The first Bay of Pigs mission in Call of Duty: Black Ops is named “Operation 40.”
It is the opening campaign mission of the 2010 game and takes place in Cuba on April 17, 1961, during the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The player controls CIA operative Alex Mason, who works alongside Frank Woods and Joseph Bowman. Their objective is to help Cuban exiles and attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro.
The mission’s title refers to the real-life Operation 40, a CIA-sponsored group made up largely of anti-Castro Cuban exiles and American intelligence personnel. The historical group participated in covert activities connected to the invasion, although the game dramatizes its role and places fictional characters at the center of the action.
The opening mission also establishes Black Ops’ recurring themes: Cold War secrecy, unreliable memories, covert American operations, and the blurred boundary between historical events and fictional conspiracies. “Project Nova” is a later campaign mission involving a chemical weapon, while “Executive Order” follows the early Cuba sequence and moves the story toward the Soviet space program.