Headscratchers / Hitman (2016)

As a Headscratchers subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

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Overall

• What happened to his Silverballers? He's gone from being a Guns Akimbo-wielding badass to being a guy who only fires a single gun and without any of his previous bullet-time accuracy.
  • Nothing, technically. You can still take a Silverballer into levels as an optional piece.

• Any reason why Providence doesn't simply lobby the ICA? They have the money and the agents inside just have them put a no kill order on Zaydan or something. ICA doesn't have a creed about killing for status quo and would make way more money by doubling as protection racket for people rich and powerful enough to know about them and pay their yearly off-assassination fee.
  • They have an even bigger agenda. Providence likely thought that staying hidden was more important than having their schemes potentially ruined by the infinitesimal probability of someone coincidentally having their agents killed for unrelated reasons and thus didn't place any agents inside the ICA. Once the Shadow Client's plan got rolling and they realized that someone was going after them and using the ICA to do so is what prompted them to turn Soders.
    The ICA has historically sought to remain neutral, and therefore avoids repeat customers. They don't like working for a specific group too often, since that makes unnecessary enemies and reduces potential clients. That's why Ort-Meyer, Sergei, and the Shadow Client all had to use proxies and pseudonyms to keep hiring them.
  • Providence has no shortage of proxies, given all the companies they own and all their numerous subsidiaries. The problem comes with finding reasons for those proxies to have the ICA to kill their targets. Having a hand in the ICA leadership means they don't have to bother with that step.

• How exactly does the lethal poison work? For some targets it works instantly (like Viktor Novikov, who barely has time to put his drink back down on the table before collapsing) but for others it takes quite some time (like Francesca De Santis, who has time to accuse Roberto before falling to the floor dead).
  • With weight, toxicity resistance, what the poison was mixed with, same dose on different person takes different time. It could also be different lethal poisons each mission; some might arouse less suspicion than others so 47 takes different ones with him / ICA finds it easier to smuggle them in.

• When you use the ability to start a mission infiltrating the staff, why do the staff react suspiciously? In the non infiltration it makes sense suddenly Chad is absent and some bald dude with a bar code replaces him without any heads up it's a disguise, but this is newbie Tobias Rieper who just got hired today, you're supposed to be there.
  • It's not a full-on infiltration; rather 47 starts the mission in the normal position, goes through the level Silent Assassin-style to get a disguise and get into position, and then control is given to the player. So basically normal gameplay things are done ahead of time for the player.
    That said, even if it's a full-on infiltration you're only given a superficially plausible cover-identity and reason to be there which holds up as a way of getting you in there to begin with, but which falls apart when given any kind of close scrutiny since you're actually not supposed to be there.

• When you knock an NPC out, they will stay unconscious for the entire mission unless a guard comes along and wakes them up by yelling at them. Shouldn't they need CPR or any resuscitation procedures?
  • It's mostly psychological trauma; someone hit the back of your head with a hammer and you're still alive your body is probably in a deer in the headlights mode.
  • There's also the possibility that it does happen but what we see is just a truncated version of events to let you get on with things.

• If 47 kills/ knocks out a generic NPC with glasses and takes their outfit (eg. one of many waiters, technicians or chefs), why does he also take the glasses? All it would do is screw up his vision. It only make sense if 47 tries to impersonate a certain person who wears glasses, like Dr. Oscar Lafayette.
  • It is possible to wear glasses in such a way that you're subtly looking over the tops of the frames. Nudge them slightly down the bridge of your nose and tilt your head a little bit, and you're good. As for why, glasses obscure one's eyes, which makes it harder to recognise someone once they've taken them off (or, if you've seen them before without glasses, from recognising them with them on).

Tutorial

• So, how does Agent 47 simulate drowning a guy in his own vomit? Or are we to assume that 47 pulled his Tutorial targets back out before killing them?
  • Since it's a simulation, most likely they're just acting poisoned. While there's boxes labelled 'emetic rat poison', chances are these actually contain something with a distinctive taste but are non-poisonous (like curry powder, for example) which is powerful enough for the actor in question to know they've been 'tagged' and to act poisoned. So when 47 is drowning someone in 'vomit' in the tutorials, they're just acting.

