With Wolfenstein Youngblood on the horizon, what better time than now to take a look back at the story of BJ Blazkowicz, and see how Terror Billy earned his nickname and reputation as a Nazi Killing badass, and how we’ve gotten to where we are today.
Here’s a breakdown of the plot in Machine Games’ two mainline Wolfenstein games, The New Order and The New Colossus
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An Alternate Reality World War 2
The year is 1946, World War 2 is in full effect, and the tide of the war is starting to shift in favor of the Nazis thanks to their sudden and dramatic leap in technology. We’re talking near impervious metallic killing machines, robot dogs, death lasers, and all other forms of nastiness.
Professional nazi slayer Captain William Joseph Blazkowicz and his unit storm a Nazi compound, but the mission goes sideways and BJ is forced to watch as the Nazi Scientist Deathshead kills a friend of your choosing. Then BJ escapes, blows up the castle, but leaves with the parting gift of coma-inducing shrapnel in the head.
After a 14 year nap, BJ awakens in a Polish asylum. He is tended to by a nurse named Anya, who eventually will end up being his future wife and an absolute badass, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Nazi’s show up to do their Nazi thing. Blazko fights his way out, and upon learning about how the Nazi’s have taken over the world while he was sleeping, he sets out to form a resistance.
Blazko and Anya hitch a ride on a train to Berlin, and it’s here that we first meet the crazy-to-the-max Frau Engel.
Anyway, Blazko and Anya have train sex, infiltrate the prison, rescue the friend that you didn’t let die, I’m guessing it was Fergus, because well Fergus is just clearly cooler than Wyatt, and they make their way to the resistance HQ in Berlin.
The Da’at Yichud
The resistance learn of the Da’at Yichud, an ancient Jewish mystical society with technology that is centuries ahead of its time. One of its members, Set Roth, is being held at a labor camp, so Blazko frees him, and Frau Engel gets her face crushed, making her all the more terrifying.
Set explains that the Nazi’s discovery of a Da’at Yichud cache was what allowed them to create their superweapons and ultimately win the war against the Allies. But, it wasn’t the only one.
So, the resistance steals a U-Boat head to a cache at the bottom of the Atlantic, find cool new toys, then they head to the moon, yeah, the moon, to steal some nuclear launch codes. As soon as Blazko gets back though, Engel raids the Resistance HQ. Rest in Peace Tekla and Klaus.
This brings us to the climax of New Order: The Resistance mount an assault on Deathshead’s compound and you face off against Deathhead’s giant robot with the brain of your friend from the beginning of the game, because, well he’s an evil nazi scientist.
After the final battle, Deathshead tries to pull off one more trick by blowing himself up with a grenade to try and take BJ with him. BJ survives, the compound gets leveled by a bomb, and BJ takes another coma induced nap.
The New Colossus
Which brings us to New Colossus. BJ sleeps for five months while the resistance hide in their stolen U-Boat. BJ wakes up conviniently when the Nazi’s storm the sub, but he gets captured and has to once again watch as a psycho murders one of his friends. Rest in Peace Caroline.
BJ and crew escape thanks to Frau Engel’s daughter Sigrun, who’s had enough of her mom’s abuse, and all together, the group heads to the US to look for some more members.
This takes them to New York, where they find and recruit the married couple of Grace Walker and Norman “Super Spesh” Caldwell. Grace is a survivor of the atomic bomb that was dropped on the US while BJ was comatose, and the leader of the American Resistance. Spesh is a former lawyer and conspiracy theorist who is extremely excited at the idea of a working toilet.
After a quick mission to Roswell, BJ gets captured during a home visit when his racist shitbag of a father sells him out to the Nazis. Daddy gets what he deserves, but things take a bad turn for the resistance when Spesh dies trying to get BJ out of prison, and… well, BJ gets his head chopped off.
The Resistance Gains the Upper Hand
Everything’s fine though, because they Frankenstein BJ’s head onto a super-soldier body and with his head on new shoulders, he goes to space for an audience with the Fuhrer himself on Venus disguised as an actor, auditioning to play himself in a propaganda movie. Let’s just say, It’s a very convincing portrayal.
While there, Blazko manages to steal the codes for the Odin, an automated defense system that guards the Nazi stronghold. Sigrun decrypts the codes and finds a way to shut it down, which sets up the big finale where the resistance members launch an assault on the Nazi’s giant fortified airbase, hijack Odin’s command systems, and finish up in time to make it to Frau Engel’s appearance on the Jimmy Carver Show, where they split her head with a hatchet on national TV.
And that’s where the story leaves off. Frau Engel is dead, the resistance is stronger than ever, and the message to rise up has been delivered across the world. With that, you’re all caught up on Wolfenstein just in time for Youngblood, which takes place 20 years after the events of New Colossus and stars BJ and Anya’s twin daughters Jessica and Sophia.
Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit
