodrama, if the games had anything political to say at all.
1 The Chinese Free to Play Exclusive
Simply titled Call of Duty Online, this free-to-play game was a Chinese exclusive, online-only game developed by Activision Shanghai and Raven Software. It released in 2012 in beta form but later had its full release in 2015. The game generally included maps, weapons, and modes from multiple COD titles, and received updates over the years adding more things from the latest games in the series.
The game also had plenty of alterations as a result of being a Chinese exclusive. For one, Zombies mode was replaced with Cyborg mode in order to comply with Chinese censorship laws. The game was also notable for featuring loot box and microtransaction practices that are quite common today, though it was the first in the series to have them. In 2021, publisher Tencent Games shut the game down and encouraged players to switch to COD: Mobile.