Paris

• How does the head of an international intelligence-gathering network and a former spy miss that 47 isn't a Middle Eastern sheik or that Helmut Kruger, a long-time associate, has been replaced? She even sits down for a private meeting with both! Notable in that in Sapienza, Francesca De Santis picks up on the fact 47 isn't her lover as soon as he gets close. Hell, Viktor notices Helmut Kruger isn't Helmut Kruger if you get close to him.
  • We can go with the old-fashioned explanation of Pride. Dalia is so confident of her position that she doesn't actually pay attention to anyone around her. She barely gives any of them a second glance, so wrapped up in her own thing.
  • The whole point of the Helmut Kruger opportunity, let's not forget, is that he and 47 look almost exactly identical. Coupled with the fact that he often wears extremely heavy makeup, which masks his features. It also seems to be suggested that Viktor is the "face" of Sanguine/IAGO while Dahlia masterminds things from the background; Viktor has encountered Kruger face-to-face more so recognises him, while Dahlia may have directly interacted with Kruger on a face-to-face level less frequently. And FWIW, even Dalia will recognise (and enter target lockdown) that you-as-Helmut is not Helmut if he acts suspiciously around her (such as crouching down and bumping into her repeatedly).
    • Consider though she had a phone conversation with Kruger, which is enough to notice that when he calls back he suddenly dropped his accent.
    • None of the people in the game have particularly appropriate accents; one can assume that it's a form of Translation Convention.
  • "When you're invisible, you stop looking over your shoulder." With a global intelligence network, Dalia doesn't believe that anything could be outside her vision.

• Why isn't deleting/recovering the NOC list an actual objective? You'd think that would be a higher priority for MI6 than simply killing Novikov and Margolis.
  • MI6 presumably had a plan to recover the list once Novikov and Margolis were eliminated, and only told the ICA what they needed to know. After all, 47 is an assassin, not a spy. The NOC list is extremely sensitive intel, so they wouldn't want it in the hands of anyone but themselves, especially not an amoral third-party like the ICA. They only hired the ICA to terminate IAGO because IAGO is based in France, which is well outside of their jurisdiction. Theft, however, is much more difficult to trace back to them, so they probably had a spy already present to swipe or destroy the NOC list once the shit hits the fan.

• So why exactly did the Shadow Client leak the targets to MI6?
  • Tying up loose ends: he doesn't want Providence to ask Novikov or his girl for a copy of the file they gave the Shadow Client. Since MI6 knows about the ICA, most of the company's start up came from MI6, they are the perfect moneyman to take care of the spies about to sell their secrets.
  • The Shadow Client is basically using proxies to hire the ICA multiple times. If he leaks information to someone so they hire the ICA, it's because he wants those targets dead but doesn't want to contact the Agency. This is both due to him not wanting to reveal himself and the ICA's "avoid repeat customers" policy.

• Continuing the above headscratcher: why MI6 in partciular? Why not leak it to a mobster or corrupt businessman, who are less likely to have compunctions about ordering assassinations on civilian targets and less likely to instead kidnap the targets for interrogation?
  • Because MI6 already had a vested interest in IAGO due to the NOC list, and they would have the connections and resources to hire the ICA. Your regular run of the mill mobster or businessman likely won't have that kind of cash on hand, or even know the ICA exists in the first place.

• Again following on the above Headscratcher, why did MI6 have Novikov and Margolis assassinated rather than kidnap and interrogate them? With all the connections and intel they have, the duo could take down tens of criminals if they turned witness to MI6. Why kill the golden goose?
  • Most likely MI6 concluded that both of them were too dangerous to keep alive, especially if they somehow obtained their NOC list without them knowing and were willing to sell it to the highest bidder.
  • Try dragging Novikov and Margolis to an exit without getting spotted or killing anyone, it's much easier to just kill them both. And if their capture is exposed and MI6 is tied to a kidnapping on foreign soil, it'll cause a diplomatic incident.

• Did IAGO seriously not have any backup plans in case Novikov and Margolis were assassinated?
  • Perhaps MI6 hunted down the rest of IAGO's leadership and a large enough portion of their agents offscreen.
  • They likely didn't. IAGO was Margolis's baby and she didn't trust anyone else with it, including Novikov, whom she treats as disposable.

