A former Treyarch developer has published a large collection of behind-the-scenes Call of Duty development images covering World at War, Nazi Zombies and the original Black Ops. The material comes from Gabriel Betancourt’s personal portfolio, where he documents his work at Treyarch between 2008 and 2011 and shares screenshots, lighting experiments, work-in-progress environments and commentary from production. The newly circulated galleries offer a rare look at how several early Call of Duty maps and Zombies locations changed during development.
One of the most notable sections focuses on Nazi Zombies and the map known internally as Theatre, which later became Kino der Toten in Call of Duty: Black Ops. Betancourt describes Theatre as the first Zombies map built specifically for the mode rather than adapted from an existing multiplayer level, which created new design and lighting challenges for the team. His gallery includes development imagery and concept material showing how the team established a visual direction for the map before it reached its final form.
Betancourt also explains that work on Theatre involved creating tools to help match lighting between Xbox 360 and Wii. According to his account, the team developed a color-conversion workflow that allowed 32-bit color values to be approximated within the Wii’s more limited presentation while accounting for gamma differences. He says the Wii version was pushed far enough that the Xbox 360 team later used some of that work as visual direction when completing the map.
The portfolio includes additional material from other early Zombies locations, including Der Riese, Verrückt and Nacht der Untoten. Betancourt says Der Riese originated from the World at War multiplayer map Nightfire and describes how lighting, scripted events and reflections were used to improve atmosphere while keeping performance under control. The Nacht der Untoten section similarly details its roots in Airfield and includes commentary on how Treyarch balanced cinematic lighting against gameplay readability during the mode’s earliest development.
The galleries also contain work-in-progress images from Call of Duty: World at War itself. Betancourt describes the project as one of the most demanding periods of his career and shows unfinished environments, multiplayer maps, lighting passes and miscellaneous development captures. Some of the material is presented specifically as random work-in-progress content that never appeared publicly in this form during the original 2008 release cycle.
Black Ops receives a similarly detailed treatment. Betancourt’s portfolio covers single-player levels such as Khe Sanh and Hue City, with notes on dynamic lighting, environmental color palettes and technical tricks used to sell transitions between interiors and exteriors. He also says some missions changed heavily during production, including Hue City, which was originally planned as a daytime level before being switched to night.
The Black Ops material provides additional context for how Treyarch was shaping the game during its early development. Betancourt says the project was initially more tightly constrained around the Vietnam era before the team explored broader locations and ideas, including work tied to the Bay of Pigs invasion. His portfolio states that he contributed to pitching several missions during this period and later helped with lighting and technical systems used across the game.
Unlike many Call of Duty leaks that surface through anonymous archives or datamined builds, these images come from a named former developer’s own portfolio and are accompanied by detailed first-person production notes. That makes the material especially useful for understanding how Treyarch’s environments and Zombies design evolved rather than simply showing isolated unfinished screenshots.
The galleries add to a growing amount of publicly surfaced development history from major studios, where old prototypes, assets and internal material can reveal how familiar games changed before release. Recent examples elsewhere have included large archives exposing cut and early development content, although Betancourt’s material differs in that it is being shared directly through a former developer’s own portfolio rather than appearing through an unauthorized leak.
For Call of Duty fans, the most interesting takeaway is how much of Treyarch’s Zombies identity was still being established during the World at War and early Black Ops period. Maps such as Theatre, Der Riese and Verrückt were being used not only to refine visuals, but also to experiment with lighting, power systems and environmental pacing that would later become fundamental to the mode. Betancourt’s galleries now provide a detailed first-hand record of that process.
