Hitman Characters Long Overdue for a Hit

I love the Hitman series of games. If you don’t know what the Hitman games are about, I wrote a “quick start” guide on the series that you can read by clicking this link right here.

The Hitman games aren’t really about plot. The plot in a Hitman game is usually there to loosely tie together a sequence of exotic places to travel to and kill people within in new and interesting ways. Since it’s a series of hits, you’d expect there to not be a lot of plot baggage trailing behind Hitman unlike many other long-running games franchises (I’m looking at you, Resident Evil). However, Hitman does have its fair share of unresolved plot threads and, more importantly, people still left alive who really should have felt Agent 47’s garotte wire across their throats before the credits rolled.

The latest games have a feature called “elusive contracts”; targets that must be eliminated within a certain time period¹ before they disappear forever. As Eminem famously said, you only get “one shot”²; if you die while undergoing the elusive contract or let the target escape then that’s it, they are gone forever³. Once you’ve killed the target there’s no restarting the level, either. At the time of writing the other week the elusive target was played by Sean Bean (riffing on the fact that all the characters he plays in TV and movies inevitably die) and a few years back one of the elusive targets was honest-to-goodness Gary Busey.

It irks me slightly that IO Interactive haven’t seen fit to drop a few of the aforementioned survivors of the Hitman lore into elusive target mode. I thought I drop a few suggestions here and, who knows, maybe one day we’ll get to kill the following people…

Birdie – The Informant

Why?

Too dangerous for the ICA to allow him to stay alive; this contract’s for the firm.

How?

Exploded in his bus full o’ birds, probably using one of the explosive rubber ducks while dressed as a crow.

Where?

I could see Birdie hiding out anywhere, really; Sapienza, Hawke’s Bay, Santa Fortuna, Mumbai. However, the U.S. was his native territory so maybe Miami, Whittleton Creek or Colorado. He’ll stick out like a sore thumb wherever he goes anyway!

I’ve written before how much I hate huge chunks of Hitman: Absolution, in particular the antagonists. You could argue that having hateable villains is a positive but, combined with the linear progression of story across some truly banal chunks of America, it’s a game where the player doesn’t have any sense of urgency to do anything. The game might have worked had there been a different protagonist but, unfortunately, the entire game rests its plot on the shoulders of Agent 47, a man who can only emote through murder⁴.

A positive of Absolution’s villains is that you get to kill around 95% of them. Of the grotesquely hateable characters, 47’s pigeon-loving bird shit-covered informant Birdie somehow miraculously survives. Birdie is a horrible, detestable little weasel who manipulates both 47 and the other antagonists and I genuinely cannot believe that Absolution ends with him still intact. I’d love the opportunity to push his arse off of a roof while he’s tending to some pigeons, or blow up the skanky bus where he keeps his pigeons.

To add insult to injury, Absolution has a post-credits stinger which didn’t go anywhere, because Absolution sucked and IO Interactive would rather hope you’d forget about it⁵. Birdie turns up at the Chicago PD, where he wants to talk to another character who also makes this list…

Cosmo Faulkner – The Detective

Why?

While it’s in the ICA’s interest to cut off loose ends, perhaps Mr. Faulkner has gone a bit too far outside of his jurisdiction and the law and stepped on a few criminal toes in the process. The owners of those toes want him dealt with.

How?

Poison his glass of whiskey at the bar. You know, because all detectives drink whiskey at dive bars.

Where?

I could see him chasing a lead in Santa Fortuna, possibly involving the Delgado Cartel.

I don’t particularly hate Detective Faulkner. His role in Absolution is as an antagonist so minor that he’s almost not even worth being in the game.

During Absolution Agent 47 gets framed for murder, which sounds absurd but is even worse when you realise that the building the evidence was in was set alight by redneck cowboy fucknugget Dexter Blake⁶. Faulkner is the leading investigator on the case and once 47 leaves Chicago we basically don’t see him until after the credits when Birdie approaches him with information on 47.

I want the opportunity to off Faulkner because he’s a loose end and a liability to the ICA (International Contract Agency). Sure, you could argue that a Chicago detective isn’t going to be able to cause that much harm but then I’d like to remind you about the last time a detective was tipped off about 47. The Clouseau-esque Chief Inspector Albert Fournier was warned about 47 during the events of Blood Money following the opera house assassination, and he orchestrated a 51-man SWAT team to hunt down the hitman. 47 himself was shot in the stomach during the pursuit and spent the entirety of Hitman: Contracts in a coma, all because of one detective knowing too much.

