Despite Call of Duty Black Ops 6 being released on October 25, some players have already finished the game's campaign after temporarily ignoring the online and zombie game modes. If you're one of these, you may proceed to read this piece; however, if you haven't finished the campaign yet, you may want to stop reading.
It's fair to say the ending of Call of Duty Black Ops 6's campaign is confusing. A lot of action happens in the safehouse in the story's final chapter, and the ending can be quite misleading. First, let's explore the end of the campaign.
After raiding Vorkuta and capturing Jane Harrow, the Rogue Black Ops team led by Frank Woods discovers a tracking device in Harrow's body. In other words, a Pantheon attack to recover Harrow is imminent.
The team uses a truth serum to quickly get information regarding Pantheon and the Cradle out of Harrow. However, during the interrogation, the Pantheon attacks the safehouse, which forces Russell Adler, Troy Marshall, Sevati "Sev" Dumas, Felix Neumann, and William "Case" Calderon to protect the place while Woods completes the interrogation.
During the interrogation, Woods finds out that the Pantheon's main goal was to conduct a false flag attack in the Capitol Building using the Cradle so Daniel Livingstone would lose his position as CIA's Deputy Director. Harrow, who was the second in line, would take over the role. Therefore, attacking the Capitol Building would end in Pantheon taking over the CIA.
Shortly after getting the information out of Harrow, Pantheon rescues her and moves her to a helicopter in the area. Right when the aircraft is taking off, Case infiltrates it and, while fighting Harrow, a stray bullet kills the pilot. Following the landing, Case kills Harrow after hitting her head thrice with the Crawl container. Quickly after, Marshall radios Case saying that Livingstone managed to evacuate the Capitol Building in time, but Case doesn't reply.
Two weeks later, Woods, Adler, and Marshall meet with Livingstone, who asks them to continue working together as an independent unit to dismantle Pantheon. Unexpectedly, Case isn't in the conversation.
However, during Livingstone's final chat, the CIA Deputy Director teases the idea that Pantheon is still infiltrated within the CIA. While he says this, we can see someone hacking into Livingstone's computer. Now, a question arises: who's that man?
While we don't know who the person is, the fans believe it could be either Case or Jackson Caine.
Without a doubt, Jackson Caine is likely to be the right guess. His looks match almost perfectly with the person in the image, which is enough to believe that the person is, in fact, him. However, some fans are still refusing to believe it, especially after the theory that has arisen regarding Case and the ending of the campaign.
We understand the reasons why some players may think the person in the image is Case: firstly, we never get to see his face throughout the story, and, secondly, Case doesn't appear in the final scene where the Rogue Black Ops team reunites with Livingstone. Although he could have been killed during his fight with Harrow in the helicopter, some people think he survived.
The theory of Case being the person in the image gets even more solid when we mix these two reasons with a point that some fans have brought up: the end of Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War was in 1981, ten years before the action that takes place in Call of Duty Black Ops 6. Curiously enough, during the Emergence mission, we find out that the first Cradle test performed on Case was ten years ago in a laboratory located in Kentucky, where Adler worked for some time.
With this information, some fans have built a theory that states that Case could be Bell, who was presumably taken down by Adler at the end of the Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War campaign. The theory says that, right after the end of Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War, Bell was brought to the laboratory in Kentucky and used to test the Cradle. Considering that Adler worked there and that he was responsible for the death of Bell, could it be possible that Adler had just faked Bell's death to test the Cradle on a soldier?
Whoever the person hacking Livingstone's computer was, it's still unclear. Do you believe what your eyes saw, or do you think there could be a link between Case and Adler?