Listing Every Historical Inaccuracy in Call Of Duty Vanguard 

*PLEASE NOTE* At 2:35 the Inaccuracy counter skips from 13 to 15. This was because I was originally mislead by an unreality source which caused me to make a factually incorrect point here. I have since used the RU-vid snipping tool to remove it from the video to prevent any spreading of incorrect information. *_____** Corrections **_____* 5:54: The Knights Cross of the Iron Cross was worn around the neck. Richter actually only has a Iron Cross 2nd class here, but still is a "combat medal" 8:23: These are not 20mm cannons, but 37mm cannons. 11:16: There actually was an altitude reader back there, the gunner could read it while the pilot focused on the target 20:54: It was fairly common practice for soldiers to only loud 5 rounds into the Lee-Enfield to prevent spring failures 21:00: The Panzer 4 F2 had a 75mm cannon, not a 76mm 23:33: These are not "Modern plate carriers". They are Italian ‘Samurai’ vests. still very misplaced for the German forces however. My apologies for these errors. This was my first ever Historical inaccuracy video and I have learned a lot since the publishing of this video years ago. I strive to create more factual, detailed and reliable sourced back information for all future content.

Imagine being so good as a soldier that you get a medal for a battle that hasn’t happened yet

My man did more research to make this 26 minute video than the entire Call of Duty team did making CoD Vanguard.

The worse thing about this game isnt the inaccurate weapons, its the disrespect they give to so many heros and good people in the war to the point they just make up lies about them to cast them in a bad light.

The best thing about Vanguard is that it makes playing World at War so much better

Hey there! I worked as a QA tester at Activision during the course of Vanguard's development and I can wholeheartedly say that I submitted a lot of these historical inaccuracies (specifically anachronistic/unrealistic weapon placements, weapon details, and smaller nitpicks like the "Bugger that RPG" line) to the developers via impressions surveys and bug reports. They all fell on deaf ears. You were just as frustrated as I was and I worked on the damn thing.

The absolute best were the Germans charging downhill, the Japanese soldier speaking perfect English, and the V2 rocket suddenly becoming pilotable

Being an Italian, I feel bad for the constant lack of representation of Italian troops in almost every game presenting the Nort Africa front. This does not only occur in Cod Vanguard, but also in other games such as Battlefield V. Medal of Honor Airborne was probably one of the few games to do this, which I gave them props for.

Makes Return to Castle Wolfenstein look like a documentary.

Activision: “we want diversity!” Also Activision: *Proceeds to ignore all the different possibilities for real diversity in favor of downright criminal levels of historical inaccuracy*

Another fun fact: Almost every detail in the older CoD titles were more realistic with better attention paid to detail. Edit: I have over 7.5k likes on this comment and I'm not going to add "Mom,..." get the camera or "I'm famous." Bc that's not cool😎 Edit 2: Bruh, I'm not saying the older CoD titles were realistic, just more so in comparison. Pls stop with the hate

13:30 There was a parachuting us pilot in WWII Owen John Baggett actually is believed to have hit and possibly wounded a zero pilot with his service pistol, its better than not trying anything

16:40 blud thinks he's in warthunder fun fact: 10 December 1943, there was this Tiger Tank gunner (Kramer) that got angry about the sound of Russian fighter bullets bouncing off the tank. So his commander, Carius, let him shoot at them. On the second shot he got lucky and hit one in the wing, bringing it down.

The devs of this game were so obsessed on adding racial, national and gender diversity that they ended up ridiculing every group they were trying to appeal to with such cartoonish inaccuracies. Not to mention the total disregard for every other form of historical accuracy.

The fact that the dev's put the stg44 in Japan AND before it was made is incredible. Like, did the dev's not question what the 44 in the rifles name ment?

The one about the scared soldier turning from a real human to another ai was the best

There's a lot you've missed in Stalingrad, a lot of things in Sniper's apartment, for example the fact that Papasha has both Soviet and Imperial awards, or also there's some more inconsistencies with magical t-34-85 from future, for example it has white stripes on turret used for allied aviation identification. Also german soldiers are using stg-44s during battle of Stalingrad somehow.

I like how Activision, trying not to look racist or sexist since all the leaks & whistleblowers & employee walkouts happened, tried to be more inclusive in this game while forgetting all the real inclusive heroes & soldiers during WW2.

COD Vanguard expectations in Stalingrad: *Brutal house-to-house, urban combat* COD Vanguard Stalingrad in reality: *Assassin's Creed and Sniper Elite knock-off*

After playing through Vanguard, I’m honestly surprised this video isn’t 5 times longer.

