Video Game / I Expect You To Die

I Expect You To Die is a 2017 VR puzzle game developed by Schell Games, putting the player in the role of a super-spy with telekinetic powers in a James Bond-esque series of espionage adventures as they stop the machinations of the Zoraxis Corporation and its leader Dr. Zor.

It was followed by a sequel, I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy And The Liar, in 2021. Another installment I Expect You To Die 3: Cog In The Machine, was released in 2023.

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This game has examples of:

• Affably Evil: Dr. Prism's robots are trying to kill you but they are very friendly and crack jokes.
  Robot: [agent Phoenix activates a giant drill] Hey, you found some nickel, do that again and you'll have ten cents.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: In The Spy and the Liar, after retrieving the launch briefcase from John Juniper and leaving him dangling on a catwalk, he pleads with Agent Phoenix. Even offering to tell them who Dr. Zor is. Zor is not having it.
• Alternate History: In The Spy and the Liar, a map of the world◊ seen in your mobile office shows the divisions of the world in this timeline. A close-up map of Europe reveals that the Soviet Union is still active and Germany is still split between East and West, and various environmental details in Cog in the Machine indicate the series is set in the late 1960s. While the celebratory cupcakes and a close-up map of Europe shows that the countries still exist, they've banded together in four unions that make up the world powers:
  • The Mediterranean Commonwealth is formed from Europe, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, Greenland, and Africa north of the Rainforests. They're ruled by Prime Minister Anthony Markopoulos, whose wariness of Zoraxis is painting a target on his back.
  • The Hudson Federation is comprised of the United States, Canada, Mexico, Cuba and Puerto Rico. They're ruled by Premier Sucre.
  • The South Atlantic Union controls South America and Africa south of the Rainforests. They're ruled by President Isioma Okafor.
  • The Pacific League holds Southeast Asia, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, and Madagascar. They're ruled by Chancellor Chelsa Magpantay.
• Appropriated Appellation: After stopping the missile in "Operation: Jet Set", John Juniper realizes the agent who destroyed the Death Engine is still alive and decides to warn Dr. Zor that "a pesky phoenix has risen from the ashes". From then on, the Agent is referred to as "Agent Phoenix" by Zoraxis and Juniper, and the Handler addresses the Agent by the name before the final mission of the game, Operation: Rising Phoenix.
• Bad Boss:
  • During "Operation: Party Crasher", the agent poses as Juniper's butler by sending him wine via a dumbwaiter. If the agent repeatedly messes up, Juniper orders the wine cellar gassed to kill his incompetent butler.
  • John Juniper orders his guards to gas the wine cellar and throw grenades in it to kill the agent, fully aware that his butler Gibson is being held captive within along with them. This causes Gibson to turn on him, revealing to the agent that the heads of state are still alive.
  • Though he's nowhere near this level, the Handler himself isn't that great of a boss either in the first game. He takes from the Agent's paycheck to pay for breaking the window of a Zoraxis lab, and often strings them along with false promises, such as telling them about a winter lodge reward program for infiltrating Zor's own lodge only to tell you they cancelled it years ago when finished, or finally letting the Agent go on a vacation... only for said "vacation" to actually be another mission. He grows out of it in later games, though, to the point that when Agent Phoenix is left on a beach at the end of Cog in the Machine, he tells them to enjoy the beach, and come back to HQ soon... "But not too soon."
• Battle Butler:
  • John Juniper's butler Gibson gives the agent a mean left hook during their infiltration of Juniper's castle in "Operation: Party Crasher". He left a bruise significant enough that it caused the agent's handler worry.
  • The first of Dr. Prism's robots who Agent Phoenix encounters is Robutler, who affably tends to them during their visit to Prism's home inbetween attempting to kill the Agent with a poison gas trap and their chest lasers.
• Becoming the Mask: The signature tradecraft of John Juniper. It’s what makes him such an efficient impostor for the state leaders. That, and the Mimic Masks the Fabricator gives him.
