For my Sam Giddings obsession

So the zombie eye colors were always a part of the lore that I found immensely interesting. The Jimmy Zielinski era of Zombies was pretty clear about what each eye color meant and who was in control of the zombies (yellow for Samantha, blue for Richtofen, orange for Maxis).

But once Jason Blundell took over, eye colors became less important and in most maps, weren’t explained whatsoever, a lot opting to use Sam’s voice and the iconic yellow eyes, even when it seemingly makes no sense.

Despite this, I’m stubborn as hell, so with my own speculation, I thought I’d take a look at every Treyarch Zombies map to try to explain the eye colors and the Demonic Announcer. This post will mostly be about the Aether Story, but I will briefly touch on modern Zombies and the Dark Aether Saga (which most eye colors make sense in, aside from a few).

So, let’s start with the maps that DO have explanations and already make sense in the Aether Story. We won’t need to discuss them.

Shi No Numa

Der Riese

Kino der Toten

Five

Ascension

Call of the Dead

Shangri-La

Moon

Tranzit

Nuketown

Die Rise

Mob of the Dead

Buried

Origins (there are the whitish-purple eyes from the Templars, which AFAIK never got explained. Personally I love the idea that the Templars genuinely don’t follow an Announcer and are just actual animals/monsters.)

Blood of the Dead

Classified

Alpha Omega

Sam enters the MPD after Verruckt, which explains the rest of World at War and all of Black Ops 1. She loses control during Moon, but after Buried she goes to Dimension 63 and is the Announcer for Origins. Classified takes place before Moon which explains why she’s in control “again”.

Richtofen takes over during Moon/Nuketown and for the BO2 Victis maps, until he loses control in Buried, where Maxis takes over.

Mob/Blood is explained in one of Blood’s radios that the Alcatraz Pocket Dimension is created by the Warden under influence by the Shadowman. I always saw it as Shadowman controlled but the Warden being the announcer for Blood of the Dead’s dog rounds gives it more credence that these maps are Warden controlled (just with him breathing down his neck lol).

The Zombies in Alpha Omega are controlled by Pernell/Avogadro, as he’s in the APD during the map’s events. The APD does seem to be weaker than the MPD though, as the Avogadro’s control seems to be radius based and only affects Camp Edward.

Problem 1: Nacht der Untoten and Verruckt

Originally I thought that Sam entered the MPD before all of World at War, explaining these two away. But double checking and she actually gets teleported to the Moon in between Verruckt and Shi No Numa.

So, what’s going on in the first two maps? Interesting to note that Nacht der Untoten doesn’t actually have an Announcer voice at all. This plus the timeline placement of Sam entering the MPD tells me that zombies don’t actually need an Announcer per se, and presumably will just act like uncontrolled monsters without direction.

Verruckt tho? It actually does use Samantha’s voice, despite it happening before her control. It is also a Group 935 facility, so it would be a prime target for her. That said, the official timeline was made WAY after World at War so I assume it’s intentional that Verruckt is not Sam’s doing, and her Announcer voice is used just for gameplay purposes. Verruckt’s zombie outbreak is weirdly unexplained though (Pernell already suspects that Group 935 are losing control of their test subjects and preemptively sends in a marine unit to retrieve Peter McCain). Verruckt just seems to genuinely have fallen apart completely because of Group 935 and nothing else.

Verdict: No Demonic Announcer for either Nacht or Verruckt.

Problem 2: All of BO3

This one’s gonna be iffy because this was when they REALLY stopped caring about eye colors.

Shadows of Evil: With the evidence of red eyes in Mob meaning Shadowman and some later maps (we’ll discuss them) I would’ve fully expected Shadows to have red eyes, since it’s clearly the Shadowman that’s behind everything in this map.

For some reason tho they use yellow eyes and Sam’s voice. Although it’s a different story there’s a later case of an Announcer mimicking the voice of another Announcer, so it’s not too far fetched for me to say that the Shadowman is mimicking Samantha’s voice and eye color.

My ONLY guess as to ‘Why is he mimicking her?’ is because the Shadowman is trying to dupe the SoE crew, and get them on his side to allow the Apothicons to destroy their world. If the Announcer voice was literally just the Shadowman and the zombies had more sinister red eyes, it probably would’ve tipped them off to not trust the Shadowman. This is a stretch regardless, I admit.

Verdict: Shadowman

The Giant: Considering this map takes place only moments after Sam and Maxis get teleported away, I think it’s safe to say this map is being controlled genuinely by Sam. You could even probably time when zombies attack the facility to when Sam hides in the MPD.

Verdict: Samantha

Der Eisendrache: This takes place in the same fracture as The Giant and is also a Group 935 facility, so she most likely attacked it not long after being teleported to the Moon. Especially since Eagles’ Nest is one of the bigger facilities that Group 935 has.

Verdict: Samantha

Zetsubou No Shima: This one’s weird because it’s a Division 9 facility. Shi No Numa proves that Sam would still attack it but I believe she only attacks the latter because Ultimis go there. That said, I still think Sam would attack it as Division 9 are heavily involved in Group 935 shit in the original timeline, even if this is a very detached fracture of that. Map also takes place after Sam enters the MPD so that still tracks.

Verdict: Samantha but a very weak verdict I admit. Possibly no Announcer at all.

Gorod Krovi: Now this is where it gets interesting. Red eyes, a big deviation from BO3’s usual yellow. My theory is that it’s Dr Monty controlling the zombies.