And another thing regarding the Stalingrad mission, the whole city looked too luxurious for an industrial powerhouse

so basically it's like as if the people in those "stolen valor" compilation videos on RU-vid got together and made a game... 🤣

The fact that the cruisers were missing their turrets is plain inexcusable.

Some of these inaccuracies are so bad it makes you think that they intentionally went out of their way to mess up everything.

Its kinda messed up how they disrespect the real lives lost in WW2 for cheap political points to satisfy people on twitter. I understand changing the specifics for gameplay reasons, but these changes don’t make the game any better. it’s just changing history for modern sensibilities.

It’s disgusting that they said that the colonial African soldiers simply “married” the German women there. That’s like saying the Japanese soldiers simply married the Chinese women during their occupation of China. But of course, you can’t say anything remotely bad about their crimes at all or you’re considered a racist. The writers 100% knew what they were doing when writing this in, and it’s astonishing how less people have pointed this out. Also, with all of these historical inaccuracies in the game, with many of them so simple a 10 year old could probably notice it, as well as the disrespect for many of the real life people displayed in this game, it’s safe to say COD games don’t have any thought or care behind them anymore. Well made video.

Did you forget that in the mission set in Stalingrad in 1943, in the initial scene we see the officer standing on top of an SDKFZ 231, a vehicle that had been withdrawn from active service since 1940, so it is practically impossible that it could have been used in Stalingrad in 1943 *+1*

11:58 there actually was an altitude reader back there, the gunner could read it while the pilot focused on the target

A real red flag for me was when, I think it was a voice actor for this CoD, said "We want to give CoD iconic and recognisable characters because they never really had that before this game" when there are a whole array of characters: Price, Soap, Ghost, Gaz, Roach, Makarov, Woods, Bowman, Hudson, Weaver, Alex, David and Harper to name just a few.

When a 26 minutes long video was more entertanining than multi million dollars video game. You deserved more views.

I was actually watching this video while playing call of duty vanguard to see all the things that you pointed out, which were historically inaccurate. This was a great video!

stalingrad citizens just chilling while the front line is moving towards them is crazy, was there a single historian consulted while making this game?

The inaccuracies in Vanguard hurt me both as a historian, and as a gamer. the amount of inaccuracies and how noticeable they were, just added to the amount hatred I had for this game.

5:44 damn this dude rolled a natural 20 on charisma, he made his fellow soldier having a panic attack throw himself to certain death in the EXACT moment he said "just go lmao"

Reject gaming, embrace reality Honestly the actual stories of what they’re based on is really awesome

I usually got into CoD by playing the campaign first. I was one of those unfortunates who bought the game, believing that the campaign was going to be like the stories told in Medal of Honor and Blazing Angels 2: a WW2 story that is fictional in nature, but rooted in the deep historical authenticity that has been cultivated by not only past WW2 CoD titles, but also past WW2 games and other WW2 media. A WW2 story that was going to tell the story of the first special forces, such as the SAS, the British Commandos, the Devil's Brigade, the SOE, and the OSS just to name a few. Instead, what we got is a stinking pile of the most politically correct nonsense I have ever had the misfortune of ever playing in my 26 years of existence, as well as the most cursed gun attachment combinations I have ever seen. I feel bad for Jonathan Ferguson for having to endure those cursed guns, but at least he has his emotional support STG-44 to rely on.

The shell shocked soldiers that you just say "let's go we got a job to do" and they immediately get up and start fighting is so hilariously bad, what an awful attempt to show PTSD

The Shell-Shocked Soldier: I'm depressed! Kingsley: No, you're not! The Soldier: Yes Sarge!

This video was posted on the 14th of January 2022. And then on the 28th of September the same year, Sledgehammer added a modern-day bullpup assault rifle and a futuristic plasma cannon into a WWII game.

7:57 *casually walks in-front of a tank*

its a damn crime that this video only has 700 views. Very well put together

When a game released in 2008 has better historical accuracy, continuity, game content, overall fun level, better multiplayer and better telling of a war story than a game released almost 13 years later, world at war is fucking epic

I’m not into cod but I really enjoyed this video. Thanks for this. It was cool and you clearly put in effort with research. Nice one mate.

Volkssturumgewhers were semi-automatic, however they’re portrayed as fully-automatic in the game

You know it’s kind of funny. Every decade the depictions of WW2 Germany become more and more cartoonish and ridiculous. It’s like they are some fictional supervillain faction. Mark my words, in the 40's people will know them as a fantasy-tier race with soldiers casually drinking blood and shooting red lasers of evil demonic power out of their eyes.

