The Most Memorable Call of Duty Characters Article

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The Most Memorable Call of Duty Characters

Jul 25, 2021 | 0 Votes

by jose - rate Being one of the longest lived FPS gaming series, Call of Duty has made it's mark in the gaming community. But what makes the game stand out are the men and women who play an integral part in the lore of the game. WWGDB - The Most Memorable Call of Duty Characters

WWGDB - The Most Memorable Call of Duty Characters

In 2003, a WW2-based FPS adventure game was released, it was called Call of Duty. The game became so popular that successive iterations of the game were continually released in the following years. The main theme of the game was WW2 multiplayer and campaign mode combat and it was delivered well. WW2 was quite a hot topic in gaming in the very early stages of the 21st Century and with the rise of the Internet and online gaming, Call of Duty started to make its mark.

In 2007 Activision, the publisher and one of the oldest companies in the gaming industry took a drastic step by veering away from the WW2 theme and releasing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. From that point on, Call of Duty or COD (for short) became a household name as far as PC gamers were concerned. The franchise started releasing iterations almost yearly and titles such as COD World at War, Black Ops, Ghosts, and Advanced Warfare became instant hits in the gaming community. To date, the COD franchise has begun to release versions of the game for the mobile market and to this, COD Modern Warfare and Warzone are starting to gain equal popularity to that of the PC counterparts.

One of the aspects of the COD series is that the game is played via multi-player online combat. However, aside from multi-player mode, Call of duty has a very strong impact storyline that spans the whole saga of the gaming series. From way back to the 1960s to the near future, the story is an intricate web of events and characters that are usually interconnected to each other that a particular main character may appear more than once through the game's iterations. This has led to the campaign mode of the game becoming really very popular.

This being said, let's take a look at some of the main characters who made Call of Duty quite a dramatic, thrilling, and thought-provoking gaming experience.

Ronald "Red" Daniels

Call of Duty wouldn't probably be around today if not for the game's primary character, Red Daniels. The original hero of the game's WW2 starting campaign adventure, Daniels was a Corporal in the 1st Infantry Division of the US Army deployed in Europe in 1944 to fight the Germans. Players get to experience Daniels' life as he goes through his tour of duty starting with the invasion at Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge and finally surviving and going home (with honors) to his wife and newborn son in 1945. As far as COD and its beginnings are concerned, there is no other character as memorable as Corporal Red Daniels.

Capt John Price

With The release of COD 4: Modern Warfare, a new hero was able to capture the hearts of the gaming masses. With combat switching to modern warfare, Capt. John Price aka Bravo Six is a British SAS officer who sort of reminds one of Chuck Norris (with his cigar), an all-around, all-weather, all situational battlefield mission commander who leads his Task Force 141 team of experts in deployments all over the world. It's even probably safe to say that from this point on, almost the entire COD series revolves around the adventures, missions, and campaigns of Capt. Price and his men and both the good and bad guys they encounter along the way. As mentioned, COD played in campaign mode aside from a lot of action, is full of drama as well, and to this the good Capt. and his men deliver it very nicely.

Capt. John MacTavish

Soap is the prodigy of Capt. Price. Soap is one of the strongest characters of COD despite that he was situated as more of a support role to Capt. Price. Effective, efficient, and dependable, the no-nonsense and loyal MacTavish got the job done where and when it mattered. Sadly, his death was one of the most emotionally gut-wrenching scenes in the series with Capt. Price holding his battered body and wailing like a father who lost his son.

Alex Mason

Another of the most memorable and intriguing characters, Alex Mason functions as one of the foundation characters of the game series. A retired USMC Captain turned CIA agent, Mason's storyline serves as the backbone for COD Black-Ops and it's sequels. Mason lived a hard life being captured by the then Soviet Russians and brainwashed for their geo-political objectives though being able to escape with the help of another memorable character Victor Reznov. Throughout Black-Ops, Mason relieves memories and past experiences planted into his mind while fulfilling his mission for the CIA (talk about being double brainwashed). The twists and turns that surround Mason's character and how it has affected those around him as well as his family make up for a very interesting storyline.

Victor Reznov

A Russian hero who hails all the way back from WW2 and the Battle of Stalingrad, Victor Reznov is an all-around good guy whose actions and objectives align for world peace and the good of humanity. Crossing paths with Alex Mason during his incarceration in a soviet labor prison, he befriends Mason and helps him not only escape but counteract the deep brainwashing done to him by Soviet high command. Reznov makes several important appearances in Mason's mind as well as his actual life.

Frank Woods

comes as a black-ops character with a very strong impact as he portrays a very trustworthy and dependable support role in the storyline. Being the best friend of Alex Mason, Woods is also an ex USMC turned CIA operative who works with Mason on their interdictive missions around the world. His strongest impact is in cementing the ever twisting story in the fight against global terrorism which has become Call of Duty’s mainstream theme throughout its iteration of titles. Woods dies an old man in a senior home for US military vets but is resurrected as an archetype (along with Mason) in the later stages of the COD lore.

