Trivia / Hitman (2016)

• Acclaimed Flop: The game was a critical smash, a hit with loyal Hitman fans, a very welcome bounce-back following the divisive Hitman: Absolution... and it apparently performed so poorly that IOI was dropped by Square Enix and was left almost completely broke, to the point of being forced to lay off over a quarter of its staff simply to remain operational as it was struggling to complete the game's second "season". IOI developers directly blame the game's financial failure on the game's episodic release format, which they determined in hindsight was a major mistake that alienated many potential buyers, so when they found a new investor in Warner Bros. for Hitman 2, they completely ditched the format and just released all the content at once.
• Adored by the Network: Sapienza as a map. It gets the most play in promotional materials and got the most post-launch support in Elusive Targets and extra missions taking place on the map.
• All-Star Cast: Compared to later games in the trilogy, the voice actors used for the targets and civilians are either big-names in voice acting, or are at least well-known by players. In alphabetical order:
  • Colleen O'Shaughnessey voicing Valorie St. Claire.
  • Mary Elizabeth McGlynn voices Dalia Margolis.
  • Rochelle Greenwood voices various civilians, and a few of the notable mission-assisting ones, such as Hailey Brannen.
  • Yuri Lowenthal and Matthew Gravelle voice many of the male civilians.
  • Jason Isaacs voices Reza Zaydan.
• The Cameo:
  • Some NPCs have names inspired by forum usernames.
  • The news reporter reading about Strandberg in the post-Marrakesh cutscene is of Travis, a community manager for the game. This is a continuation of his cameo in the E3 2015 trailer, once again the one reading the news while Strandberg packs up his things.
• Contest Winner Cameo: Rocco, the guy who lives above the ICA safehouse in Sapienza, is voiced by the #1 place holder of Hitman: Sniper Challenge. The game can be seen in his apartment.
• Dark Horse Casting: Jonny Cruz, voice of Jordan Cross in the Bangkok mission, wasn't a popular voice actor at the time of the games' release, though he would gain later fame for playing Lucio in Overwatch.
• Defictionalization: The Class was subject to some viral marketing, which included setting up a Bandcamp, Soundcloud and Youtube account for the fictional band. The accounts all have the full rendition of "Are We Stars" heard in the level, and also includes releasing two more songs not heard in the game; "Gun Show" and "Shine a Light".
• Content Leak:
  • Usually, the names of each level in the games' files follow the naming scheme of the Location, then an animal; Paris Peacock (The Showstopper), Coastaltown Octopus (World of Tomorrow), Marrakech Python (A Gilded Cage), Bangkok Tiger (Club 27), Colorado Bull (Freedom Fighters) and Hokkaido Snowcrane (Situs Inversus). Patient Zero is known as "whitespider", and each mission has a different virus as a codename — Zika (The Source), Ebola (The Author), Rabies (The Vector), and Flu (Patient Zero). The Tutorials meanwhile, while their locations are classified in-game, internally the naming is a bit of a mess; some files refer to it as Siberia, others as Greenland, and several files just use the animal name; Polar Bear. Ship (Freeform Training) and Graduation (The Final Test) are the suffixes for those missions.
  • The codenames of the elusive targets are plainly visible on SteamDB, and are named after...alcoholic drinks and cocktails, of all things.
• Dummied Out:
  • There's a lot of ninja-disguise-related dialog the game never really uses as the Ninja disguise turns all of Hokkaido into a hostile area. The "Futo" suit released for the Definitive Edition (and later in Hitman 2) never uses these lines either, despite explicitly being based on Futo's getup from Mini Ninjas. The cut lines reference that game pretty liberally too, from the Director professing their love for the game ("I just loved Mini Ninjas"), Yuki Yamazaki making comparisons to the game ("Ninja's are for kids, you know that right? Like... Mini Ninja's — you know that video game?"), while dialogue from guards who stop you going into restricted areas will admonish 47 for not having the proper stealth technique to just sneak past them like the ninja he’s dressed as. Weirder still, is that these voice lines got re-recorded for every voice actor that appears in later games, despite logically only needing to do it for one level. The "White Shadow" suit in 3 would also use these lines, but again, Hokkaido is deemed a hostile area, meaning many lines go unused.
  • Disguises such as the Stalker outfit in Bangkok, the Scarecrow disguise in Colorado, and the Hokkaido Fowlplay baseballer and Motorcyclist disguises in Hokkaido, also have voice lines for people recognizing you as such, despite these outfits turning their maps into hostile areas, even toward civilians.
  • A functional gardener disguise can be found in the files for Paris.