Sapienza

• Why is Silvio planning to kill Francesca? I get he's afraid of women but it seems like an extreme reaction to someone just living in his house.
  • He suspects (correctly) that Ether has placed her there to spy on him because they think he's a loose cannon. He also suspects (again, correctly) that her reports could result in his "removal".
• Why does the Ether Corporation have a laboratory underneath the mansion? Why not, I dunno, something a little more sanitary?
  • It's mentioned in the briefing and by civilians in the town that Caruso is (or was) Ether's golden boy, and he suffers from agoraphobia and isn't comfortable leaving his home. Ether set up a field lab so he could work on the virus from his mansion.
• What is Ether, a pharmaceutical company, doing with a virus that can kill hundreds of people? I get they're shady, but that is certainly not going to help business.
  • It was a Providence matter, the ending cutscene mentioned people of the board weren't even informed. Now what Providence want with a virus that can kill a designated target all around the world if they have their DNA is kind of easy to get, they wouldn't need the ICA and have their power secured.
• Why didn't Francesca notice her lover's voice is different when you call her as the golf coach?
  • Goes with the theme of the targets having huge character flaws that explain how easy you can kill them following an opportunity.
  • FWIW during Paris when 47 disguises himself as Kreuger, during his phone call he does deepen his voice a bit, suggesting that 47 does change his voice, we the audience simply don't hear it.
• Who are the guards hanging about the town? Are they Sapienza's formally dressed police force?
  • Ether hired them to protect scientists when they leave the lab (saw in the church opportunity).
  • You can overhear chatter which seems to imply that CICADA essentially are acting like a privately-operated police force while Ether are based in the town, no doubt to make sure nothing happens which could potentially threaten the project.

Marrakesh

• General Zaydan is someone Providence wants to place in charge of Morocco. Their plan for this didn't include inflaming public opinion by stealing seven billion dollars. What was their original plan, then?
  • Presumably they had some slower yet much more subtle plan to get Zaydan in power. Once Strandberg went against their orders they simply decided to make the best of it. Let No Crisis Go to Waste after all.
  • The ends were still achieved, but it was the means by which Providence didn't agree with. Providence originally wanted Strandberg to subtly manipulate the Moroccan economy into crashing so that it looked like it would be the fault of the government. However, Strandberg's theft of the money put all of the attention on him, potentially exposing Providence, especially since they had to resort to a bold mercenary attack in broad daylight to rescue him.
• Why don't General Zaydan and Strandberg have a Moroccan and Swedish accent respectively?
  • Given this level was set in Morocco and yet everyone speaks English, it's strong evidence there's some form of Translation Convention. It wouldn't make sense either way: Zaydan studied at West Point, U.S.A, and Strandberg was doing business in Morocco for who knows how long; he probably lost his accent years ago from doing business overseas and never talking to his family.
• If Hamilton-Lowe knew about Zaydan's coup, why didn't they just go public? Or at least warn the Moroccan government?
  • Hamilton-Lowe was tipped off by the Shadow Client. They don't want to be caught for their own criminal dealings, so they hired the ICA to deal with Zaydan's coup.
• Killing Zaydan makes sense to me. Even if Strandberg is dead by himself, Zaydan has backup plans to get the riots he needs started, like the fake Crystal Dawn gunmen. But if you just kill Zaydan, Providence seems to lose their man in Morocco, so why would killing Strandberg be necessary?

Bangkok

• For all his attitude about being sick of his father controlling him and wanting to be his own man, why is it when the minute things start going wrong for Jordan in the mission (like finding a recording of Hannah's death in his bedroom or pushing his lawyer out of a window), he immediately whips out his phone to beg his dad for help?
  • Jordan naturally wants to be his own man but his upbringing as a Spoiled Brat (if your father literally lets you get away with murder you're definitely spoiled) turned him into a teenager still on his first independence crisis, too prideful to accept daddy's help but too unprepared to not need it.
  • Good old-fashioned hypocrisy. Jordan hates his dad and his domineering ways and the control his dad has over him... until he needs daddy's help to get him out of a jam. Which further increases his resentment and feelings of inadequacy. It's all a rich cocktail of psychological issues.
• Why does Heidi Santoro have a katana in her room?
  • It's probably just a souvenir she got from somewhere, most likely Japan. As for how she managed to get it in and out of different countries, most likely some generous bribes somewhere along the line. Heidi's famous and her band leader is loaded. As for why she owns a katana... she might just like katanas. People do.
• What is the Class doing in the Himmapan? Since the Himmapan is owned by his estranged father, why would Jordan want to visit there instead of shooting at his studio?
  • As mentioned above, Jordan is quite the hypocrite regarding his desires to be independent from his father. Presumably he and the rest of his band thought it would be fun to be waited on hand and foot in a luxury hotel in an exotic country while recording their album. Besides, Jordan probably didn't even need to ask his dad for permission, he likely just called the Himmapan front desk and said "Hi, I'm Jordan Cross, world famous musician and son of the owner of this hotel. I'd like to reserve the entire North Wing, please."
• If the Class was producing Are We Stars at the time of the mission, and we kill Jordan Cross before he finishes the song, why does a radio play it in Hokkaido?
  • They'd probably recorded enough takes of Jordan's vocals (and other contributions) to stitch into something that the rest of the band was able to finish off and release as a tribute.