  John Juniper: Well, in order to do my best work, I need to become the character. I need to submerge myself completely. So, whenever I get a new part, I commission a new mask. I’m very particular about them. Each mask needs to really capture the essence of the character. Then, I’ll take a few weeks to prepare for the role. During that time, I don’t take off the mask. Then, on day one of the shoot, I remove my mask, and I emerge as the character.
• Bee-Bee Gun: In "Seat of Power", one of Zoraxis' henchmen, the Hivemind, will sic swarms of bees on the spy late in the mission. Unless the bees are killed by neurotoxins or prevented from entering the room by clogging the hole drilled by the Hivemind, they will sting the spy to death.
• Berserk Button: John Juniper does not like it when people touch or wear his masks. If he sees you wearing one in "Operation: Party Crasher", he flips out.
  John Juniper: Are you wearing one of my masks?!?
• Beyond the Impossible: In the last mission of Cog in the Machine, three devices need to be brought close to a giant ball of kinesium in order to protect it with a shield to contain its explosion. The agent's telekinesis can grab them, but it operates through their hands and they only have two hands, so Prism calls the attempt impossible. Aiming at the giant ball of kinesium brings up TK targets in three different directions, allowing Agent Phoenix to grab all three (to Prism's bafflement).
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: John Juniper is obsessed with theatre and acting, and insists on calling the scheme a "script", much to the annoyance of the Fabricator. In spite of his eccentricities, his top-notch acting abilities are the crux of Zor's plan in The Spy and the Liar.
• Catch and Return: A common way to deal with enemies. Barring the usual Grenade Hot Potato that occurs somewhat frequently, "Operation: Stage Fright" sees the player catch poisoned arrows to fire them back at the enemy with a crossbow. If they're accurate enough, the player can actually catch the arrows WITH the crossbow, instantly loading it.
• Collapsing Lair: In The Spy and the Liar, the Zoraxis Defense headquarters is rigged to self-destruct after the agent aborts the nuke launch.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In "Operation: Eaves Drop" it's revealed that it was the Fabricator who built the automatic bear-turrets in "Winter Break".
    • Said level also reveals that the Fabricator personally knows Commander Solaris from "Death Engine".
  • In the third game Dr. Prism is credited with creating your telekinesis implant.
• Cool Car: "Friendly Skies" is about stealing one of these from Zor's airplane while it's being transported to Zanzibar. In addition to being a high-class automobile, it is equipped with a good amount of high-tech weaponry that the agency wants to poke at.
• Deadly Euphemism: In "Seat of Power", the Zoraxis Defense meeting agenda mentions Professor X-Ray's "performance evaluation" as a team-motivating exercise. The professor's nameplate can be found in the trash along with that of Zoraxis defector Anna Ulanova, and the missing chair at the other end of the table can be lifted from the fiery pit below the board room, tossing out a pair of X-ray vision goggles in the process.
• Death Faked for You: After the "Death Engine" mission, your handler reports that you were declared legally dead after being caught in the space station's destruction.
• Death Trap: Agent Phoenix winds up in these during Mission 2 and 5 of the second game.
• Developer's Foresight: Many puzzles have actually multiple solutions, all consistently logical. Some of them are harder to find, but much faster to execute - which is useful for getting the speedrun trophies.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first game identified Dr. Zor as being male through a voicemail left in their car during "Operation: Friendly Skies", where the speaker refers to Zor as "a man of your social status". Later installments of the franchise make a point of keeping Zor's identity entirely shrouded in mystery right down to their gender, which is masked by a distorted Voice of the Legion that is constantly shifting between male and female voices whenever Zor directly addresses Agent Phoenix.
• Enraged by Idiocy: Operation: Party Crasher has Juniper ask you to send up the bottle of wine he's been saving. Should you send him the bottle labeled "Juniper Hated It!", however...
  John Juniper: Gibson. Walk me through your thought process here. You took a bottle you know perfectly well I absolutely despise, (short pause, most likely due to him having just noticed the label) AND YOU TOOK THE TIME TO WRITE "JUNIPER HATED IT" ON THE LABEL, AND THEN YOU SENT IT TO ME!? Are you drunk?!
