Marchenko warns Adam Jensen to stay away from the ARC's territory when he comes to visit. Marchenko says this is because he doesn't think Adam has what it takes to fight for the cause and will only get himself killed. In fact, he is an agent of the Illuminati so he knows Adam Jensen is an unnecessary complication for his mission to kill Rutcker.
Augments number over 7 million people in the world but Viktor constantly advocates more and more violence despite the fact it can only bring down reprisals against them from the entire world. He also is a Bad Boss who uses his followers like disposable tools. This is because he's working to discredit Augments as a race for the Illuminati. He's also only working for them because they have his Kill Switch and has no real loyalty to them or the Augment cause.
Viktor's Obviously Evil appearance makes a lot of sense as he's making himself into the Big Bad for the public to hate as part of the Illuminati's desire to pass the Human Restoration Act.
Why is Viktor's Kill Switch just lying around? Well, it's among the equipment of the Illuminati's agents. Obviously, one is there to make sure Viktor doesn't go off script. He's just The Pawn there.
Why does Viktor refuse to back down even when you have his Kill Switch? It's because he knows Manderley is an agent of the Illuminati or someone very much like him. Marchenko will almost certainly be killed in prison because Adam's bosses are all Illuminati servants.
Gunther, Anna, later Paul, as well as JC Denton are accepted as soldiers in UNATCO without any sign of disdain. While this could be a changing sign of the times, it could also mean that Adam Jensen made a substantial impression on the people inside the organization.
Lucius DeBeers wasn't actually killed by old age but what was implied to be poison. Bob Page has recently developed a serum which makes it very easy to kill Augments. Lucius has also been equipped with numerous treatments designed to keep him alive indefinitely. It doesn't take a genius to figure what may have happened to him. It also explains why in Deus Ex, Everett says the technology to revive DeBeers has been around for years but he hasn't bothered to use it: if the Orchid is just a prototype for the Grey Death, then a simple dose of Ambrosia could've done the job.
You can tell where Desperate Measures and System Rift actually fit into the game's timeline even if you don't believe they were originally part of the main story. Desperate Measures clearly takes place on the first day of the bombing before Adam Jensen goes to Golem City as it takes place in the daytime as well as before he has any reason to suspect ARC. It provides clues and talks of a "big Russian man" which Jensen might use to justify his suspicions of Marchenko. System Rift obviously takes place during the night as Adam is at home watching baseball and presumably taking a much needed break from his side-questing. This adventure clears the Santeau Group of any wrong-doing while also pointing at the Illuminati's involvement in stopping their activities. System Rift takes place during the 2nd visit to Prague, after returning from Golem City. Random Non Player Characters will mention that something is happening in Golem City, hinting at the riots happening over Talos Ruckers death, but before Prague instigated martial law.
Why did noone notice or mention that Jensen has new eye shield augments (these being thinner, sleeker, and more minimalist in design)? It's because, as shown in Deus Ex: Black Light, at least one of his eye shields was destroyed by Gunther Hermann during their fight onboard that train in Indiana. Gunther backhanded Jensen so hard that it tore his eye shield right out of his skull. Stands to reason that he got his new set after that to replace them. So noone would have made a big deal about them, knowing he replaced his old ones.
The name of the strip club, the Red Queen, is a reference to the Red Queen hypothesis, which proposes that organisms have to constantly adapt and evolve just to keep their relative place in an ever-changing environment, let alone getting ahead. One of the major themes with augmentation in both Human Revolution and this game is that many people felt they had to augment themselves to keep up with the competition, turning what should be a voluntary decision into a forced one. Red Queen hypothesis in action. As for why a strip club of all things was named after it, the Red Queen hypothesis is suggested to be one of the reasons for the evolution of... you guessed it, sex* (or more specifically, sexual reproduction, as it's a faster way to mix and propagate genes than asexual reproduction).
