Hitman Games Agent 47 / Characters

47

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/47_hitman2.png

"Names are for friends, so I don't need one."

Citizenship: American, British, German, Swiss and two unknown (Currently), German / Chinese / Colombian / Austrian / Kazakh (Biologically)

Affiliation(s): Dr. Ort-Meyer, Institute for Human Betterment, ICA, Victoria, Lucas Grey, Olivia Hall, Father Vittorio, Carlton Smith, Lei / Mei Ling, Rosewood Orphanage, Tommy Clemenza

Debut Appearance: Hitman: Codename 47

Voiced By: David Bateson (English)^note

To most, he is an urban legend, but to anyone who has encountered him and lived to tell the tale, Agent 47 (sometimes called "Mr. Forty-Seven”) is the world's deadliest and most elusive assassin. He is the Player Character of the Hitman franchise, with a 100% hit rate and an unfaltering dedication to his work.

Born in Romania in The '60s, he is the result of a cloning experiment using the combined DNA of five of the world's most dangerous criminals. After being freed from captivity, he was recruited by the mysterious International Contract Agency (ICA), where he made a name for himself by embarking on missions no other hitman would dare to touch.

Warning: Due to the nature of 47 as a character, spoilers for events prior to Hitman 3, as well as for Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman are off. You have been warned!

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# - B

555: The barcode tattoo; "640509040147" is a wacky, but completely intentional example. It's a fully-legal barcode, which may have skipped over the heads of players in the early 2000's, but when barcode scanning apps for smartphones became more common, scanning it reveals it belongs to a dildo holder. Presumably, the barcode was chosen as it ended in a 47, which Ort-meyer uses as a naming scheme for the clones he creates. In some of the promotional materials for Absolution, it didn't end in a 47 and was in fact a Steam code for the game. Specifically, 640509 refers to 47's "birthday", September 5 1964, and 040147 refers to Series 4, first-class clone (Blood Money goes into what the different classes of clones mean; as a first-class clone, 47 grew to adulthood at a normal rate instead of an accelerated one and is more genetically stable), individual 47.
10-Minute Retirement:
- He does retire after slaying his creator in Codename 47. But by the end of Silent Assassin, he realises that killing is all he knows and retreats back into a life of murder-for-hire.
- In Hitman 3, The Chongqing level has him state "maybe it's time for a change" when publishing the ICA's files to the internet, and after neutralizing Arthur Edwards, he briefly quits for a year, in part to decide his own future, (a luxury he's never had), as well as to track down Diana. He chooses to work with Diana again for the foreseeable future to prevent anyone from filling in the power void left by Providence, and makes clear that it's his decision to do so.
The Ace:
- 47 is a peak-level human clone and master marksman who can fire any gun with minimal recoil and usually land a headshot. He's also an expert at handling more exotic weapons, like sniper rifles and poison and he knows at least three forms of martial arts!
- His physical condition is best exemplified in the Hitman (2016) trailer: he runs over ten kilometers in 36 minutes, with both his breathing and BPM normalizing within seconds of coming to a halt.
- It's not limited to murder, either. He's also a Polyglot, as mentioned below and demonstrates expertise in a wide variety of fields, most prominently in the Opportunities and the Mission Stories of both the 2016 game and its sequel, Hitman 2. Among his talents showcased, he can do some flair bar-tending, give someone a massage, play the drums well enough to impress a famous musician, well-versed in audio mixing apparently, he's good at playing the bongo drums, has implied knowledge of how to tattoo someone, knows how to be a real estate agent, as well as doing Yoga and understanding quite a lot about forensics (both of which make sense, given his profession). In other words, if there's something silly that he has to do to get him closer to his target, he will do it!
Affluent Ascetic: 47 seems to live fairly sparsely despite the huge amount of money he earns as an international assassin. A large part of this is due to his lifestyle; he has to stay on the move and can't settle down, so a fancy house or car are out of the question and he likely avoids elaborately prepared meals due to knowing all too well what a vulnerability they are (Hitman: Enemy Within indicates he likes fast food because it's anonymous and pre-prepared, leaving minimum risk). It's mentioned that his bespoke suit is one of the few luxuries he can allow himself, and that's before you consider that his WA2000 rifle is one of the rarest, and thus most expensive guns in the world. Hitman 3 Freelancer finally shows him living in a mansion surrounded by a forest and lake, which holds an underground safehouse.
Afraid of Needles: A flashback in Absolution shows a preteen 47 being restrained and crying as doctors plunge a very large needle into his neck. Ort-Meyer's "diary" in the C47 manual reveals he is deathly afraid of them: In a scene reminiscent of Lecter's backstory in The Silence of the Lambs, a pre-teen 47 overpowered some of the largest orderlies and stabbed the phlebotomist (Odon Kovacs) with his own needles, then got quietly escorted back to his cell. Decades later, he immediately recognizes Kovacs on sight as "the one with the needles". He's not so afraid of them that he's unwilling to use them as weapons, however. By Hitman 2 he's presumably gotten over it as he shows no qualms about letting Lucas Grey inject him With the antidote to Ort-Meyer's memory suppressant.
All There in the Manual: In Codename 47, his upbringing is detailed in Ort-Meyer's "notes", as well as his relationships with the other staff.
Always Save the Girl:
- At his core, Mister 47 is a gentleman who'll always help a lady in need. In Codename 47, he squirrels one of Lee Hong's concubines out of his club in exchange for information. Take note, though, ultimately the job comes first: these women don't have contracts out on them. If a woman does have a contract on their head, he'll kill her as dead as any of his male targets. And of course, if clonking a civilian woman with a fire extinguisher is needed to complete a job, he'll do that too.
- Victoria is another laboratory-bred killer. 47 does not want her to end up being some organization's plaything like he did. He also prevents Diana's death despite Travis's orders, although he shoots her in the stomach before deciding against delivering a coup de grâce.
Ambiguously Bi: Inverted. 47 is speculated to be asexual and aromantic due to being engineered to be the perfect clone and showing very few signs of sexual attraction to anyone, including Diana. He is also either confused or disgusted when Mei Ling kisses him.
Ambiguous Situation:
- His baldness and general lack of body hair. It's either a part of his genetic programming to ensure he leaves less evidence, or he shaves it for the same reason. That said, his insistence of keeping the look even while hiding and off-duty suggests he has no control over it.
- His apparent asexuality is similarly either part of his genes to ensure he's Not Distracted by the Sexy, the result of his upbringing affecting his ability to connect with others^note, or just a natural lack of interest in such matters.
Anti-Villain:
- There has always been an internal struggle for 47. He was genetically created to kill. He knows that killing is often wrong (as you know from playing Silent Assassin), but it's the only thing he is exceptional at.
- The ICA and Mr. 47 feel they provide a vital service to the international community, since nearly all of their targets are terrorists, drug lords, serial killers, and just all-around evil people. In the case of the Marrakesh mission "A Glided Cage" in Hitman (2016), Diana makes a point to stress that the fate of a nation is riding on the hit and he's messing with "quite the powder keg".
- He isn't required to save Mei-Ling or other civilians, especially since it risks a lower stealth rating, but it is possible. Some of the harder challenges in Absolution require you to rescue bystanders from Wade or the ICA wet teams.
Applied Phlebotinum: In addition to his amazing criminal lineage, Ort-Meyer threw in "47 chromosomes", endowing 47 with strength, speed, stamina and intelligence well above the human norm and apparently, also a remarkably slower aging-rate. This could be an example of Accidentally-Correct Writing, as while in Real Life extra chromosomes result in birth defects and medical disorders, artificial chromosomes are being pursued as a method for inserting new genetic material. Another possible interpretation is that the good doctor threw in an extra male sex chromosome. In the past, there were many misconceptions about the XYY syndrome. It was sometimes called the super-male disease because men with this syndrome were thought to be overly-aggressive and lacking in empathy. Recent studies have shown that this is not the case. Therefore, it would have been time-appropriate for Ort-Meyer to try and stack the deck in this way.
Artificial Human: 47 is a clone of the Ort-Meyer project, a project funded by Providence. He was genetically engineered to be the perfect assassin and growing up, he was taught how to use various weapons, as well as offing targets The Institute wanted to get rid of.
Assassin Outclassin': In any mission involving rival hitmen coming for 47, the poor buggers are outclassed at at every turn, whether they come after him as lone wolves ("You Better Watch Out") or in full-blown deathsquads ("Attack of the Saints" and "Apex Predator."
- Funnily, one of the civilians in "Slaying a Dragon" is planning a hit on the Triads himself! In the console remake (Contracts), you can break into his sniper's nest in the complex overlooking the park.
- The Spetnaz Agent in "Invitation to a Party".
- "Temple City Ambush": Baseball Cap Man and Straw Hat Man. These guys are brothers, hired by Deewana Ji to comb the city for suspicious foreigners (that means you). There's also the nagging matter of Purple Turban Man.
- In one of the final missions, Mr. 17 will be deployed to put a quick end to your career. Mr. 17 is, as the name suggests, one of your "brothers" who survived the Asylum attack.
- Blood Money takes place before/after a war between The Agency and their American counterpart, The Franchise.
  1. The objective of "Murder of Crows" is to eliminate 3 hitters before they reach their target, the Secretary of the Interior, during a political speech.
  2. An optional cutscene in the porn mogul's house involves 47 being seduced by a model who turns out to be an assassin sent to kill him.
  3. In "A Dance with the Devil", 47 must not only infiltrate a nightclub and assassinate a rogue CIA agent turned gun smuggler and his lover, but also identify a pair of assassins from The Franchise and fight them to the death.
  4. "Amendment XXV". Just break into the White House, assassinate the vice-president and the Franchise plant who's out to kill the President. Simple stuff. (As for Mark Parchezzi III, he never did learn the lesson...Mess With The Best, Die Like The Rest.)
- "Hunter and Hunted" and its accompanying mission, "Rosewood". Wade and his men take to the streets to find Victoria, gunning down everyone in their path. Three henchmen are deployed to Chinatown to find the informant, Birdie. The rest of them rendezvous at the girl's safehouse: Wade lingers in the boiler room in anticipation of a fight with the legendary Hitman—terrifying his henchmen, who fully expect to "get the chair" because "that lunatic wants a stand-off!"
- After Wade is killed (via exploding boiler), Lenny holds Victoria hostage with a grenade. 47 later finds him, drives him out to the desert and leaves him to die.
- Anyone familiar with Absolution knows about "Attacks of the Saints", where 47 is ambushed in his bathrobe by a cadre of bazooka-toting nuns. Everything about this mission is ludicrous. 47 has to eliminate 9 targets both in and outside a motel and the surrounding cornfield. The Saints were hand-picked from a group of orphans, battered wives and convicts with a history of violence. Interestingly, their leader Dixon is shown to have survived 47's attack and been reduced to a coma patient, but only in the trailers. She doesn't appear again.
  "Do you think we enjoy this, 47? You are an inspiration to all of us."
- One of the stories in the Mumbai level of Hitman 2 has another Assassin tasked with killing two of the three targets. The man needs 47 to discreetly fix his scope and arrange for his targets to be where the assassin plans to snipe them to even succeed. And as a final insult the assassin in question can then be taken out by 47 and impersonated to meet and kill his employer, the last remaining target. Through all this the assassin never realizes that 47 is around and using him.
- In Hitman 3, the ICA sends a team of a dozen assassins to take out 47 in Berlin, one of whom Olivia manages to dispatch before you arrive. 47 systematically hunts them down through a nightclub, despite their numbers being 11 to 1. Once he's taken care of five of them, their handler, Jiao, realises that he's wiping them out and calls off to the mission. There is, of course, a way to kill every single one of them.
Attending Your Own Funeral: By way of a potassium chloride injection mimicking the appearance of death. 47 is sedated (but fully-awake) during his funeral service, all bought and paid for by his would-be dispatcher, Alexander Cayne. Diana approaches the crematorium bed under the guise of paying her respects and slips him the antidote orally. It's not your funeral; it's theirs. (Unless you fail to wake up during the fake credit sequence. Then it is your funeral.)
Badass Armfold: 47 in his iconic Silverballer pose.
Badass Boast: In Silent Assassin, he gently reminds Diana that he doesn't "perform ordinary hits" and so he can charge whatever he damn well feels like. In Blood Money, he counters Mark Parchezzi's offer of friendship with, "I can do whatever I'm paid to" and in Absolution, he states without irony that he "sold perfection" to the ICA for many years.
- In 3, Lucas Grey delivers one on his behalf. While wounded in the forests of England, he yells at the CICADA commandoes surrounding him (one of whom is 47 in disguise) to "tell the Constant to start running" before shooting himself through the head. 47 can then offer one of his own in Mendoza if he triggers a private meeting with Tamara Vidal, who leads him to a room with five bodyguards in it. When she states the apparent odds of the situation, 47 only says "Yes. See your mistake?"
Badass in a Nice Suit: One of the first things 47 ever saw of the world outside the asylum was a store in Little Italy which sold expensive suits. Needless to say, it influenced his taste in clothes quite a bit. He's rarely seen without one and they're one of the few indulgences he allows himself with the money he makes from his work.
Badass Longcoat: 47 wears his suit in two different ways: Tie in and tie out. He leaves his jacket unbuttoned mainly in the cutscenes and outdoor levels; the tie moves freely in-game when you're crouching or turning quickly. He cuts a Dracula-like figure in cutscenes, especially with that shiny red inlay. The World Of Assassination trilogy adds some actual longcoats as unlockable suits for 47 to try out.
Bad Santa: If he's disguised as Santa, it's because he's in the middle of an assassination. He can even kill his targets while dressed as him, dropping a deadpan ho, ho, ho if he does so.
Bag of Spilling: Agent 47 of the games can amass a literal armory of weapons in just one game and by the the start of the next, the only weapons he has are his trademark Silverballers, his garrote and maybe a syringe or coin. What makes it even sillier is the fact that the games the first 5 games are only loosely chronological and therefore, parts of one game can happen in between the levels of another game, but 47 still has to acquire the same weapon multiple times in a row:
- Justified in the second game, as 47 had quit the life and was living with Father Vittorio and he could realistically store only his Silverballers and a couple other things in the shoe closet he had there.
- Hitman: Blood Money begins with Mr. 47 having freshly flown into the United States from his usual operating area of Europe and Asia. The loss of equipment there is justified, since getting an arsenal of guns past customs is fairly difficult. That said, while you don't have all of your kickass weapons, you do still start with five basic weapons, one in each broad category—including the Custom Sniper/W2000 Sniper, which was the ultimate rare weapon in the (chronologically) previous game and very hard to obtain outside that game's final mission. Since these five are generally the best in their category (and the only guns you can upgrade), you're pretty much set for life.
- Hitman: Contracts is a bizarre case, as the majority of the storyline of the game shows 47 fighting for his life after suffering a near fatal gunshot wound, the missions being mostly remakes of missions from previous games or flashbacks to, presumably, earlier missions in his life. The only mission taking place in reality is the final one. However, it's entirely possible to play the final mission after equipping yourself with weapons acquired during the hallucinations. Chronologically, Contracts also takes place after the "Curtains Down" mission of Blood Money, meaning aside from his dream armory, he still has his hideaway.
- Also justified in Absolution: 47's gone rogue, so he wouldn't have access to any large arsenals the ICA would otherwise provide him. He even loses his Silverballers and has to make do with just an unsilenced revolver and garrote for a few weeks. This is why Sanchez gets the drop on him in "Terminus": 47 had no other silent weapons to use on him. Less-justified in the transition from "Dexter Industries" to "Death Factory", whereby entering an elevator causes you to lose all your gear and again between "Death Factory" and "Fight Night" via climbing a ladder.
- Played With in Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2. You start with minimal equipment (ICA 19, coin, garotte by default), so even your Silverballer need to be re-acquired, although it's among the first unlockable weapons in both games. There are also MK.II weapons, which are identical stat-wise.
- Can be subverted in Hitman 3 if the player is using an Old Save Bonus from Hitman 2. In this case, 47 carries over all of the equipment that the player would have unlocked with the sole exception of the game breaking ICA electrocution phone, which was removed due to its Scrappy Weapon status.
- Taken to ridiculous levels in the Roguelike freelancer gamemode for 3, which starts 47 off with no tools or weapons. And every time you lose a campaign, you lose all your tools and all the weapons you're carrying.
Bald Head of Toughness: He's a devastatingly skilled assassin with an iconic shiny dome.
Bald of Evil: Especially in earlier games, 47 is an incredibly evil person, willing to murder innocents to cover his tracks. No matter what his morality is (as it switches between games,) his baldness is always a prominent feature he possesses.
Battle Butler: A peace-loving Sicilian priest and his assassin gardener.
Because I'm Good At It: The revelation that his mother was a laboratory beaker is too much for 47 to handle and he abruptly retires, giving away all of his possessions and retiring to Sicily. When his friend and mentor Father Vittorio is kidnapped, 47 bites the bullet and finally accepts more work from ICA — supposedly to purchase intel on his friend's whereabouts, but eventually because he's fallen back into old habits. By the end of the game he's back to working for The Agency because, as he admits, he "wasn't made" for anything else.
Been There, Shaped History: According to the Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman comic, him and Subject 6 are responsible for the decision to tear down the Berlin Wall, as they needed to get rid of their behavioural implants and the person they needed to see was in Berlin. On a related note, they're also the ones who killed Diana's parents, as 47 was fulfilling a contract when he was at The Institute and was given to them by Providence.
Being Personal Isn't Professional:
- Mr. 47 is old-fashioned and quite paranoid. He never meets face-to-face with his fellow agents if he can help it and severs all support/contact once the job is done. If any of them dared to show up later with their hand out, he'd kill them. (As he threatened to do to Smith before the latter coughed up some diamonds.)
- He's completely unfazed upon finding the corpse of the girl he's been contracted to save in "Meat King's Party".
  47: I assume the mission hasn't changed.
- In Blood Money, 47 would rather let Diana die in a hail of Franchise bullets than accept an assignment from her in-person, even if he admits he'll miss her company. His stance in Absolution hasn't changed: 47 states in his personal log that he takes no pride in killing her. But rules are rules and if she deliberately crossed The Agency then she had to expect repercussions... Even after he learns the truth, it takes him a while to warm to Victoria and quit perp-walking her around town at gunpoint.
Best Served Cold: 47 and Dr. Kovacs cross paths again when he's an adult. 47 kills him with a poisoned syringe in the jugular vein. After that, sedatives and poisons became a regular part of his repertoire (perhaps to show he has overcome his fear of syringes).
Better with Non-Human Company:
- 47 was not brought up by normal parents in a normal life, so for a lot of the time we see him, he can't stand normal people. He moves like a machine because he thinks like one and he executes his moves and strategy with perfection. Animals, especially small ones, such as birds and rabbits, seems to be one of the only things 47 display any true fondness towards. But as with anything else in his life, he will kill any pet he has in his possession without hesitation, if they pose a liability to him.
- His social skills are on the rise when Hitman (2016) rolls around. Sure, his social life is as empty as it always was, but he's become significantly more adept at engaging in normal social interactions and faking a variety of personas in order to get closer to his target. Hitman 2 has 47 actually start to regain a lot of his suppressed emotions , and Hitman 3 has him turn into a much more personable character. In Hitman 3, its possible for 47 to comfort and offer genuine advice to a woman in Chongqing who fears she has been stood up. There is no benefit to doing this in regards to your targets either.
Big Damn Heroes: In Absolution, 47 kicks in a church door when he comes looking for a corrupt Sheriff. This causes a panic in the pews, until they grasp that Sheriff Skurky is the one to worry about.
Big Ol' Eyebrows: He has noticeably thick, full eyebrows which stand out even more due to his baldness and possibly being the only hair he has on his body at all.
Bling-Bling-BANG!:
- 47's signature weapons are a pair of custom stainless steel AMT Hardballer pistols, with stylized fleurs-de-lis engraved on the slides and Pachmayr American Legend grips. The Ballers play a major role in the Absolution mission "Birdie's Gift", when they are put on prominent display in a gun shop; the sole objective is to retrieve them.
- The W2000 might be the most expensive item in 47's arsenal, considering only 176 were made.
Blood Knight: He tries to lead a peaceful life in-between the first two games and his initial goal in Silent Assassin is simply to find Father Vittorio. However, he realises in the end that assassinations are all he's really suited for and he goes skulking back to ICA.
Breaking the Bonds: At the start of "Operation Sledgehammer", Sheriff Clive Skurky takes a piss break after interrogating 47, leaving him completely alone. This gives 47 ample opportunity to untie himself. C'mon, Clive, you were doing so well up until that point.
Briefcase Blaster: The foil-lined Sniper Case allow you to carry a disassembled Sniper Rifle around in a briefcase without suspicion, as sniper rifles are too large to be concealed in 47's jacket. There are also a couple of other suitcases for assault rifles which come fully-assembled. Also a subversion, as these suitcases are so long that somebody should be asking questions.
The Butcher: His go-to alias in Budapest, "Metzger", is German for butcher.

