Forum:What is canon?

Hi all,

a debate has arisen in a recent blog post as to what defines the Call of Duty canon. In my opinion, everything in-game is considered canon unless it is deliberately an easter egg or contradicted by a definitive source. Such sources would be a later release or a developer comment, usually in the form of a retcon.

So, we can ascertain that all of the campaigns collectively occur in the same Call of Duty universe. What minor discrepancies are encountered, such as some dates in the Call of Duty: World at War Soviet campaign, are few and far between. What questions remain can be answered by the proper amount of research or guessing.

This method of defining what is canon also brings another question to the table; what of Nazi Zombies and Wonder Weapons? Appearances of wonder weapons in Campaign, such as the Ray Gun in "Little Resistance" and the Thundergun in "Numbers" are quite obviously easter eggs to help the player and make the game interesting, and are considered non-canon. Similarly, the Nazi Zombies map "Five" can be considered an easter egg (and, thus, non-canon) because it is unlocked using cheats in the CIA database; not to mention the fact that its playable characters consist of John F. Kennedy et al.

What we can gather is not canonical:
 * Multiplayer, obviously
 * Many elements of Nazi Zombies (points, power-ups, demonic announcer)
 * "Five", Dead Ops Arcade, Zork
 * Easter eggs (e.g. Lullaby for a Dead Man, "Little Resistance" Ray Gun)

What questions we may have:
 * Is Zombie Mode canon at all?
 * Is Mile High Club canon?
 * What about Group 935 and Element 115?

What other conclusions can we draw? Improvements/rebuttals are welcome. Thanks, CoD addict - 03:22, December 6, 2010 (UTC)