Warning: This article may contain spoilers for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Please proceed only if you’re comfortable with potential spoilers.
An observant player recently uncovered a subtle historical inaccuracy in Call of Duty: Black Ops 6’s single-player campaign, sparking a lively discussion about the game’s realism and other possible anachronisms in the series.
The Black Ops franchise has long stood out in the Call of Duty universe, known for its imaginative storytelling and unique takes on historical events through the lens of covert operations and conspiracies. Each game has woven espionage and choice-driven narratives into well-known historical contexts. While Black Ops 6 continues this tradition and has earned praise from figures like Ice T and critics alike, perfection is elusive, as one detail-oriented player recently pointed out.
Reddit user critlvcritlvcritlv shared a screenshot from the campaign mission “Blood Feud,” where the characters Case and Sev are seen investigating a lead along the Mediterranean coast in 1991. In the scene, a van—resembling a 2018 Ford Transit—is parked prominently, despite the mission being set nearly three decades prior. The van also appears to have high-intensity xenon headlights, another anachronism since such lights only became common in the late ’90s.
Players found humor in the oversight, jokingly calling the game “literally unplayable” for this small inaccuracy. Others speculated that the van model may be a reused asset from a more modern campaign, possibly from Modern Warfare 3, or suggested that it might resemble a Fiat Ducato, though this too would still be anachronistic for 1991.
Asset reuse, while valuable for game development efficiency, can sometimes give an impression of “laziness” or compromise on authenticity. While the Like A Dragon series, for instance, reuses assets to build a familiar atmosphere, small oversights in historically set games like Black Ops can stand out more for fans invested in the realism. For most players, however, such details likely go unnoticed and don’t detract from the game’s engaging narrative and action-packed gameplay.