This is the first map where Dr Monty actually chimes in to talk to Primis. And we know red is connected to Apothicons thanks to Blood of the Dead. And we know after BO4 that Monty was also Apothicon, he just hid it better and had his own motives (watch Alpha Omega’s outro cutscene to see him transform into his Apothicon form to literally devour Maxis lol). A big deal there is that Dr Monty and the Shadowman are one in the same.

So yeah, I actually think Monty is the one in control here.

Verdict: Dr. Monty

Revelations: Another interesting one. You could argue either Monty or Shadowman here, but I’m leaning toward Shadowman. His corruption and influence finally bled into Agartha, which is the primary conflict of this map. You literally fight him as the main boss and the eye colors match Mob/Blood.

Verdict: Shadowman

Problem 3: Tag der Toten

Most of BO4 is actually pretty well explained. Except this one. Eye colors here are red, and in the broken cycle the Shadowman never escapes the Summoning Key to attack Agartha, so with my theory on what red eyes mean, it has to be Monty.

Alpha Omega’s outro is also about Monty finding out what Ultimis and Primis are doing. Although his influence in the map isn’t a whole lot, I think it makes narrative sense for the Announcer in this map to be Monty.

Verdict: Dr Monty

So, my true verdict on EACH eye color are:

Samantha=Yellow

Richtofen=Blue

Maxis=Orange

Monty/Shadowman=Red (red I believe to mean Apothicon influence)

Avogadro=White

So what about Modern Zombies?

This is actually significantly more straight forward, lol.

Yellow in this storyline seems to mostly mean Zykov/Forsaken. He’s in control for all of Cold War. BO6 also uses yellow eyes, but doing a bit of research for this and it seems the explanation is that S.A.M. has been torturing Zykov and using his powers to mimic him, which explains why the zombies here still use yellow eyes and have the Forsaken’s voice, despite him not being in control since the map Forsaken.

There’s only one game in the Dark Aether story where the zombies have red eyes and it’s Vanguard, and this seems to be obviously Kortifex. Pretty cut and dry.

BO7 is weird because it’s consistent about having different Announcer voices per map (which makes sense) but doesn’t change eye colors from yellow. Every map is under each Shadowsmith’s control except Paradox Junction which is The Twins. Also fun to note that the Announcer on every BO7 map changes to the Twins when you defeat the Shadowsmith in each main quest. Would’ve been sick if each map also had different eye colors, which would’ve made sense, but oh well.

The only real unexplained game for me is MWZ, which STILL uses Forsaken despite it being multiple decades since his control. My only explanations are:

S.A.M.’s ending in Reckoning is canon, so she’s still in control of the zombies and is still using Zykov’s voice. This means Eddie is canonically dead.

The Entity/Jansen has also learned to mimic Zykov’s voice and is in control (this would sort of make sense as a trait carried from her mother, Sam).

Personally, I MUCH prefer the Reckoning ending where you side with Eddie and defeat S.A.M., so I’d rather the first point not be the case. Ava being unknowingly in control would also be a fun thing to add, since she’s still new to her powers for most of MWZ.

Not gonna cover the purple eyes from S.A.M. Trials/T.E.D.D. Tasks, since it’s obviously just there for gameplay purposes.

The Chaos Story doesn’t really play around with different eye colors or Announcers since it got cancelled fairly quickly, unfortunately. But the zombies in this story don’t even seem to be under the control of any one person, but rather just the Sentinel Artifact itself.

The more I think about it, the more I'm confused as to why Victis went to Tag der Toten and not Alpha Omega, and vice versa for Ultimis/Primis. Speaking purely narratively.

Broken Arrow HEAVILY ties into both Russman's and Marlton's lore. Hell Marlton actually briefly appears during Alpha Omega's main quest, and he's been connected to Nuketown since the BO2 days. Russman would also have a lot to say about being taken to yet another Broken Arrow facility.

Victis having a rematch with the Avogadro makes WAY more sense than Primis and Ultimis meeting it for the first time (aside from Dempsey knowing Pernell before his transformation). And since the Aether Saga is so heavily reliant on cycles, I'm shocked they didn't have Victis be the ones to send the Avogadro back to Tranzit, where they'd end up meeting him for the first time. Victis starts and ends with the Avogadro, if they had been at Alpha Omega.

Conversely, it makes WAY more sense for Ultimis and Primis to go to Tag der Toten. The Siberian facility is a massive part of Ultimis' lore and more specifically Richtofen, it was one of his more important bases alongside Der Riese. And imagine the rich narrative potential of Ultimis seeing the prisoner cells in Tag and slowly remembering WHY Richtofen was there with them when he asked them for help to stop Samantha. Plus Ultimis has already been here in the original Call of the Dead.

Tag der Toten is THE final map of the saga. I can't tell you how many people just don't see it as a finale map purely because the playable crew is Victis of all groups. The final map to this 10 year story should've been the Ultimis/Primis team-up map. It just makes sense.

Again with the cycle theme, Primis Richtofen reuniting with Pablo and helping him go back to the Great War (where they'd JUST met and Pablo had helped him reach Alcatraz) would've made a lot of sense. Hell I'm sure Ultimis would've had a lot to say to Pablo especially Richtofen, since he was one of the original test subjects before Dempsey.

You'd have to rewrite some things (a core part of Tag is that Ultimis and Primis are chilling at the campfire where they eventually die), but in terms of narrative satisfaction, I think it makes WAY more sense for these three crews to swap maps.