  • The Caruso twins have an entire Elusive Target mission ("The Brothers") and briefing that are still found in the trilogy's files, and are in a complete state, with models, audio clips, really everything but a way to access it without modding the game. The mission was likely cut as its plot involves the Delgado cartel smuggling weapons for Ether, despite the former not being affiliated with Providence. Interestingly, they both appear during "End of an Era" in Hitman 3, when 47 is looking through his ICA files.
• Executive Meddling:
  • While in development, the game frequently suffered from this big time at the hands of Square Enix according to some people who worked there, which included the decision to break the season up as it was.
  • Surprisingly averted however in regards to IO's departure from Square Enix. IO management has in retrospect had nothing but nice things to say about how Square helped IO during their transitionary period to an independent studio.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Fake American: The Constant, who has an American accent, is voiced by the British-born Philip Rosch.
  • Fake Brit: The Canadian Jane Perry as Diana Burnwood.
  • The woman singing Italian in "Landslide" is voiced by German singer Conny Kollett.
  • Sean Rose (Australian) and Ken Morgan (British) are both voiced by American actor James Sobol Kelly.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The game sold in the Asia-Pacific region (except Japan) through the various Playstation Network sites after Bandai Namco terminated its venture with Square Enix to sell the game online. Averted as of 2019 when the game was sold as a gold edition under WB Games.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition:
  • The collector's edition comes with the game, an art book, a tie and clip set based on the one 47 wears, and a statue of 47 sitting on a chair, Silverballer in hand.
  • A "Complete First Season" box came out a year after release. In addition to the game, it also comes in a steelbook case and includes the soundtrack and making-of documentary.
  • The GOTY edition, released November 7th 2017, includes the entire first season, three new outfits and weapons, 3 new escalations required to unlock said weapons, and "Patient Zero", a new short campaign where 47 is trying to stop a virus outbreak in modified versions of Sapienza, Colorado, Bangkok and Hokkaido. It costs 60$ for new players, ^note The GOTY will replace the regular version on digital stores, as the price is the same while those who already own the game can upgrade to it for $20.
• Lying Creator: Downplayed due to the whole Square Enix thing. The devs confirmed that the briefcase would appear in the game, but in hindsight it likely was meant to be absent until Season 2. In the end, Season 2 was turned into a full sequel, meaning that the briefcase will not be part of this game.
• Meaningful Release Date: The Linux Port was released by Feral Interactive on February 16th, 2017. For those who don't follow, February 16th was the 47th day of 2017. Agent 47 is the titular character of the game? Get it?^note  For those curious, the macOS port was released on the 172nd day of 2017 (June 21st), and all other versions were released on the 70th day of 2016 (March 11th).
• Orphaned Reference:
  • A strange peephole can be found between Caruso's office and De Santis' bedroom. In the alpha, Caruso had an unrequited crush on De Santis, and would have spied on her and 47 during the "By Candlelight" story mission.
  • Several lab rats can be found inside Ether's field lab, and one box can be poisoned to kill the rats. The rats were intended to be used in a cut mission story where killing them would summon Caruso to the lab.
• The Other Darrin: Jane Perry replaces Marsha Thomason as the voice of Diana.
• Pre-Order Bonus: Pre-ordering the game got you an in-game Requiem Pack, which includes a suit inspired by Blood Money, a chrome-finished suppressed ICA-19 pistol, and white rubber duck explosive. The pack was made available for purchase separately in January 2017.
• Recycled Script: A single man manipulating the agency to take down his opponents? Sounds familiar. It's even lampshaded by 47 ^note Unless he, like Diana, is referring to the previous levels:
  Agent 47: It's happened before.
• Screwed by the Network: Despite the critical success of the game, in May 2017 Square Enix cut all business ties with IO due to the game turning out to be a financial failure. While IOI was somehow able to negotiate retaining the rights to Hitman as a newly-independent studio, their financials were in a dire state in 2017, with a serious possibility that both of them would completely dissolve. Fortunately, a chance publication deal with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment allowed IOI to continue operating and complete the second "season" of the game, releasing it as Hitman 2, which performed well enough that it gave IOI the momentum needed to bounce back while remaining independent.
• Similarly Named Works: The full game name is simply titled HITMAN, but it is not the first game of the franchise, that goes to Hitman: Codename 47, which is the first game of the series, and the Codename 47 subtitle is especially important to remember. Players tend to call this game "Hitman (2016)" instead, to differentiate between the two games (including this very wiki for disambiguation purposes).
