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.