Colorado

• Why are Berg, Graves and Pravati targets? Yes, they are terrorists, but ICA is trying to find and kill the Shadow Client, not play hero.
  • Guess they are already registered targets or the ICA wants to totally destroy the Shadow Client.
  • If Diana's guess is right, Soders ordered the elimination of all of the militia's leadership as a way to strike back at the Shadow Client.
  • This is a mission where ICA takes it personally (the Shadow Client is using them in a secret war they want no part in), so instead of just killing one person someone paid them to they'll clean up the whole organization leadership to avoid retaliation or reorganisation. Plus it's possible some of them were also already registered target that Soders asked to take as top priority.
  • Also, the whole militia worked for Rose, who in turn worked for the Shadow Client, who was at war with Providence. It's possible that the militia has been attacking Providence assets for some time, and so once the ICA found their headquarters, Providence used the ICA via Soders to take the group out.
  • They were already targets. 47 was already on-site, so the ICA had him use the opportunity to take them out. Plus, as previous games have shown, repeatedly hiring the ICA under false pretenses is a great way to piss them off.
  • Remember, this is technically a stealth contract Providence is issuing via Soders and there are reasons for Providence to want to kill all four of them. Rose, obviously, is the leader. Parvati would take over if Rose were killed, and Parvati is just as violent and probably more capable so she had to go. Berg was actively interrogating a Providence courier, and being the master interrogator he is he'd get secrets out of the man Providence would rather not have known; it's also implied during the level that Berg tends to not write things down, so the intel dies with him. Graves is a genius intelligence analyst, better than Olivia Hall and likely better than even Diana, so she'd be all over Providence in no time if she were left alive. In Providence's eyes, they were the four most valuable people the Shadow Client had and all of them were a threat so they all had to go.
• How does a Brit, Israeli, Australian and Sri Lankan ends up setting their base in Colorado? Keeping this hidden is hard enough but not even being a citizen of the country, what connections do they have in that state to keep the police off their back when things start exploding? Right-Wing Militia Fanatic usually works because they have a good PR in nearby community since they are part of it but unless the Shadow Client's shady past took place on that farm there is no reason for the Freedom Fighters to set shop in a different continent.
  • Graves does rattle off on how she got to the farm in the Audition opportunity. Something about passports, burner phones and lots of hacking. Graves trusts it so much she refuses to believe that Interpol tracked her down.
    • It's not impossible but it's a terrible idea, they would have been found by now.
    • At the risk of pointing out Occam's Razor. They were tracked down and 47 dealt with them accordingly. Mind you, it's possible the base wasn't meant to last very long before they moved.
  • They're working with/for the Shadow Client, about whom we know the square root of fuck-all. Presumably he has the necessary connections / money / etc. to keep people asking awkward questions.
  • In the Bookkeeper Elusive Target mission, several FF members go into detail explaining just how hard it is to keep this operation under wraps and how expensive it is.
  • I've never been to Colorado, but just looking at Google Maps there does seem to be a fairly large amount of wide open space there. Perhaps they're just far enough away from anywhere that no one really knows much about them. It's not like they're testing their weapons and building their army smack in the middle of Denver, after all. At very least, everything was probably set up or fronted by Americans and the Brit, Israeli, Australian and Sri Lankan just moved in there without anyone knowing.
    • Colorado is empty, the 5/6ths of the state that is not a major metropolitan area has half a million people in it, and for the most part we ignore anyone who can drive the speed limit, so it is pretty easy to go unnoticed here.
  • It's actually rather easy to set up a fortified enclave in the United States, assuming you're an American citizen or are somehow able to smuggle yourself into the country. There's vast swathes of rural and undeveloped land in the USA that you can purchase and develop at extremely low cost in completely privacy. And as long as you pay your taxes, don't blatantly break any laws, and don't bother your neighbors, the government usually doesn't bother you in return. Hell, there are even small breakaway regions in the country that claim independence from the USA that the government largely ignores since they're too small to be any real threat.
• Why aren't Rose and Parvati, the heads of the militia, armed? I get why Berg and Graves are unarmed, the former a moral interrogator and the latter a distrusted newbie. But I'm sure that they should at least carry a pistol.
  • 99.999% of the other NPC's in the episode are armed in some way. It's a good hypothesis to think that those two place a ton of trust in the other NPC's to protect them. Also, Parvati is handicapped and Rose is more of a demo expert, they need a gun on them as much as Berg or Graves.
• Why does Ezra Berg carry around a bottle of lethal poison pills?
  • He is ex-Mossad, carrying cyanide pills if things go wrong must be a habit.
• Why the Agency didn't send someone to kill Olivia while 47 was cleaning the farm? If the Shadow Client is right they didn't need her alive anymore and it's not like 47 is their only assets. She wasn't even a difficult target, being a lone hacker with no bodyguards.
  • They didn't know where she was. It's clear when you enter the bunker that she did a "Screw This, I'm Outta Here" and left in a hurry. Diana says in the briefing that Hall's trail ends in Colorado.