Reality:stalingrad was retaken because of soviet solders holding the line and waiting for reinforcements to encircle the city Cod:a single person held stalingrad and inspired all 11 million solders to go on the offensive

15:32 Also, it was pretty unlikely for a bullet to fully penetrate a flamethrower tank, let alone fly out its user's chest after.

Another addition to the Australian Soldiers wearing slouch hats at 22:16. They are wearing the 7th Gen pattern Rising Sun badge which was put into service from 1991 onwards. The one they should be using is the 3rd gen pattern which is bronze coloured and not gold plated

Lovely how the whole reason CoD began with WWII era games was to honor the memory of the soldiers who had fought, and newer CoD games such as Vanguard basically mock the purpose it was to uphold

As far as the pilot with the 1911 is concerned, there is one recorded pilot to pilot kill with a 1911. His name was Owen Baggett and he shot the pilot of a Japanese Zero in the head killing the pilot and resulting in the plane crashing. The odds might not have been great, but not zero. Otherwise top tier man!

My son and I do ww2 living history. We had a great laugh watching this video. Good job!!!

I learned a lot from this video. Thanks!

Got to love how this game managed to insult literally every nation depicted in the game: •America by ruining Midway and making it look like the war was lead by African Americans, somehow insulting both white and black Americans who fought •Britain especially in the El Alamein mission, all with cockney accents and insulting the characters based on real people, making the high command look like they’re still in the 19th century. •Australia and New Zealand by forgetting that New Zealand exists and making Australians wear bush hats, surprised you weren’t armed with a boomerang too. USSR completely shit on the bloodiest battle in history and has the Gaul to say that the only reason they won was because of 1 person, and not the 100s of thousands who sacrificed themselves. •Germany, cartoonishly villainous, yet somehow despite making them all evil, they don’t actually depict how bad the bad ones really were at Stalingrad. •Japan ‘dO yOu SpEAk jApaNEsE?’ •Italy, like New Zealand they forgot they were at Tobruk and El Alamein, although not enough to forget to include the guns. I don’t expect much from a CoD game, especially in terms of historical accuracy, but how the fuck is World at War more accurate even when they made sure that their characters weren’t based off real people? Vanguard literally advertised their game as a depiction of real life heroes.

I’m fine with sacrificing some accuracies for fun/balance. But this is just completely unbelievable

Always feels like he's very close to just breaking into laughter. It's just great!

The Fourth Reich scene killed me. As I love the WW2 German uniforms, seeing any inaccuracies puts me into cardiac arrest. The main antagonist (Forgot his name) was wearing the Golden Nazi Party badge, but it was huge, the random Army General to the right when they salute is also wearing it, but it is much more accurate. Also the badge would have been worn above all chest decorations besides the combat clasp. Also the aforementioned Army General was wearing a bunch of medals, and whilst I’m not 100% sure, some of them definitely do not exist. Also his service medals (the two blue squares) should have silver or gold eagles to denote their grade. Also the 1939 clasp to denote that the person earned the Iron Cross in WW1 (Seen above his iron cross on the chest and on the tunic button) are inaccurate, they look more like the breast Eagle insignia that was part of the standard uniform, as their wings were too wide and they lacked the plaque underneath. Also he for some reason has a sleeve Eagle and breast Eagle even though for regular army, their eagles were worn only on the breast

Fun fact: The revolving shotgun was scrapped after multiple occasions of the chamber firing back onto people.

There were no tactical reloads during WWII, they hadn't been developed yet till much later.

There was such thing as a duel-magazine MP40 called the MP-40/I but it was EXTREMELY RARE. (I heard about it on the RU-vid channel "Forgotten Weapons" featuring the incredibly knowledgeable Ian McCollum.)

Three more that I see that were missed are: Around the 2:48 mark, the SS officer is not only missing shoulder boards, he has the arm rank insignia of a corporal and is also wearing a crush cap that he never would have been authorized to wear if he were only a corporal. He'd only be issued the garrison cap and the field cap. Regarding the Owens gun and the Aussies, not only was the Owen's not being produced yet, but only troops in the pacific were ever issued the weapon. Aussies in Africa would be carrying M1928 Thompsons. The Panzerfaust 60 wasn't being produced yet either, and never saw service in Africa. The Faustpatrone was the earliest version, and went into production concurrently with the end of the Africa campaign, but didn't make it to the front until after. Western Allied forces didn't encounter the weapon until the Sicily landings.

