Like Call of Duty, Call of Duty is centered around violently securing the desired outcome. There’s still an opposing force, and you need to impose your will over it as you work to secure your victory. In the 1980s, as Esquire magazine tells the story, a Florida high-school student, Anthony Darlington, used payphones to “call that booty,” as he called it—or telephone females he knew for sex. Darlington explained call that booty morphed to booty call, gaining further usage after he and a fellow Army serviceman became the hip-hop duo Duice and released the song “Booty Call” in 1992. Subsequently, other music artists released songs referencing “booty calls,” such as Da Ko Boyz’s 1994 release “Da Booty Call.”

The playful variation call of booty has been used in written text since at least 2003. The phrase draws on the idiom call of duty, or the often heroic sacrifice by people in the military and law enforcement. Call of booty, then, is a pun that alludes both to booty call and to the summoning and deployment of one’s (usually a man’s) “heroic” sexual impulse.