Hokkaido

• Yuki Yamazaki's blatant exposure of her tattoos is considered a cultural taboo in Japan. How are many of the GAMA staff not reacting in some revolted manner because of it?
  • Because she's paying them and can have them wake up at the bottom of the ocean? Cultural taboo doesn't mean much when the person is rich and powerful enough.
  • This actually seems in character for Yuki, since we're clearly given the impression that she's a reckless individual (she smokes cigarettes and eats potentially lethal fish, for instance) so the fact that she doesn't care about taboos isn't surprising.
  • Not to mention that the GAMA institute itself is a thinly veiled criminal operation, since they're heavily involved in illegal organ harvesting and trafficking.
• Why does the screen in the operating room instruct 47 how to suck the blood out of Soders?
  • It's part of the procedure, 47 just willfully messed up the part where the machine has to pump the blood back. You can't replace the heart while it's still doing its job.
• If you leak evidence that Soders killed the chief surgeon's father and get him high, the man will storm to the operating room screaming that he'll kill Soders. What an idiot, but that's not the point. Why aren't the other surgeons trying to stop him from killing their VIP patient?
  • GAMA is chopping up an Interpol agent in the basement, they're clearly not the most moral batch. If their colleague want to get away with murder on a patient that paid in advance who are they to stop him?
• Why doesn't Jason Portman's surgeon notice his patient suddenly gained a barcode tattoo on the back of his head?
  • He assumed it was a faint mark or dirt or something.

Patient Zero

• How did Liberation acquire or create the virus?
  • It's stated by two of the scientists in the ICU room that Owen Cage was one of Ether's top researchers, and his bio says that he made contact with Liberation while online. He likely agreed to help create the virus due to his experience.
• Why would the Sapienza clergy let Craig Black rent out the church for a book reading? His books aren't even religious in any way, just trashy romance novels.
  • Some churches just allow that sort of thing. Hey if the money's good...
• Why is Craig Black holding a book reading at the date of the exchange? Why not covertly travel to Sapienza to meet with Akram at his apartment? It's much less high-profile and risky.
  • To poison everyone who attends. Dialog in-game when he's left to his own devices reveals that he doesn't like the book he's working on. Disproportionate Retribution at it's finest.
  • Oybek's signal to activate the sleeper agents was an emergency, so the book reading is unlikely to have been a cover. It was most likely a legitimate event planned weeks in advance by Black's publisher. Having the handoff at a public-but-not-quite event also provides plausible deniability. If anyone asks, Brother Akram is just a big fan of the Cassandra Snow novels, and Craig Black being at his own book reading is perfectly normal. Security would already be on site for the event, so that wouldn't stand out as suspicious either. And if anyone got word about a handoff taking place at the book reading, any of the people present would be suspicious.
    • If no one knew about the handoff, it wouldn't matter anyway. It would go off without a hitch.
    • If someone only knew that Craig Black or Brother Akram was a sleeper agent, every person he'd come close to or interact with would be a possible suspect as either having given or received the virus sample. In other words: every person at the book reading.
    • Unfortunately for the cult, the ICA was already perfectly aware of who the sleeper agents were to begin with, so their attempts at obfuscating the handoff was kind of pointless. They indeed could've just met at the apartment and be done with it.
  • If you meet him dressed as Akram, Black states that he loathes his fanbase. Presumably, the event (and the handoff at the event) was so he could kill them all.

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