C - G

Call to Agriculture: In Silent Assassin, he resigns to go harvest tomatoes in Sicily. It's implied to be over a number of years, as the dates of birth of the five fathers sets Codename 47 somewhere in the mid 1990s and Silent Assassin is set in the early 2000s. The irony is that he's still in disguise, posing as an unassuming gardener.
Captain's Log: 47 takes over Diana's briefings in Absolution, and returns to the habit in Hitman 3's "The Farewell".
"Personal note: Diana saved my life. Although the grounds for her termination are just, I take no pride in this assignment."
Characterization Marches On: I NEED TO USE THE BATHROOM. Ah, memories. In the first game 47 was more of a blank slate; Bateson's narration was a bit more working-class and there was none of that snobby attitude you've come to expect from 47.
Charles Atlas Superpower: As a result of his genetic coding, 47 is as strong, fast, agile and durable as it's possible for a person to be.
The Chessmaster: In Hitman (2016), Jasper Knight was a renowned chess player who defected to the Soviet Union. Your second "test" as an Initiate is to 'assassinate' an actor resembling Knight in a controlled setting at ICA headquarters. "Knight" spends a good portion of his mission pondering a chess conundrum given to him by an ambassador he murdered (with ricin-coated chess pieces, no less). 47 may also alter the chessboard and there is a Challenge to solve the problem.
Clone Angst: He doesn't seem too fazed by it anymore, but he did enter a monastery for a few years after killing his creator and realizing he's not a normal human. In Silent Assassin he confides to Father Vittorio that he wasn't born in the traditional sense and frets that he has no soul because of it.
Cloning Gambit
- The barcode comes into play in the final level of H:C47: If you try to break into Ort-Meyer's inner sanctum, the reader will scan you as Mr. 47 and gas you to death. Game Over. But if you drag the body of a Mr. 48... aha! The reader can't tell the difference, so it lets you in. Pay your respects to Ort-Meyer by blowing his head off.
- In Silent Assassin, one of your toughest opponents is another runaway clone. Feel free to dress up in your brother's clothes. (After all, when 47 first picks up his headset, he pretends to be Mr. 17.) It will work much better than your own suit, plus you can take his rifle. Just get to the exit before the mobsters catch wise. It's even possible to hide his body in a specific part of the office so that the guards don't get suspicious at all.
Clueless Chick-Magnet: His interest in sex is near-zero, but that doesn't stop Mei Ling and an intoxicated gambler in Vegas from draping themselves over him.
Cold-Blooded Torture: He's not above using torture to get information in Absolution, something that demonstrates exactly how ruthless he can be.
Cold Sniper: 47 is often distanced from human emotions. He is also very skilled with a sniper rifle. With a good scope and a silencer, you should have little difficulty making a clean hit of it.
Combat Pragmatist: Willing and able to use pretty much anything in a fight, from marble busts and bricks to pianos and electrified fences. His unarmed combat style is best described as brutally efficient, as expected of a combination of Krav Maga, Jeet Kune Do, Muay Thai, Jiu-Jitsu and Escrima.
The Comically Serious:
- 47's reaction when he's accosted by a drunk, middled-aged Vegas swinger.
- Or better yet, his annoyance at a roadside motel for serving him bourbon in a coconut. "Anything less....festive?" could be David Bateson's driest line reading ever.
- Some of the more goofy disguises can result in this due to 47's dead-serious personality, such as a clown costume or a Chicken Outfit, both of which come from Blood Money. There is also the conversation he can have with a bodyguard while wearing a flamingo mascot outfit:
  Bodyguard: So... That's a great outfit. I'm thinking it must get pretty warm in there though.
  47: It's insulated.
  Bodyguard: Huh, imagine that. Guess it would have to if you're supposed to wear it for hours and hours every day. Do you, you know, get to use it at home? For parties and things like that I mean.
  47: (dryly) No.
  Bodyguard: Right, right. I, eh, I have a friend that is into that sort of thing. Cosplay, assuming imaginary identities. He says it's very liberating. Takes him out of the stress of everyday life and work, you know?
  47: Not really.
  Bodyguard: Yeah, I guess it's different when you do it for a living. How's the pay?
  47: Sufficient.
  Bodyguard: Nice! Okay, good talk.
Complexity Addiction: According to "Overachievers", he and Diana apparently both have a love for making their assassinations as absurd or convoluted as possible to show off.
Conspicuous Gloves: 47 usually wears a pair of black leather gloves as part of his signature look, presumably to avoid leaving fingerprints. Having said that, he will go without them when wearing a disguise. Beginning from 2016, his new ensemble lacks the gloves, but he dons them on the variants of said suits that usually require Elusive Target completion to get, (Mumbai, Maldives, and the New York levels in Hitman 2, as well as all the levels in Hitman 3 are gotten via escalation or level progression instead). Colorado, Hokkaido and the Maldives being the exceptions that do not offer gloved variants of their location-specific outfit.
Conspicuously Selective Perception:
- 47 reaps both the rewards and the pitfalls of this. On the one hand, guards and witnesses take no note of the six-foot-tall bald guy with a bar code tattoo on his head stomping around the scene (as long as he doesn't do anything criminal directly in their line of sight) and are always taken in by his disguises, no matter how little he resembles the person he's impersonating. On the other hand, security and police pay attention to him and only to him. NPCs can traipse through restricted areas, pass through security checkpoints without being scanned for weapons and run around openly carrying firearms without upsetting anyone. If 47 does any of these things in front of a guard, the penalty is death. This is justified in one level of Contracts: The targets have only done business anonymously and the target you can disguise yourself as is a tall, thin, bald guy.
- This is less the case in Absolution and the 2016 Hitman, where no disguise is foolproof and there will always be at least a few people eying him warily—especially those wearing the same uniform as 47.
Consummate Professional: This is 47's defining character trait. "Bodies found"? What is this, Max Payne? GTA? Gamers today have no panache, damn it. The series puts emphasis on stealth from Silent Assassin and onwards, with players reaping rewards for completing a mission with minimal tools and no alerts.
Corporate Samurai:
- On occasion, 47 will be asked to break into an office building and stab all the encrypted files in their sleep. In "Graveyard Shift", he had to scale the the Patronas Towers to hack the schematics of a missile shield from Charlie's computer.
- In Absolution, he turns up in Dexter's weapons factory to look for Victoria. Once he sees she has been moved to another location, he murders the man in charge of her examination, Warren Ashford, then wipes the server so nobody can pick up where Warren left off.
Counting Bullets: The Agency believes in minimizing collateral damage and any unwanted attention. If 47 unloads more than 1 bullet per mission, his score will suffer.
The Cowl:
- Played up in Absolution. Characters in the same room as him (like Victoria) are bathed in sunlight, while 47 is cloaked in shadow. And then there is Dramatic Thunder whenever 47 emerges in the open air of Chicago.
- Hiding is a major factor in that game. Even a dark corner of a room can be enough to cloak a sneaking Hitman from prying eyes. Look for things to hide behind on levels, like crates or dumpsters, or just turn off the lights. Nobody will bother what they can't see.
Cradling Your Kill:
- If you've poisoned or tranquilized someone.
- 47 does this to Dr. Ortmeyer seconds before he snaps his neck ("You broke my heart, my son.") and clasps hands with Diana after he shoots her non-lethally.
Crazy-Prepared: Given his long list of skills to learn how to blend in, he counts as this. The 2016 game shows that he's mastered quite a number of skills, such as massage therapy, playing the drums and cocktail mixing. He also seems to be carrying wigs to allow him to impersonate certain people in the same game.
Cut Lex Luthor a Check: 47's environmental awareness, ability to spot details (environmental or behavioral) others miss, excellent undercover work and general familiarity with various murder techniques would arguably make him an excellent detective, especially if paired with Diana. While not the only instance of 47 playing detective, one potential kill method in Hitman 3 demonstrates this nicely; 47 pretends to be a private investigator, and the duo can solve potentially two different cases, one of which occurred decades prior.
Cutscene Incompetence: In every Hitman game apart from Absolution, Agent 47 is shown to be an apex predator who is nigh-impossible to ambush. Absolution overlooks this and cutscenes frequently leave 47 with egg on his face: Failing to wire Sanchez, failing to rescue Victoria multiple times, getting framed for the murder of a hotel maid and becoming the target of a citywide manhunt to name a few.
Dark and Troubled Past: He was raised to be a killer, isolated from the world and performed on by unscrupulous scientists. The experiments (especially those involving needles) were painful and traumatic, and 47 was forced to abandon his humanity to become a cold unfeeling assassin to be used by others.
Dark Is Evil: He favors dark suits, and is a ruthless assassin.
Deadpan Snarker: One of the joys of Hitman is listening to Bateson's bone-dry delivery. In "A Dance With the Devil", there's a clue to the hitwoman's real identity: it's the scantily-clad singer in the Shark Club. She's up on stage, butchering a torch song, as the waiter ogles her body and mentions how lucky they are to hire her on such short notice, even if her singing is "terrible". Mr. 47 deadpans, "I hadn't noticed", but Bateson's inflection is withering.
Death Glare:
- In Absolution, Birdie asks 47 if he's crazy. 47 responds with a glare which says, I know where you park your car (and I own C4).
- There is also this bit, if 47 manages to get close to Janus:
  Janus: You know... You remind me of someone I met a long time ago. A young boy in Romania...
  47: Tell me more about this... boy.
  Janus: Ah, the boy. I remember his eyes better than anything. Ice cold. Defiant.
Defector from Decadence: When he learns of what Travis has been doing to Victoria and the other girls, he states "I can no longer be a part of this," and goes to war against the ICA. Up until the hit on Diana, he had always followed his orders without question.
Depending on the Artist: The only things generally agreed upon is that 47 is white, bald, taller than average and has a barcode tattoo on his head. His face, however, keeps changing, even in the World of Assassination trilogy (which makes the story cutscenes a bit weird).
- In Codename 47, he looked like a generic white guy and the barcode had numbers under it (although 2000's graphics downgrades them to dots). Silent Assassin and Contracts portrayed him with some noticeable asian features, a heriditary trait from Lee Hong. The numbers in his barcode are now gone.
- In Blood Money and Absolution, he is a very buff, angry-looking guy. The asian features are gone and the numbers are missing in BM but reappear in Absolution.
- Hitman (2016), 2 and 3 portray him as a slim, handsome man who is mistaken to be on his 30 or 40s, a full 180 from the thug we saw in BM and Absolution. The numbers on the barcode have disappeared again.
Determinator: He's not the type to surrender (unless it can give him an opportunity to attack), as he states to himself in "Hunter and Hunted" (Hitman: Contracts, not the level of the same name in Absolution) and to Birdie. The problem is, Diana knows this and will promptly yank 47's leash if he's getting in over his head.
Devil in Plain Sight: His preferred style of assassination. He blends into crowds, roaming public areas until he can find an outfit that allows him to infiltrate top-secret places. Few people are aware that the world's most dangerous assassin walks amongst them, and his targets don't tend to realise he's there until he kills them.
Dirty Business: If the dark, bleak fever-dreams of Contracts mean anything at all, 47 certainly does feel some guilt over his line of work.
Dodgy Toupee: If he dons one, it tends to look pretty out of place on his bald dome. Somehow, few people will make note of this.
Don't Fear the Reaper: His original character model was meant to evoke the Grim Reaper. You can see it in the loading screens where his face is overshadowed, making it resemble a skull. Still, if you need rescuing from a Chinese brothel or a redneck jail, there's no one better to have your back.
Double Meaning: From Hitman (2016) onward, whenever 47 interacts with a target or someone they're close to, he tends to say things that fit the role he's playing and as an assassin there to kill the target.
Doom Magnet: 47’s flawless record has made him the most-highly paid assassin at ICA and a bogeyman in the underworld. But having that kind of notoriety is no good thing...
The Dreaded:
- Few people have ever heard of him, but those who do know of him as someone who can strike before you even know what hit you. It's always fun when your targets are on the run and shit-scared — they don't experience fear very often. ("Bald fuck is comin' to KICK MY ASS!!" — Blake Dexter).
  Blackwater Park guard: I heard about this guy. I just wanna say: if Roy's right, we are in short supply of kryptonite.
- In Blood Money, it's implied that he became something of a national urban legend.
- In the 2016 game, it's even possible to invoke this for an assassination: In the Hokkaido mission, the very sight of 47 in his suit is enough to cause Soders to die of shock!
Dual Wielding: 47's iconic pose is him weilding Silverballers at once, though he lost this skill after Absolution. The "Silent Assassin" indicator in 2 and 3 does consist of this imagery, however,
Easily Forgiven: Diana does appear to forgive him for killing her parents, though that hit was done on the orders of The Institute and Providence, and 47 and Grey didn't exactly have a choice in the matter back in 1989, so it's likely she doesn't take it too personally, and considers Providence getting dissolved justice for that crime.
Eiffel Tower Effect: Discussed in Hitman 3. According to Tamara Vidal, his alias Tobias Rieper has a social media account that is filled with "bland generic tourist photos" (likely edited stock photos) from "every clichéd attraction known to man, from the Sphinx to the Easter Island statues". He also doesn't appear in any of them. When a guard responds to her, they claim he could simply be ahead of the curve.
Equal-Opportunity Evil: Agent 47 does not discriminate with his targets. No matter their race, gender, sexual-orientation, religion, financial status, political leaning or nationality, if he is contracted to kill them, he will show them no leniency or special treatment as he ends their life.
Even the Guys Want Him: Invoked with the occasional mook in Absolution:
Elite Blackwater Guard: Cute guy. Too cute... almost.
Evil Eyebrows: Not unusual on their own, but 47's large, jet black eyebrows stick out on 47's otherwise pale, hairless head.
Experienced Protagonist: By the first game, 47 has already established himself as a professional killer, master marksman and skilled improviser. His skillset only increases in each game to include more ways for the player to non-lethally dispose of enemies and especially in the World of Assassination trilogy, he's picked up a variety of social skills to help him blend in.
Face Death with Dignity: In Contracts, 47 calmly knocks back drinks as the police raid his hotel. The menu reveals the Police Inspector, Albert Fornier, is an escaped Target whom 47 is still intent on killing, "even in my death". You always remember the one who got away.
Feet-First Introduction: 47 upon his arrival in the United States—specifically, Baltimore. It's used again for a foot chase in Absolution. His shoes are still smoking from the hotel explosion!
Firing One-Handed: 47 always fires a pistol in impractical ways. Lucky for him, he is super-strong and gifted with keener senses than most.
Flawed Prototype: His creator considered him one due to his individuality and ability to comprehend and question morality. Although, these abilities are what make him so good at what he does.
Flower Motifs: The lily symbol of the series. It's based on the fleur de lis, the official symbol of the French Foreign Legion. 47 apparently forgot where it originated from by the time Ort-Meyer summoned him back to the Asylum. The symbol is most often spotted on your pistol grips and rifle suitcases.
Frameup
- In Blood Money, the Vice-President of the United States is murdered by a lowly janitor with no known motive. In truth, the janitor is Mark Parchezzi III, a cloned assassin hired by the Veep to assassinate his boss, President Steward. 47 retaliates by killing both Mark and the Vice-President before the hit can go down. It was Alexander Cayne's intention to reveal the 'real' instigator of the attack by pinning it on 47—believed to have been killed by Diana—and claim credit for apprehending the killer whilst covering up his own involvement in the plot.
- In Absolution, Blake Dexter slits the throat of a hotel maid and places the knife in 47's palm, leaving him unconscious at the scene of the crime. This puts the Chicago P.D. on the hitman's scent for the first time.
Friend to All Children:
- In the manual illustrations for Silent Assassin, he's shown playing chess with a black child sitting beside him on a plane. 47 seems to have a weak spot for kids, particularly Victoria who reminds him so much of himself.
- In the first Tie-In Novel, 47 rescues a group of children from a pedophile ring leader and leaves them with Father Vittorio.
Gangsta Style: In the reveal trailer for Hitman (2016), 47 turns his pistol to the side before killing a target. This makes the casing eject straight into the air so he can catch it.
Genius Bruiser: He's at the pinnacle of human physical capabilities as well as an extremely formidable combatant and a highly skilled assassin who is very skilled in a variety of fields such as tactics, investigation, intelligence gathering, breaking into locations, engineering, chemistry, computer science, can analyze people and situations within seconds and react accordingly and knows multiple languages as well as how to avoid leaving evidence and avoiding detection.
Girls Have Cooties: 47's shiver of disgust when Mei Ling kisses him in the original. The mission remake in Contracts averts this, with 47 being only slightly surprised by it.
Gold Fever: 47 is a gold bug. In Silent Assassin, he demands that his fees be deposited in gold bars in a secret Swiss bank account.
Go-to Alias: In Codename 47, he uses the name Tobias Rieper as his cover identity. He drops it in Silent Assassin, telling Mei Ling to not call him by that name. As of Hitman (2016), he's begun using it again.
Gun Nut: Weapons are the tools of the trade for any professional contractor. There are many different weapons that can be used to perform your work: pistols, shotguns, rifles, SMGs sniper rifles, belt-fed machines guns, explosives…
The Gunslinger: Head shots all day long! If we needed confirmation, in "Til Death Do Us Part", there is an Easter Egg which occurs if you shoot a small silver coin at the far left of the mansion. This causes the wedding guests to start applauding 47.
Guns Akimbo:
- His weapons of choice are a pair of modded AMT Hardballers, dubbed "Silverballers". Of course, if the game is played right, 47 almost never actually uses them: dual-wielding the Silverballers is inaccurate and often a waste of bullets. If you put Laser Sights on them, you can see that they shoot off-center. (In Silent Assassin, they even count as two separate gunshots, so you'd never actually use them for a perfect run.)
- Every pistol and some submachine guns have an unlockable, dual-handed version in Contracts, ranging from the pathetic Silenced SG220 all the way up to the mighty Magnum .500! More than enough to kill anything that moves.