Ghost

One of the characters who has made a very strong impression in the COD franchise is the Ghost himself, Simon Riley. A SAS operative who went through so much heartache and suffering in life yet manages to come out as a masked hero. His story is one of the most emotionally charged akin to that of John MacTavish. Unlike Soap, however, he was murdered in cold blood by his top superior Gen. Shepherd despite proving himself as a loyal soldier and performing his Call of Duty to the very end. Ghost has been so instrumental in assisting Price and MacTavish throughout their campaigns and his sudden death at the hands of a traitor is a big loss to many fans of the COD franchise.

General Shepherd

Not all of the memorable characters of COD are good guys. The villains of the series do leave a much stronger impression in the minds of the gaming community though with a rather bad taste. Probably the biggest prick in the series is the man who led Task Force 141 and the Shadow Company, Gen. Shepherd himself. Manipulating global events to acquire a huge army and turn himself into a sterling war hero, megalomaniac Shepherd will stoop as low as killing his own best operatives (Ghost and Roach) to hide evidence that would point to him as the mastermind of it all. Unfortunate for him, both Capt. Price and Soap know his dirty secrets and were relentless in avenging their friends. The Gen. finally gets his due when Soap darts Shepherd's head with the dagger he was stabbed with in order to save Capt. Price's life.

Jonathan Irons

Jonathan Irons is the main bad guy in COD Advanced Warfare. The CEO and founder of Atlas Corporation which happens to be the largest Private Military Company Worldwide, Irons is bent on world domination. After losing his son in a mission involving high-tech military-grade exoskeletons, he recruits Jack Mitchell (his son's best friend) to unwittingly do his dirty work for him. However, Mitchell finds out that Irons is simply setting things up (just like Gen. Shepherd) to make it appear that the world needs him and rebels against his employer. Not only that but Irons is executing a plan of mass genocide but Mitchell and his group stop him in time. Kevin Spacey did a great job in portraying Irons.

Raul Menendez

The Nicaraguan drug lord on America's most wanted list seems to have more lives than a cat. Fueled by his hatred towards the West and love for his disfigured sister who unfortunately suffered so much due to tragic circumstances, Menendez is able to build up an army as well as a huge drug cartel and amass power with a huge score to settle with Mason and Woods when his sister dies from a grenade that was meant for him. The Call of Duty series is still ongoing and Menendez although killed while trying to escape prison is alive again courtesy of the Archetype program run by Mason's own granddaughter. Expect more from this antagonist in the years to come.

Vladimir Makarov

To understand who Vladimir Makarov is, one has to be familiar with the man who was his mentor and superior the way Price was to Soap. That man is Imran Zakhaev who started the Soviet UltraNationalist when the Berlin Wall fell in the 1990s. Zakhaev harbored a deep hatred for the west which was then passed on to Makarov. Zakhaev and Makarov were both members of the 4 Horsemen terrorist leadership group prevalent in the series. Unlike Zakhaev though, Makarov was a soldier for the Russian Army and even became a Spetsnaz before leaving that life and working for Zakhaev. After Zakhaev is taken down by TF141, Makarov takes over and vows to avenge his death. Also, Makarov is probably the most sadistic bad guy in the Call of Duty franchise who will stoop so low as to kill even an innocent child and torture people just for the fun of it. Fortunately, he meets his doom when a very angry Capt. Price catches up to him and winds a rope around his neck, and hangs him up to pay for his inhuman crimes.

Cmdr. Farah Karim

The first female lead (the main character) in the Call of Duty series. Farah is actually a new character and appears for the first time in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019. An Iraqi-born freedom fighter, she appears alongside Gaz and Alex (rumored to be Simon “Ghost” Riley). Cmdr. Farah Karim heads the Militia forces fighting for freedom and being funded by the West. Working alongside the men that would later become TF141, Farah fought to save her people from Russian toxic gas and eliminated the soviets mainly responsible for the death of her family and that of countless others.

Sgt. Charlotte “Charly” Johnstone

Sgt. Charlotte “Charly” Johnstone is a new (albeit getting to be popular) character for Call of Duty. Charly grew up traveling through Africa with her father hunting down poachers in both Tanzania and Kenya. An expert tracker, she joined the British Army afterward and was accepted into the Special Reconnaissance Regiment of the SAS. Charly was instrumental in liberating a besieged CIA safe house and became good friends with Agent Kate Laswell after which she was inducted into the International Anti-Terrorist Coalition where she is currently assigned to. Expect more of Sgt. Johnstone in future versions of COD.

There are a lot of characters in Call of Duty and in my opinion, all of them are memorable in one way or the other. However, since we cannot include them all, the list had to be streamed down to these few. Nevertheless, for those who have played the games or are still planning to, just remember that the main characters through the series are all somehow linked to each other, and in order to really know them one must practically know them all. The character relationships with one another (as friend or foe) establish themselves as the basis for the strong, violent, emotionally charged, and dramatic lore of the game. Without all these characters, Call of Duty probably would never be what it is today.