• Escape Pod: The Deep Dive operation involves the spy getting into a damaged one of these, having to repair it mid-escape.
• Evil Genius:
  • Dr. Daniel Sans, the mind behind the supervirus from "Squeaky Clean" and the Director of Biosciences Division. Clement Clevari PhD, the Director of Biological Atrocities who is also involved with the Zoraxis supervirus project. Commander Solaris from "Death Engine" similarly joined Zoraxis to further her research into spacecraft, and quickly became chief engineer and inventor for the organization.
  • From The Spy and the Liar, the Fabricator is the genius behind the Mimic Mask.
  • The Big Bad of Cog in the Machine, Dr. Roxanna Prism is an ex-Agency scientist who got fired after trying to replace all agents with her robots and now wants revenge.
• Evil Gloating: John Juniper does this after he has you captured and trapped in a Death Trap. He expresses surprise if you just sit there listening through the whole monologue, though if you do anything to try to escape he will skip straight to activating the deathtrap.
• Evil, Inc.: The official front for Zoraxis' organization is Zoraxis Industries.
• Fanboy: The agent's handler is a big fan of actor John Juniper. He's rather disturbed by the revelation that Juniper is working with the Fabricator and Zoraxis.
• From Bad to Worse: Several missions involve potential solutions having a wrinkle thrown into them by an escalating hazard. "Operation: Deep Dive" for example, has the primary solution involve pulling the escape pod engine's ripcord to restart the engine. You then realize that the ripcord has been hooked up to a grenade's pin, and it tumbles to the ground live and ticking if you don't check beforehand to disarm it. You can throw it into a storage bin to dampen the explosion... but one of the bins next to you has the remaining reserve of the pod's grenades.
• Foreshadowing:
  • John Juniper appearing on a Zoraxis radio show.
  • In "Operation: Eaves Drop", the electrical override system that serves as anti-tampering device is mentioned by the Fabricator to also be in case Juniper "gets any ideas". She uses this to zap him on Zor's orders in "Operation: Rising Phoenix", causing Juniper to let go of the edge of the catwalk he was hanging on and fall to his death.
  • Throughout Cog in the Machine, Agent Phoenix starts experiencing a series of blackouts in missions. This is due to Dr. Zor's plan to destabilize the kinesium in every agent's brain, which would kill them all.
• Flesh Versus Steel: The plot of the 3rd game. The agency's former Gadgeteer Genius wants to prove she can build a robot agent better than agent Phoenix by sending her robots after him and using the data to improve them.
  Dr. Roxanna Prism: Once you're dead everyone will see how superior my robots are to human agents. Every time we encounter, agent Phoenix, we get stronger. It's simply a matter of time and iteration.
• Fun with Subtitles: When playing the game with subtitles on, most of the captions are straightforward. However, some missions have funny subtitles for certain things that happen. A couple examples come from mission 5, where Zor's assassin is dubbed "A Bad Person" when he speaks. Also, if the player chooses to eat the bagels provided during the assassination attempts, the subtitles will say "(panic eats)" for the first bite and "(panic eating intensifies)" for every subsequent bite.
• The Ghost: Most of the characters in the game, including the player. The only characters who have any screen presence in the first game are an unnamed Zoraxis henchman and Charlie Caliente.
  • In The Spy And The Liar, famed actor and Zoraxis operative John Juniper averts this, appearing in multiple missions in the game. There's also a few more minor henchmen who make their presence known during the first mission.
  • In Cog In The Machine, has Roxanne Prism as one of the main antagonist, who also appears in multiple missions.
• Given Name Reveal: In Cog in the Machine, the Handler's name is revealed to be Reginald.
• Grenade Hot Potato: Happens in multiple missions. If done in "Operation: Party Crasher", John Juniper will yell at the guard who threw it, telling them to throw the grenade and then shut the hatch.
• Have a Nice Death: Dying will grant you a coroner's report of what killed you. While mostly matter-of-fact, one of the causes of death is listed as "Bad Science".
