Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 hides a custom fail state inside its “Following Orders” mission, where you play as a North Korean soldier raiding a village home. Aim at one of the framed portraits of the Supreme Leader hanging on the living room wall, pull the trigger, and your own squad immediately turns on you and guns you down.
Quick answer: Shooting either framed portrait of the Supreme Leader makes your allied soldiers instantly open fire and kill you, triggering a unique mission-failed screen that reads “YOU DISHONORED YOUR COUNTRY BY DAMAGING A PORTRAIT OF THE SUPREME LEADER.”
What happens when you shoot the portrait
In the interrogation scene, a pair of framed portraits of North Korean supreme leaders are mounted next to each other near the top of the living room wall. Aim your rifle at them and fire once; one bullet is sufficient. You get no warning prompt, and nothing builds up beforehand.
The moment a portrait takes damage, the soldiers around you, including Officer Ko, stop acting as allies. They shout, swing their weapons toward you, and shoot you dead on the spot. Because you are surrounded inside a small room, there is effectively no chance to survive the retaliation.
Your death then cuts to a black failure screen carrying the dishonor message, with a Korean retry button labelled 다시 하기. The outcome is identical every time, whether you fire at the left portrait, the right portrait, or line up carefully from across the room.
Where this happens in the “Following Orders” mission
“Following Orders” is the third campaign mission in Modern Warfare 4. Its title card places you in the present day as a North Korean soldier, carrying a Kastov 762 assault rifle with 30 rounds loaded and 60 in reserve. Commander Ri Ju-Young leads your squad through a foggy rural village, ordering soldiers to round up household heads and hunt down a defector.
Officer Ko directs the raid on one residence, where a civilian husband is dragged out and questioned. You then move into a back room to escort his terrified wife into the main living area.
With the couple pleading in the living room and state television broadcasting behind them, the portraits become reachable targets on the wall. This interrogation beat is the only point where the fail state can be triggered, since that is where the framed leaders appear.
Shooting the television does not count
The same room holds a television set playing state footage, including an image of the Supreme Leader. Firing into the TV cracks the screen, but it does not provoke your squad. They ignore the broken television entirely.
Only damage to the two framed portraits counts as the dishonor. That distinction is what makes the reaction feel deliberate rather than a generic “you shot a civilian” penalty, the game is specifically scripting the leaders’ images as untouchable.
How you know you hit the trigger
Confirmation is immediate and unmistakable. Your squadmates shout and the screen flashes red with damage as they fire, followed by the dishonor fail screen and the 다시 하기 retry option. Reloading from the checkpoint drops you right back into the interrogation, so the Easter egg can be repeated as many times as you like.
It is worth separating this from the mission’s actual branching choice. Later in “Following Orders,” you are asked to either refuse Ri Ju-Young’s orders or execute the defector. Refusing gets your soldier shot but does not fail the mission; it continues after you go down. The portrait reaction is a different, self-contained fail state that exists purely as a reactive detail in the environment.
The campaign it sits in
Modern Warfare 4 is built around a fictional war on the Korean Peninsula, following a North Korean invasion of the South, and it leans on the imagery of an authoritarian state throughout its campaign. Small scripted reactions like the portrait fail state are part of how the game dresses that setting, rewarding players who test the edges of a level with a response written just for them.
The game releases on October 23, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC, with pre-order owners already able to reach the campaign through early access. If you work through “Following Orders” yourself, the portraits on that living room wall are there waiting for anyone curious enough to take a shot.
