I'm sure this question's been eating at you ever since you heard of the mode in Call of Duty: World at War (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, DS): "Why Nazi Zombies?"

Activision executive producer Daniel Suarez explained during an interview with MTV multiplayer:

It was one of the pet projects of one of the designers. The seed of the idea came out of casual [tower] defense games online. It was something that they [Treyarch] had been working on for a while and went back to when they had time.

Suarez went on to explain that the Nazi Zombies became something of an urban legend in the company during World at War's production, with the designers themselves claiming no knowledge of any zombies, nazis or otherwise.

Quite suddenly, the Nazi Zombie build appeared one day and evidently became quite popular with the World at War team internally. The marketing people got involved and a little public attention was called to the mode for Halloween via a video on GameTrailers. The rest is history.

Point of curiosity: The devs were able to get through 23 waves in Nazi zombie mode.

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