Verrückt

Verrückt — "insane" — is the asylum, the second Zombies map ever and the one that invented the perk system. A Group 935 facility in Berlin’s Wittenau Sanatorium, it is claustrophobic where Nacht was simple: blood on the kitchen walls, a screaming dentist’s chair, and in co-op the mode’s cruellest opening — the team spawns split in half.

Two spawns, one asylum

With three or four players, the squad starts divided across two rooms separated by a locked electric door: a German wing and an American wing, mirrored down to their faction-matched wall weapons. Each half fights its own way around the asylum toward the far end, where the paths finally converge — and until they do, the only help you can give the other side is a grenade lobbed through the door’s window.

Power

The power switch — the first in Zombies — sits in the power room at the opposite end of the map from both spawns, and throwing it is free. It opens the electric door that reunites the team, wakes the perk machines, and arms the electro-shock defences on the balconies.

Perks: the debut

Perk-a-Colas begin here. Four machines, at the prices that would barely move for a decade: Quick Revive at 1,500 in the American spawn, Jugger-Nog at 2,500 on the German side, Double Tap at 2,000 on the left balcony and Speed Cola at 3,000 upstairs by the kitchen. All of them need the power on — which means crossing the asylum first.

Pack-a-Punch and the box

No Pack-a-Punch yet — that waits for Der Riese. The Mystery Box starts in the power room, and Verrückt is where it learned to move: the teddy bear debuts here, relocating the box when your luck runs out. The electro-shock traps and wall-bought Bouncing Betties, both new, fill the firepower gap.

Survival

The asylum’s corridors leave no room for training loops, so Verrückt plays as hold-and-fall-back: claim a defensible wing, use the balcony traps as a pressure valve, and respect that its zombies — including the original’s notorious sprinters — arrive faster than Nacht ever allowed.

Secrets

No quest — but the mode’s first player-triggered song. Flush the leftmost toilet in the German-side upstairs three times and "Lullaby of a Deadman" plays, Kevin Sherwood and Elena Siegman’s first Zombies vocal track. The asylum’s other secrets are pure atmosphere: the dentist’s drill, the crying by the crematory oven, and a radio voice reciting a very familiar string of numbers.

Story

The canon here is grim: a Marine recon team under "Tank" Dempsey was sent into the overrun asylum in September 1945 to extract Peter McCain, an OSS spy inside Group 935. They were too late — McCain had already fled, one arm the poorer. Of the four Marines, one escaped, two died, and Dempsey was captured to become Richtofen’s test subject: the first domino in the crew the story would build around.