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The Real Crime Diary Blog Legal and Courtroom Analyzing Every Torture Scene in Call of Duty — All 46 of Them
Legal and Courtroom

Analyzing Every Torture Scene in Call of Duty — All 46 of Them

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  • June 29, 2024
  • 50 Comments
  • 1 minute read
  • 14 Views
  • 1 week ago



Pain destroys one’s world, and, in that silence, torturers impose the myth of the state’s legitimacy. | Sign up for Nebula: / Buy a Nebula Gift Card:

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SPECIAL THANKS:
Cameron Kunzelman for additional voices:
Alex Adams for additional background information
Hat Man and Nebula Studios for graphs and motion graphics
AFGuidesHD for allowing me to use their gameplay footage:
Iavor Todorov for additional background information

SOURCES:
Torture and Democracy by Darius Rejali
How to Justify Torture: Inside the Ticking Bomb Scenario by Alex Adams
Anatomy of Torture by Ron Hassner
Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? by Michael Sandel
Serial Season 4 – Guantánamo:
U.N. Convention against Torture:
Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture:
Wait, There’s Torture in Zootopia? by Casey Delehanty and Erin Kearns:
Guantánamo by the Numbers– ACLU:
Report on Guantanamo Detainees: A Profile of 517 Detainees Through Analysis of Department of Defense Data by Mark Denbeaux, Joshua Benbeaux, and John Gregorek:
Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship by Hannah Arendt:
History of Guantanamo Bay– CBC News– The National:
Every Torture Scene in Call of Duty– MrSp3ctre:
Policing in Japan: A Study on Making Crime by Setsuo Miyazawa

Media shown: Call of Duty: 2, 3, 4: Modern Warfare, World at War, Modern Warfare 2, Black Ops, Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops II, Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, Black Ops III, Infinite Warfare, WWII, Black Ops 4, Modern Warfare (2019), Cold War, Vanguard, Modern Warfare II (2022), Modern Warfare III (2023), Black Ops 6

Music Used (Chronologically): Multiplayer Menu Theme (Infinite Warfare), Multiplayer Menu Theme (Black Ops), Downtown Sniper Soviet Tension (Call of Duty 2), Third District (Katana Zero), Captain Toad Goes Forth (Super Mario 3D World), Polina’s Vengeance (Vanguard), Multiplayer Menu Theme (Modern Warfare 2), Multiplayer Menu Theme (Ghosts), Pripyat (Call of Duty 4), Furnace (Control), Olympus Mons (Infinite Warfare), Embassy (Modern Warfare), Afterlife (Infinite Warfare), Collateral (Modern Warfare), Smooth Talking (Nocturnal Spirits)

Additional music and sound effects from Epidemic Sound

Thumbnail and Graphic Design by
Description credit: “Torture and Democracy” by Darius Rejali

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50 Comments

  • Reply
    @JacobGeller June 29, 2024

    Want to gift a year of Nebula to a friend? Or tell them to gift a year of Nebula TO YOU? Check out Nebula's new gift cards (with a discount, when you use this link): https://go.nebula.tv/gift?ref=jacobgeller

  • Reply
    @JohnDoe_1483 June 29, 2024

    Wow, not surprised at all once I saw this Soylent Jackson’s physiognomy. Torture is not a moral evil just because the UN said so in the last century. For all human history you were allowed to torture your enemies. Not surprised this soyllennial doesn’t understand the friend-enemy distinction

  • Reply
    @dougthedonkey1805 June 29, 2024

    In Fallout: New Vegas, there’s an unmarked quest at Camp McCarran where an NCR lieutenant is trying to get information out of a captured Legion centurion. She explains that torture is illegal in the NCR, and asks you to torture the information out of him for her since you’re not a citizen.

    What I love about the quest is that you can either beat him to get the info or just trick him into thinking you’re sent by the Legion to kill him, and if you trick him into giving the info, you get more XP and caps than if you’d tortured him.

  • Reply
    @inezz-q6r June 29, 2024

    nice

  • Reply
    @seelcudoom1 June 29, 2024

    the question on the ethics of torture baffles me because with most ethical questions i can see where the other sides coming from, if not from the perspective of how they would think its good, then at least seeing what they get out of it to understand why they might support it for unethical reasons, but torture has no positive for anyone, it gives bad intel, most of the proponents of torture know it gives bad intel and dont even try to dispute it, torturing people is literally harming ourselves because that bad intel will fuck us over, do we literally have such a large number of people who are motivated not even by self interest but just blind sadism?

  • Reply
    @alexanderdesmouceaux4395 June 29, 2024

    Brazilian here: in late 1980s, activists in Brazil got a lot of documents written by the military dictatorship that was in power since 1964. This documents showed, in details, the whole system of military justice and the many techniques of torture used by professional torturers, techniques used even on pregnant women. If you are interested, the book that is the result of this research is called "Brasil: nunca mais".

