Call of Duty Black Ops Easter Eggs: The Main Menu Secrets

2 min read

The interrogation chair you start in is not a cutscene. Break out of it and there is a working terminal, an arcade game and a 1977 text adventure behind it.

The best Call of Duty Black Ops easter eggs are in the 2010 game, and the most famous one is running before you press a single button on the menu.

Getting out of the chair

The main menu is not a static screen — you are sitting in the interrogation chair, in first person, and you can break free. Mash the left and right triggers (or the equivalent keys on PC) repeatedly and Mason pulls loose, letting you stand up and walk around the room behind the menu.

The terminal

Behind the chair is a working CIA terminal. It accepts typed commands, and it is a genuine little file system: login credentials scattered through the campaign open up mail and documents that fill in background on Dragovich, the Nova 6 project and the wider programme.

Dead Ops Arcade

Type DOA or 3ARC UNLOCK at the terminal and you unlock Dead Ops Arcade, a full top-down twin-stick zombie shooter in the vein of Smash TV. It is not a joke mode — it has its own progression, and Treyarch has brought versions of it back in later games, including Cold War.

Zork

Type ZORK and the terminal boots the 1977 Infocom text adventure. It is a playable copy, parser and all, sitting inside a first-person shooter's menu.

Elsewhere in the series

Zombies maps carry their own elaborate multi-step easter eggs — the musical tracks triggered by finding three hidden objects became a Treyarch signature, and the main quest lines on maps like Ascension and Moon are full easter eggs in their own right. The menu secrets are simply the ones you can reach in thirty seconds.