• The Heavy: Dr. Zor remains in the role of the Big Bad in The Spy and the Liar, but John Juniper is the one who provides the most opposition to the agent, having a constant presence throughout the game.
• Heel–Face Turn: Two Zoraxis members turn on the organization. Anna Ulanova defects after trading information for clemency, while Dr. Ashley Lincoln leaked information to the Agency and developed a recipe for an antivirus that would diffuse the Zoraxis supervirus that is used by the agent to destroy the virus.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Every single time you go through a final mission, expect to die... and don’t, somehow.
  • In "Death Engine" in the first game, destroying the Death Engine while you’re still on it.
  • In "Operation: Rising Phoenix" in The Spy and the Liar, when the briefcase controlling the nukes about to blast several cities runs low on power, the agent has to use the elevator backup battery to restore full power, causing the elevator to fall from the top floor.
• "The Hero Sucks" Song: Dr. Prism believes her robots are superior to humans and her Villain Song takes a few potshots at agent Phoenix.
  Dr. Roxanna Prism: You're the best of the best? Well, let's see if that's true. I'm less than impressed. I've built better than you. I've made you before. I can take you apart. I'll reach into your core. And I'll rip out your heart.
• Humiliation Conga: "Operation: Party Crasher" can easily be one for John Juniper. You knock out his butler, ruin his party, make fools out of his security team by killing them with his own gas security system, freaking them out over a fake Agency attack and scaring them by telekinetically returning their grenades to them, and can use the dumbwaiter to send said grenades to blow up his castle's study, ballroom and billiards. To top it off Juniper personally hands you the nuclear briefcase through the dumbwaiter, thinking you're his butler, and to add insult to injury you can be wearing one of his masks when he comes to confront you, which pisses him off even further.
• Identical Stranger: Based on game art The Fabricator and Dr. Prism have pretty much identical facial features and Scary Shiny Glasses, with the only difference being that the Fabricator wears a fancy hat.
• In Medias Res: The second game plays with this; if you play the tutorial, you wake up in an Agency room with the Handler observing that "your memory might be a bit patchy from the attack", which also gives him a good reason to make sure your telekinetic implants still work (and that the Agent still remembers how to use them). Each of the following missions opens with a timestamp of "X Days Ago" until Operation: Safe and Sound, which drops a knockout smoke grenade into the van's delivery slot. When Agent Phoenix wakes up, they're in the same room as the tutorial (albeit with some different furnishings)... which turns out to be a set of Juniper's making.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: In "Operation: Rising Phoenix", trying to pick anything up with telekinesis during the final confrontation with Juniper will result in him shooting it out of your grasp.
• Justified Tutorial: In all three games, teaching the player how to use their telekinesis is fully justified.
  • For the first game, the telekinetic implants are apparently new, and the Handler is teaching the Agent how to use them.
  • For The Spy and the Liar, the Agent wakes up after an attack, and the Handler is making sure the Agent still remembers how to use their telekinetic implants. When the In Medias Res catches up, it turns out they've been kidnapped by John Juniper, who is impersonating the Handler, but it's unclear if the tutorial is part of the same sequence of events, takes place at another point in time, or just non-canon - and if it is canon, Juniper's a good enough actor to "be worried" about the Agent's well-being during his impersonation.
  • For Cog in the Machine, the Agent has arrived at an Agency control point that was evacuated during the big explosion at the end of the previous game. The automated reconnection protocol errs on the side of caution, and assumes that the agent going through the process is unfamiliar with their telekinesis; once the Handler is on the line, he does do a quick check of his own to make sure the Agent is okay, and then follows through with protocol thereafter.
• Kill It with Fire: One of the ways you can die in the "Seat of Power" operation is at the hands of a flamethrower-toting henchman, implied to be the "Charlie Caliente" named on one of the plaques.
• Kill Sat: The Death Engine operation takes place on the titular satellite. More accurately, on a small shuttle docked with the Death Engine.