  • Reply
    @aesra1185 June 29, 2024

    Oh my god the only reason BO4 didn’t have a torture scene is because the campaign didn’t exist

  • Reply
    @ProxyVert June 29, 2024

    I feel like the movie that brings the ticking time bomb theory to light was unthinkable from 2010, real mind bending

  • Reply
    @TiaGems June 29, 2024

    "Who cares?"
    "ME! I care!"

  • Reply
    @notjeeves5454 June 29, 2024

    thanks for making the whole trailer black screens

  • Reply
    @Beto_Serrano June 29, 2024

    Makes sense that the game which is nothing but propaganda for the USA army has torture appear so casually.

  • Reply
    @Neo2266. June 29, 2024

    You should have probably made the distinction between Torture and Interrogation.
    Also, the title makes it sound like you're going to analyze every scene, as opposed to the concept in CoD as a whole

  • Reply
    @Sud0wood0 June 29, 2024

    You touch on this at the end, but CoD's ubiquity in milennial gamer culture makes this even more worrying. Like, it's a common meme to see people lament over the "golden days" of 08-2012 when we were playing MW2 and Black Ops. CoD is something almost every gamer in my generation has played, and in each of them, a little kernel of this idea that torture is morally good and effective is placed. It's an incredible feat of propaganda

  • Reply
    @capidolism June 29, 2024

    I did expect the spanish inquisition

  • Reply
    @M4TCH3SM4L0N3 June 29, 2024

    Honestly, the entire question of torture has so insidiously infiltrated every aspect of our media culture, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that the federal government had been involved in the initial wave of television scripts that began the trend of interrogation-as-effective-investigation scenes, sort of like the anti-drug episodes they paid for in the 90s/00s.

    This trope has virtually ruined most media about Batman for me. I don't know exactly WHEN it happened – sometime in the 90s, I suspect, though it was definitely present in some of the more extreme comics in the 80s – but Batman shifted away from "the World's Greatest Detective," into "the World's Most Ruthless Interrogator."

    I admit that I enjoyed the sequence of the Dark Knight Returns when Bruce hauls the one mutant up to the highest parapet of the tallest building in Gotham to threaten him for information, and I get that having him get the information he needs for the plot while hoisting up thugs by the collar was more visually interesting in the Animated series than the sequences with him sitting in the cave looking at a screen, but somewhere around "swear to ME!" I started to get tired of it.

    We lost something important in the trade-off, and that's even before you factor in the ethical issues. It's just lazy problem solving that never works in real life the way it does in our imaginations, and I'm sick of it.

  • Reply
    @madeleinesherer7615 June 29, 2024

    this is an amazing video, brilliantly edited and written and researched, and yet all i can think about is that brief moment at the end where we see jacob in a goncharov hat.

  • Reply
    @realkraid June 29, 2024

    This reminds me of one time a friend of mine on Facebook started watching 24 and documenting, post by post, every time that Jack Bauer kills someone, while pointing out that the show takes place in a single day per season (the total bodycount is over 300 by the end of the series and movie, nine days total)

  • Reply
    @parkerprice6787 June 29, 2024

    If anyone wants to check out that pie recipe, make sure you pay for nebula through their website and not through the app store; more of your money goes to creators like Geller that way. Hank Green did a video recently where he did the math with regards to Dropout, but the same applies for basically any digital subscription.

  • Reply
    @UnimportantAcc June 29, 2024

    I was gonna close the tab immediately if you hadn't shown the opening of CoD2. Good job haha

  • Reply
    @kayleawilson June 29, 2024

    AAAHHHHHHH THIS IS SO GOOD.

  • Reply
    @CompiledGabriel June 29, 2024

    24:07 I will. Nobody expects the spanish inquisition

  • Reply
    @Dragon-365 June 29, 2024

    Not me getting an ad for the marines 💀

  • Reply
    @virtueofabsolution7641 June 29, 2024

    Aww so we aren’t gonna over analyze every torture scene ?

  • Reply
    @zoe_astra June 29, 2024

    I think a great place to observe the in efficacy of torture is the high rate of false confessions that have been obtained under duress. More and more people, especially in the US, are having their convictions overturned and many of this cases involve false confessions.

