Minimap

The minimap is an element of the HUD and the primary source for navagation in the multiplayer portions of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty: World at War, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, and Call of Duty: Black Ops II.

Overview
The minimap was first used in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It has since been used in every Call of Duty after. It helps players to navigate through the map and locate enemies. It shows a birds eye view of the player's location. It does not show the entire map, rather a zoomed in portion of the map where the player is. Objectives such as bomb sites, Domination flags, and other objectives also appear on the minimap.

The player always appears as a yellow arrow on the minimap, and is always the center of it. The map shifts and turns according to the player's movement and direction. Teammates are green arrows (unless colour-blind assist is turned on, in which case they will be blue).

Enemies appear on the minimap as either red dots or red arrows (orange dots and arrows for colour-blind assist). The former usually happens under two circumstances: either the enemy has just fired an unsupressed weapon, in which case this dot will last only a few seconds; or a friendly UAV, Spy Plane, or Recon Plane is a which scans accross the minimap, giving the relative position of the enemy, assuing he/she doesn't have a perk hiding them from it. An enemy can also appear as a dot when targeted by a Recon Drone in Modern Warfare 3. The latter happens when a friendly SR-71 Blackbird, or Advanced UAV is in the air, or when an enemy is damaged by an explosive from a teammate with Recon in Modern Warfare 3.

Trivia

 * The minimap replaces the compass used in earlier Call of Duty games.
 * In Modern Warfare 2, some suppressed weapons still give a player's position away, like the M9.