H - K

Hand Cannon: The AMT Hardballer, one of the first tools supplied to 47 by his tutor Dr. Ort-Meyer. (Seems your father wasn't all wrong.) Your Ballers will have the last word in most arguments.
Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: 47 in his complimentary kiki robe. The coconut with an umbrella in it really seals the picture. This is his default outfit for "Attack of the Saints" and one of his unlockable costumes in Hitman 2's Haven Island DLC.
He's Back!: Twice, at the beginning of Silent Assassin and the end of Absolution.
Hero Stole My Bike: Beginning with Lee Hong's powerboat, 47 has developed a habit of killing people and stealing their rich-man cars:
- In "Anathema", you have the option to loot Vito's body for his car key, than tear out of the mansion in a red Ferrari.
- Contracts takes place moments after the slaying of Dr. Ort-Meyer. Feel free to rob the dead and steal his Audi. Mission complete.
- In "A Vintage Year", 47 escapes using Fernando's floatplane after killing him.
- In "You Better Watch Out", you have the option to escape using Lorne's helicopter after killing him. However, this escape route requires 47 to leave his weapons and suit behind because of the weapon frisk at the door leading to the helipad and only bodyguards are allowed on the top floor.
- In "Till Death Do Us Part", 47 can escape using the priest's boat after sedating him and stealing his boat key.
- Clobbering the medic in "Hunted and Hunted" (Contracts) will yield his ambulance key. 47 drives off while giving a snappy salute to the border agent.
- After completing the hit on Diana, 47 goes off-script and borrows her car. After parking somewhere on the outskirts of Chicago, he drags Victoria out of the car and sets it on fire with a trail of gasoline to cover his tracks.
- The kicker is when he finds Birdie's chicken bus/pigeon coop lying abandoned in Chinatown, then drives away in it.
- Wade drives to Chicago in a custom 1950 Mercury coupe, which 47 helps himself to.
- Add insult to injury: Not only does the Patriot lose the wrestling match, 47 steals his tour bus. (Which then gets blown up by The Saints, anyhow.)
- Near the end of the game, 47 steals a Hearse from the church where he killed Sheriff Skurkey.
- In Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2, most levels have multiple exits, some of which include stealing vehicles. From basic clapped out cars in Sapienza to Viktor Novikov's helicopter in Paris, there's usually a vehicular escape option. Some involve stealing the keys first.
Hidden Eyes: In a rare Western case, some Hitman artwork has 47's eyes unrealistically shrouded in shadow.
Hidden Depths: The "World of Assassination" trilogy frequently shows 47 to have numerous eclectic skills beyond his skills as an assassin.
- In the "Bangkok" mission in Hitman (2016), Agent 47 (disguised as Abel De-Silva, a replacement drummer) can actually play the drums quite well. Either he's prepared for this exact situation in case he actually had to play them, or he actually has some hobbies outside of killing people.
- In "The Author" mission, if he disguises as the superfan, he calls out author Craig Black for some poor writing he noticed. In the mission briefing for the level, it's implied he read the books on the way to the mission just in case he needed to talk to him.
- Situs Inversus shows that he knows several Yoga moves. Given his flexibility, he likely does Yoga outside of missions. He's also shown to be able to prepare sushi rolls, although Yuki Yamazaki will say it's terrible unless her favorite kind of fish has been added, the highly poisonous Fugu (Pufferfish).
- In "Chasing Ghosts", taking place in Mumbai of Hitman 2, 47 can pose as a painter and actually does paint the portrait in question.
- In Hitman 3, there's an optional event in Chongqing where a woman asks 47 if he's seen her friend, who's running late from their agreed dinner plans. 47 assures her that she's probably just running late, after which she starts doubting their friendship. 47 points out that her friend agreed to meet her at night in the rain, which is a pretty big ask and when she gets worried over the possibility of her friend ruining her shoes in the rain, 47 even suggests that she could pay their tab to make up for that. This is surprisingly good friendship advice from a guy who barely has a social circle himself.
Hitman with a Heart:
- It's hard to tell where the line is with 47, though Diana assures us he does have one. He's not emotionless, but he's rarely put in a situation where he needs to be merciful.
- Unless canon demands it (which is extremely rare, as in two cases), the ICA won't touch civilians and they keep their collateral damage to a minimum. Travis must have dozed off during that part of the initiation meeting.
- Silent Assassin shows that 47 ducked out of contract killing to work as a church gardener in Sicily. He cares enough about the priest there that when he's kidnapped by the mob 47 reveals himself to The Agency to rescue him.
- Absolution cements this, with Agent 47 willing to betray The Agency in order to carry out Diana's request to protect Victoria. It's like he is protecting his little sister. He is also shown to be visibly bothered when he performs the contract on Diana, having to convince himself she's just another target.
- In Hitman 3, he comforts a woman who is expressing anxiety over her friendship with an old friend of hers, and offers her friendship advice for when her friend does arrive. He does this for this complete stranger he happened to be standing next to, despite there being no benefit in it for him or his mission in doing so.
- In general, 47 does care about the people he considers his friends. That list just happens to be exceedingly short!
Holy Hitman: Agent 47, dark ops man of the cloth.
- Ort-Meyer's death was a big moment for our protagonist to start questioning his own reality. He doesn't really 'get' religion. He wanted to do good. Helped with the garden and the church.
- He donates vast sums of money to the Catholic Church and to an orphanage in Chicago and he lives an incredibly spartan lifestyle (his suits being his one luxury), never dipping into his reserves except for emergency funds. When 47 brings Victoria to the orphanage, he attempts to repay the favour with a fat envelope of cash, but Sister Mary respectfully declines it, telling him she knows he's donated a considerable amount to them already.
- In "'Til Death Do Us Part", 47 can jump the soused clergyman, preferably in the kitchen as he's wetting his whistle. His clothes open up a new action prompt: "Perform Ceremony", which prompts 47 to marry the couple off.
Homeless Pigeon Person: In Blood Money 47 collects a pet canary in his travels and is obviously fond of it. When Cayne's men raid his hideout, he is forced to painlessly kill the bird so it can't distract him or give away their presence.
Homosexual Reproduction: 47 is the result of a warped experiment which combined the DNA of five Ace criminals — all men — in an effort to create a perfect killer.
Frantz Fuchs: His nose is very much like mine. Handsome devil!
Hunk: For someone who's supposed to blend in easy, 47 is looking conspicuously studly in the World of Assassination trilogy, so much so that he gets compared to a world-famous male model in the very first non-tutorial level.
Hunter of His Own Kind: In the first two games, he tracks down and kills Ort-Meyer's other clones, the superior 48s and the inferior 17s. He's well aware he's this, as he puts two and two together once he sees the 48's for the first time.
Hyperspace Arsenal: Someone carrying a few coins on their person without them being visible to anybody would be nothing out of the ordinary. Multiple pistol magazines and a number of knives borders on comedic, but would be feasible. 47, on the other hand, is on another level entirely; he is able to run around with small warehouses' worth of nicknacks and weapons without so much as a bulge in his clothing.
- In the first three games, 47 can carry around 20 pistols without spoiling the line of his suit in addition to three micro-Uzis, a trio of knives and a Sawed-Off Shotgun, so long as the player has unlocked the relevant weapons (or used the "giveall" weapon cheat from C47.) Also in C47, the eponymous character can put certain small items away inside his jacket. When he switches to swimming trunks in order to infiltrate a sauna, the same animation of him putting things away into his jacket is used, making it look like he reaches inside his own chest like in Videodrome [!].
- The sequel, Silent Assassin, took the middle road. You can only carry a single 'large' weapon, be it a Katana, an AK-47, or an anti-materiel rifle — but you can still stuff a lot of small arms inside your shirt: 3 different knives, 8 pistols, a revolver, a small SMG, a sawed-off shotgun, a bottle of anesthetic and his trademark piano-wire. Also notable is that he can apparently transfer this entire arsenal to the jacket of another disguise in a matter of seconds. Contracts allowed him to carry even more pistols.
- Blood Money was marginally-more reasonable by only allowing 47 to start out a mission with one handgun, one SMG and one unconcealable weapon alongside his non-gun equipment (although this one would be placed in the ICA crate). Any collected handguns and SMGs can still be concealed on 47's person... but the inclusion of an ICA weapons storage crate could allow the player to feign realism.
- Blood Money's customizable SMG can be modified to about the size of a large assault rifle. Despite this, it still counts as an SMG, meaning 47 can still tuck it into his jacket.
- Your convenient carrying case used to be able to fit all guns. 47 has a specially-fitted case for his W2000, so it doesn't make sense that he could arrive with a W2000 and leave with a Dragonov (in Contracts). This was fixed in Blood Money: Your can't stuff just ANY old rifle in his sniper case.
- Special mention goes to the coins in this specific entry which 47 can throw to create a distraction - there is always one available from the inventory, no matter how many have already been thrown. 47 can even walk through metal detectors with them.
- In Absolution it's now a standard. 47 can now conceal his Silverballers, two identical handguns, a light machine gun, a sniper rifle, a remote explosive and an entire gasoline can on his person with no change in mobility. (For reference, a syringe takes up as much inventory space as an axe!)
- In Hitman (2016) and Hitman 2, he carries most items inside his suit and any large weapon like a sniper rifle or an axe, he places onto his back. Although he can only carry one large weapon, he can hold an infinite quantity of smaller items, such as scissors, pistols, coins and other such items. Hitman 2 lets 47 bring along his briefcase, which is useful for carrying around sniper rifles and other weapons (they're illegal to carry openly, unlike in 2016, where the briefcase wasn't an option).
- Just when it seemed like the first two games in the World of Assassination trilogy made the most use of this, Hitman 3 can see 47 hide multiple sawed-off shotguns that somehow only require pat-downs for guards to notice, and can carry dozens of presumably full bottles of wine without much hassle.
Hyperspace Wardrobe: In the default entrance for Dubai in 3, 47 parachutes onto the Burj Al-Ghazali, emerges in a back room, and changes out of full skydiving gear to a classy grey suit...by simply passing through a curtain. The skydiving suit, complete with rigid full helmet, mysteriously appears in a plastic bag on a hanger nearby, just like all other disguises.
Hyper-Awareness: "Instinct" is a key ability of 47 from Absolution onwards that allows him to see usable objects within a given room, NPCs through walls, and targets from anywhere (save for Elusive ones) at the cost of color and hearing.
- In Hitman 2, while posing as a realtor giving Nolan Cassidy a tour of a house up for sale in Whittleton Creek, he instinctively voices his tactician's thoughts aloud. The delivery of lines that a normal realtor would say, in contrast, doesn't come as naturally.
"This is the downstairs living room. It is most commonly used for watching television and other recreational purposes. Large room with two easy-to-get-to exits. Dark floors hide stains easily. A room with lots of potential."
Idiot Ball: Grabs this in Absolution. In one of the cutscenes, the usually competent and the most successful assassin in the world tries to garotte Sanchez, a bodyguard who is twice his size and far more muscular than him. It unsurprisingly doesn't work and 47 gets knocked unconscious, allowing Dexter to frame him for murder. 47 admits afterwards that he had gotten overconfident and paid the price.
IKEA Weaponry: Is that a sniper rifle in your pants or are you just happy to see me? 47 disassembles and re-assembles his W2000 with ease, but even with his speed, there's still a five-second wait. Averted with the later entries and the later "Sieger 300 ghost" sniper rifles in Hitman 2, as they don't need assembling.
"I Am" Song: In Absolution, "Black Bandanna" plays as Mr. 47 rolls into South Dakota. It's supposed to evoke Johnny Cash.
The evil on your mind
It pays you back in kind
I am the judge, you've crossed the line
I Owe You My Life: 47 could not hide his gratitude toward the anonymous French doctor who extracted a bullet from him in Contracts. In the first mission of Absolution, he admits some reservation about killing Diana, even if she's guilty of ransacking The Agency for personal gain (the official cover story), since she took a terrible risk to save him from the crematorium in Blood Money.
I Work Alone: Not counting Agent Smith's rare appearances, where he's usually the irritating comic relief. Diana sometimes helps during missions, too, by providing intel.
An Ice Suit: 47 during the Japanese campaign in Silent Assassin. In a nod to the film poster for Moonraker, he's still wearing his expensive suit and tie underneath.
Iconic Outfit: The black suit + black gloves + red tie combo.
Iconic Item: The Silverballers, fiber wire and (to a lesser extent) the W2000 rifle suitcase.
Icy Blue Eyes: Meant to highlight his cold, professional personality. In Hitman 2, "The Constant" is able to recognize 47 by his eyes alone.
Immortality Begins at Twenty: In Absolution we see flashbacks of a younger, already-bald 47 being experimented on. He apparently no longer ages. Perhaps Ort-Meyer aged up the clones until they were where he wanted them then stopped them from aging further.
Implacable Man: Once a contract has been accepted by the ICA, as soon as 47 accepts it into his own mind, he can't be called off. Numerous marks in the games have tried to beg for mercy, bribe him, threaten him, or otherwise reason with him; none have succeeded. The only time the contract gets invalidated is if the contract itself has a specific stipulation 47 doesn't fulfil when going after the target. 47 will hound you to the ends of the earth. Snowstorms, security fences, bulletproof windows, snipers, wet teams, helicopters, tanks, exploding buildings... Nothing fazes him, only slows him down and he'll always adjust. When Grey dies at the end of the Dartmoor Mission in Hitman 3, he goes to Berlin, wears his fallen brothers' coat, and massacres at least five ICA Agents actively trying to kill him in a nightclub.
Improbable Aiming Skills:
- For all intents and purposes his accuracy is perfect, only inhibited by any mechanical flaws of the weapon he's firing. Notably, he's able to kill two targets at once with a sniper rifle.
- In Absolution, the "point shooting" mode can be used to kill multiple targets with laser-precision in a miniscule window of time, similar to the level 3 Dead Eye in Red Dead Redemption. If you're not careful, you can get misses or non-lethal hits.
Improbable Weapon User: Although it's easier and often cleaner to use the fiber wire or a gun, 47 is perfectly capable of killing people with items like scissors and syringes, or knocking them out with soda cans and bibles. All of these can be thrown—which can be quite useful considering the gun tends to draw suspicion while scissors and syringes (somehow) do not.
Infinite Supplies: In Absolution, we learn that 47's regular tailor, Tommy Clemenza, supplies him with a new suit whenever the old ones get torched in the same way Q forks over a new watch for 007 in every movie.
Insignia Rip-Off Ritual:
- Before 47 leaves the sanctuary, Vittorio hands him a rosary necklace to try and influence him to live a life of peace. Since 47 knows he won't find inner peace, he leaves the rosary behind at the church. (Note that in the original build, 47 was supposed to carry a rosary with him throughout the game as a strangulation weapon, but it got Dummied Out).
- At the conclusion of "A Personal Contract", 47 expresses his disgust with The Agency by switching off his earpiece. Later, when he decides to resign from The Agency, he cuts open his barcode with a razor blade.
It's What I Do: In Absolution, 47's opening narration ends with: "One day, I will think of this as just another job. After all, this is what I do." Here the trope works both as a starting point for the plot (the target being a trusted associate of his) and grimly describes to newcomers how the game mechanics will unfold.
Item Get!:
- Each time 47 reclaims his Ballers in cutscenes, look for him to raise his arms to the heavens. He always does it.
- "Birdie's Gift": Interestingly, if 47 completes the "It won't be Stealing" challenge without raising attention, nobody in the gun shop will notice 47 ripping off the Silverballers. He'll even pose dramatically for ten seconds with his gun barrels in the air!
- In Codename 47, before you enter the U'Wa village, take the Idol out from your pocket and hold it out in front of you. If you don't, the villagers will most likely attack you, especially if you're in a soldier's uniform. Otherwise, 47 will hold it aloft like Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the tribesmen will tell you to see the Chief.
Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: In Absolution, he shows a greater willingness to torture his victims for information, particularly if time is of the essence. He waves a gun in Victoria's face until she coughs up the reason behind Diana's betrayal, threatens to bury Lenny alive in the desert, breaks Sanchez's arm and stomps on Skurky's bullet wound to make him squeal before he dies.
Jerkass: In earlier games, most prominently Blood Money, he is very cold and unfeeling. He has no problem with killing innocents if he feels like he has to, and is even hostile towards those friendly to him, even abandoning one in the desert. He's only focused on money, not caring about the harm he brings to those around him or those he encounters.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's mellowed out in later games, even if he can still be a bit of a prick. He tends to be professional and distant, but will show sympathy to those close to him, making a genuine effort to show kindness and empathy to Diana Burnwood.
The Juggernaut: As mentioned under Implacable Man, 47 is extremely hard to kill, let alone escape. Diana, Grey, Agent Smith, Olivia, Travis, pretty much anyone who has worked with him or know of him have testified as such. He will No-Sell anything barrier between the target and him. Diana speaks to The Constant in Hitman 3 about this, and warns him that he's not going to stop until his pact to take down Providence is done, which he does take with some seriousness.
Kick the Dog:
- Played for Laughs in Absolution when 47 sets up a delivery man to get murdered in one of the cut scenes. You can avenge him by poisoning his sushi, however!
Kleptomaniac Hero: In Hitman, it's a given that 47 is supposed to pocket any loose stuff he sees.
Knight in Sour Armor: 47 always wears a grimace, even when rescuing people and doing good.
Kubrick Stare: The loading screen for "The Seafood Massacre" in Contracts, as well as the Contracts cover art.

