"Nuketown" is a multiplayer map originating from Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010), a first-person shooter game developed by Treyarch and published by Activision.

[1][2] At the end of each multiplayer game on "Nuketown", a nuclear bomb is dropped on top of the location, obliterating it as the results of the match are displayed.

[1][2] After the release of the first Black Ops title in 2010, "Nuketown" has reappeared numerous times, with the setting being adjusted to fit theme of the respective game.

These buildings, often arranged in locations nicknamed "doom towns", included grocery stores, gas stations, and houses built of varying materials.

[1][2] These nuclear tests sites inspired the creation of a scene in Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull (2008), a film that released shortly before the development of Black Ops began.

[1][2] In the version of "Nuketown" featured in Black Ops, an easter egg existed that would play "Sympathy For The Devil" by the Rolling Stones if players managed to decapitate every single one of the map's mannequins in fifteen seconds.

The Gameological Society's Ryan Smith described "Nuketown" as the fairest map in the Call of Duty series based on its symmetrical layout, though also one that could "devolve into chaos" as well as where death was inevitable.

[13] GameRevolution's Toby Saunders and Cian Maher described the map as having "absolute chaos imbued in its very core,"[14] and GameRadar+'s Jeremy Peel wrote that "Nuketown" was an iconic "cramped and frantic playground.

[18] Peel believed that depictions of real-world material and the fast-paced action of "Nuketown" could be viewed as an metaphor of the Cold War and the idea of mutual-assured destruction.

He also commented that the additional ending cutscene to "Nuketown '84", where an arcade machine is obliterated by the bomb as well, could be seen as "juxtaposing the bright, chirrupy presentation of U.S. capitalism with the apocalyptic scenario that loomed over it for half a century."

[2] Writing further on "Nuketown '84" in particular, Peel pointed out that a lot of the newly added graffiti to the map featured symbols of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (C.N.D.

Peel declared that the map could possibly be interpreted in two ways: as an analogy of how the decade played out based on its graffiti, or as a black comedy critique of explosives and fast-paced fighting "crapping all over foolish notions of world peace.