  • Reply
    @sassycassyg June 29, 2024

    This reminds me of when I was in middle school speech and debate class and had to argue in favor of torture for interrogation. My group did terribly because we literally couldn’t find any research in favor of what we were supposed to be arguing. I had to parrot bush era arguments about “enhanced interrogation techniques” just to have something to say. Bleh. Loved that class otherwise but that assignment was not it

  • Reply
    @PatricTheSpartian June 29, 2024

    At the end of the day, it's an escapism machine. Tthe meme "I hate video games, it appeals to male fantasy" is exactly right, because COD games ultimately boil down to good guys beating bad guys. Everything good guys do is morally and objectivly correct, while everything bad guys do is terrible and an absolute evil. The same applies to torture scenes. They do not harbor any deep meaning about ones struggle with violence, because they are just convinient plot drivers. Video games are entertainment medium, they are designed to excite and entertain, and despite the opinion of the pearl-clutching crowd, torture scenes can be entertaining. COD series mostly uses them out of laziness and not so stellar writing, but imagine if they were swapped for hours long by-the-book interregation/interview. It's simply doesn't work with a limited time given where pacing and plot movement are crucial. I would even say that removing torture and saying "ah, btw, the bad guy confessed about McGuffin off the frame" is equally or even more lazy.

  • Reply
    @JayPlazma June 29, 2024

    24:12 no one expects the Spanish Inquisition! I sure as hell didn’t

  • Reply
    @keoniderrenberger5040 June 29, 2024

    This guy and I have the same exact desktop wallpaper. He also uses the music from the modern warfare 2019 deluxe edition playstation home theme. Theres a chance we coincidentally have the same exact wallpapers for both our desktops and playstations.

  • Reply
    @raulperez375 June 29, 2024

    Huh, gotta say, I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition

  • Reply
    @nou8913 June 29, 2024

    Never expected to see here the Spanish Inquisition!

  • Reply
    @zac9311 June 29, 2024

    The bad guys stay bad and the good guys stay good" is the biggest lie of war

  • Reply
    @Gamer88334 June 29, 2024

    I would say "In real life, don't resort to torture unless it's absolutely necessary. It's too unreliable. Your victim may tell you what you want to hear even if it's not true just to get the pain to stop."

  • Reply
    @cameramanjack3854 June 29, 2024

    One has to assume that IOF soldiers have spent a lot of time playing Call of Duty

  • Reply
    @davidlennox6242 June 29, 2024

    terrible release, mediocre game, but the infinite warfare soundtrack is great. On par with Trent Reznor's title track for B02

  • Reply
    @semeras June 29, 2024

    another banger vid

  • Reply
    @firewolf11567 June 29, 2024

    I like how black ops 4 has no instances of torture just because it had no campaign mode lol

  • Reply
    @brain_drops June 29, 2024

    This video has made me uncomfortable in a way a video really hasn't before. Thanks Geller <3

  • Reply
    @nicolassorg7335 June 29, 2024

    24:06 that was unexpected

  • Reply
    @Puppy_Puppington June 29, 2024

    Torture doesn’t work. Known this since I was a kid and thought “hmmm, they’re gonna hurt me anyways… or off me… and even if I don’t know anything I’m such a wuss that I’ll say whatever it is to stop the pain”

  • Reply
    @swempytimes June 29, 2024

    This is an interesting idea for a video, I've loved the CoD campaigns for 20 years now and love hearing people talk about it, making videos I could only dream to make. Thank you

  • Reply
    @PipAznable June 29, 2024

    Now do this but Metal Gear.

  • Reply
    @SirGrimLockSmithVIII June 29, 2024

    Boy, I sure hope he doesn't talk about the Spanish Inquisition. I definitely wouldn't expect it

  • Reply
    @cringetingles June 29, 2024

    jeez… its almost like these games are about war… where torture happens all the time……

  • Reply
    @flowerdeliveryservice5157 June 29, 2024

    on one hand it’s obvious that none of these would involve sexual assault, due to ratings boards n all but it’s interesting to think of how responses would be different if they went there (knowing that real torture often involves sexual abuse)

  • Reply
    @angrydragon5567 June 29, 2024

    I appreciate the metaness of this video in being about torture and in of itself being torture to watch

  • Reply
    @LowQuatsSquats7529 June 29, 2024

    Did you plump your lips like damn those are huge

  • Reply
    @_minty_fresh_ June 29, 2024

    You gotta love the Morality=Weakness mentality.

    Like arguably, it's more difficult and impressive to be merciful to an enemy for the sake of ethics… but for some reason, COD idolizes being rash as the brave choice.

  • Reply
    @Jakioliberty June 29, 2024

    I actually wonder about more things, like how many times is a female torturer vs a female tortured and the race difference as from this video only it felt like black people were tortured more than whites…

  • Reply
    @moondog548 June 29, 2024

    I didn't want to watch this, but ironically, every day for the past week, YOUTUBE insisted!

  • Reply
    @rayres1074 June 29, 2024

    The inefficacy of torture being omitted in the media is, in my opinion, often a product of necessity of storytelling. To capture, torture an innocent and follow a false lead is basically wasting the viewer's time, unless the objective is to portray torture as inefficient, so it almost always pops up as a working method. Imagine playing a whole CoD level or a whole episode of a series only to find out, damn, that lead was fake and we just wasted time. That wouldn't be well received.

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