L - O

Lack of Empathy: He's gotten better over time, but in early games he's notorious for being icy and lacking compassion. His response in the fourth game when Diana announces she may die is to brush this off and demand his paycheck. That said, he does shows concern for people like Diana, Victoria, Sister Mary, and Lucas Grey, his brother, especially after the latter gives back his memories and his emotional center is restored. He also doesn't comment on civilian kills in-game, though in Freelancer you are docked 50 Merces for merciless killing.
- His killing methods are gruesome, calculated, often excruciatingly painful, and sometimes humiliating. This include drowning, burning alive, feeding people to carnivorous animals, electrocution, shoving people into mulchers, impersonating women's lovers to lure them, and most chillingly, tricking a man into killing his own daughter.
- He's usually polite to his soon-to-be victims. Rather than coming across as respectful, it evokes a total detachment from what he's about to do. Extra credit for the innocent mailman in Blood Money, whom 47 lured to his death with the promise of a tip.
- When Blake Dexter screams that 47 "killed my boy," 47 responds with a smirk; it's the closest that 47 has ever come to smiling. Blake is a scumbag, and his son Lenny wasn't much better, but still...
Lantern Jaw of Justice: Sprouts one in Absolution... along with a very mysterious chin scar. Both have disappeared as of Hitman (2016).
Last of His Kind: As far as 47 can guess, he slaughtered all of the remaining "Class 1" clones in Ort-Meyer's laboratory. A few years later he runs across an inferior model, Mr. 17, performing jobs in India and in St. Petersberg, so... who knows? Maybe there's more out there. If there are other survivors of the project, they must be keeping a low profile if Cayne couldn't locate them.
- Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman and Hitman 2 introduces another clone; Lucas Grey, aka Subject 6, aka The Shadow Client, first mentioned way back in the Hitman: Enemy Within novel.
- And by the end of the third game, he's completely this. Lucas Grey is dead, making 47 the only survivor of Ort-Meyer's experiments, meaning that when he dies, so will Ort-Meyer's legacy.
Lethal Chef: Not usually, but his cooking can be used to kill two targets. Justified, since he's making fugu, which is highly toxic if improperly prepared.
Leit Motif: Ever since Blood Money, "Ave Maria" has been associated with 47, though from 2 onward, several bars of "Untouchable" and "Mission Accomplished" get the same associations (Chongqing's level music is partially made up of the latter). Carpathian Mountains opts to uses "In Constant Motion"; which features a deliberately corrupted version of "Untouchable"'s bars.
Light Is Not Good: If he wears a light outfit, it doesn't change his malicious intentions.
Limited Wardrobe:
- 47's trademark outfit is a black, two button notch lapel two piece suit, a white dress shirt with pinstripes and a red silk tie. In Blood Money, the suit is apparently custom tailored at the price of $5,000 (which is about right for a bespoke suit of that quality), as indicated by the penalty for failing to retrieve it from a mission.
- In Absolution, he even makes a stop at his usual tailor to get a new suit before the big finale. Lampshaded by Tom the Tailor.
- The punchline comes at the end of Codename 47: During the final battle, we see that each of the "Mr. 48s" is wearing the exact same suit. That, right there, is the end of any notion that Hitman might somehow, if you think about it long enough, make sense.
- Lampshaded again in Absolution, should a C.P.D. officer manage to stick you up.
  "Well, well, well! The 'silent-but-deadly assassin' in his Gay Republican outfit."
- The 2016 game finally gives some other clothing options, with suits from the previous games returning and some more casual wear being available as starting outfits in some levels.
- In some of the earlier games, he had different outfits in certain missions; In Codename 47, he wears DPM fatigues complete with a bandana in the jungle and in Silent Assassin he wears local garb in Nuristan, complete with a turban.
Living Legend: In Silent Assassin he is dismissed as a "rumor". In Blood Money he is promoted to "myth". In Absolution, he is referred to as a "legend" by his fellow assassins. As the Shadow Client cryptically says in Hitman (2016), "You define the art and it defines you."
Living Macguffin: 47 isn't just a mere clone. Besides being extremely proficient with weapons and stealth, not having a single hair on his body and a giant barcode tattooed on the back of his head, he is stronger, smarter and faster than the average human. This makes him a valuable commodity to those wishing to jump-start their own cloning programs.
Locked Out of the Loop: It's plain to see 47 that has utmost respect for Diana, as she's saved his bacon more than once. The only time he showed impatience with Diana was when she kept the existence of The Franchise from him until after they shot him and later when she insisted on meeting him in-person; however this, too, was part of Diana's Long Game.
Married to the Job: Played for Drama. It's not just romance 47 cares nothing about - he literally has no life outside of his work. He was bred and programmed to be a Professional Killer, and that is all he knows. The one time he ever tried to leave the game, it barely lasted a handful of months before he drifted back into it.
Master of Disguise: The gimmick of Hitman is his ability to steal clothing off the backs of NPCs, both good and evil. In some instances, he'll also steal physical features (usually when impersonating specific people). He'll sometime gain his target's hair (for example, the hospital director in Hitman (2016). Granted, said director wore a wig.).
Master Poisoner: He has a large collection and knowledge of poisons. Sedatives, Lethal and Emetic Poisons^note being some examples.
Master of Unlocking: Hitman was one of the early stealth series to use lockpicking several times during a mission, before games like Splinter Cell and Dead to Rights (or Fallout 3 much later) caught on. This becomes less and less useful as the games go on, as later stages rely on use electronic locks and keycards.
Mighty Whitey:
- Downplayed because his ethnicity is all over the place, but 47 is a pale-skinned man that destroys two major drug smuggling routes in Latin America: In Codename 47, Pablo deals in curios as a front for his drug syndicate; lately he's been looting precious artifacts from a local U'Wa tribe (real-life aborigines in Colombia, here portrayed as ooga-booga guys in leopard skins). They agree to help out 47 when he returns their gold idol. In Blood Money, Don Delgado is a highly-respected Chilean winemaker who is also secretly a cocaine supplier. Even after he is killed, his mourners in the Colchagua Valley still don't want to face the truth.
- "Death of a Showman", the tutorial level in Blood Money. 47 is always shown as sneaking around versus leaving large numbers of bodies in his wake. But here, he slaughters almost everyone in Scoop's crack factory to display all of the various skills he possesses!
- 47 pulls some favors for the residents of Chinatown: Taking out the local racketeer, a drug dealer, the crooked cops and (possibly) rescuing a fry cook from Wade's henchman.
Miser Advisor: Not exactly an advisor, but 47 has a habit of bilking his clients for all they're worth. When The Agency asks 47 perform a job for them in Silent Assassin—a mission which transpired after they agreed to fund a global rescue effort for his missing priest—-he says that he is to be paid triple the going rate (which totals out 100,000 USD), in gold! Curiously, he is not at all greedy for money apart from a proud belief that he is worth three hitmen put together (which, in all fairness, he isn’t wrong about) .
Mix-and-Match Man: Somebody peed in this Übermenschen's gene pool.
1. Lee Hong: A Chinese crime boss, he murdered his own uncle to take control of the Red Dragon Triad. 47 inherited Hong's Super-Reflexes: Even in his advanced age, Lee Hong was pretty spry with a sword.
2. Pablo Ochoa: A Colombian drug lord. He eluded death for so long by killing anyone who tried to prosecute him, including a judge. 47 inherited Pablo's durability: Pablo could shrug off being shot over a dozen times in the chest and head.
3. Frantz Fuchs: Eldest in a family of balding xenophobes. A former member of the Hitler Youth, he was schooled in the art of terrorism by his father. 47 shares his knack for disguise and for MacGyvering tools.
4. Arkadij "Boris" Jegorov/Boris Ivanovich Durushka: A staunch Kazakh anti-Communist. Boris was thrown to the wolves by his father, a dedicated apparatchik, so he ran away and became a gun smuggler. 47 inherited his Combat Clairvoyance. In the original, Boris is able to detect 47's presence from several rooms away. Watch out for this one.
5. Dr. Otto Wolfgang Ort-Meyer: The man who brought the whole gang together and ran the cloning program from his asylum in Romania. 47 inherited his intelligence; Ort-Meyer was part of the French Foreign Legion alongside the rest of the "Five Fathers" and yet has the genius to successfully execute a cloning project in the 60s. 47 shares similarly diverse knowledge of many things that are not usually related to his profession as a Professional Killer.
Mob-Boss Suit Fitting: Tommy Clemenza's clothing store. Tom keeps 47's old outfits and a weapon or two in the back room.
Monster Clown: He can dress up as Corky the clown, and proceed to go on a killing spree. It's both hilarious and terrifying at the same time.
Morality Pet: Mei Ling, Agent Smith, Father Vittorio, Victoria and the few animals he keeps. Also, in the supplemental material, the young 47 (normally trying to be as stone-cold as his old man), starts crying when a runaway lab rabbit which he adopted as a pet died and is buried, much to Dr. Ort-Meyer's surprise. In the comics, he continues to breed rabbits on the grounds of The Institute, and even after "The Wipe" he coos at one in a window in fascination.
Most Definitely Not a Villain: You are a huge mutant bald guy who looks like Pluto from The Hills Have Eyes, there's a barcode the size of a license plate on the back on your head and every cop and his grandmother knows about "Mr. 47" and how to identify him... yet all you need to do is wear glasses (not even a wig!) and stand 2 meters from them and they won't recognize you. You would think that would make identifying him rather easy. On the other hand, nobody notices when the only cook in the house suddenly loses all his hair and grows half a foot taller. This trope is lampshaded and discussed in "Skurky's Law".
Murder Is the Best Solution: Not necessarily Agent 47’s own philosophy, but as the series’ eponymous contract killer, he has built his entire career and reputation around enforcing this trope for others. Although he charges a ridiculously high price for the job, he still receives plenty of work, because his clients have already decided that his targets absolutely must go away forever, no matter how much it will cost them.
Must Make Amends: 47 promises to fulfill Diana's dying wish: protect Victoria and "don't let her turn into you."
My God, What Have I Done?: Though he did manage to rescue Vitorrio from the mob, he left around 20 corpses scattered around the church. In his shame, 47 drapes his crucifix on the splintered gate and leaves.
"You've been a friend to me, but I must leave. As you can see, I can be of better use elsewhere."
My Greatest Failure: 47 is truly sorry for killing Diana's parents, which he croaks out while he's being poisoned. Diana even gives him a minor "The Reason You Suck" Speech to keep up appearances, as well as to tell him how she truly feels about the whole situation. This is notable, as it seems to be the only kill he has ever committed that he feels any remorse for.
My Name Is ???:
- Det. Faulkner litters Chicago with a poster reading "Have You Seen This Man?" and a question mark over a bald figure.
- In Blood Money, if you manage to kill the target without raising your Notoriety at all, the newspaper will report on a "Silent Assassin" on the loose and print a front-page splash of the victim (the primary Target). If however, you accrued a minimum amount of Notoriety (10 points or so), but still weren't identified, then the paper will print a silhouette of a featureless, bald man with a "?" for a face.
