Call of the Dead Easter Egg Guide (BO1): Solo and Co-op Steps

Which version can you do?

Call of the Dead was part of the Escalation map pack (Xbox 360 on May 3, 2011; PC on June 2; PS3 on June 10). The four original characters are not playable here: you hear them behind a locked door, and the quest is about getting them out.

Easter egg	Players	Extra steps	Reward
Stand-in	1–4 (the only one possible solo)	Fuse, generators, submarine, Golden Rod	Wunderwaffe DG-2 and the Stand-in achievement / trophy
Ensemble Cast	2–4 only	Everything in Stand-in, plus vodka, four radios, four fog horns and the lighthouse dials	Wunderwaffe DG-2 and the Ensemble Cast achievement / trophy (also unlocks Stand-in)
“Not Ready to Die” song	Any	Three meteor rocks	The Avenged Sevenfold song plays

Before you start

Turn on the power in the control room at the top of the ship.
Bring explosives for the generators: Semtex sticks to the target and is the easiest. Grenades, the China Lake, the Crossbow and the Scavenger also work. Ray Gun and LAW shots must hit directly.
You will need the V-R11 from the Mystery Box (950). Its odds go up during the Golden Rod step.
Keep George calm while you work: walk him into the icy water or shoot him with the V-R11 if he turns orange and starts running.

Stand-in: the solo Easter egg, step by step

Knock on the door. Go to the locked metal door on the ground floor of the building next to the lighthouse, below the PhD Flopper room. Knife it to hear the trapped crew.
Find the fuse. Go upstairs to the PhD Flopper floor and look for a fuse; its spot changes every game (see the list below). Put it in the fuse box to the right of the door.
Destroy four generators. Four generators with red lights appear around the map. Blow up each one with an explosive, then knife the door again.
Call the submarine. In the ship’s control room, turn the wheel so the handle points to about five o’clock (two clicks to the right). Pull the first lever from the left once and the third lever three times. A fog horn sounds and a submarine surfaces; in solo its green light shines into the lighthouse.
Get the Golden Rod. Stand at the bottom of the lighthouse and shoot a zombie with the V-R11. It turns human and floats up the green light. Kill it before it reaches the top; the Golden Rod (the Vril device) drops to the bottom.
Send the rod and fix the fuse. Put the Golden Rod in the tube to the left of the door. Wait for Richtofen to finish talking, then knife the sparking fuse box. The Easter egg is complete.

Fuse and generator locations

Fuse (random each game, PhD Flopper floor): on the table next to PhD Flopper, on the table opposite, in the corner between the cabinet and the wall, on the floor by the lockers, or behind the batteries next to the meteor. Guides list slightly different sets of spots.
Generator 1: straight across from the locked door.
Generator 2: outside the window of, or behind, the Stamin-Up shack.
Generator 3: beyond the railing near Double Tap on the ship, or in the water below. One guide places a generator in the icy water on the lower deck near Juggernog instead.
Generator 4: on the ice shelf between the two halves of the ship, or between the ship and the starting area.

Ensemble Cast: the extra co-op steps

Do the first three Stand-in steps (knock, fuse, generators). Then complete the steps below. One major guide says they can be done in any order, as long as the submarine is called before the fog horns. Finish with the Golden Rod and the fuse box as in Stand-in.

Catch the vodka (two players). A frozen vodka bottle is stuck on a railing somewhere on the map. One player stands right below it, the other knifes it down. If nobody catches it, it breaks and appears somewhere else. Put it in the tube to the left of the door, then knife the door again and wait for the dialogue to finish before moving on. Common spots: the railing above the PhD Flopper stairs, the stairs to the AK74u, near the M16 on the ship, or by the MP40 where the two halves of the ship meet.
Press four Morse-code radios in order: (1) on a cabinet one floor below the control room, right side; (2) on a barrel inside the Stamin-Up shack; (3) inside a container like a train car near the Semtex on the back half of the ship; (4) on a cabinet under the stairs by the trapped crew’s door. You hear Morse code when it worked.
Call the submarine with the wheel and levers, as in Stand-in.
Sound four fog horns while the fog is in. Hold Interact on each, in order: (1) by the pool at the bottom of the lighthouse; (2) in the water at the right-hand corner after the ice slide to Speed Cola; (3) on the left side of the lighthouse base, right against the building; (4) behind the large rock in the middle after the ice slide. The submarine then aims its light at the top of the lighthouse.
Set the lighthouse dials to 2-7-4-6 (see the next section for the solution).
Shoot a zombie with the V-R11 in the light. The human is tougher here; use a Ray Gun, Scavenger or machine gun to bring it down before it reaches the top.

Lighthouse dials: the six-step solution

Each floor has a dial; from top to bottom the colors are yellow, orange, blue and purple. Turning a dial also adds 1 to the dials directly above and below it, where present. The four starting numbers are the same every game. Notes with numbers around the map are the hints.

