'There's a plane bro': A Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 calling card seemed to reference 9/11 before getting removed

Soldier walking through a tunnel carrying a wooden bat — (Image credit: Activision)

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 currently has a closed beta underway, during which players are getting to know all of the ins and outs of what this this year's game has to offer, including talking to your meatshields and now finding some interesting calling cards.

Call of Duty leaker, who goes by TheGhostOfHope, posted an image of a default calling card from Black Ops 6. The card named "Make History" includes images of protesters, a pixelated image that resembles George W. Bush Jr, and an image of a plane flying into a building.

Understandably, most people connected the dots between the last image and the real tragedy of 9/11 pretty quickly, even if it wasn't a mirror image. "Y'all see anything out of the ordinary about this calling card?" TheGhostOfHope says. While someone does briefly theorise that it could be about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, TheGhostOfHope quickly shuts it down: "There's a plane bro."

Despite not looking exactly like the World Trade Center, the image of the plane flying into the building was most likely referenced from it, especially as a day after TheGhostOfHope pointed out the similarities, the calling card had been changed.

"Lol, they actually removed it," TheGhostOfHope says in a subsequent Twitter post. Now, all that's left is a close-up of someone writing something on a small cassette tape—no more protesters or planes flying into buildings. The unusual change is even stranger when you consider that Treyarch has officially denied rumours that Black Ops 6's campaign will depict the 9/11 tragedy.

Black Ops 6 calling card — (Image credit: Activision)

This isn't the first time we've recently seen videogames use real tragedies in promo art or in-game. Back in June, War Thunder accidentally released official art that included a picture of the Challenger Space Shuttle tragedy in the background. The promo art involved aircraft in combat, and behind one is an unusually shaped cloud of debris, which is actually from the immediate aftermath of the Challenger disaster. Like the art on Black Ops 6's calling card, this was quickly removed once it was brought to light.

How this keeps happening is beyond me. You'd think that this calling card would have been looked at by more than one person. Albeit the plane is pretty small, but including an image that resembles 9/11 alongside the words "Make History" seems like a rookie error.

Elie is a news writer with an unhealthy love of horror games—even though their greatest fear is being chased. When they're not screaming or hiding, there's a good chance you'll find them testing their metal in metroidvanias or just admiring their Pokemon TCG collection. Elie has previously worked at TechRadar Gaming as a staff writer and studied at JOMEC in International Journalism and Documentaries – spending their free time filming short docs about Smash Bros. or any indie game that crossed their path.