If you were around in November 2010, you remember the shock. You finish the Black Ops campaign, the credits roll, and suddenly you’re sitting in the Oval Office. It wasn't a glitch. It was "Five," the most chaotic, stressful, and oddly charming experience in the history of the franchise.
Most people hated it at first. Honestly, many still do. It’s tight. It’s fast. The thief takes your guns and leaves you holding a starting pistol while a zombie JFK screams about the economy. It’s peak Treyarch.
While Kino Der Toten was the map everyone played to feel powerful, five call of duty black ops zombies was where you went to test if you actually knew how to play the game. There are no wide-open stages here. No stage to run circles around. It’s just you, a couple of elevators, and the looming threat of the Pentagon Thief.
The Pentagon Setting Was a Fever Dream
Treyarch took a huge risk here. Imagine telling a publisher today that your main co-op mode features John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara, Richard Nixon, and Fidel Castro fighting undead scientists in the basement of the Pentagon. It sounds like a bad fever dream.
Yet, it worked.
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The map is split into three distinct layers. You start in the Hallways. It’s pristine, bright, and cramped. Then you head down to the War Room. This is the heart of the map, filled with computer banks and that iconic Defcon system. Finally, you hit the Labs. This is where things get weird. It’s dark, there’s flickering light everywhere, and the layout is a literal maze of teleporters and pig rooms.
The verticality changed everything. In World at War, you mostly stayed on one floor or moved up. In "Five," you are constantly cycling through elevators. It creates this frantic pacing where you never feel truly safe because a teammate could be two floors away and completely unable to help you when the hoard breaks through the windows.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Pentagon Thief
Let’s talk about the "Science Guy." Officially, he’s the Pentagon Thief. He doesn't want to eat your brains; he just wants your Mustang and Sally.
When the lights go red and that distorted siren starts blaring, the panic is real. Most players make the mistake of running away from him. That’s a death sentence. If he catches you, he takes your equipped weapon. If it’s your Pack-a-Punched wonder weapon? Say goodbye.
The pro strategy—the one people actually used to hit round 50+—involved specific positioning in the War Room. You had to catch him coming down the stairs. If you kill him before he touches anyone, you get a Fire Sale and a Max Ammo. If you kill him after he steals a gun but before he teleports away, you get your gun back and a Bonfire Sale.
The Bonfire Sale is the secret sauce of "Five." It drops the Pack-a-Punch cost to 1000 points and opens all the teleporters directly to the PAP room. Without mastering this cycle, you are basically just waiting to run out of ammo and die in a corner.
The Winter’s Howl: A Love-Hate Relationship
In the pantheon of Wonder Weapons, the Winter’s Howl is the black sheep. Compared to the Thundergun on Kino, it feels... weak. It’s a frost breath gun that freezes zombies in place. On paper, that sounds amazing. In practice? It’s a bit of a nightmare on high rounds.
It doesn't kill instantly. It turns zombies into ice blocks. If you’re trapped in one of the tight corridors of the Pentagon Labs, an ice block is just as much of a wall as a living zombie. You can’t run through them.
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But here’s the nuance: the Winter’s Howl was never meant to be a killing machine. It was a crowd control tool. In a map where the hallways are three feet wide, stopping the front line of a hoard is the only way to survive. It required a totally different playstyle. You had to be surgical. You had to communicate.
The Defcon System and the Panic of Pack-a-Punching
Opening the Pack-a-Punch on this map is a chore. It’s not like Kino where you just link a teleporter. You have to flip four switches in the War Room to reach Defcon 5.
The problem? The switches are spread out. In a four-player game, this is fine. In solo? You’re sprinting past zombies, hitting a switch, jumping over a railing, hitting another, and praying you don't get caught in a corner. Once you hit Defcon 5, every teleporter leads to the President’s Situation Room.
This room is a deathtrap.
It’s tiny. If you stay in there too long, the zombies will swarm the windows and you’ll have nowhere to go. You have to get in, upgrade, and get out. It adds a layer of "risk vs. reward" that modern Zombies maps often lack. Nowadays, Pack-a-Punch is usually in a safe zone or a large arena. In five call of duty black ops zombies, the PAP room was where dreams went to die.
Why "Five" is Actually Better Than "Classified"
In Black Ops 4, Treyarch released "Classified," a remake of "Five." They added the Ultimis crew, simplified the teleporters, and replaced the Pentagon Thief with a generic dog round variant.
It was "better" in terms of mechanics, but it lost the soul.
The original "Five" was gritty. The lighting was oppressive. The character dialogue was absurdly satirical. Hearing Nixon complain about "hippies" while blowing a zombie's head off with a Stakeout shotgun is a specific type of 2010 humor that you just don't see anymore.
The difficulty was the point. You weren't supposed to feel like a god. You were supposed to feel like a politician who was way out of his depth. The tight corners made the "mule kick" perk—which was actually added to this map later via an update—a dangerous gamble. Do you really want a third gun if it means swapping takes longer when a freak is screaming in your face? Probably not.
Survival Strategies for the Modern Player
If you’re booting up the original Black Ops today to revisit this, stop trying to train in the War Room. It’s the "obvious" spot, but the spawns are too fast.
The real high-round strat involves the elevators. You can actually use the elevator as a shield. By calling the elevator and standing near the doors, you can control the flow of zombies and give yourself an immediate escape route to a different floor.
Also, don't sleep on the M14 off the wall in the starting room. In the early rounds, those points are vital for clearing the debris to the elevator. You need to get to the power as fast as possible. If you’re still on the top floor by round 6, you’ve already lost the game.
The Cultural Legacy of the Pentagon
Looking back, five call of duty black ops zombies represents a time when developers weren't afraid to make something "too hard." It didn't hold your hand. There was no quest marker telling you how to find the thief.
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It remains a divisive masterpiece. It’s the "difficult second album" of the Black Ops world. It forced players to learn how to "clutch"—that specific skill of weaving through a gap in a zombie line that’s only inches wide. If you can survive on "Five," you can survive on any map in the franchise.
How to Master the Map This Weekend
- Prioritize the Bowie Knife: In the Labs, the Bowie Knife is a one-hit kill until round 11. It’s expensive (3000 points), but it pays for itself in point generation.
- The Claymore Trap: Buy claymores early. You get two every round. If you stack them in the hallway leading to the PAP room, you can create a "safe zone" for when you’re cornered.
- Ignore the Howl in Solo: If you’re playing by yourself, grab the Ray Gun or a Crossbow instead. The Winter’s Howl doesn't have the "get out of jail free" power you need when there's nobody to watch your back.
- Master the Teleporter Logic: The teleporters aren't random. They cycle based on which floor you are on and the current Defcon level. Learn the icons above the portals so you don't accidentally teleport into a dead end.
There’s a reason people still talk about this map fifteen years later. It wasn't just a bonus mode; it was a statement. It proved that Zombies could be funny, political, and soul-crushingly difficult all at once. Go back and play it. Just make sure you keep an eye on your Nixon—he’s usually the first one to go down.