What happened in Stalingrad according to the game: This one strong female sniper was so heroic and brave that her actions single handedly changed the course of the war! What happened in Stalingrad in reality: you run you die

Ottoway’s mistake wasn’t just an inaccuracy. That is a flat-out insult to his courage. Very sad, given what call of duty had been

Your videos are so indepth that i hope you make more videos like this & I'm also subscribeing.

Bros the history teacher everyone want

I remember when people said that holographic scopes are historically inaccurate in Battlefield V...Well in Vanguard almost all of the scopes are holo...

I'll add some: 1. The Brits cannot and WILL NOT put a Black soldier in a special forces. The black soldier cannot even reach the higher rank. 2. The Type 95 Ha-Go only armed 37mm gun, only one Japanese tank, the Type 97 Chi-Ha later variant CAN destroy a Sherman, but in a close range.(Side note: If you trying to destroy a Sherman with Type 95, you can only destroy it by attacking it's back from close range). 3. On the German helmet, it should be a Swastika or a SS emblem, not the Imperial emblem. 4. The He-177 'Greif' was a unreliable heavy bomber, it was mostly used to bomb Moscow. 5. If you notice, during the North Africa mission, you see a the plane already used the black and white stripes, this is very inaccurate. The black and with stripes was used in 1944 to prevent friendly fire. 6. The Mitsubishi A6 Zero was easily to catch on fire, so it's impossible that Zero can keep flying even though it was shot. 7. The Japanese should wear helmet, not a normal cap. Reason is, because they were in a battle. 8. Really a soldier fight keep fighting even though that soldier already burned?? 9. STG-44 in Pacific? It was impossible. All German Navy almost ceased to exist because of blockade and air raids in 1943-1945. 10. The Battle of Stalingrad involved not only German Army. Romanian, Hungarian, Italian, and other Axis country involved during this battle. 11. If you realize, there is a goddamn Panzerschreck in North Africa. This is inaccurate. The first Panzerschreck was used in 1943. 12. The SA or even SS doesn't participate in the North African Campaign. 13. The main antagonist should already a Reichsführer SS, not a lieutenant. 14. There is no way a German plane can fly get out from Berlin during the Battle of Berlin. It's only possible if you fly the Me-262 and Arado Ar-234. There is actually still lot of historical inaccuracies, but I cannot write it all because it will take days.

I didn't know that you reviewed this game, but I'm so glad you did lol

The "What is that?!" Line and the scream fit so well in the segment of the cursed guns 😂

The fact that, in this game, you become an ace in a day with just a dive bomber after shooting down the Pacific Theatre's best fighters at that time (before Corsairs & Hellcats took the stage) is beyond hillarious

The disrespect towards Australian troops by trying to make them "victims of prejudice" is beyond insulting and I'm not even Australian

23:33. I'm a year late but I have to correct it. The vest that the German is wearing existed. It's called a samurai vest, used by the 185th Folgore Paratroopers. It stored MAB 38 magazines so idk what it's doing in the hands of the Germans. It's Italian though so it is an inaccuracy.

You know it's sad when Enlisted more accurately matches these battles with only like 1/4 the buget of CoD

20:24 Fun fact, they misspelled "Mittelmeer" (Mediterranean Sea in German) as "Mittlemeer". They couldn't even look up a single word.

“It’s the end for me! I’m as good as dead already!” “You’ve got a job to do.” “Fair point, I hadn’t considered that. I’m all good now.” Bethesda level speech check right there.

Tanks for tuh great video.

This is like a fantasy world war 2 novel.. I miss the old call of duty where it was accurate even though graphics were limited I miss doing the missions that actually happen with old war footage as part of the cut scene

22:41 fun fact: in the first COD game, you get rid of the panzerfaust after you use it. so basically panzerfaust is depicted correctly in a 2003 game but not in a 2021 game lol 24:10 another fun fact: in world at war, these tunnels are actually flooded and you get caught in the flood

I learned more about WWII in this video analysis than the game itself

On the topic of the weapons... wow. I could go on all day about the errors made about the weapons, but some of the most egregious include. The MP40 being chambered in 9mm makarov in game instead of 9mm Parabellum The Mauser C96 (Refered to as the machine pistol in game) being listed as chambered in fucking 50. cal pistol ammo The Thompson being chambered in 5.7x28mm, AKA the caliber created for the P90 which was created 45 YEARS after WW2 ended. The Volkssturmgewehr being portrayed as automatic, when in reality it was semi auto (its supposed to be Volkssturm-gewehr "German Homeguard Rifle" not Volks-sturmgewehr "Peoples storm rifle") In the gunsmith, it is possible to turn a PPSH-41 into a PPS-43, which is not possible in real life. Its possible to take the stock off the MG42, which makes it impossible to fire because removing the stock removes the recoil spring. It is possible to add grip tape to most weapons, which is something that was not common place in armies untill the 21st century.

