Campaign[edit]

Characters and setting[edit]

From left to right: Alex Mason, Jason Hudson, and Robert McNamara

Black Ops takes place between 1961 and 1968 during both the Cold War and the Vietnam War, 16
years to 23 years after the events of World at War. It portrays a secret history of CIA clandestine
black operations carried out behind enemy lines. Missions take place in various locations around the
globe such as the Ural Mountains, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Hong Kong, Laos, South Vietnam, the Arctic
Circle and Siberia. The single-player campaign revolves around an experimental chemical weapon
codenamed "Nova-6". This weapon is bound to be used by sleeper agents in the United States, who
are infused with sequences of numbers, once broadcasts are transmitted from an unknown numbers
station.
The player controls the protagonist, CIA SAD/SOG operative and former U.S. Marine Force Recon
Captain Alex Mason (Sam Worthington). Occasionally, CIA paramilitary operations officer Jason
Hudson (Ed Harris) and some other characters are playable to progress the story. Alex is often
joined by fellow operatives Force Recon Master Sergeant Frank Woods (James C. Burns) and Navy
UDT Chief Joseph Bowman (Ice Cube), while Jason teams up with Grigori Weaver (Gene Farber), a
Russian-born field operative. Viktor Reznov (Gary Oldman), a key character from the Soviet
campaign in World at War, returns along with that game's Russian protagonist Dimitri Petrenko
(Boris Kievsky) also making an appearance. Oldman also voices Daniel Clarke, a British scientist
assisting in the development of Project Nova. Opposing the CIA are the leaders of Project Nova:
former Red Army General Nikita Dragovich (Eamon Hunt), Colonel Lev Kravchenko (Andrew Divoff),
and former Nazi scientist Doctor Friedrich Steiner (Mark Bramhall). Black Ops also features several
historical figures. During the story, Mason meets John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, and Fidel
Castro.

Story[edit]

On April 17, 1961, Mason, Woods, and Bowman take part in Operation 40 to assassinate Fidel
Castro and assist the CIA sponsored Cuban exiles during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Mason
unwittingly shoots Castro's body double, but he elects to stay behind to protect the extraction plane
with Woods and Bowman aboard from an oncoming blockade, before being captured by the real
Castro, who hands him over to the Soviet Union. Imprisoned at Vorkuta Gulag, Mason befriends
former Red Army soldier Viktor Reznov. Reznov gives Mason the identities of their enemies: Major
General Nikita Dragovich, his right-hand man Colonel Lev Kravchenko, and ex-Nazi scientist
Friedrich Steiner, who defected to the Soviet Union. On October 29, 1945, Reznov, Petrenko, and
their platoon were sent to extract Steiner from a Nazi base in the Arctic. However, they were
betrayed by Dragovich, who tested Steiner's nerve gas known as "Nova 6" on Petrenko's squad,
killing them. Reznov was spared the same fate when British commandos, also interested in
acquiring Nova 6, attacked the Soviets. In the chaos, Reznov destroyed the Nova 6 and escaped,
only to be captured by the Soviets and sent to Vorkuta. The Soviets later recreated Nova 6 with the
help of a British scientist, Daniel Clarke.
By 1963, Mason and Reznov spark an uprising to flee the prison. Reznov stays behind luring the
guards away to facilitate Mason's escape. On November 10, 1963, Mason meets with President
John F. Kennedy, who authorizes a mission to assassinate Dragovich. Mason, Woods, Bowman, and
Weaver are dispatched to the Baikonur Cosmodrome to disrupt the Soviet space program and
eliminate members of "Ascension", a Soviet program giving sanctuary to Nazi scientists in exchange
for their knowledge. The team destroys the Soyuz spacecraft, while Woods apparently kills
Dragovich in a car explosion with a commandeered BTR.
On January 21, 1968, Mason's team is sent to Vietnam as part of MACV-SOG. After defending Khe
Sanh from a North Vietnamese assault, they recover a dossier on Dragovich from a Russian
defector being held by the North Vietnamese Army in Hue City during the Tet Offensive. The defector
is revealed to be Reznov, who joins them as they penetrate Laos to recover a Nova 6 shipment from
a downed Soviet plane. They are captured by Viet Cong and Spetznaz forces at the crash site.
Bowman is executed, but Woods and Mason manage to escape, hijacking a Mi-24 Hind and
crippling the Ho Chi Minh trail before rescuing Reznov from Kravchenko's base. They confront
Kravchenko and Woods stabs him, but Kravchenko pulls the pins off of grenades strapped to
himself, forcing Woods to sacrifice himself by pushing both himself and Kravchenko out of a window.
In the aftermath, Mason presumes the two dead.
Meanwhile, Hudson and Weaver interrogate Clarke in Kowloon City. Clarke reveals the location of a
hidden facility in Mount Yamantau before being killed by Dragovich's men. Hudson and Weaver
destroy the base and receive a transmission from Steiner requesting to meet at Rebirth Island, as
Dragovich has begun killing loose ends. Mason and Reznov head there to assassinate Steiner at the
same time, succeeding just as Hudson and Weaver arrive. Unknown to Mason, Hudson and Weaver
had witnessed Mason carrying out the act alone while declaring himself to be Reznov, prompting the
pair to interrogate him.
Dragovich has sleeper cells placed within each US State capital which, when ordered by the
numbers broadcast, will release the Nova 6 gas. As a result, the U.S., now at DEFCON 2, is
preparing a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, which would result in World War III and
Mutual Assured Destruction. Hudson reveals that while Mason was imprisoned at Vorkuta,
Dragovich reverse-engineered the C.I.A.'s MKUltra program and brainwashed him to serve as a
Soviet sleeper agent and assassinate Kennedy. Reznov died during the breakout, and the Soviet
defector in Hue had actually been killed before Mason reached him. Mason's visions of Reznov are a
result of dissociative identity disorder caused by the brainwashing program. Prior to the Vorkuta
uprising, Reznov reprogrammed Mason to assassinate Dragovich, Kravchenko, and Steiner instead.
With Steiner's death, Mason is the only person left with any knowledge of the location of Dragovich's
broadcast station, from which he transmits instructions to his sleeper cells via numerical sequences,
having additionally had the knowledge of how to decipher the numbers implanted into his mind at
Vorkuta. Mason finally remembers the location of the broadcast station: a Russian cargo ship named
Rusalka off the coast of Cuba. An assault on the Rusalka begins, with Mason and Hudson infiltrating
the underwater submarine base protecting the ship. Hudson calls in the United States Navy to
destroy the Rusalka. Mason and Hudson confront Dragovich in the lower levels of the facility, where
Mason strangles and drowns Dragovich before escaping with Hudson. They regroup with Weaver,
who declares victory.
Archive footage of President Kennedy before his assassination on November 22, 1963, is shown,
revealing Mason was among onlookers who watched Kennedy disembark from Air Force One at
Love Field. His presence, and Dragovich's taunt before his death, suggest that Mason may have
carried out his initial programming.