I don’t have any particular method I’d like to kill Faulkner with. I’d settle for drowning him in a toilet (it was good enough for Sean Bean!).

Mr. X – The Mystery Man

Why?

CLASSIFIED

How?

Take him out with a flying suitcase, just for the irony.

Where?

I’m sure Mr. X can hide just about anywhere as long as there’s a dark corner to hide in, but it seems appropriate for him to attend an event at the Isle of Sgail…

One dangling plot thread from all the way back in Hitman 2: Silent Assassin…just who the hell is Mr. X?

The game opens with Mr. X introducing the game’s antagonist Sergei Zavorotko to the fact that the infamous Agent 47 isn’t a myth, convincing him to order a series of hits that cover an ulterior motive of getting hold of some nuclear weapons. To be brutally honest I don’t entirely understand the machinations behind the hits in the original Hitman 2 and I don’t think it was the developer’s intention that we should do; we’re just a hitman, we don’t get to understand the “bigger picture”.

Either way, the “Mystery Man” disappears after the opening and we haven’t seen or heard from him since, save for a cameo in the Hitman: Sniper Challenge. According to the wiki he might have been manipulating Sergei during the events of Hitman 2 but who knows?

I want to know who this man is and, more importantly, I want to knock him out with his own briefcase and then dump his arse off of a tall building.

Given the current plotline of the new Hitman games, I did briefly wonder if Arthur Edwards, “the Constant” of villainous organisation Providence might be the elusive Mr. X. However, he doesn’t have a suitcase, he tends to wear blue instead of black and I think we would have been given more hints as to this being the case if the two men were one and the same.

Carlton Smith – The Agent

Why?

The man’s a walking liability. The CIA want this embarrassment taken out once and for all.

How?

Smothered in his sleep while he’s only wearing his boxer shorts.

Where?

Like Birdie, any of the American locations seem appropriate. However, Whittleton Creek stands out as a prime location for this all-American agent to hang out in.

This one is like kicking a puppy.

Agent Smith has appeared in most of the Hitman titles, usually in some form of cameo where he’s in some dire situation and needs help. His biggest role was in Blood Money when 47 had to rescue him from a rehab clinic he was being held prisoner in, and then later on he approaches 47 with the game’s final contract of doing in the vice president. His most recent appearance was a cameo in a Japanese hospital, where he’d been locked in one of the morgue’s refrigerators.

I don’t harbour any particular hatred towards Smith but sometimes you have to do hits on people who don’t deserve it (not all the targets are monsters!). I think it would be interesting to present fans with the opportunity to take Smith out, and then maybe flip the elusive contract around if you approach Smith and talk to him; it could then turn into a mission where you have to save his useless arse one more time.

Malcolm Sturrock – The Butcher

Why?

Malcolm’s back doing what he loves best; killing people. Unfortunately he’s killed another pretty girl (his favourite) and the child’s family want him tracked down and taken out.

How?

Hacked in the head with a machete and then fed into a meat grinder.

Where?

Since he’s staying on the lam, Malcolm will need somewhere he can blend into and grab unsuspecting victims easily. Mumbai stands out, being one of the busiest cities on the planet.

One of the things I love about Hitman is how cold and straightforward the missions are presented. You’re given a brief by the client for each contract and, unless told otherwise due to changing circumstances by your handler Diana, you must follow it to the letter, regardless of what you find.

The perfect example of this comes from one of the many iconic missions in Hitman: Contracts, if not debatably the most iconic; The Meat King’s Party. Agent 47 is sent to infiltrate a BDSM fetish party at a slaughterhouse, charged with eliminating grotesque “Meat King” Campbell Sturrock (Jabba the Hutt made human) and rescuing a kidnapped girl. Unfortunately, by the time you find the girl she’s already been hacked to pieces, wrapped in clingfilm and hung-upside down from the ceiling in a room set out like a shrine, complete with candles and, in a nice touch of black humour, a whole bunch of pine tree car air fresheners hung around her from the ceiling. With the girl already dead, it’s just a matter of taking care of rotund monster Sturrock.