Mysterious Watcher: When 47 takes leave of Victoria, he refuses to confirm whether he'll be back, instead saying "I'll be watching". Indeed, he rents a flophouse directly across from Sister Mary's orphanage. In the epilogue, he watches her and Diana reuniting through his sniper scope. Looks as if he and Diana are back to their old arrangement of communicating at a distance.
Names to Run Away from Really Fast: His recurring pseudonym "Tobias Rieper".
- "47"—which he considers to be his true name—happens to be the designation of the world's most widely-produced assault rifle, the AK-47.
Naytheist: Vittorio understands why 47 can no longer remain at the sanctuary, but he gives him a crucifix to remind him of the good things in his fellow man. 47 discards it as he passes through the church threshold, as a hitman has no need for such things. Still, he never came right come out and said he doesn't believe in God—just the idea of redemption (hence "The Gontranno Redemption"). It’s understandable, seeing as he seriously fears he doesn’t have a soul due to his unnatural "conception" as a test-tube baby, literally designed to be a killer. Despite all of this, he is still shown to be supportive of the Church, donating much of his money to it.
Nerves of Steel: 47 is renowned for his unflappability, even when he's shot and smoke grenades are raining from the windows. Rarely does he even raise his voice. Once—and only once—his eyes widen. (When a cadre of nuns track him to a motel and blow it to pieces with an RPG. You can hardly blame him for being baffled.)
Never Hurt an Innocent: Downplayed. He won't show any compunctions about killing innocents if they are his assigned targets, but he prefers to keep collateral damage to an absolute minimum out of a sense of professionalism.
Nice to the Waiter:
- While tailing a car in the Netherlands, he solicits a hooker to distract the wheelman and just to be sure, he hands her $1000 instead of the going rate of $250.
- In Absolution, 47 casually tips a hobo while on his way to see Birdie, though he mistakenly tosses the coin into an outreached cup which was apparently full of scalding coffee. In a later mission, 47 gives the same hobo a $20 bill. Perhaps not coincidentally, the tramp is entirely unhelpful to the police when they question him about 47's whereabouts and he just babbles nonsense until they angrily kick him out.
- A subtle example from Hitman (2016): When getting his makeup "touched up" as Helmut Kruger, he compliments the stylist for his work – unlike the real Helmut. Judging by the stylist's reaction, 47 made his day.
Noble Demon: Although he is an assassin willing to kill civilians in brutal and creative ways for large sums of money, 47 does have the occasional rule he avoids breaking. In addition to his child-friendly nature, he also avoids harming and killing people other than his target if at all possible. Granted, that's more out of a sense of professional pride than any moral scruple.
No Hero Discount: 47 is responsible for re-stocking all of his hardware and ammo. The Agency is only obliged to give him free intel and sometimes not even that! In Blood Money, Diana e-mails him hints for a steep fee.
Nominal Hero: A firm anti-hero. If 47's targets weren't all evil and if it wasn't for his handful of Morality Pets, 47 would have no virtues at all.
Not Distracted by the Sexy:
- 47 brushes off the attention of some very comely ladies, including Mei Ling ("You are my number one!"), "Eve" the spider-lady, Diana herself and even former porn star Traci Lords!
- Towards the end of Absolution, players have the option of tailing Layla (Dexter's moll) into a panic room. Once there, the game soundtrack is replaced with striptease music as Layla attempts to seduce 47 before quickdrawing a hidden pistol on him. The only reason she even gets that far is because 47 wants information from her; while easily-missed, look carefully and you'll see 47 automatically equips his Silverballers for this scene.
Not My Driver: A trailer for Contracts featured this. An asthmatic businessman has discovered that he is about to be murdered by 47 and promptly flees the building he's in, huffing and puffing to a waiting car. When the driver is told to start driving, he lowers the divider window to reveal the familiar barcode tattoo. Eek.
Not in This for Your Revolution: Though he begrudgingly agrees to go rescue the President, 47 demands his inflated salary up-front and also makes it clear he wants nothing to do with the CIA's internal wars ("Skip the patriotism, Smith.")
Not So Above It All: "Overachievers," a short side story written after Hitman 2016 came out, makes it canonical that 47 and Diana deliberately strive to create seemingly impossible and convoluted kills that are compared to an Agatha Christie novel. It was Canon Welded in Hitman 3's "The Farewell" level where a former ICA handler at the party recalls the events to Diana.
- Several of 47's Pre-Mortem One-Liner, usually when he's in disguise, portray him with a dark sense of humor and a fondness for Double Entendre despite his usual quiet, stoic exterior. A good example is if poisoning Sierra Knox in Hitman 2 while disguised as her doctor under the pretense of a booster injection. 47 just keeps pouring it on.
47: I promise, once I'm done, you won't feel a thing.
Sierra: So what's in this thing, Doc?
47: Mostly floral extracts... Hemlock, Belladonna, Aconite... It's designed to be fast and efficient.
Sierra: Fast and efficient, I like that. Wait.... Belladonna? Isn't that poisonous?
47: Yes.
Sierra: Should I be concerned?
47: I'm not. Just relax. It'll be over soon. (injects her)
Sierra: I... I don't feel so well, Doc...
47: Don't worry. It'll be over soon, Mrs. Knox.
- 47's tastes aren't quite as spartan as he'd like you to think. For one, he's quite the dandy: he's always been very particular about his suits, and in World of Assassination he chooses a series of stylish, expensive outfits. In Hitman 3's Freelancer mode, he chooses a handsome lakeside villa for his safehouse. And he fits in better in upscale settings: he's at ease in the glitzy World of Assassination levels, whereas he's visibly irritated by the tackiness of Middle America in Absolution. Diana even promises to get him "back to civilization" after he finishes work in Mississippi in Blood Money. And, of course, there's his greed. Unless you're a very dear friend, if you want 47-tier services, you'd better offer 47-tier compensation.
- He might be more interested in sex than he lets on. It's implied that he celebrated his survival after Blood Money by visiting Mei Ling for a freebie. During his drugged-up nightmare in Hitman 3, he imagines Diana waltzing with the Constant, which has an undertone of sexual jealousy. And he is once—once—Distracted by the Sexy in "You Better Watch Out" if he triggers the cutscene with the undercover female assassin^note.
Not So Stoic:
- Diana's apparent betrayal in Blood Money causes him to shout "Bitch!" out loud, marking the only time he ever has been verbally aggressive on-screen.
- There's also learning that Diana took Victoria away from the doctors. His face is one of abject horror that she was subjected to the same brutality he was.
- To add to this, in Contracts (which is mostly 47's fever dreams), you can see a ghost in "Traditions of the Trade". The ghost and in fact, the entire haunted part of the hotel isn't in the Codename 47 version. It seems to be an implication that his macabre trade does bother 47 on some subconscious level.
- In Hitman 3, when confronted by Diana about killing her parents, he manages to croakily apologize to her before passing out from a neurotoxin.
- In the neurotoxin-induced coma, he starts having hallucinations about all his previous assassinations, being haunted by the memories or all the people whose blood he has spilled. Even if he's a Professional Killer, he's not completely without emotion, and taking lives isn't something that he can do without being completely unfazed.
Nothing Personal: Don't take it personally if he kills you with a nailgun; it's just business.
Obfuscating Stupidity: 47 has a few charming scenes where he passes himself off as some hick tourist.
Odd Friendship: With Diana Burnwood, an affluent British intellectual and handler for the ICA. She's the only real friend he's got and the two are incredibly close, with her even forgiving him for killing her parents.
Old Shame: The only killings he seems to regret is the murder of Diana’s parents, once he remembers that he was the one who assassinated them.
Older Sidekick:
- Emilio Vittorio, also known as Padre Vittorio or just Padre, is the guy who convinced 47 to relinquish his life of violence and serve God instead. Vittorio is supposed to be in his mid-sixties, but he can still dish out punishment if you damage his church. Just ask Sergei.
- Tom the Tailor is an old hand for the Chicago mob who supplies clothes for the ICA. He keeps backup suits for 47 at the ready, just like Alfred Pennyworth.
- Depending on one's interpretation, 47 may be Diana's Older Sidekick. He's about ten years older than her, and has the experience to go with it; when they met at the ICA, 47 was cool as a cucumber, and Diana was an awkward twenty-something (not knowing how to react to 47's stoicism, being curious about how killing felt, etc).
Older Than They Look:
- Among his other talents, 47 has the miraculous ability to age backwards. According to Hakan Abrak, Production Director for Hitman (2016), Hakan states, "Hitman doesn't have an age, so he's timeless." They are going with a Bond approach with age, it seems, as Hitman (2016) takes place after Absolution, as evidenced by one of the intro cutscenes showing various kills from each game in the series.
- Believe it or not, the barcode on his head (640509-040147) isn't random. The first section of it is his birthday, September 5th, 1964, meaning, as of the 2016 game (Set in 2019), he is 55 years old. However, given the implications of Class One cloned tissue being relatively ageless in Codename 47 (it keeps the Five Fathers looking very young despite their advanced age), he might as well be ageless.
- In the 2016 game, civilians and guards describing him speculate him to be on his thirties or late forties. His medical file in Hokkaido describes him as being physiologically in his early twenties.
One Last Job: In exchange for a free hit or two, Diana agrees to use her connections at ICA to find Vittorio. But 47 isn't looking to get back into the business.
One-Man Army: 47 is The Dreaded by anyone who knows about him, let alone if they know him personally. It really says a lot about that status that in Absolution, ICA Director Travis send an entire platoon with rockets and ATVs solely to take him down. Note that 47 is not a one-man army in most other respects; He's feared because he can kill guards and targets silently; not because he packs a lot of heat like many other videogame action hero's. This is best seen in "Apex Predator" in Hitman 3, where 47 has to kill 5 out of the 11 ICA agents sent to kill him, and the game treats it as a cat and mouse situation, with 47 observing and biding his time to kill each of them one by one.
One Size Fits All: At no point does the game prevent 47 from donning a jacket because it's the wrong size; only if it's a unique NPC who can't be easily impersonated. The albinos and other hitmen have no problems with disguises, either. Female NPC's generally won't fit for obvious reasons.
Only in It for the Money: So much so that, when Diana warns him that the Franchise are coming to kill them both, he still demands to be paid before he'll take the fight to them!
- Silent Assassin and Absolution are the only stories where 47's motivations are entirely altruistic. He still gets paid for his altruism, though.
- He has no problem with being manipulated by the Shadow Client in Hitman (2016), so long as the money's good.
- Interestingly, it doesn't look like he uses the money for anything not work-related. Most of it he seems to give away to the church. At one point he implies that his insistence on payment is to keep up his professional reputation.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: If you manage to make him angry, you've done something seriously bad - only a personal "betrayal" in Blood Money has resulted in 47 ever going over Tranquil Fury. After Lucas Gray bites the dust in a Providence ambush in Hitman 3, 47 turns a German rave party into a slasher movie as he kills anywhere from 5 to 11 of his own colleagues just to send a message to the agency.

