The Easter Egg that went too far.

Fetch me their souls...

We all love ourselves a little Easter Egg, don't we? A nod and a wink from the developers to you to remind you that at the end of the day you're still playing a video game and silliness is a given, right? Maybe they'll break the forth wall, maybe they're tell a stupid joke, maybe they'll just reference something from a past game that makes you go: "Huh, that was cool that they did that. I liked that!" And that's all an Easter Egg is supposed to be, a cool little something extra that doesn't get in the way of the core experience that the developers are trying to create. Just something you nod at and acknowledge, and then immediately forget. Like the Skyrim style Iron Helmet you can find encased in glass at the beginning of 'Wolfenstein: Old Blood', the upside-down effect applied on mobs assigned that special name in Minecraft, things of no consequence like that. What an Easter Egg is not supposed to do, is spiral off into it's own reoccurring minigame that spawns a cult-like following of people who don't even really show up for the main game anymore, not when they can pick apart these Easter Eggs.

I remember when I first heard about Nazi Zombie mode of Call of Duty: World at War. "That's really cool" I thought, and thus felt more than justified going around the houses of friends just to play that one zombie map with them when I would never consider doing so for Cod proper because... I mean who wants to play an Online FPS at someone else's house? But Zombies was different, it was trendy, it was cooperative, and it was pretty darn straightforward and simple. Just endless waves of shuffling dead in Nazi uniforms that would try and wear you down wave after wave until they killed you off. Their trick being that the zombies become slightly more powerful until your guns actually can't take them down. It was a fun party time that I think we all enjoyed and certainly didn't expect to see return really ever. Little did we know the seeds of what would become a ten year ongoing narrative were set before the next game was even a glint in Treyarch's eye.

Oh Yeah! Because for whatever reason the developers of this Zombie mode had the seeds of an ongoing story in their head to try and justify this throwaway minigame. Because it's a zombie invasion, so there has to be an explanation; doesn't there? A mystery, with twists and reveals? No. Because at that point what you're doing is twisting up the Easter Egg into something more. Something dangerous. But none of them every cared. Not for a second did they think there would come a point where actual waves of COD fans would show up only to plough the Zombie modes for details. Not a huge number of them perhaps, but a number at all! And that the Zombie mode would then become an expectation of the franchise that needs to be lived up to with each entry to such a point that when the Zombie mode is bad, such as it was in Cod Vanguard, that is a point of genuine criticism! A zombie mode so ubiquitous that the partner studio who handles this franchise, Infinity Ward, got jealous and tried to make their own version called 'Extinction' featuring aliens. But that mode really sucked for some reason. (I just couldn't get into it.)

A video caught my attention on Youtube of someone desperately trying to make the original map of COD Zombies fit into the wider lore of the extensive series of interconnected Lovecraftian zombie modes across the games in some way more significant than just: "This was the first map that the team thought of." And in their ruminations and suppositions I glimpsed a touch of that mania which emanates out of a well drunk deeply and excessively. That rabbit hole you've all put fallen completely down at this point, with no hope of escape. And I thought; "Cod Zombies can't have gotten that wild, can it?" I mean this guy was talking about Elder Gods and multiple Universes and CIA sub divisions and there just ain't no way that COD zombies has facilitated all that through their little survival modes, right? And then I thought about it just a little bit harder.

See I grew off the zombie trend with the rest of the world, and even quicker off the Cod Zombie trend as it became increasingly clearer that these modes weren't exactly being made for the likes of me. Not anymore. Every new map had the basic foundations of what COD Zombies were supposed to be, wrapped over stunningly elaborate Easter Eggs designed to stump internet sleuths with their cryptic nonsensical actions. Whenever I showed up to friends houses to play zombies, it always became a case of "Hold on, let's do the Easter Egg from this tutorial I saw on Youtube" which was always this overly elaborate multi-step process that rewarded some miniscule lore snippet that I could barely understand let alone be satisfied by. I stopped playing the games before they added in actual Easter Egg rewards, but even then I could see that there was a dedicated throng of fans glued to some hyped up meta narrative. So what does that look today?

What if I told you that the current COD zombies narrative consists of a race of primordial extra-dimensional entities known as the Keepers who maintain all of the Aether (existence) from the influence of Dark Aether (the obligatory evil opposite) as it becomes manipulated by an evil offshoot of the keepers known as the Apohticon. Those Apothicon were banished from existence after a war against the two races, with the keepers led by Malcom McDowell, and have spent the millennia since trying to influence the waking world by stretching their influence into reality. Those Apothicon sent elements emanating their influence across the universe and one just happened to land in an American Cowboy town in the middle of nowhere, spawning zombies that kicked off the whole COD Zombies timeline. Oh, and the Keepers call the highest of their order 'Elder Gods' which is where the Lovecraftian influence starts seeping into things. Does that sound sane to you?

That's what happens when you try to write a back story to something as stupid as nazi zombies, but then actually turn around and do a good job of it. I can't lie, the extent of the lore that the zombies mode has is damn impressive and intricate; I only wish it wasn't all tucked behind miniscule snippets of lore you have to uncover and put together like you're researching a dissertation on alien philosophy. Mixing the supernatural with high cosmic fantasy is a bold step for a horror game to take but considering the hoards of loyal fans this mode of COD alone has maintained, I've thinking they've done a damn fine job of it. It's gotten so wild now that the latest COD Vanguard zombies, in way of making up for the truly lacklustre zombie mode it launched with, included a gargantuan colossus boss fight against a Lord of the Dark Aether, and no one batted an eye and thought of it as a strange addition to zombies. (Although, to my understanding this and the last COD zombies entry established a brand new timeline for COD zombies so I'm not sure if this fits in with all that insane lore I just discussed. God this is giving me a headache...)  

I often hear some on-the-sidelines COD fans wish that Activision would just put together a pack of every COD Campaign together and sell that to get fan's attention. But honestly I would much prefer a zombies stand alone game that just mashed together all of the zombie content so I can play it all without having to source a copy of World at War behind the mummified remains of a bombed out Blockbusters. Few games match the commitment to puzzle solving that Treyarch does and even if it's just to see the sights whilst jumping across all the historical zombie backdrops, I think there's a very special COD journey wrapped up totally separate from the main game. COD Zombies went too far; it became a whole other game in and of itself. And I think we're all better for it.