9. Call of Duty: Black Ops - "There's A Soldier In All Of Us"
The Call of Duty franchise has a history of producing elaborate, glossy, superbly-shot adverts for their video games, yet this one for Black Ops caused a significant amount of controversy, as it depicted Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel running around blowing s*** up. Sociologist Dave Maydea famously commented that, "Bryant and Kimmel's participation in the commercial, and in turn support of this
war-based game, speaks nothing to the physical and mental health concerns soldiers (including American soldiers) experience because of war...What we see in this commercial, is that war is not just permissible. It is cool...I wonder, how many of the marketers for 'Call of Duty: Black Ops' have been in combat, lost a limb, dealt with severe war-related mental health problems, killed someone, or had a loved one killed?" Mayeda, of course, completely ignores the heightened aesthetic of the advert; Bryant and Kimmel are depicted in "street clothes" in an effort to artistically depict them as "avatars" rather than soldiers actually fighting on a real battlefield, but of course, Mayeda's probably never picked up a controller in his life, so we couldn't expect him to know that. This is just a case of someone
wanting to be offended by something, and then launching a fecklessly uninformed tirade against it.