P - S

Papa Wolf: In Absolution, 47 takes Victoria into his custody after Diana can no longer protect her.
Paper-Thin Disguise: He's capable of disguising himself into almost any role despite the fact that he could look nothing like the locals of wherever he is, much less whomever he's disguised as (such as in the Hitman 2 Mumbai and Colombia levels, where the locals are predominantly brown and he's white and so sticks out like a sore thumb). This comes to a ridiculous conclusion in Absolution where wearing a uniform makes you more recognizable than wearing the signature outfit of a specific person. Apparently every cop in Chicago knows every other cop in Chicago by height, but Hope's town eccentric could change his face completely and nobody would notice. This changed back to a more reasonable system starting from Hitman (2016) where not every disguise is foolproof and will have "Enforcers" who see through it in certain places.
Parental Substitute: In Absolution, 47 behaves like an over-protective dad to Victoria, with Diana filling the maternal role. Talk about a weird family unit!
Pay Evil unto Evil:
- This is pretty much nearly anytime he kills a target that had a contract put on them, barring a few exception who were innocent people or at least might not have deserved death for their crimes. 47 is an almost completely amoral assassin who kills because he's paid do and can sometimes off his victims in horrible ways, but said victims in question range from cartel members, crooked politicians, murderous cult members and all sorts of nasty and depraved people, so him killing them makes him come off as the lesser of many evil's.
- The 2nd time Ort-Meyer's death is shown in Contracts, the old man feebly tries to crawl away, then reaches an arm out to 47, who brushes it off like a fly at a picnic.
- Near the end of Silent Assassin, "17" will start crashing a couple of your missions. He's no pushover, but 47 will lightly kick his corpse in disdain, calling him "a lesser Hitman".
The Perfectionist: Even though he has spiritual objections to the work, he would rather be a good assassin than a mediocre anything else. His and Diana's love of showing off has earned them the ire of their coworkers.
Perfect Poison: A staple of his arsenal since Blood Money.
"Mostly floral extracts. Belladonna, hemlock, aconite. It's designed to be fast and efficient."
- Funnily enough, the poison described in Blood Money is a combination of two poisons that would both be deadly on their own, but combined would precipitate into solid powder and be useless as an injected poison.
Perpetual Frowner:
- You'd be forgiven for thinking 47 is actually physically incapable of smiling. The last shot of Hitman 3's cinematic is 47 smiling at resuming his and Diana's partnership.
- He almost smirks at Blake Dexter when the latter is interrogating him about the whereabouts of his son Lenny, who was left behind in the desert.
Platonic Life-Partners: With Diana. Their friendship's overtness varies between games, but she's the person who best understands 47, and 47 in turn trusts her above anyone else.
- In Silent Assassin their working relationship is quite quid pro quo—he returns to the ICA, and in return she'll help him rescue Father Vittorio—but he doesn't begrudge her this, and they get along as well as ever.
- By Hitman: Blood Money it's clear that Diana personally cares about him, enough to save his life at enormous personal risk.
- In Hitman (2016), we learn that they've been friends since they met: Diana bent the rules during 47's training to help him pass Soders' designed-to-fail final exercise.
- Hitman 3 leaves no doubt that 47 returns her affection: judging by his sedative-induced hallucinations, his deepest fear is losing Diana's friendship, a logical fear since he murdered her parents. After all is said and done, she does forgive him.
Player Headquarters:
- These will be your Hideout for the duration of the first game, where 47 can practice with test dummies and a shooting range to test the various weaponry you’ve acquired. In Silent Assassin, he continues to live and work out of the Gontranno Sanctuary, keeping the seat warm for Father Vittorio even after he admits the chances of his survival are slim. In Blood Money, Cayne hounds 47 to a sinister-looking basement, with a few sticks of a furniture, a canary and some rats to keep him company.
- Contracts had a weird one. 47's headquarters at the time was his apartment, but he was rather busy bleeding out on the floor during the game itself. Instead, the player headquarters is the Asylum training room, which has a central room full of all the collected weapons you've found throughout the game.
- In Freelancer, 47 settles in a fancy lakeside house with an Elaborate Underground Base. Player gets to unpack and furnish the house in-between the missions.
Polyglot: 47 obviously is fluent in English, and judging by the subtitles in Contracts, he knows some Cantonese and Russian. In Absolution it seems that he's added Serbo-Croatian to the list^note. And the time of the World of Assassination trilogy, 47 has mastered French, Italian, two or three dialects of Arabic^note, Swedish, Japanese, Spanish, Hindustani, German, Russian, Mandarin, Thai, probably Malay^noteJudging by "Shadows on the Water" and possibly even Hebrew and Dutch^note in addition to his native Romanian!
Posthumous Character: Played with in Blood Money. Cayne reveals pretty early on that he's killed 47, the missions themselves simply flashbacks and the final level is at his funeral. And then he gets up in the middle of his last rites.
Power Loss Makes You Strong: The point of Absolution was to strip 47 of his money, his Sat Nav, his weapons and his support network and force him to make do with blunter instruments.
Pragmatic Villainy: In Hitman 3, to prevent the ICA from tracking them down once more after being caught out in Berlin, 47 heads to ICA's databanks in China and with Olivia's help wipes his and Diana's data before leaking everything else into the internet, destroying the entire organization. The reason? "It's the path of least resistance".
Professional Killer: One of the best examples of the trope in gaming, if not the uber-example. You could put his picture in the dictionary next to the word assassin.
Progressively Prettier:
- His face in Hitman 1-4 wasn't ugly by any stretch of the imagination, but it was definitely the face of a criminal. Gaunt, meaner, more moblike. He's changed considerably since then. The wrinkles have been smoothed over and the camera loves to watch him disrobe, if you lean that way. He's also buff as hell; he doesn't skip training, that's for sure.
- As of the 2016 game, the fact that an Identical Stranger happens to be a male model is probably a good indicator of his looks. Even the chin scar is gone.
- His face was changed again in Hitman 2 to be more angry looking and more life-like than in 2016.
- His face in Hitman 3 strongly resembles his younger self seen in Birth of the Hitman.
Private Eye Monologue:
- Codename 47 opened each mission with a wry commentary on Hitman's surroundings. It was gradually phased out (indeed, the narration only shows up once in Contracts during a C47 flashback) before disappearing in Blood Money altogether.
- ...until it makes a comeback in Absolution. Now that his handler is dead, the briefing files are read aloud by 47.
- In Hitman 3, it returns for "The Farewell", where instead of Diana or Lucas Grey, he narrates the mission stories himself.
Properly Paranoid: He doesn't buy for a second that Diana needs his help in "Requiem." A moment's hesitation is all she needs to syringe him.
Punch-Clock Hero: If you want him to help you, you better pony up. This is especially true in Blood Money, where he saves the President of the United States because he's being paid to, no more, no less.
Punch-Packing Pistol:
- The Silverballers. In Silent Assassin, they are so overpowered that they send anyone on the receiving end flying and in Blood Money they can be upgraded with the long slide and Magnum ammo for a similar effect.
- This was later made more silly with the Striker pistol in Hitman 2016 and Hitman 2, which is a nod to the broken physics of the old Silverballers. It has the same properties as a sniper rifle!
Raised in a Lab: 47 was created as part of a cloning experiment by Dr. Ort-Meyer, and grew up in a laboratory, in which he was raised to be the perfect assassin.
Razor Floss:
- The fiber wire: a thin strip with reinforced handles. It's the only weapon which 47 cannot drop (You'll find it in Ort-Meyer's training zone and in Vittorio's "garden" shed) and after that, it'll stay with you forever. It's glued to your hands!
- It's not entirely clear if a person is asphyxiated with the wire, or if it cuts into their neck and severs some blood vessels, or both. Other people have suggested that it severs the spinal cord.^note
- It's your default tool in the loadouts of the World of Assassination trilogy, although it has the status of Boring, but Practical among players.
Redemption Failure: In the second game, 47 abandons the life of crime to become a gardener for a priest, yet he's forced back into it when his employer is kidnapped. In the end, he realizes that he can't just turn his back on the business of death and returns to working for The Agency full-time.
Renaissance Man: As noted below, aside from being knowledgeable in various ways to murder people 47 has a variety of skills that allow him to reasonably fulfill whatever guise he's in.
Required Secondary Powers: 47's ability to carry out a hit that looks like a very unfortunate accident is a byproduct of his very strong sense of lateral thinking and ability to get a read on a given person's personality and think about what they'd do. He can even use this kind of mindset to solve murders as easily as he uses it to commit them.
Retired Monster:
- 47 at the beginning of Silent Assassin. He soon resumes his bloody trade, if only to initially save the priest who took him in. At the end, he leaves the Sanctuary to go back to working for The Agency.
- Somewhat in Absolution as well. Diana points out that Victoria is very much like him (both were bred to be super assassins by unscrupulous individual) but Victoria hasn't really gone through the Training from Hell or programmed as heavily or been forced to kill. She has a chance to leave the life behind and be normal. 47's goal is ensuring that she had the choice he never really had.
Road Runner PC: Guards never mastered that all-important skill of running and firing. Besides, you can still outrun them in a foot chase. Sequences where 47 escorts an NPC around demonstrate that his full walking speed, without running, is still a bit faster than any other characters can run.
Rogue Agent:
- Defects from the ICA in Absolution as a personal favour to Diana to protect Victoria, though he's reinstated by the final mission, as Travis' handling of the entire affair has been nothing short of disastrous.
- Goes rogue again towards the end of Hitman 2 when he remembers his pact with Subject 6 to bring down Providence. He ends up dismantling the ICA in the process and by the end of Hitman 3, he and Diana are go freelance to make sure nobody can set up anything like Providence ever again.
Sarcastic Confession: Seems to have become very fond of doing these in the World of Assassination trilogy.
Save the Day, Turn Away: In the second and fourth games, 47 turns his back on a church and walks away in penance for the carnage he committed inside.
Scannable Man: The only known characteristics of "the Hitman" is that he's a Caucasian male with a tattoo on the back of his head.
Scary Shiny Glasses: He can wear glasses if disguise-holders are wearing them. They sometimes let off a creepy shine, setting a fitting indicator for his personality
Secretly Wealthy: As a high-profile assassin who charges ridiculous rates for his services and isn't know for splurging, 47 is unsurprisingly incredibly wealthy.
Self-Made Orphan: He unknowingly kills his genetic templates at the bequest of Ort-Meyer, before executing the Doctor himself, who was the closest thing he had to a father.
Senseless Violins: 47 hides his WA2000 in a guitar case during the events of Enemy Within.
Sharp-Dressed Man: Usually seen in his iconic two piece black suit with red tie. Even without it, his numerous default suits in "World of Assassination" are very smart and flattering.
Sherlock Scan: In Absolution, fire trails = predicted enemy pathfinding. 47 can also pick up on conversations from several meters away, implying a degree of Super-Senses and the HUD highlights items that can be used to killing.
Shrouded in Myth:
- This is a minor plot point in Blood Money. The journalist is skeptical when Cayne claims he took down 47—someone whom his own agency denies even exists. He needs hard proof before he'll print the story. Each and every piece of evidence given to him is taken from the missions the player has to play.
- In the Absolution mission "Terminus", Blake refers to 47 as "the ghost, the myth... the Hitman!" and in the mission "Skurky's Law", a detective trying to piece together the murders is in disbelief that no one can I.D. the titular assassin.
- Even as far back as Silent Assassin, he has this reputation, with Sergei Zavorotko referring to him as "nothing but a rumour".
