The single-player campaign features two connected storylines, with the first set from 1986 to 1989 during the final years of the first Cold War, and the other set in 2025 during a second Cold War. The protagonist of Black Ops, Alex Mason returns as the protagonist in the first Cold War section, and chronicles the rise to infamy of the game's primary antagonist, Raul Menendez, a Nicaraguan narco-terrorist and the leader of "Cordis Die", a populist movement celebrated as the champion of victims of economic inequality.