• Letting the Air out of the Band: A triumphant chord is played on solving important puzzles. In Mission 5 of The Spy and the Liar, the chord begins to play only to peter off as it's revealed the Headquarters was just a film studio and Juniper had been holding you prisoner the entire time.
• Literary Allusion Title: Befitting the Spy Fiction theme of this game series, the title is based on a famous quote from the villain of Goldfinger.
• Mask of Power: The Mimic Mask from The Spy and the Liar is a hi-tech device that perfectly copies the facial appearance and the voice of another person. It’s the reason the state leaders are professing support for Zoraxis despite their actual views; because it's not actually them. It was John Juniper impersonating them, while the actual state leaders were kidnapped by Zoraxis.
• Mind over Matter: One secret in your office reveals that you have an implant that allows you to telekinetically move small objects, even at a moderate distance. The third game reveals that Dr. Prism was the one who invented it and implanted it.
• Mission Control: Your agency handler briefs you on the operation you choose and tries to provide advice during a mission.
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: Downplayed with your handler who takes most of the challenges you face in stride, confident you can face even the worst death traps. Still, they are genuinely helpful in pointing out threats that the player is not normally aware of the best they can. In The Spy and the Liar this is played straight when John Juniper kidnaps the player and impersonates the handler seamlessly in Mission 5.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Gibson undergoes this when John Juniper is willing to kill him along with Agent Phoenix and gives the player a tip on how to escape.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: All over the place in the Zoraxis organization. At the top of the organization is Dr. Zor, but Zor's underlings also include Dr. Daniel Sans, Clement Clevari PhD, and Professor X-Ray. The Big Bad of the third game Dr. Roxanna Prism is an ex agency scientist who wants to prove she can build a better robotic agent.
• Mundane Utility: Dr. Prism's home in the third game includes a jar of invisible ink that the Agent has to mix a revealer for. Her scribblings in the margins reveal that she's not using it for the various notes because they're secretive, but because her pens which use non-invisible ink ran out in the middle of what she was doing with them.
• Never Found the Body: In the ending to The Spy and the Liar, the agent handler's report to his superiors states that they have yet to find Agent Phoenix's body.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: In Juniper's desperate attempts to kill the agent in "Operation: Party Crasher", they hand over an armed grenade. It's exactly what the player needs to blow open the secret passage leading out of the wine cellar, allowing them to escape with the briefcase containing the nuclear launch codes that they inadvertently handed right to the agent.
• No Full Name Given: Premier Sucre of the Hudson Federation is the only one of the four major world leaders whose full name is unknown.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Juniper's first attempt to dispose of the agent involves a number of traps he left on his plane relying on their current trust in him. When those fail and his allegiances are revealed, he launches a missile at the plane. In his final confrontation with the agent, he tries to gun them down. He admits that he would've just had the agent killed in "Operation: Safe and Sound", but Dr. Zor insisted on the Death Trap.
• Noodle Incident: Two in The Spy and the Liar.
  • During "Operation: Jet Set", while attempting to fend off the missiles that Juniper sends in an attempt to bring down the plane that Agent Phoenix is inside of, the Agent's handler mentions an incident last summer when they "met an alien with the Russians," before stopping himself and tells Phoenix to never mention the incident again.
  • During "Party Crashers", while the Agent is impersonating the butler Gibson, Juniper sends requests for wine orders via the dumbwaiter. If you send him a shoe, Juniper assumes it's "about the yacht". Whatever happened, Juniper had to pay Gibson's medical bill as part of his apology.
• No One Could Survive That!: Zoraxis is fooled into thinking that the agent was killed when they blew up the Death Engine, and in The Spy and the Liar, their KIA status is maintained as a cover. John Juniper's reaction to the agent blowing up his missile in mid-flight is that only one agent could've pulled that stunt off, but that they died on the Death Engine - unless...
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • In "Operation: Deep Dive", the agent sinks Zor's Aratus-class submarine before making their escape on one of the malfunctioning escape pods.
  • In "Death Engine", the agent hijacks a Zoraxis personnel shuttle to travel to the Death Engine satellite space station.
