After Call of Duty: Warzone’s nuke event blew up current-day Verdansk, players were transported back in time to 1984.
This time travel has so far gone unexplained. Why are we all of a sudden fighting on the map circa 1984? Well, players reckon they’ve worked it out.
During the deployment cutscene that plays at the start of a game of Warzone, you see the word “Flashback” on the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
This, coupled with the emergence of a Warzone survey that reportedly mentions a new fast-travel system via “red doors”, has led to a theory for what’s happening.
The Red Door was the name of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War’s leaked internal alpha, which emerged in July. We didn’t know it at the time, but red doors would go on to play a key role in the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War campaign.
THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD.
In that campaign, red doors appeared in the trippy mission Break on Through. Here, you experience a flashback to Vietnam 1968 and, under the influence of CIA operative Adler, try to reach a bunker via a red door. There’s even an achievement tied to the red door and what you do with it.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War – Break on through Mission Walkthrough | No Commentary Watch on YouTube
The theory, then, is Verdansk ’84 puts players in the same situation as the player character who, in Black Ops Cold War, relives their Vietnam mission.
If this is true, it’s not time travel that’s happening in Warzone. It’s a good old-fashioned flashback mission.
This makes sense in the context of the ongoing Black Ops Cold War story, which revolves around the hunt for Adler in Verdansk. Villain Stitch kidnapped Adler and has him holed up somewhere. Perhaps we’re playing a flashback of this rescue mission, in the same way we played a flashback of the Vietnam mission in Black Ops Cold War.