• What Could Have Been:
  • The earliest announcement of the game suggested that it was to be a prequel to Hitman: Absolution, but this was later discarded and the game explicitly takes place after it. A possible remnant of this is 47's more youthful appearance in the game compared to Absolution.
  • According to this video this was originally intended to be a PC-exclusive multiplayer-only game as Square Enix was convinced that "consoles were done" due to flagging sales from the 360 and Playstation 3, but once the Playstation 4 and Xbox One started selling like hotcakes, Square panicked and re-tooled the game to be multi-platform and added in a campaign (which explains why the game was made into a live service, and does not let you unlock progression offline).
  • Alpha builds of the game had briefcases around the level that 47 could use to store and carry weapons without arousing suspicion. It was cut before the first episode was released, likely because it made it too easy to sneak weapons past guards (something which 2 and 3 proved beyond a doubt).
  • Supposedly the player was going to be able to take people hostage to use as a human shield, a feature possibly carried over from Absolution. This was cut, most likely due to balance concerns, but also to simplify things.
  • In the Beta, shooting an unsuppressed gun while out of sight caused the guards to inspect the area, and frisk 47 after the detection meter filled. If nothing was found, they would leave 47 alone and keep searching. In the released game, they will skip this step and just try to arrest him instead. It's likely that this too was also cut for balancing.
  • The E3 2015 trailer showed off essentially alpha-versions of the the first few game's targets. Viktor Novikov and Claus Hugo Strandberg are largely unchanged backstory-wise, though their faces are different (Novikov bears a passing resemblance to his in-game look, Claus does not and appears to be significantly older), while Silvio Caruso appears to be a wine connoisseur on top of being a biologist (though why he decides to drink while working with dangerous microbes is a bit of a mystery). There's also the curious case of a person who chats up a girl to photograph her and seemingly kills, who many speculate to be Jordan Cross, before he was rewritten as a Jerkass Woobie musician.
  • Some early footage had Circling Stars around an unconscious NPC's head. This wasn't well liked among players, and it was replaced by the current "2015-era YouTube buffering" dots.
  • Paris originally had an NPC dressed up as a Vampire Magician. While this NPC was eventually removed in the final release (and remains so in 2 and 3), the outfit can still be found in the attic.
  • The proposed second season was meant to seamlessly integrate into the framework of this game alongside the currently existing content. Instead, a standalone sequel, Hitman 2 (not to be confused with Hitman 2: Silent Assassin), was announced on June 7, 2018, and released on November 13th. However, the developers managed to reverse the original plan; owning this game gives you free access to the legacy pack, allowing you to play this game's levels in the sequel, and 3 continued this tradition.
  • Several promotional pieces for Season 1 indicated that, originally, the game was only going to release two chunks of three, with Paris, Sapienza and Marrakesh in one chunk while Bangkok, Colorado and Hokkaido would be in the second batch. For undisclosed reasons, this was reverted to a more traditional episodic model of each episode, with each level releasing one at a time, but the delays this change caused were partly why the Summer bonus missions for Sapienza and Marrakesh were made.
  • Silvio Caruso's elder brothers, Orlando and Renzo Caruso, were planned to be targets in an unreleased Elusive Target titled "The Brothers" set in Marrakesh. The intended mission briefing was able to be found via modding^note They are also laying about in the Linux Port's directory, as the video files used in the level are not in the game files, and are just a bunch of webm files. Weirdly enough, they appear on the sanctioned targets list in "End of an Era" in Hitman 3, alongside other 2016 Elusive Targets.
  • Oddly enough, all civilians and bodyguards have unique dialogue for disguises that turn the map into a hostile area.^note The Stalker disguise from "Club 27", the Scarecrow disguise from "Freedom Fighters", and the Baseball Player, Motorcyclist and Ninja outfits from "Situs Inversus" This suggests that these disguises were likely intended to be normal outfits at some point in the game.
  • The targets of the Patient Zero campaign (excluding Sister Yulduz and Klaus Liebleid) were originally elusive targets and briefing videos were made for each one:
    • Bradley Paine ("The Conditioner") was a Colorado ET, a psychiatrist hired by the militia to help their soldiers overcome their moral limitations. In addition to Paine, any patients that he counsels would also have been targets.
    • Craig Black ("The Author") was a Sapienza ET. The client, his ghostwriter, also requested that his latest manuscript be retrieved to prevent it from being published.
    • Oybek Nabazov ("The Doomsayer") and his three students (Akram, Akmal and Ansar, the last of whom shares Brother Akram's model).
    • Owen Cage ("Patient Zero").

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