Crunch time.
One of the more memorable campaign levels from Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a largely stealth mission through East Berlin, set in February 1981.
In this level, you alongside your crack team of CIA operatives infiltrate the German Democratic Republic via train, and it’s here you get a sense of developer Raven’s attention to detail: there are era-appropriate ads all over the carriage, including an old-school FILA logo and a poster for an old camera, and a man reading a newspaper with a headline about then American president Ronald Reagan.
And there, on the wall by the carriage door, is a Doritos advert.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is no history lesson, of course, but developer Raven Software has done a good job of simulating that early ’80s atmosphere. But this Doritos ad is a bit out of place.
Call of Duty has a long history with Doritos. You can get XP from the things. There’s even a horrible-looking Doritos weapon charm. Black Ops Cold War was in fact leaked by a Doritos marketing campaign. So of course there’s an in-game Doritos advert.
It turns out, this ad is the right kind of Doritos advert for the time. Here’s an old Doritos wrapper from the late ’60s:
But it is in entirely the wrong place. Would there have been a Doritos advert knocking about East Berlin in 1981? Almost certainly not. The Doritos global expansion didn’t begin until the mid-’90s. They only hit the UK in 1994. So no, there wouldn’t have been a Doritos advert on a train in East Berlin in 1981.
So, not entirely realistic. But at least the in-game Doritos advert has the right logo!