Finally, our lengthy national nightmare is over. After years of waiting and suffering, I can confirm that the next Call of Duty: Black Ops game will bring back the franchise’s iconic “Dude with guns sitting on the cover” iconography. Truly, a time for celebration.
A new year of course means a new entry in Activision’s long-running and super popular first-person shooter series, Call of Duty. As revealed last week, the next game is Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, a new entry in the franchise’s sub-series about spies, future warfare, and conspiracy theories. Weirdly this game is still arriving on last-gen consoles. But I’m not here to chat about that or Black Ops 6 launching on Game Pass. Instead, I’m here to talk about something much more important. Something that was missing in the last two entries. Of course, I’m referring to the random guy sitting and holding pistols on the cover of many Black Ops entries.
How this all started...
This all started in 2010. That’s the year Treyarch and Activision released the original Call of Duty: Black Ops. Black Ops and its cover introduced the world to something new.
Before that entry, previous Call of Duty covers featured men standing, fighting, running, or yelling. Black Ops did something different. It let its cover star chill. “Hey, take a load off dude,” Treyarch told the cover star. “But, hold on to your guns still...this is Call of Duty.”
And thus, the Black Ops franchise began its run of having dudes sitting on the cover holding pistols. And what a glorious time it was.
In 2012, Black Ops II continued the tradition and let the guy on the cover not only sit, but contemplate a bit. One gun rested near his chin as he seemingly pondered a grand idea—or maybe he was just thinking about how Nuketown is rad.
Then in 2015, Black Ops III arrived and gave the sitting soldier with guns a glow-up and a suit of fancy power armor. It was the future, after all. Even when relaxing in the future, one must wear high-tech armor.
You don’t know what you got, until it’s gone
In 2018, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 launched and while everyone was talking about the game’s battle royale mode—Blackout—and its lack of a single-player campaign, I was instead mourning a bigger loss.
This was the first entry in the sub-series to ditch having a dude sitting on the cover with guns. Instead, the cover featured what Call of Duty had done so many times before: Dudes running and screaming. Boring. Sad. Horrendous. Truly, this was the beginning of a dark age.
When Activision announced another new Black Ops game—2020's Cold War—I was hopeful. Perhaps this entry in the Black Ops franchise would fix everything and bring back the dude sitting on the cover with his handguns. Yet, as we all learned in 2020, hope is but a cruel prank played by the universe on those in need.
Cold War, like Black Ops 4, didn’t feature a dude sitting on the cover holding guns. Instead, we got a close-up of two dude’s face split down the middle. I didn’t care. I officially gave up at that point. Black Ops was done letting its cover stars rest while carrying firearms.
The return of the king
When rumors started swirling that the next Call of Duty game would be another Black Ops entry, I felt nothing. The series had moved on. I no longer hoped for a man sitting on the cover with some pistols. I had been burned too many times before.
As you can imagine I was shocked and elated to see the first leaks reveal that Black Ops 6 would feature a man sitting on the cover of the game, holding two pistols, too. Then, on May 28, the game’s official artwork was revealed and there he was in all his glory: Dude sitting on the cover with guns.
It seems Activision and Treyarch are righting a wrong they created back in 2018 when BLOPS 4 ditched the sitting dude on the cover and Cold War doubled down on this tragic turn of events. Finally, Call of Duty: Black Ops is back, baby. Take a seat, soldier, you’ve earned the rest.
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