10 Call of Duty Facts That Will Blow Your Mind!

Soldier in Camouflage Shirt

Written by Angelo Dargenio I June 1, 2014@1:30 PM

The sheer numbers that the Call of Duty franchise has managed to pull in are astounding. From incredible sales figures to downright baffling statistics about bullets fired, damage caused or even the number of hours put into the franchiuse, Activisions flagship series has recording some truly astounding numbers. Brace yourself, as this list of 10 Call of Duty facts may actually blow your mind.

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10. Modern Warfare 3 is the Fastest Selling Game of All Time

Modern Warfare 2 sold 8.8 million copies in its first month, breaking every sales record set prior. In fact, the previous record holder was another Call of Duty title, Call of Duty: Black Ops, at 8 million in sales.

Unfortunately, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 sold only 7.4 million in its first month, which may be signaling a decline in the series. Now we just have to wait and see how much Ghost does. A Call of Duty Face That Will Blow Your Mind? You betcha.

9. Modern Warfare 3 Made More Money Than Hollywood During Its Launch

Modern Warfare 3 made $775 million in its first five days. That’s far more than ‘Avatar’, the current highest grossing movie, did. Call of Duty is actually worth more than more of the top movies in Hollywood.

If you put together the life-long sales of ‘Avatar’, ‘Titanic’, and ‘The Avengers’, the three highest grossing movies of all time, they still don’t quite make the $6 billion that Call of Duty had made by the time Modern Warfare 3 came out.

8. Gamers Play Almost 2000 Years of Call of Duty a Day

According to Activision, Call of Duty isn’t just one of the biggest sellers every year, it’s also one of the biggest time sucks for gamers around the globe.

Based on data collects from various platforms over the lifespan of the series, Activision found players cumulatively spend the equivalent of 1900 years playing Call of Duty… every day.

In that amount of time in the real world, multiple empires have fallen, the New World was discovered, automobiles were invented and computers shrank from the size of a warehouse to fit in the palm of your hand.

All you did was wrack up a 27-kill streak.

7. The Real Cost of All UAVs Destroyed Could Pay the US Budget

As one of the easier perks to unlock in Call of Duty multiplayer, the UAV (Unmanned aerial vehicle/drone) is a frequent occurrence in just about every single match. While you can probably easily count the number of UAVs you shot down last match on one hand, we’ll wager you had idea just how many have been destroyed in the lifetime of the franchise.

813 million UAVs have been destroyed in Call of Duty online matches.

If you multiplied that number by the cost of a real-life drone ($4.3M), you’d get $3.5 quadrillion. Or, enough to pay the US federal spending budget 5,422 times.

6. Call of Duty Has Been Played for 25 Billion Hours

When you put together all the time spend by every player playing Call of Duty back to back, you get over 2.85 million years of playtime.

That’s longer tan humans have existed on earth! In fact, if you were to go back in time 2.85 million years, we would still be indistinguishable from other great apes.

Yes, Call of Duty has managed to out-pace evolution!

5. 18 Billion Multiplayer Matches Have Been Played

Think you’ve played a lot of Call of Duty over the past ten years? You don’t know the half of it.

Since the franchise became synonymous with online multiplayer, Call of Duty has consistently found itself atop the “most played games” lists on just about every platform.

While that type of consistency is impressive already, knowing just how many matches have been played in mind-boggling.

According to Activision, 18 billion multiplayer matches have been played in Call of Duty. And you thought you played a lot of Call of Duty.

4. Call of Duty’s Daily Players Could Fill 80 of the World’s Largest Sports Fields

Activision has logged over five million people playing Call of Duty at once in the days of Black Ops and Modern Warfare 2. That’s greater than the population of Los Angeles! In fact, that’s greater than the population of nearly every since in the US.

3. Players Have Respawned 1.9 Quadrillion Times

Has a rough go of it last time you played Call of Duty’s multiplayer? That’s okay, so did the rest of the world.

Over the life of the series, Activision claims there have been 1.9 quadrillion respawns in Call of Duty multiplayer.

Somebody had to be on the losing end of those 18 billion multiplayer matches. We just didn’t expect that number to be the equivalent of the world’s population dying 266,816 times.

2. 31 Billion Care Packages Have Been Dropped

That total is impressive considering the care package itself is a killstreak that noobs have problems earning. What’s even more impressive is that, if you treated these care packages as real objects, you would have enough care packages to build 15,000 pyramids or 100 Great Walls of China.

1. 100 Million People Have Played Call of Duty

Our number on entry in this list of Call of Duty Facts That Will Blow Your Mind is a big one.

100 million people have played Call of Duty. That’s a larger population than most countries! If the entirety of the Call of Duty franchise formed a country it would d have a greater population than Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. They would be an incredible international military threat. As long as they aren’t noob tubing.