Call of Duty: Modern Warfare foregår blant annet i et fiktivt land i Midtøsten, men det benytter seg også av ekte historiske begivenheter til å fortelle sin historie. Dog har spillet blitt kritisert av mange for å endre på den tragiske "Highway of Death"-begivenheten, hvor amerikanske soldater ødela omtrent 2000 personbiler på veien mellom Kuwait City og den irakiske grensen under Gulfkrigen, og drepte et utall av sivile i prosessen. I Call of Duty: Modern Warfare har denne begivenheten blitt skrevet om, slik at det er russiske styrker som åpner ild mot sivile og at amerikanske CIA redder dagen.
Det er en kort oppsummering, men dette har Activision og Infinity Ward blitt kritisert for, og flere anser det som historisk revisjonisme og til og med amerikansk propaganda. Dog forsvarer Narrative Director Taylor Kurosaki historien i et intervju med GameSpot, hvor han sier følgende:
"I think you could probably find many instances of the words 'highway of death' being used in a lot of cases. The reason why Urzikstan is a fictional country is because we are taking themes that we see played over and over and over again, over the last 50 years, in countries all over the world and locations all over the world, and we're not making a simulation of one particular country or one conflict. These are themes that play out over and over again, and with a lot of the same players involved. We don't portray any one side as good or bad."
"In our game, there are American characters who betray the trust of other characters in the story. There are Middle-Easterners who resort to tactics you wouldn't think as above-board. There's also characters that are from the same region that you think are more morally just. Same thing for Russian characters. We have Russian antagonists and Russian heroes in this game, and again that was our goal. This is not some kind of propaganda. This is reporting on what is happening in these conflict zones."
"These are proxy wars ... and the biggest victims of these proxy wars are the local people on the ground. For people who are from a more privileged background where they don't live in close proximity to these conflict zones, they don't think about the cost [to] the locals in these areas, and I think that this is a thing that we're really building awareness for."