Except Campbell isn’t the only bad guy. While he’s clearly a big fat bastard, he’s obviously protecting his brother Malcolm, the deranged man who spends the entire party fawning over the girl’s corpse while walking around dressed only in a butcher’s apron and his grotty underwear. While Campbell has paid for a lawyer to get them off the hook concerning the kidnapping, it’s blatantly obvious that Malcolm is the psychopath who had his way with the girl.

Malcolm isn’t a target in the contract though. The client has only stipulated that they want Campbell dead. Sure, you can kill Malcolm; Hitman is open enough that you can carve your way through everybody in the level if you want. However, if you kill a non-target you’re technically creating collateral not outlined in the contract and as such will never achieve the coveted “silent assassin” rating.

If we are to canonically assume that Agent 47 has met every contract he’s undertaken meeting the requirements for “silent assassin”, this means that Malcolm’s hideous arse is still out there in the world of assassination going unpunished. I don’t think it is too much to presume that psychopaths that don’t get caught will possibly go on to kill again. That’s the setup I want for an elusive contract: Malcolm Sturrock is on the loose and he’s pissed somebody else off this time by cutting up the wrong loved one. Time for some justice, Hitman-style.

I’d feed his unwashed arse into a meat-packing machine.

Mark IV – The Clone

Why?

The Ether Corporation are trying to convince the last of the Franchise’s failed clones to undergo some tests as they intend to start their own cloning program. One of the shareholders thinks this is bad for business and wants the project scuttled.

How?

It’s a shootout to the death on the roof of a building!

Where?

Possibly at the GAMA Institute in Hokkaido if they want to run tests, alternatively at the Ether facility in Sapienza.

This one is more of a “what if” scenario.

The main antagonist of Blood Money is an organisation called “the Franchise”. They are a contract agency directly in competition with the ICA and, in an attempt to equal Agent 47’s prowess, they have developed their own cloning program.

The result from this program are the Marks; three albino men with skills equal to Agent 47⁷. You encounter Mark Purayah II and Mark Parchezzi III (Mark II and III, get it?) during the course of the game and inevitably prove that 47 is the better clone. Mark I never shows up, apparently because the Franchise’s cloning problem hasn’t solved the small issue of their clones having a limited lifespan.

I’d love for a fourth clone to show up, just as a nod to Blood Money. I don’t particularly expect an epic showdown to occur, I’d be happy with the ICA just being all “oh hell no, we’re not letting this loose end from the Franchise just wander around”. Mark IV could be up to some nefarious plot or carrying out a run-of-the-mill assassination just to get by and you’d interrupt him while he’s working. Maybe he keeps knocking out guards in the level and disguising himself. It would be a neat encounter.

While I don’t normally take guns, I’d shoot Mark IV with a sniper rifle, just to prove a point.

Adam “Kane” Marcus and James Seth Lynch – The Mercenary and The Psychopath

Why?

Remnants still loyal to the 7 would like Kane and Lynch finally punished.

How?

Poison Kane’s coffee while he’s wistfully staring off into the middle distance, involve Lynch in some sort of explosives test accident.

Where?

Santa Fortuna could make for a good locale, but they’d fit in tooling around with the militia in Colorado too.kane and lynch

Frankly I’m surprised these infamous chaps haven’t already turned up as elusive contracts!

Hitman: Absolution established that Kane and Lynch share the same world as Agent 47 as they turned up as cameos. Given that IO haven’t announced intentions to make more Kane and Lynch (and given the performance of their last K&L game, why would they?) I think it would be a fitting end for Kane and Lynch to meet their makers at the hands on a consummate professional. I mean, who haven’t they pissed off? Are you telling me that not one of the people they have crossed can’t afford to take out a contract with the ICA?

I’d poison Kane’s coffee and I would involve Lynch in some sort of explosives accident.

In Conclusion

I’m not expecting IO Interactive to take much notice of this blog post, but there’s a wealth of characters from Hitman’s history and it just feels weird that we’re never given the opportunity to kill them. It’s been fun spit-balling ideas, regardless.

---

Post by Sean Patrick Payne+ | March 22, 2019 at 5:00 pm | Articles, Video Games | No comment

Tags: Agent 47, Hitman, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman: Absolution, Hitman: Blood Money, Hitman: Contracts