Mob of the Dead | ZFRR Hub

The First Room

Top-down plan of the Mob of the Dead First Room: library, start corridor and cells, with windows, doors, wall buys and Afterlife points — The First Room as Al would have drawn it, traced from the game files. Click to zoom.

On ZFRR, the Mob of the Dead First Room is the cell block where the game starts. Metal walkways, tight corners, doors that need Afterlife to open, and no room to run a proper loop. Brutus arriving in a corridor this narrow is what ends most runs, because there is nowhere to take him for a walk.

Mob of the Dead is one of the Three Hardest Maps ranked on the site. The records standing today, solo to four players, are shown next to this article, and the Mob of the Dead leaderboard lists every run with its video.

Two wall buys hang in the cell block: the M14 and the Olympia, 500 points each. The first doors of the cell block are opened through Afterlife, without spending a point.

ZFRR presents

First Room 3D

Mob of the Dead

Built from the game's own collision data: every wall, window, door and wall buy where it really is.

Overview

Alcatraz, New Year’s Eve 1933. Four mobsters locked in the most famous prison in America try to fly their way out on a plane built from scrap, and the island refuses to let them go. Mob of the Dead is the first map to step away from the Group 935 story: its zombies answer to neither Samantha, Richtofen nor Maxis, and the series only tied it back to the rest years later, in Black Ops 4. It is also the one most players still name as the best of the Black Ops II era.

GameBlack Ops II

Map packUprisingDLC 2 of 4

ReleaseXbox 360Apr 16, 2013PCMay 16, 2013PS3May 16, 2013

LocationAlcatraz IslandSan Francisco BayDec 31, 1933

ModesSurvivalGrief (Cell Block)

The crew

Mob of the Dead swaps the usual heroes for four inmates, voiced by actors who built their careers on gangster films:

Albert “Weasel” Arlington

The brains of the plan and the one nobody trusts, voiced by Joe Pantoliano.

Michael “Finn” O’Leary

The Irish muscle, voiced by Michael Madsen.

Salvatore DeLuca

The boss of the group, voiced by Chazz Palminteri.

Billy Handsome

The hothead, voiced by Ray Liotta.

The plan is simple: gather the parts of a plane hidden across the prison, assemble it on the roof and fly off the island. The island has other ideas. However far they get, the four end up back in their cells, and the night starts again.

Afterlife

Afterlife is the mechanic that defines the map. The game opens with every player in Afterlife, and the first minutes are spent freeing yourself from the cell block.

Ghost form

A player in Afterlife leaves their body and flies up to places the living cannot reach.

Shock the panels

The ghost powers the electric panels that open doors and run machines, and sees what is hidden to everyone else.

Beat the timer

A timer runs the whole time: the ghost has to return to its body before it runs out, or the player drops to the ground, downed.

Limited lives

Each player has a limited stock of Afterlives: 3 in solo, 1 in co-op. Going down with one in stock sends you to Afterlife instead of bleeding out, and reviving your own body puts you back in the game.

No Quick Revive

That is why the map has none: Afterlife does its job, solo included.

Leaving Afterlife the first time hands out the starting loadout: an M1911, a Shiv and grenades.

The full Afterlife guide

Speedrun First Room records

Solo

Round 10 00:08:54 Marco
Round 20 00:25:53 Marco
Round 30 01:23:47 Marco
Round 40 05:20:53 Plant

2P

Round 10 00:08:04 Marco · Sooogood33
Round 20 00:25:25 Marco · Sooogood33
Round 30 01:20:56 Marco · Zegosoft
Round 40 06:00:57 Marco · Zegosoft
Round 50 22:33:52 Marco · Zegosoft

3P

Round 10 00:10:07 Marco · Zegosoft · benniiZ
Round 20 00:37:57 Marco · Zegosoft · benniiZ
Round 30 02:47:41 Marco · Zegosoft · benniiZ
Round 40 14:47:09 Flo203 · Ekzx · Inferno Maarten

4P

Round 10 00:11:14 Inferno Maarten · Ekzx · Qeziaa · blasteress
Round 20 00:47:19 Inferno Maarten · Flo203 · Ekzx · Swadow13
Round 30 04:21:40 Marco · Apasbeau · Zegosoft · Sooogood33

See the speedrun leaderboard

Enemies

The undead of Alcatraz are its own guards and prisoners, and their eyes burn red: nobody from Group 935 is at the controls this time. Even the Mystery Box has turned red.

The enemies of the map

Boss

The boss of Mob of the Dead is Brutus, the warden of Alcatraz.

The warden

Brutus is the island’s warden, a huge armoured guard who walks into the game on his own schedule.

Padlocks

He does not only hunt players: he locks the perk machines, the Mystery Box, the workbenches and even the plane. A padlock costs 2,000 points to open, and 2,000 more for each extra one he sets in the same round.

Armoured helmet

His helmet soaks up headshots until it is knocked off.

Narrow corridors

A horde can be trained, Brutus has to be dealt with, and he always seems to arrive in the one corridor where there is no room to turn around.

Box and traps

Spend too much at the Mystery Box and he comes for it. An active trap stops him for a moment, and he shuts it down.

Bounty

He has no round of his own and walks in with the horde. Killing him drops a power-up.

Everything about Brutus

Perks

Juggernog

2,500 points, more health, the perk every run is built around.

Double Tap Root Beer

2,000 points, faster fire rate and extra damage per bullet.

Speed Cola

3,000 points, faster reloads.

Deadshot Daiquiri

1,500 points, the aim snaps to the head.

Electric Cherry

2,000 points, a shock around you every time you reload. It made its debut on Mob of the Dead.

There is no Quick Revive on the map, and no Stamin-Up either: you move at the base speed all game long. PhD Flopper and Mule Kick stand on the docks but cannot be bought here: they only work in Grief, the Cell Block mode, where Juggernog and Electric Cherry are missing instead.

Weapons

Eight weapons hang on the walls of the prison:

Wall weapon	Price
M14	500
Olympia	500
B23R	900
MP5	1,000
Claymore	1,000
Remington 870 MCS	1,200
Uzi	1,500
M1927	1,500

The Mystery Box glows red here. It holds the Ray Gun, the Ray Gun Mark II (added with the Vengeance DLC), the Death Machine, a box weapon on this map instead of a power-up, and the AK-47 and Uzi, both new to Zombies. Pack-a-Punched, the AK-47 becomes Reznov’s Revenge.

The special weapons of the map:

Blundergat

The wonder weapon of the map, a blunderbuss that comes out of the Mystery Box. Pack-a-Punched, it becomes The Sweeper.

Acidgat

The Blundergat converted with an acid kit built from parts found around the prison. It fires sticky acid that bursts after a moment. Pack-a-Punched, it becomes Vitriolic Withering.

Hell’s Retriever

A tomahawk earned by feeding souls to the hellhound shrines. It comes back to your hand and can be upgraded to the Hell’s Redeemer.

Golden Spork

The end of a long side quest that starts with a simple spoon. It kills in one hit up to round 34, the second strongest melee weapon in Zombies after the upgraded One Inch Punch of Origins.

Zombie Shield

A buildable shield that soaks up hits.

All the weapons, prices and locations

Traps and the gondola

Fan trap

1,000 points, a trap that shreds zombies with a giant fan.

Acid trap

1,000 points, a trap that melts the horde in a cloud of acid.

Tower trap

1,000 points, a sniper tower that fires on the horde, and switches to rockets once upgraded through Afterlife.

Gondola

750 points a trip. It carries players between the prison and the docks.

Traps, costs and the gondola

The plane and the bridge

Parts across the prison

The parts of the plane are spread around the prison, some of them only reachable through Afterlife.

Built on the roof

Once every part is found, the plane is assembled on the roof of the prison.

To the bridge

It is the only way to the Golden Gate Bridge, where the Pack-a-Punch machine stands.

Electric chairs

The way back. The chairs on the bridge send the player back to the cell block, in Afterlife.

Every plane part and where to find it

Easter egg: Pop Goes the Weasel

The main quest of the map ends on the bridge, where the four inmates finally understand that they are caught in a loop and turn on each other. Two endings exist. It is the first Zombies Easter egg that ends the game without the players dying, and the first where a playable character turns on the others:

Break the cycle

Weasel takes down the other three, and the loop is broken.

Continue the cycle

The other three take Weasel down, and the night starts all over again.

Black Ops 4 settled it: in Blood of the Dead, Weasel’s ending is the canon one.

The Easter egg, step by step

Ciphers

Ciphers and scraps of paper across the map piece together a comic drawn by Weasel.

Every secret of the map

Achievements

Achievement	How
No One Escapes Alive	Execute the escape plan
Feed the Beast	Obtain Hell’s Retriever
Making the Rounds	Complete the cycle 3 times
Acid Drip	Convert a weapon using a kit
Full Lockdown	Brutus completes his patrol
A Burst of Flavor	Kill 10 zombies at once with a new beverage
GG Bridge	Survive a whole round on the bridge, round 15 or later
Trapped in Time	Use and upgrade all traps before round 10
Pop Goes the Weasel	Break the cycle
Paranormal Progress	Open a door without spending points

How to unlock every achievement

Trivia

The clock above the cafeteria door is stuck at 1:15, for Element 115, and the intro cutscene shows 9:35, for Group 935.
A book on the shelf of the starting library reads Alcatraz Swimteam Yearbook.
The spoon of the Golden Spork quest sits next to a skeleton in the wall: the old convict who tried to dig out with a spoon.
A painting of the Tower of Babel hangs in the warden’s office, a nod to the Tower of Babble Easter egg of TranZit.
The trap switches are stamped Zom B Inc.
The map is likely inspired by the real 1962 Alcatraz escape.
It was the first Zombies map of Jason Blundell and Kevin Drew, who went on to lead the mode in later games.