Shown Their Work: All of 47's incredibly badass Quick Time hand-to-hand combat moves are real-life techniques from escrima, krav maga and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Simple, yet Awesome: 47's fighting style is built around brutal efficiency and ending battles as quickly and effectively as possible, his main fighting styles being Krav Maga, Pencak Silat, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai and Jeet Kune Do which all emphasize combining simplicity and strength.
Simple, yet Opulent:
- To a casual observer, 47 is an unpolished man in a funeral director's suit. Wasn't retail, homie.
- The first Tie-In Novel explicitly points out that expensive clothes is one of the few luxuries a journeyman like 47 can enjoy.
Single-Target Sexuality: Maybe towards Mei Ling. If 47 has any sex-drive at all, he's only ever shown (subtle) signs of it towards her. He seems pleasantly surprised when she kisses him in Contracts during their first encounter, and Blood Money's ending cutscene, in which he visits a high-end Chinese brothel, implies that he's taken a short holiday to pay her a visit.
- His extraordinarily abusive childhood might explain this. He was forbidden from forming any positive human. attachments, likely making him uncomfortable getting close to others. The fact that Mei repeatedly throws herself at him with no ulterior motives might have made her the only woman whom 47 feels comfortable being a bit intimate with.
Sinister Shades: He can don sunglasses, which adds to his cold and mysterious look.
The Snack Is More Interesting: 47 has such low regard for Lenny Dexter as an adversary, he casually munches on an apple as Dexter is forced to dig his own grave.
The Social Expert: A self-taught one rather than a natural charmer. His social skills were minimal at best from Hitman: Codename 47 through Hitman: Absolution. By World of Assassination he's taught himself proper manners for all occasions (apart from how to smile). Perhaps he realized that being able to earn people's trust were useful for a man in his line of work.
The Sociopath: Enforced. He was bioengineered for murder, and what emotions he still had at "birth" were forcibly suppressed by Ort-Meyer. In most of the early games emotions confused him and the best 47 could do was mimic them. His empathy was never utterly gone though, and it begins showing itself more often in the latter half of Hitman 2 after Grey gives 47 an antidote for the conditioning that restores 47's old memories.
- While 47 has no qualms about killing anyone, including civilians or a non-combatants, he still shows signs of morality, and cares about certain individuals. Notably, he is willing to help Father Vittorio, Mei Ling, and Diana, even when he doesn't personally benefit from it.
- His sociopathy is dialed up in Hitman: Contracts Contracts. In one mission, he murders an utterly innocent private investigator whose only crime was getting captured and tortured by a gang. He also kills a man at the behest of a kidnapped girl's father, and when he discovers that the intel was flawed, the kidnapper was someone else, and the girl has already been tortured to death, he merely reacts to this discovery by confirming with Diana that this doesn't change the contract's terms^note.
- Blood Money shows him at his nastiest. He canonically kills multiple civilians who he suspects might be threats, or who've simply seen his face. It also introduced the series's first experiments with scripted Opportunity Kills; these were more gruesome than anything in the series thus far^note. Unlike World of Assassination, many of these scripted kills required either killing innocents^note or framing them^note. He's also greedier than ever, going as far as demanding compensation for a mission even when his own life is at stake. He shows no care for any living thing apart from a pet canary, which he kills during a raid on his safehouse to prevent his cover from being blown.
- Even after he grew a conscience in Absolution, he kept a sadistic streak. His methods of killing have gotten more vicious with every installment.
- 47 is good at charming his victims, and it's unnerving to watch. The standout examples are two instances where he lures female targets to their deaths by impersonating their boyfriends. At the other end of the spectrum, he'll occasionally taunt them before killing them.
Soft-Spoken Sadist: 47 is polite, succinct and almost never raises his voice, even when confronting a target.
Spell My Name with a "The": By Absolution, he's gained a reputation as The Hitman.
The Stateless: 47 is a man of no nation and no known fixed abode. Technically he could be considered Romanian by birth, but his status as a lab-created artificial human might throw that into question and by Romanian law he'd have to be living in the country to actually claim birthright citizenship.
The Stoic: He is calm, collected, and able to mantain his composure in even the most stressful situations. Whether he's fleeing a burning building, navigating through a creepy asylum, or or fighting his way through a train where everyone else is armed to the teeth, he stays calm and doesn't let his surroundings faze him.
Strong and Skilled: He is at the pinnacle of human physical capabilities and is a highly skilled combatant trained in a variety of styles such as Krav Maga, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Muay Thai, Judo, Wrestling, Eskrima, Kickboxing, Karate, Boxing, Wing Chun, Hapkido, Taekwondo and Jeet Kune Do.
Suddenly Always Knew That: 47: The man of a million and one talents. Can we just stop for a moment to appreciate 47's ability to do things that he shouldn't really know how to do, from the mundane to the extraordinary:
- Operate any vehicle, no matter how absurd. (He can operate any sort of car, plane, helicopter, bike, and he can even fly given the right circumstances.)
- Operate any kind of machinery, even esoteric prototypes that he would have no way of knowing how to use.
- Disarm a nuclear explosive ("Plutonium Runs Loose", "Deadly Cargo")
- Preparing Sushi ("Tracking Hayamoto", "Sushi Honshu Style")
- Preparing Fugu Fish ("Situs Inversus" "The King of Chinatown," and "Tracking Hayamoto")
- He has fantastic gardening skills in Silent Assassin, so good that Father Emilio forgives 47 for murdering several people for the sake of money because that's just how great he is at it.
- Officiate a wedding ("Till Death Do Us Part")
- Strut down a runway as a fashion model (who happens to share a resemblance with him, but still) ("The Showstopper")
- Mix together an obscure cocktail while following the recipe to a T ("The Showstopper")
- Beat Jasper Knight, a master of Chess, at his own game^note ("The Final Test")
- Psychoanalyze someone and get them to admit a dark secret of theirs, a murder no less, in mere minutes ("Sapienza")
- Comfortably massage people ("A Gilded Cage")
- Perform robotically-enhanced surgery ("Situs Inversus")
- Play the drums well enough to win over a room full of well known indie musicians, producer and music stagehands ("Club 27")
- Wrestle against a formerly unstoppable wrestler pumped full of steroids using fighting moves he's never shown any proficiency in before ("Fight Night")
- Skillfully cut Lenny's hair (even if he knocks him out immediately after doing so) ("Shaving Lenny")
- Perform professional-level sound mixing ("Club 27")
- Repair a tuk-tuk ("Club 27")
- Trick Penelope Graves, a woman far more intelligent than he is, into believing he's an Interpol agent testing her allegiance to Sean Rose's compound by using masterful improvisation tactics to gauge her reactions ("Freedom Fighters")
- List off and perform a series of yoga positions ("Situs Inversus")
- Give professional medical advice and perform checkups on people with the skill of a seasoned doctor ("The Finish line", "The Last Resort")
- Use the tools of a pit crew to mess with their race car in specific and subtle ways ("The Finish Line")
- Perform a "spiritual cleansing" in front of a group of superstitious folk with nobody the wiser ("Three-Headed Serpent")
- Play the bongos with the rest of a band without any rehearsal ("Three-Headed Serpent")
- Fix a tattoo to look exactly like another person ("Three-Headed Serpent")
- Paint a stylish portrait of someone ("Chasing A Ghost")
- Neatly shave people's beards and hair without harming them ("Chasing A Ghost")
- Pose for a photo shoot in the most photogenic way possible ("Chasing A Ghost")
- Get someone's measurements precisely in order to set the foundations for what would likely have been an amazing dress ("Chasing A Ghost")
- Sell a house in a convincing, if somewhat macabre, manner ("Another Life")
- Prepare burgers and fries to such a good level that Nolan Cassidy, a man notoriously hard to please, is impressed. ("Another Life")
- Deliver the mail promptly and expertly, faster than a postman who knows the lay of the land ("Another Life")
- Blend in perfectly with the Ark Society's strange customs and locate coins that are in such esoteric locations that seasoned guests have not been able to obtain all of them ("The Ark Society")
- Play the harp while blindfolded, and navigate through a high-security area without being able to see where he is going ("The Ark Society")
- Impersonate a corpse so impeccably that nobody realises that he's alive and conscious ("The Ark Society")
- Apply for a job interview and pass it with flying colors, though this can backfire if the player makes the wrong choices ("Golden Handshake")
- Manipulate the stock market and potentially crash it in mere minutes ("Golden Handshake")
- Perform tech support even more professionaly than two skilled technicians ("Golden Handshake")
- Give clear and professional instructions on how to properly use fitness equipment as well as jetskis ("The Last Resort")
- Have intricate knowledge of the Cassandra Snow novel New England Wiccan to the point where, when you get to meet its author while disguised as a super-fan, 47 calls him out on a poorly-written part of the book ("The Author").
- Prepare a five star meal that's enough to impress a notorious elitist ("On Top Of The World")
- Solve a complicated murder mystery in a very short period of time ("Death In The Family")
- Take professional quality photographs ("Landslide", "Death In The Family")
- Deal drugs to finicky customers ("Apex Predator")
- Present a detailed history on an incredibly rare bottle of wine, of which only five bottles remain ("The Farewell").
- Resist mind control torture directed at him by a ruthless scientist ("End Of An Era")
- Dance at an impressive level ("The Farewell")
Suit Up of Destiny:
- After Vittorio is kidnapped by the mob, 47 uses his old employee ID number and password to fast-dial Diana for help. But The Agency isn't just going to help 47 just like that: He needs to repay them with a few pro bono hits. Mr. 47 suggests that an arrangement can be made and after a cutscene, he unearths the suitcase which contains his familiar guns, laptop and suit.
- In the climax of Absolution, he pays a visit to his old friend, Tommy the Tailor, to see about getting some new threads. Indeed, he looks like a hobo in his current suit, which is burnt to cinders. Tommy leads 47 to the back of the store and presents him with a newly-tailored suit, so he can resume his line of work in style. "It's quite an improvement over your old suit." (Just take his word for it.)
Sugar-and-Ice Personality: He lives by an ancient code: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. For this reason, he's twice prepared to spill Diana's blood when she backstabs him. Yet he mourns her loss in his audio log, expresses some skepticism over the hit and notes for the record Diana's past willingness to stick her own neck out to save his.
"But I'll never forget those who betrayed me...and those who never betrayed my trust."
Sunglasses at Night: He can choose to wear these sometimes, though these have little impact on his disguise, only being included because the person he stole them from was also wearing them.
Super Prototype: In a sort of Gone Horribly Right manner. 47 is a vastly smarter and superior killer to his so called "upgrades", the 48s, as well as much better than any of shoddy knockoff versions. This is primarily because unlike his successors, he possesses free will and is able to think for himself. Ort-Meyer wanted him to die so he can create his own army of cloned slaves with the knowledge he learnt with 47. As we all know, that kind of backfired.
Super-Soldier: According to Ort-Meyer, his "sons" were genetically-engineered to go beyond the parameters of normal human beings. The only thing they lacked was a sense of identity (which the Doctor considered a hindrance). In effect, 47 has somewhat above average human strength, stamina and cunning and he appears to age remarkably slower than a normal human.
Suspect Is Hatless: Sometimes the best disguise is none at all. (47's own suit, we mean. We don't want 47 running around in his birthday suit.) A clean-cut guy in a suit isn't going to turn many heads.
Swiss Bank Account: According to a conversation with Diana, he prefers to deposit his money offshore. Quelle surprise.
Sword over Head: Fresh off his success in liquidating the Franchise (a murderous cabal which threatened The Agency), our intrepid hitman heads to Chicago for a redux. Even after successfully plugging Diana in the chest, however, 47 can't bring himself to shoot her in the head — not without knowing why. He never needed a reason to kill anyone before.

