MP40

The MP40 is the wall-buy the mode was balanced around: a thousand points on nearly every World at War map, and the best point-per-bullet economy of the early game. It is not a great gun — it is a great transaction, printing fifty points a hit from ammunition that costs pocket change off the same wall.

Its Kino der Toten placement made it legend: the highest-damage SMG on the map, a wall away from the spawn strategy of an entire generation. Pack-a-Punched it becomes The Afterburner — double magazine, double damage — a name it has carried through five games. Zombies Chronicles raised its wall price to 1,300, the mode’s version of inflation.

It has surfaced in every era that could justify it: WWII’s lockers, Black Ops 4’s box, and Vanguard’s loadouts for its true period homecoming. Where there is a 1940s wall, there is an MP40 on it.