• Operation: [Blank]: Every mission uses naming convention.
• Orphaned Punchline: During the credits of Cog in the Machine, the Handler starts to tell a story, but it gets cut off by Dr. Prism's final message for Agent Phoenix. When it ends, it goes back to the Handler, who states "and that's why I don't trust chickens anymore!"
• Our Presidents Are Different: In The Spy and the Liar, Prime Minister Anthony Markopoulos of the Mediterranean Commonwealth has made himself a target of Dr. Zor through his wariness of Zoraxis Industries.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: In "Squeaky Clean", the handler tells the agent to act naturally when Zoraxis agent sees them. Player can grab cleaning equipment they were provided for cover and pretend to be cleaning up the window, despite the fact that said window is broken.
• Pretentious Latin Motto: The Zoraxis Defense motto is "Zoraxis Pax Omnis", which translates to "Zoraxis peace to all".
• Properly Paranoid: As Zoraxis Industries is a front for criminal activities, Prime Minister Markopoulos is very right to be cautious about them.
• Retraux: The game is specifically modeled with the aesthetics of James Bond-esque films of The '60s in mind, complete with the stylized simplistic opening and the old-fashioned setting.
• Red Baron: The player eventually becomes known by the callsign "Agent Phoenix" during The Spy and the Liar, owing to their return from near-certain death at the end of the first game.
• Running Gag: Vacations. In the first two missions, your handler will use a vacation to bribe you into accepting the mission, only to go back on his word both times citing budgetary reasons. In the briefing for the third one, he explains that it's in the Caribbeans... and immediately adds that it's not a vacation.
  • He finally gives you a vacation in the first DLC. Turns out that it's actually a mission.
• Schmuck Bait: The menu on "Operation: Jet Set" is full of meals that sound tasty at first glance, but are all designed to kill you if you examine them more closely. Fugu is infamous for being poisonous if not cut very carefully, but according to the description for Fugu Sashimi, it was prepared by a Zoraxis chef. If the name of the dish "Death By Chocolate" doesn't tip you off to the poison in the cake, the description also mentions a "hint of almond". The S.L.T. contains "sand lobster", which is just their way of saying "scorpion". And while the oranges in the Citrus and Co. fruit bowl are safe to eat, the "juicy explosion" mentioned in the description is in fact an armed grenade.
• Shame If Something Happened: Dr. Ashley Lincoln was on the verge of creating an antidote for the Zoraxis supervirus when she received a letter from her supervisor that she would be best off spending time at home with her family over engaging in unauthorized research after hours.
  Daniel Sans: It would be a shame if something were to happen to them while you were in the lab working on an unapproved project.
• Sigil Spam: Anything Zoraxis-related is bound to have the letter Z or their globe-grabbing logo on it.
  • To a lesser extent, your own agency has a tendency to put its own symbol (a spiral) on its own stuff, particularly lighters.
  • "Operation: Safe and Sound" in The Spy and the Liar plays with this. Juniper masquerades as your handler with the Mimic Mask, and has acquired an Agency logo to sell the scene.
• Smoking Is Cool: Cigars show up in almost every mission, with the opportunity to light them and smoke them. Several are stamped with the Agency or Zoraxis logos. "Operation: Jet Set" uses this against the player if they've gotten used to the trope, with a booby-trapped cigar bomb being amongst the several traps.
• Smug Snake: John Juniper thinks of himself extremely highly, calling himself "the world's greatest actor" and having high faith in his scheme. Even when he's hanging by a catwalk, he still thinks that he's running the show. Zor shows to him how wrong he was.
• Spies In a Van: Your office in The Spy and the Liar, since the Agency wants to keep your KIA status as a cover. On the bright side, you've got a mini-fridge now.
• Surrounded by Idiots: In "Operation: Party Crasher", Juniper will demonstrate his low opinion of his security forces if the agent returns one of the grenades they toss them through the wine cellar hatch.
  John Juniper: Toss the grenade, and then you shut the hatch! Honestly, how did any of you survive hostility training?