Love how we went from one of the most realistic cods in mw, to the most unrealistic cods in cold war and vanguard, it's evolving just backwards.

I think the one thing that pissed me off the most was the replacement of Charles Upham. Now, I'm from New Zealand myself so that probably had a hand in my reaction, but erasing my entire country's existence in the game is disrespectful and disgusting to every ANZAC soldier who fought in WW2. Also, the erasure of the British commander in the D-Day mission and making him out to be a coward is horrid, as is rewriting every Soviet soldier to be inspired by a single female sniper rather than love of their country and brotherhood of their army. This game looks pretty and that's about all it has going for it.

"She motivated the Russians to take back their City" - 1943, Soviet counter offensive was in full sway - "the Course of the War was Changed" > Operation Bagration did, not a single sniper Also i wanna bet that they gave the Enemies and Protagonist inaccurate weapons because they didn't want to have people get bored with Bolt action's, The Japanese majorly used Bolt actions as they lacked alot of Subs

13:55 a real Japanese soldier would not ask if he spoke Japanese they would probably scream at him in Japanese regardless

23:57 While the U.S. soldiers were trained to use the M1911 with one hand, interviewed veterans often mentioned they used it with both hands because it was inefficient to use it one-handed. This doesn't mean all WWII soldiers who used the M1911 did so with both hands, but it makes such a practice plausible.

Replaying WAW I realized that most of of the inaccuracies you mentioned here was never a thing back then. Just goes to show how well made a game from 14 years ago is compared to a fairly modern one.

I'm impressed all of Vanguards stuff fit into 26 mins

Hipfiring was a thing with the MG42, called "Sturmschieße" (stormshooting) meant as suppresivr fire while assaulting. Although of course, that what you can do in-game is stupid

It's not the historical innacuracies that surprise me, it's the knowledge of this guy to notice them that does, noice job

I don't know if others pointed this out, but the mission "The Rats of Tobruk" were set in the middle of the desert. Tobruk is a Seaport City and we see no coastlines anywhere in the game.

21:43 you're right about the lee enfield capacity, but the problem is that the soldiers wouldn't fill the magazine to max capacity because that would make the spring to fail, just like they did on the bren lmg

I recently decided to finish vanguard’s singleplayer campaign since i mainly played multiplayer on this one…. I ain’t no WW2 expert but i consider myself well informed about it …Your video kinda confirmed this weird feeling i had playing all along, that A LOT of stuff in this game was odd and clearly not accurate. The japanese guns in the train in the first mission did trigger my « historic-sense » haha

The “Not one step back” rule didn’t 100% mean to kill all retreating soldiers. It also meant to send out soldiers to regroup all the retreated soldiers and put them back into combat

They literally got every detail wrong. I can understand some levels of creativity to make a game fun, but this level of inaccuracy is just terrible. Also, what really bugged me is that they claimed that they’d be exploring “new and forgotten” theatres of war when it was announced, yet every theatre (Dday, Stalingrad, the Pacific and North Africa) have all either been done at least once or done to death in the COD franchise. I’m thankful I didn’t buy this mess and just watched the campaign on RU-vid.

Fun fact: the only sniper who motivated his soldiers during WW2 was Vasily Zaytsev. The young Soviet sniper became famous for his kills from places that seemed nearly impossible. Soon enough, he'd be used as a propaganda tool for to motivate the Red Army

>has an English-speaking prisoner >has a soldier that knows English >said soldier asks if the prisoner knows Japanese

Obviously this game is terribly historically inaccurate but some of these details are so specific. It’s crazy how much this guy knows about ww2.

you missed one during the "do you speak Japanese" ambush you can see a full auto M1 garand

I'm surprised you didn't touch on the names they gave ammo types aswell, such as the "Sakura" rounds which I'm assuming is renamed from the 6.5/50mm Arisaka rounds

One extra sin for this game, the Type-11 LMG uses hopper system that you put 5-round stripper clips into it. The game just removed that feature with character replace the hopper. (no, you cannot do that on the field) Also Type-11 is designed to be operated by two soldiers and used in fixed positions. The gun didn't do so well in real life so it was replace by Type-96 and Type-99.

Another inaccuracy is Lyudmila Pavlichenko nickname in the game she's called lady Nightingale while in real life she was known more commonly as “Lady Death".