A group of prisoners team up to break out of Alcatraz on a dark and lonely night. Three prisoners spend time talking to a security guard when suddenly, another prisoner — Albert “Weasel” Arlington — seems to be in pain. The guard checks up on him, but the Weasel kills him and grabs the keys. He frees the other three prisoners who soon arm themselves with revolvers. Just as it seems the escape plan is going to succeed, the security guard comes back from the dead, and the prisoners have to shoot him several times, being very confused as to what happened. Suddenly, the prison is transformed as if it’s in Hell, with candles on the floor, bodies strung up, and nearly every guard and prisoner turned into the undead. Thus, is the start of one of Call of Duty: Black Ops II maps: “Mob of the Dead”, one of the best maps in the Call of Duty “Zombies” game mode. While a self-contained story, “Mob of the Dead” has a major impact on the wider Zombies story. It helps to set up future installments in the Zombies franchise through its influence in cycles, from the cycle in “Blood of the Dead” to Primis Richtofen and Samantha Maxis’s complex relationship.
One of the ways the map sets up for the future is with these blood vials Primis Richtofen has always worn since “Origins” (another Black Ops II map). The vials contain the blood of two of the prisoners in the cast of “Mob of the Dead”, and Richtofen wears them because they have the special property of allowing the user to live forever. As a result, they cause a repeated cycle of Richtofen dying and then living again, until the Weasel, an infamous bank robber and conman, breaks Richtofen’s cycle by ultimately killing the other prisoners he had originally helped free. This is how “Mob of the Dead” sets up the future. Another map, “Blood of The Dead”, takes place after the Weasel breaks the cycle. We meet the Shadowman, the leader of the Apothicons, a group of dark angels that wishes to corrupt everything. The Shadowman turns out to be the one who trapped the four prisoners’ souls in the first place, to set a trap for Richtofen as he collects more blood vials. Richtofen then has to sacrifice his life to break the new cycle and free the souls from this eternal Hell because it is the only way to break the cycle they are all trapped in. As a result, “Blood of The Dead” leads to the eventual destruction of the multiverse and the creation of a new universe, now set in the story of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.
Another important cycle to talk about is the relationship between Samantha Maxis and Primis Richtofen. Samantha is a young child who can control zombies and has the desire to avenge her father because Richtofen betrayed and killed him due to a disagreement about money and leadership; she also hates Richtofen because he turned her pet dog into a zombie. The two have a relationship that would count as a cycle because of its repeated changes. From Call of Duty: World at War to Call of Duty: Black Ops, they try many times to kill each other. But, they start a friendship near the end of Black Ops II through Black Ops 4. However, later in Black Ops Cold War and the upcoming Black Ops 6, they try to murder each other once again. It seems they will always be enemies throughout many lifetimes and stories. It is a cycle of their own making due to multidimensional madness of which they’ll very likely never break out, at least if the story between the two characters continues to play out this way, unlike how the Weasel broke the cycle in “Mob of The Dead”.
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