Turn the purple dial (bottom) until it reads 6.
Turn the orange dial until the blue dial reads 4.
Turn the yellow dial (top) until the orange dial reads 7. The bottom three dials now have the correct relationship to one another.
Turn the yellow dial until it reads 2, counting how many turns you make.
Turn the purple dial the same number of times.
Turn the blue dial until it reads 4 again. Purple and orange will also return to their correct numbers. Check the final combination from top to bottom: yellow 2, orange 7, blue 4, purple 6. If it is wrong, repeat these steps. Once it is correct, the submarine’s green light shines into the lighthouse.

Reward: the Wunderwaffe DG-2

A lightning-bolt power-up appears outside the door. Pick it up to get the Wunderwaffe DG-2.
You cannot Pack-a-Punch it. When its ammo runs out it is gone, and while holding it you cannot buy wall weapons, switch weapons or revive.
After completing the Easter egg, defeating George drops the DG-2 instead of a Death Machine, in later games too.
Story: the crew teleports to Shangri-La with the Golden Rod, which you need again for the Moon Easter egg.

Achievement / trophy	Value	How
Stand-in	35G / Bronze	Complete the Easter egg solo or in co-op
Ensemble Cast	45G / Silver	Complete the Easter egg in co-op
Quiet on the Set	30G / Bronze	Knock George down for the first time

Easter egg not working? Common problems

Radios out of order: the game only remembers your last four presses. If someone pressed a radio earlier, the right order can still fail. Press radio 1 twice at the start and keep cycling until the code plays. A buzz means the radios are resetting; wait a moment.
No submarine after the fog horns: after four wrong horns the submarine sinks until the next round. Do not press horns while it is sinking; those presses count toward the next try. Horns only work while the fog is in.
The human reached the top: shoot another zombie with the V-R11 and try again with a stronger weapon.
The vodka broke: it respawns in a different place. Look along the railings again.
Solo with the radios: in Black Ops 1, Stand-in does not use the radios, fog horns or dials. Advice to do them solo usually comes from the Black Ops 3 version.

Music Easter egg: “Not Ready to Die”

Hold Interact on three meteor rocks, in any order, to play “Not Ready to Die” by Avenged Sevenfold. Guides describe the spots slightly differently.

On a barrel by the water at the starting area.
On a booth in the ship’s dining room, a few decks below the control room.
Under the small table or nightstand in the PhD Flopper room.

George A. Romero: how to stop him

He walks out of the water at the start with a stage light and follows the nearest player. Calm, he glows blue and moves slowly.
If you shoot him or he hits you, he becomes enraged and sprints. His light turns orange when he is close to going down.
To calm him: lead him into the icy water, or shoot him with the V-R11. The upgraded V-R11 sends him away for the round if he is in the water, but he drops nothing.
You cannot kill him for good. He has 250,000 health per player (one million with four) and Insta-Kill and Nukes do not affect him. Do enough damage and he retreats into the water, returning about two rounds later.
Knocking him down drops a Death Machine and a random perk bottle (the DG-2 instead of the Death Machine once the Easter egg is done).

Perks and Pack-a-Punch on Call of the Dead

Pack-a-Punch moves. Once the power is on, the lighthouse beam lands on one of three rocks — at the start, behind the lighthouse or in the water by Juggernog — and the machine appears there for about two minutes. Lightning and thunder warn you before it moves. It will not move while someone is using it.

Prices from the Call of Duty Wiki map page; locations from its perk pages.
Perk	Price	Where
Quick Revive	500 solo / 1,500 co-op	Starting area
Juggernog	2,500	Inside the ship, near the bow
Speed Cola	3,000	Behind the lighthouse, at the end of the ice slide
Double Tap	2,000	Deck on the right after you board the ship
Stamin-Up	2,000	The shack behind the lighthouse
PhD Flopper	2,000	Second floor of the building next to the lighthouse
Deadshot Daiquiri	1,500 (1,000 on PC)	Top of the lighthouse, by the zipline — this map introduced it
Mule Kick	4,000	Stern of the ship, opposite the Mystery Box; added by a 2011 patch and online-only on the original platforms

Quick answers

Question	Answer
Can you do the Call of the Dead Easter egg solo?	Yes: Stand-in. Ensemble Cast needs at least two players.
Who is in the Call of the Dead cast?	Sarah Michelle Gellar, Robert Englund, Danny Trejo and Michael Rooker play themselves; George A. Romero is the boss. The Call of the Dead Wiki says the four actors voiced themselves and that Romero only licensed his likeness — we found no second source for this.
Is Call of the Dead on the 2026 PS5 port?	Yes, in the season pass as part of the Escalation pack. We found no report of Easter-egg changes as of 2026-10-24.
Where are the radios with the story recordings?	There are five story radios besides the four Morse radios: in the Stamin-Up shack, on top of the lighthouse by the box, in shallow water under the MP40 on the ship, by Double Tap, and on a rock in the water past Speed Cola.

How this guide was written

This is a reference guide for the original Black Ops game, checked against the sources below on 2026-10-24. Where guides disagree, we say so. We have not completed this Easter egg in the browser version.