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Commander Solaris, despite knowing that the spy has exposed the Death Engine's laser core and that radioactive waste and the core don't mix, continues to throw radioactive waste containers at your shuttle.
• Title Drop: Played differently in every game so far.
  • After the credits of the first game, the Handler observes that the Agent is assumed dead after the Death Engine blew up while they were on it, and admits that "I really did expect you to die."
  • Narrowly averted in Operation: Safe and Sound in The Spy and The Liar, where Juniper says that he expects the agent to... but stops, and says that he actually expects them to find a way out.
  • If you collect all of the Phantom Medals in A Cog in the Machine, you uncover a letter from the Phantom, saying that Agent Phoenix ultimately has a choice whether to live or die. At the bottom is a coded message that translates to "I EXPECT YOU TO LIVE".
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Sometimes, the only way for the player to reasonably know what kills them and what to do in what order is by dying. It is quite literally the name of the game.
• Triumphant Reprise:
  • Near the end of "Death Engine", an instrumental version of the opening song starts playing as you're about to destroy the Death Engine while you are still aboard it.
  • A more somber instrumental starts playing as the nuclear launch briefcase's power starts running low right as the player is about to abort the launch. Agent Phoenix has to use the power from the elevator backup battery to the briefcase to stop the nukes, which causes the elevator to crash.
• A Villain Named "Z__rg": Dr. Zor comes pretty close to this.
• Villain Song:
  • The opening song, "I Expect You To Die", is a song sung presumably from Dr. Zor's point of view, taunting and threatening the agent while treating their clashes as a game.
  • John Juniper with The Spy and The Liar. The visuals and the lyrics intermingle, creating an aesthetic that already tells you this master of the stage and the Agent will be at odds, as well as John's massive ego.
  • The third game Cog in the Machine has Dr. Prism singing about Building a better secret agent and by extension, the world, both figuratively and literally while being less than impressed by agent Phoenix
• Villain Takes an Interest: The agent's continuous interference eventually gets the direct interest and attention of Dr. Zor themself.
  Dr. Zor: If you survive this, agent, I shall be in touch.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Dr. Zor is apparently a corporate billionaire by day. Zoraxis even has their own radio station, which you can tune into while in your van in The Spy and the Liar.
  • Averted by the end of The Spy and the Liar. After imprisoning the heads of state and threatening to launch nukes, all four corners of the earth have Zoraxis as persona non grata.
• The Voice: Throughout both games, your primary handler is only heard through radio/earpiece. All the easier for John Juniper to impersonate him later.
  • In the few times they appear in the game, Dr. Zor has this to varying degrees. In the first game, they are heard over the phone in a call with a deep but indistinct mumble. In The Spy and the Liar, they speak more directly to Agent Phoenix with a Voice of the Legion.
• Wham Shot: Operation: Jet Set in The Spy and the Liar. Once you open the control panel on Juniper’s private jet, you find out that you’re heading to a Zoraxis base in Barcelona.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Referenced in the first two games.
  • One of the books in Dr. Zor's lodge in "Winter Break" is a book titled Just Shoot Them: Common Pitfalls of Eccentric Villainy.
  • During "Safe and Sound", John Juniper admits that he wanted to just kill Agent Phoenix, but Dr. Zor insisted on the death trap. Clearly the doctor didn't actually READ that book. To his credit, when the agent shows up again in "Rising Phoenix", Juniper just draws a gun and starts shooting.
• Worthy Opponent: Dr. Zor seems to think this of Agent Phoenix by the time of the second game, given they expresses disappointment if the Agent is unable to stop the missile launch, and says that if Phoenix survives, they'll be in touch.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • Dr. Zor does this to John Juniper hard once he offers to tell Agent Phoenix who Zor really is. They command the Fabricator to use John Juniper's mask to electrocute him and drop him from the catwalk he is hanging onto.
  • Dr. Prism later learns that Zoraxis was only using her for her kinesium research to figure out how to send a wave to make all kinesium explode, effectively killing every agent ever.