Here we were, pointing out everything Call of Duty: Black Ops got wrong (and right!) with its use of history, when one of the more obvious flaws was staring us all right in the face.
Black Ops' cover, as you can see above, features a man holding two pistols. Seems innocent enough, but according to a veteran of both the Vietnam War and various Black Ops assignments for the US military, former Marine Lt. Colonel Wolfgang Hammersmith, it's all wrong.
"They just released Call of Duty [Black Ops], and I looked at the poster — both pistols exhibited on the poster are 1911 A1 model pistols," he tells Gamasutra. "One of them has the thumb safety down with the hammer on, which is impossible to do on that gun, which means the pistol is broken. And the other one has got the hammer down with the guy's finger on the trigger, which wouldn't happen either."
Pedantic gun issues aside, the rest of the interview is quite a read, Hammersmith giving some pretty good reasons why war games shouldn't be realistic, as opposed to a trend by some developers in the opposite direction.
Interview: Black Ops Veteran Talks Video Games And The Real World [Gamasutra]