{"id":599451,"date":"2026-02-18T20:49:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T20:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/599451\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T20:49:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T20:49:10","slug":"black-ops-7-ad-banned-over-sexual-assault-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/599451\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Ops 7 Ad Banned Over Sexual Assault Joke"},"content":{"rendered":"

A live-action Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 <\/a>advertisement that aired last year has been banned from re-airing in the United Kingdom after the country\u2019s Advertising Standards Agency\u00a0<\/a>(ASA) concluded that it \u201ctrivialized sexual violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many years now, Activision has advertised its Call of Duty: Black Ops franchise with a series of comical live-action ads depicting \u201cReplacers\u201d replacing people at their jobs or in life so those folks can play the new Call of Duty.\u00a0And for Black Ops 7<\/a>, Activision continued this with new Replacer ads, including one involving two Replacers, played by Peter Stormare and Nikki Glaser, working security at an airport. And it was this specific ad that got Activision in hot water with the ASA, as reported by Game Developer.<\/a><\/p>\n

In the airport ad, the Replacers are seen roughly handling a passenger after he is stopped at a security checkpoint. Stormare\u2019s Replacer tells the man he has been \u201crandomly selected to be manhandled.\u201d Glaser\u2019s Replacer puts on blue gloves, and the passenger is told he has to remove all his clothing. The gloved Replacer then says, \u201cTime for the puppet show.\u201d Before the short ad ends, the passenger has a metal detector shoved into his mouth and is told to \u201cbite down\u201d because the gloved Replacer is going in \u201cgoing in dry.\u201d The ad is still available to watch on YouTube.<\/p>\n

The ad was initially approved to air in the UK because it was seen as a \u201cdeliberately implausible, parodic scenario that bore no resemblance to real airport security procedures.\u201d It was classified \u201cEx-Kid\u201d and would not be aired alongside programming designed for kids under 16.<\/p>\n

On February 18, the UK\u2019s ad standards group said<\/a> it had received nine complaints about the live-action advertisement, claiming it trivialized sexual violence. And after review, the ASA has ruled that while most viewers would likely understand it was a humorous ad, the problem is that the humor is \u201cgenerated by the humiliation and implied threat of painful, non-consensual penetration,\u201d and that is an act \u201cassociated with sexual violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the ad alluded to non-consensual penetration, and framed it as an entertaining scenario, we considered that the ad trivialised sexual violence and was therefore irresponsible and offensive,\u201d said the ASA in its ruling. As a result, the ad must be edited to remove the jokes about sexual violence before it can be aired again in the UK. The ASA also told Activision Blizzard to ensure that in the future its ads were \u201csocially responsible and did not cause serious offence, for example by trivialising sexual violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Activision, for its part, told the ASA that the ad was for a mature video game and \u201ctargeted at adult audiences only, who had a higher tolerance for irreverent or exaggerated humour.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A live-action Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 advertisement that aired last year has been banned from re-airing…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":599452,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[108410,141693,158,3470,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-599451","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-call-of-duty","9":"tag-call-of-duty-black-ops-7","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116093607418147310","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}