Warzone’s villain returns to life for Modern Warfare 3 Zombies, because nothing matters any more

It’s honestly a little endearing how hard Call of Duty’s various studios continue to try and make its lore and characters matter. After the big reveal that Modern Warfare 3 would be bringing back classic villain Makarov – despite him not being anywhere in the story of the reboots, all bets were off.

The next classic villain to return to fulfil a role in Modern Warfare 3 is Viktor Zakhaev, who’s the big baddie in the game’s definitely very serious Zombies story, which is going to be part of the package for the first time in a Modern Warfare game.

Zakhaev wasn’t much of a player in any of the rebooted Modern Warfare series, but Call of Duty’s… story council decided to bring him back for a one-off Warzone-ending cutscene, which was meant to lead into Modern Warfare 2 (but didn’t). At the end of it, Zakhaev is thrown into a nice deep shaft, and you can hear him screaming all the way down. Even Captain Price was counting on the fall to kill him.

But Star Wars rules seemingly apply here, so of course Zakhaev has returned, albeit with a few scars, to cause the zombie outbreak to happen and kick off the story of Zombies in Modern Warfare 3. The cinematic trailer, released overnight, sets up the scene nicely for what’s looking like a Zombies mode that’s yet to entice long-time Zombies players.

Aetherium is the viral agent of choice here, which is dispersed by Zakhaev, turning everyone around them into zombies.

Modern Warfare 3 Zombies will take place on a large map, and function as a sort of merge between Black Ops Cold War’s Outbreak mode, and DMZ. Six four-player squads will infill, complete a bunch of objectives, and escape. Some classic Zombies features, like pack-a-punch, mystery boxes and so on will return.

Modern Warfare Zombies is developed by Treyarch. We’re hoping that Modern Warfare 3’s upcoming October multiplayer reveal event will also include some gameplay/details on Zombies.

Modern Warfare 3 arrives November 10 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.