While some of the numerical codes have an obvious link to a person or location (1984 being the bookstore code, for example) the codes used within the Church of the MachineGod at first appear to be random numbers... until the complete absence of digits larger than 1 sinks in. All of the church's codes are binary numbers.
Morgan Everett went through a heavy redesign for this game - in 2050, he's overweight, has a head full of hair and seems to shave regularly, compared to this game's average-built bald, black guy with a goatee. Of course he looks different; the first game's backstory established that Page's coup in the 2030's pretty much destroyed the Illuminati, forcing its leaders into hiding. Chances are that by the time JC meets him, Morgan is in a self-enforced Beardness Protection Program, and has changed everything he can, without resorting to plastic surgery due to the risks involved. As for why Everett would be the (seemingly) only one to take such measures, it's explicitly stated that Bob hates him for being smarter than him, and his intelligence makes him a threat. So neither Dowd nor DuClare really needed to since Bob beloved them to be neutered, but knew that Everett could still tear the entire conspiracy apart.
The alias of Vadim Orlov is "Kasper McFadden", which is also the full (living) name of the titular character in Casper, though spelled slightly differently. Like the film's Casper, "Kasper" is the name of a "ghost" who is never met properly "alive" in the story.
Samizdat says that the Augment population has dropped 89%, which roughly means 70 million people have either sacrificed their Augments or been killed. Thankfully, they're an Unreliable Narrator but that's a nightmarish figure.
ARC was the only thing keeping Golem City from total collapse. With its designation as a terrorist organization in even the good ending, the human rights situation will get even worse.
The Rippers breaking into the Tarvos Blades in System Rift may be a win for freedom of information but there's not just the Illuminati's information in there but also people like the Santeau Group as well as what few other decent corporations are still out there. They're all now subject to people like Stanton Dowd who was trying to get at the information through other means.
If the player can't get to Marchenko before he detonates his bombs, it's likely that MacCready and many of Jensen's other colleagues are caught in the blast, as his team was attempting to clear the doomed buildings. This may even include Aria Argento, one of the few people in the game who is genuinely friendly to Adam, since in her last conversation she mentions being posted to MacCready's team.
The Harvester a.k.a. Daria first just sounds like a bad case of horribly designed experiment going wrong, unless you happen to fight them and discover that the Harvester also has the Titan Armor and Icarus Dash experimental augs. The end result of the neuro-chip pushing her to turn into an uncontrollable serial killer may have been unintentional, but the experiment was always planned to produce a weapon, not help people.
The reveal in the Harvester quest that Versalife was working on chips to alter peoples' minds and memories coupled with the fact that the Human Restoration Act would require all augs be fitted with suppression chips could suggest the Illuminati planned to mind control every augmented human, not merely suppress their abilities.
Adam is noticeably paler than in Human Revolution. While it's probably caused by the minor Art Shift between games, remember how The Men in Black were decipted in the original game? Yep, pale skin - which originates from their physiopharmaceutical augmentarion. This kind of augmentation also causes red eyes and black hair, which wouldn't show up on Adam thanks to his eye augs and natural black hair. The worst part? The technology that allows this must have been invented before 2035, as the MiB have illuminati logos on their necks, and part of this kind of augmentation involves tampering with the subjects's mind, which is exactly what the illuminati is doing with Adam. This rises some very unconfortable ideas of what will happen to Jensen.
There are a few prominent billboards around Prague advertising for MoodEx from Page Industries with images of people jumping to their death with the message 'There's a better solution.' While they're mostly there to get the Page industries name into the game, it's unsettling to think what has been going on in the world to give mood stabilizers such prominent advertising space.
, which proposes that organisms have to constantly adapt and evolve just to keep their relative place in an ever-changing environment, let alone getting ahead. One of the major themes with augmentation in both Human Revolution and this game is that many people felt they had to augment themselves to keep up with the competition, turning what should be a voluntary decision into a forced one. Red Queen hypothesis in action. As for why a strip club of all things was named after it, the Red Queen hypothesis is suggested to be one of the reasons for the evolution of... you guessed it, sex* .