WMG / Mirror's Edge Catalyst

Employs lie to the Runners when they hire them.

A surprising number of runs are actually corporate-sanctioned, although no one on the inside would ever admit to it. Some of the clients tend to overact regarding their good or anti-establishment deeds, knowing how the Runners tend to sympathize.

If anybody at Elysium Labs finds out that I stole this prototype, my career will be over. But it's worth it. The outCaste are dying in the Greylands - and this regenerative formula will help. Diseases of all kinds are ravaging those poor souls, and nobody is doing anything about it. Well, that stops now. Maybe this won't solve anything, but at least I'm trying.

Pope will make an appearance.

Whether it's just a few cameos in campaign ads on video screens, or if he'll play a more significant role in the story's plot - being a fairly popular politician and opponent of the current regime - remains to be seen.

• Semi-Confirmed. During one of the missions, his surname is mentioned as one of the ruling families of Glass.

There will be encounters with civilians in-game.

It's just another ordinary, boring day at the office. Suddenly, the door bursts open. A black-white-red form streaks through the room as your co-workers scream and scatter, bounces off the far wall and disappears through the emergency exit. And just as you're all gathering your scattered paperwork, a troop of pursuit cops comes charging in.

At least one reference will be made to (giant) rats.

• Double confirmed. The game displays various lines of text during loading. One of the lines states, "If you see a rat the size of a car, you're playing the wrong game." A visual callback is also done. The first level of the 2008 game featured rats getting killed by an electrical fence. During "Fly Trap," Faith comes across a couple of rats who suffered the same fate.
  • Triple confirmed. There is an easter egg in the last mission where Faith gets ran over by a train-sized rat. Not car sized, however, so we're fine.

Gabriel Kruger is not the ultimate Big Bad of the game.

He's only the The Dragon to a Man Behind the Man.

• Sort of. Kruger is the main villain of the game, but OmniStat (the most powerful nation on the planet and essentially an expy of the Soviet Union) is presented as a Greater-Scope Villain in the game's backstory.

This continuity still has the Shard.

• Confirmed.
  • I'm not seeing a direct reference, or even a distinctive silhouette. Unless you're referring to the excessive surveillance, which could be housed in any number of buildings across the city of Glass.

• Confirmed. The Shard has an updated look but still serves as a power base for the antagonist and the setting of the final level.

Morgan Freeman is the leader of Black November.

He seems◊ to be helping Faith.

• Seems to be Jossed by what's now on the website. The character in question is a (mostly) retired Runner, not a member of Black November. The leader of Black November is Rebecca Thane, whose relationship (if any) with Faith isn't revealed.

Kruger's female bodyguard is Caitlyn Connors.

She has the right race and approximate age to make it at least plausible - assuming the Connors sisters haven't seen each other in quite some time. Going from idealistic cop to working directly under Gabriel Kruger is quite the change between universes, but it still fits the same basic theme of divergent, opposing paths for Faith and Cate.

• Confirmed. Good job.

The region that contains Cascadia, Omnistat and Sabaeus is southeastern Australia.

Compare these two maps of the setting and the southern tip of Victoria on this map◊. The biggest giveaway is Tasmania on both maps. The differences in coastlines could be explained away by the apocalyptic war that happened in the backstory. It explains the racially diverse cast, but not why a country located in Victoria would call itself Cascadia, which is the informal name of the northwest of the United States. Not to mention the lack of Australian accents.

Gabriel Kruger is not dead.

It may just be me, but it seems too ambiguous to simply write him off altogether. Although Isabel/Cat appears to be alone in the VTOL at the end of the game, we never see or hear him fall from the Shard- he could simply be out of sight of the camera. Furthermore, the narration in the end credits refers to him as 'missing'- if he'd been killed, there would be literally no reason not to report it and pin the blame on, say, the Runners or Black November. He may have been quietly removed from power or retreated from the public eye, considering the events of the game.

Isabel/Cat killed Gabriel Kruger in the ending.

Gabriel fell off the VTOL and landed on the deteriorating helipad, however after Cat leaves Faith hanging on the edge to respond to Gabriel demanding Isabel to help him, off-screen she reaches Gabriel only to push him off the ledge to his death. This is her response after finally understanding her lineage with Faith. Isabel is still siding with the Conglomerate but she now knows Gabriel is responsible for the deaths of her birthparents. She will now take control of the Kruger name and will control the city the way she was raised to, but with a policy different than Gabriel envisioned.

Young!Faith killed Kruger's son during the November Riots

In the intel page for Gabriel Kruger, it's said that Kruger's son was a 'regular police officer', and that Kruger learned of his son's death 'only moments after it had happened'. The cop who Faith shot had earlier ushered her and Cat into a building, from which Faith saw Kruger murder Erika and Martin, so the cop would have been near Kruger's location. Kruger and his men were chasing Faith, and they would have discovered the cop's body very quickly, because he was just outside the building in which they saw Faith run through.

The Bauble Mall was originally meant to be a playable location.

If you take one look at it on the map, it looks perfectly positioned to bridge the gap between Downtown and Anchor, and it's literally right next to accessible buildings. I could definitely see a mission where you'd need to run through the mall to reach Anchor for the first time, especially since the first game also had a mall level.