Call of Duty is one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time, with only Mario and Tetris surpassing its popularity. While the first game, released in 2003, took place during World War II, the series later shifted to modern and futuristic settings.
In 2013, Activision released Call of Duty: Ghosts, an installment set in the “near-future” … which is around 2026. And one of the missions in this game involves a U.S. Special Operations Forces unit infiltrating a secure location in Caracas, Venezuela, to arrest a person of interest. Needless to say, the timing and the similarities between the game and real-life events raised some eyebrows.
Posts on social media highlighted the bizarre parallels between the game and the Venezuelan operation on January 3rd, 2026.
While the X post above is not 100% accurate (players do not capture the Venezuelan dictator), the game nevertheless accomplishes an important task: Predictive programming. It planted the idea that a military operation in Venezuela could happen, mainly due to its important oil reserves. Here’s a look at the links between Call of Duty: Ghosts and the Venezuelan raid.
Call of Duty: Ghosts focuses on a special unit conducting covert operations. For this reason, they wear ghost masks.
In this game, Ghosts are a coalition of all U.S. Special Operations Forces units specializing in covert operations. Interestingly enough, a few years later, the real unit named 4th PSYOP Group released a highly symbolic recruitment video titled “Ghosts in the Machine“.
The video compares PYSOP operatives to ghosts who are invisible yet able to topple entire regimes.
The recruitment video also shows multiple images of popular uprisings that led to regime changes, strongly implying that invisible PSYOP operatives were behind them.
The military operation that took place in Venezuela on January 3rd, 2026, only took a few hours but resulted in the capture of the country’s President Nicolas Maduro, his wife, the replacement of the regime, and the seizure of the country’s massive oil resources. The success of such an operation was the result of “ghost” operatives infiltrating the regime for years and a specialized Delta Force unit executing the final operation with surgical precision.
Call of Duty: Ghosts “predicted” such an outcome in 2013 to a rather impressive degree. This should not be a surprise, as developers of such games work alongside military advisors and consultants to enhance realism. Furthermore, scenario planners from defense departments provide input for predictive programming reasons.
Several Call of Duty: Ghosts missions take place in Caracas, Venezuela.
In the game’s lore, Caracas is the capital of the Federation of the Americas – a union of several Central and South American nations. Due to Venezuela’s massive energy resources, this highly centralized and authoritarian state rose rapidly to global power.
Meanwhile, the United States’ economy and military power were crippled by a catastrophe known as “The Event,” leaving it vulnerable to foreign invasions. In this context, a futuristic war (not so much in 2026) using drones, cyber-warfare, psychological warfare, and strong propaganda rages between the nations.
In the game’s mission titled “Federation Day”, American operatives seek to infiltrate Caracas to capture a scientist named Victor H. Ramos.
The mission takes place during Federation Day, a national holiday celebrated with fireworks. Coincidentally enough, the real-life American operation in Venezuela took place shortly after New Year’s, which is often celebrated with fireworks as well.
In the screenshot above, operatives infiltrate a high-rise building in the middle of Caracas as helicopters hover overhead. Maduro’s “extraction mission” occurred in strikingly similar circumstances.
This is a 3d reenactment of the actual “extraction mission” in Caracas from the YouTube channel AiTelly. Helicopters over a tall building in Caracas.
Footage from the actual operation shows American choppers arriving in Caracas in the dead of night, similar to the Call of Duty scenario.
Despite some differences in the storyline, the Call of Duty game does a good job of predictive programming: It portrays Venezuela’s resources and regional influence as a potential threat to the United States and depicts it as a potential target for a military operation. The game was released right around the time Maduro took power, and its “future operation” took place very close to 2026. By having a mission take place in Venezuela, the game forced people to consider the possibility of a US operation in Central America – something that seemed rather unlikely at the time.
The toppling of the Maduro regime to gain control of energy resources was probably in the works for years. The consultants who worked with Call of Duty developers did not “predict” as much as they were very aware of the script for the coming years. This fact is obvious when looking at other titles in the series.
Released in 2012, Call of Duty: Black Ops II has also made some extremely accurate predictions about the “near future.” First, it foresaw the coming of drone swarms, loitering munitions, and robotic systems during combat. While this seemed like science fiction at the time, they are in active use today, as seen in Ukraine and the Middle East.
More astonishingly, the main plot, which takes place in exactly 2025, could not be relevant today: The race for rare earth minerals against China.
A screenshot from Call of Duty showing the United States lagging severely behind China in rare earth production.
The graph above is fictional and taken from a 2012 video game about the near future. Here’s a graph of actual rare earth production over the past few years.
Actual figures show a meteoric rise in the mining of rare earths by China, to a level strikingly similar to the “fictional” scenario above.
If you’ve been following recent news, you probably heard about the fight for control of Greenland. It is all about rare earths.
A 2024 headline about Greenland’s rare earths.
A 2025 BBC headline about the fight for Greenland’s rare earths.
A 2026 headline about the United States needing to take control of Greenland for national security.
In short, the main plot of the 2012 game Black Ops II accurately predicted America’s aggressive pursuit of rare earths around 2025 while also predicting China’s domination in this vital field.
While this site usually focuses on movies and music, the video game industry’s reach and influence cannot be ignored. Even more so, due to their engaging and interactive nature, games represent a prime medium for normalizing ideas, storylines, and narratives. By switching to “near future” settings, the highly popular franchise Call of Duty became the perfect vessel to “prepare” its massive fanbase for this to come.
In other words, this is about predictive programming. While Call of Duty‘s strikingly accurate predictions can be explained by mere coincidence or outstanding foresight by the developers, there’s an important fact to consider: These games are made with the input of the very people who can make these things actually happen. Over the past decades, the Pentagon has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on video game development, with military consultants, advisors, and defense contractors actively involved in their development.
Part of their job is to plant ideas in people’s heads worldwide so they don’t seem crazy or shocking when they actually happen. The takedown of the Maduro regime and the hunt for rare earths have been in the books for years. It was only a matter of time before we realized the script had been laid out years ago.
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