T - Z

That Man Is Dead: "Tobias Rieper" was his go-to alias in '99. But after rediscovering where he came from, he seems to have given up any pretense of being human and curtly tells Mei Ling to stop calling him that. He reuses it in Hitman (2016) onward.
Themed Aliases: Most of the aliases he takes on in Hitman 1-4 (Tobias Rieper, Metzger, Krupps, Dr. Cropes) are Death-related.
They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: One often-overlooked reason for his success is the fact that he can blend in fairly easily. While he's not as normal-looking as most examples of this trope, neither does he really look like a bad guy.
Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Absolution-onwards, All the items 47 picks up (knives, scissors, busts, books, briefcase etc) can be thrown at opponents. Depending on the sharpness of the item, this will either kill or knock out the victim. This extends to throwing soda cans. Food thrown at long range does not knock people out, it only knocks them down.
Took a Level in Jerkass: 47's kind of a dick in Blood Money, as 47 was far more motivated by monetary greed than in previous (and future) entries in the series. Its also the only game where 47 is verbally aggressive (to Diana, no less!)
Took a Level in Kindness: IOI has tried to give to depth to 47, turning him from an emotionless killer into a more complex and a dimensional being. In Silent Assassin, he becomes friends with the priest who let him work at his church and the story is set in motion after he is kidnapped. Absolution follows 47's quest to fulfill the dying wishes of his ex-controller Diana, keeping her ward (Victoria) out of the hands of the ICA and other interested parties. Heck, IOI have even made an entire comic series to flesh out his backstory and give him some sympathetic motivations.
- At the start of the End Of An Era mission, 47 has an entirely skippable conversation with a young woman who is worried she and her friend are growing apart. Not only does 47 give her good relationship advice, he notably doesn't take the bait when she uses the phrase "dead weight" to make another veiled joke about assassination.
Trojan Prisoner: Has a habit of being the subject of this:
- In Blood Money 47 isn't the type to surrender, but Diana knows a full-on assault on Cayne isn't going to work (47 tried that approach in Paris and he barely survived). Instead, Diana worms her way into The Franchise's good graces and personally delivers them the "body" of Mr. 47. All without informing 47 about her plan, of course.
- Diana pulls the exact same trick again at the end of Hitman 3 in order to get 47 on board the Constant's Base on Wheels, which is otherwise untraceable.
Trouble Entendre: He's a master of giving these, especially in the World of Assassination trilogy. When talking to his targets while in disguise, his dialog tends to be vaguely threatening and foreshadows their impending doom or his true purpose, and his words chosen carefully enough as to never straight-up lie to any of them. Whenever he's asked what his day job is, responses include "corporate liquidator" and saying he's in "the retirement business".
Sierra Knox: So, what's on the menu? Something that'll take care of this hideous pain in my neck, I hope.
47: I promise. Once I'm done, you won't feel a thing.
Sierra: So what's in this [IV drip], anyway, doc?
47: Mostly floral extracts. Hemlock, Belladonna, Aconite. It's designed to be fast and efficient.
Sierra: Fast and efficient, I like that. Wait, Belladonna? Isn't that poisonous?
47: Yes.
Sierra: Should I be concerned?
47: (almost chuckling) I'm not. Just relax. It'll be over soon.
Turned Against Their Masters: Ort-Meyer never hesitated to use 47 to kill his closest associates. However, he sings an entirely different tune once 47 turns against him. 47 also eradicates his "brothers" to keep Ort-Meyer's plan from coming to fruition (or maybe prevent his own obsolescence?)
The Unfettered: The ending to Silent Assassin has an interesting statement by 47 about how he will live his life.
Unflinching Walk: Happens on occasion. 47 stylin' and profilin' his way out of Hope in Absolution, as the town erupts into fireballs behind him. The trailer for Hitman 2 uses it on Hawkes Bay. A Younger 47 does this in Birth of the Hitman when killing Lohrmann and Weiss; by dropping two grenades down a sewer and walking away from the explosion.
Unreliable Narrator: The flashback missions in Hitman: Contracts. Most of 47's memories jive with what we've seen before, while others (like the ghost in the hotel) are a head-scratcher.
Used to Be a Sweet Kid: His backstory also mentions that he caught and kept a mouse and later a runaway laboratory rabbit, when he lived at The Institute. The former indirectly lead to 47's very first murder-for-hire: when one of his deranged clone brothers killed his pet mouse, he retaliated and tried to run away. An orderly later treated him to a pancake breakfast, before returning him to the asylum, leading him to think he was being rewarded for the killing.
Unwitting Pawn:
- In the original game, Ort-Meyer lets 47 think he's escaped the Asylum all on his own. 47 eliminates each of his father's competitors one by one, not realizing the Doctor is keeping tabs on him.
- In Silent Assassin, Sergei arranges for the ransom of Father Vitorrio to lure 47 out of hiding (and out of retirement) so the Hitman can help him assemble an untracable nuclear warhead.
- In Absolution, The Agency hired 47 to kill Diana and prove his loyalty to them. Travis also wants Victoria located and returned safety to ICA. Once 47 realizes who the real target of his mission, he vanishes after driving Victoria away from the drop point. Travis is then forced to send wave-after-wave of Cleaners to both retrieve the girl and kill the hitman he duped.
- In 2016, his first four assignments were arranged by a shadow client (Lucas Grey) to attack Providence. 47 doesn't really care since the contracts were still fair and paid.
- From Hitman 2 onward, it's inverted, as 47 and Diana go rogue and joins Olivia and Grey, in their quest to destroy Providence from the top by taking out the Partners, they end up playing into the Constant's ambitions to a degree larger than what they initially predicted, and by the time 47 arrives in Dartmoor to eliminate Alexa Carlisle, the Constant has already seized control of the Partner family assets, with no one in Providence or anyone else able to stop him, but Grey's plan has too much momentum to reverse course.
Vigilante Man: Absolution. Though he denies it in the briefings ("Someone should clean the place up...but I am not that man."), 47 knows exactly what genre he's in and pops his collar like a Frank Miller hero.
Villain in a White Suit: If he chooses to don a white suit, he certainly fits this trope, as despite going against the worst society has to offer, he's not exactly that good of a person himself.
Vocal Evolution: His voice in the first game was more akin to Batesons' own accent (Afrikaans), with the later games making it deeper and harder to place. in (2016) his voice is considerably more nasally and higher pitched, and the later two games; 2 and 3, returned his voice back to being deeper. His voice also gets more emotion behind it in the later half of those games due to 47 regaining his emotions via the antidote to Ort-Meyers' serum that Grey gives him in 2.
Voice Changeling: His M.O. includes impersonating his victims' lovers. In "World of Tomorrow," he can lure Francesca De Santis to her death by calling her up and asking for a private tryst. In "The Ark Society," he can pull the same trick on Sophia Washington ... and this time, he's so good that he does it face-to-face.
We Wait:
- The cover art for the games most commonly depicts 47 sitting in the shadows, Buddha-style, with his rifle at the waiting.
- After dropping Victoria off with Sister Mary, 47 buys a safehouse overlooking the orphanage. There he sits, like Michael Corleone, motionless in a chair. "Waiting... For what?" A couple of days later, he finally gets a call from Birdie which puts him back on-track.
Walking the Earth: In the epilogue of Silent Assassin, 47 laments his continued presence only puts other people in danger. He decides he can never retire in safety and must keep moving.
Wall of Weapons: He starts with a bare wall in Hitman 2-4 and Freelancer, and it's up to you to fill it up.
Weapon Tombstone: In Blood Money, Diana is seen carefully confiscating his Silverballers before injecting him with the shot. Once Cayne and the others rendezvous at the church, Diana approaches the funeral pyre and places the guns on 47's chest in the classic Hitman pose.
Welcome Back, Traitor: After spending most of Absolution as a rogue agent, it's implied in Diana's letter that 47 will be welcomed back into The Agency now that he's helped to expose Travis' corruption.
What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The realization that he's not human drove 47 to quit his job, discard his possessions and hide away in Sicily. After he learns about religion, he doubts whether he has a soul. Contracts, which takes place after Silent Assassin, also suggested that Agent 47 has PTSD.
What the Hell Is That Accent?: His voice is vaguely South African, but is otherwise quite hard to place. David Bateson's voice work for the game perfectly compliments the nondescript design of the character. It's usually a bad thing to convey a total lack of character, but for 47's background and concept, it works perfectly.
White Shirt of Death: Blood Money makes good use of it. Having been interred in a crematorium by Diana and The Franchise, his black suit and gloves have been swapped for an all-white ensemble and when he springs to life, it signals one of the bloodiest shootouts in the Hitman series.
World's Best Warrior: Among those who know he exists, 47 is considered to be unquestionably the world's deadliest assassin.
Would Harm a Senior: He's okay with killing the elderly if he's paid to, with the oldest confirmed target being 90 years old.
Would Hit a Girl: While 47 is not inclined towards violent behavior against women in ordinary circumstances, if his paid target is a woman, or if he is defending himself against one targeting him, he will be as merciless to her as he would be to any man.
Wouldn't Hurt a Child: He's got a soft spot for children, going out of his way to protect them if they're in danger. He goes to hell and back to rescue Victoria from the fate he was subjected to in his youth, and personally makes sure some child slaves he rescued are given a good home.
Wrestler in All of Us: There is a segment in Absolution where you fight a luchador in a quicktime event wrestling match. Not even joking.
You Are Number 6: His name originates from a barcode on the back of his head, 640509-040147, a serial number that marks his place in a series of cloning experiments designed to create an army.
You Remind Me of X: In Absolution, 47 is tasked with protecting Victoria as Diana's final wishes because, like him, she's genetically engineered and suffered through painful experimentation.
"Human experiments... children as weapons? This is all too close for comfort. All the more reason to pull the plug."
Your Size May Vary: The official Agent 47 ICA Files trailer for Absolution says he's 188 cm, although other sources had him at 192 cm. Guess someone thought it would be weird if the playable character was much higher than most NPCs. How else does he fit into all those clothes?

Characters / Hitman Games Agent 47

47

Citizenship: American, British, German, Swiss and two unknown (Currently), German / Chinese / Colombian / Austrian / Kazakh (Biologically)

Affiliation(s): Dr. Ort-Meyer, Institute for Human Betterment, ICA, Victoria, Lucas Grey, Olivia Hall, Father Vittorio, Carlton Smith, Lei / Mei Ling, Rosewood Orphanage, Tommy Clemenza

Debut Appearance: Hitman: Codename 47

Voiced By: David Bateson (English)^note

Warning: Due to the nature of 47 as a character, spoilers for events prior to Hitman 3, as well as for Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman are off. You have been warned!

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Characters / Hitman Games Agent 47

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47

Citizenship: American, British, German, Swiss and two unknown (Currently), German / Chinese / Colombian / Austrian / Kazakh (Biologically)

Affiliation(s): Dr. Ort-Meyer, Institute for Human Betterment, ICA, Victoria, Lucas Grey, Olivia Hall, Father Vittorio, Carlton Smith, Lei / Mei Ling, Rosewood Orphanage, Tommy Clemenza

Debut Appearance: Hitman: Codename 47

Voiced By: David Bateson (English)note Other Languages:Masaki Terasoma (Japanese), Philippe Dumond (French, 2002-2006), Jérémie Covillault (French, 2012)

Warning: Due to the nature of 47 as a character, spoilers for events prior to Hitman 3, as well as for Agent 47: Birth of the Hitman are off. You have been warned!

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Voiced By: David Bateson (English)^note