Deus Ex/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Hey, It's That Voice!: So, Smuggler's real name is Drebin!
  • Name's the Same:
  • Serendipity Writes the Plot:
    • The Unreal Engine at the time would not have been able to handle a fully-rendered city, causing the creators to box in the Paris and New York levels and justify it with a lock-down due to terrorists for the former, and a way to separate ghettos and other high crime areas for the latter.
    • One rather infamous example is the lack of the Twin Towers in the NYC skyline. Due to memory issues, the part with them in it was cut out, and the developers justified it by saying they were destroyed in a terrorist attack prior to the game.
  • Talking to Himself: JC and his brother Paul share the same voice actor. This makes perfect sense, really. As do the Triad leaders in Hong Kong, and given the number of NPC conversations that you can listen in on and the cast sheet, it's possible that some of these qualify.
  • Technology Marches On: A few (minor) examples here and there. The developers thought that newspapers would still be around in the 2050's. Given how badly things have been going for them now, they'll be lucky to last out the current decade.
    • You can still find pay phones here and there. Granted, they are all out of order, but in Real Life, you are lucky to find one that is still hooked up.
    • What's interesting is one of the few things the game did predict completely right about future-tech. One in-game article mentions the 2050 World Cup was broadcast over the net, over 7 or 8 years before streaming shows over the internet became common.
    • Another, more subtle example: at one point in the game, a nano augmented character is getting a lecture about not letting their batteries completely drain before recharging them, implying that engineers from the future have never heard of Lithium-Ion batteries (Lithium-Ion batteries weren't practical for consumer electronics until the mid-2000's).
  • What Could Have Been: Textures for the White House level (created for the purpose of demonstrating the game) are still present and labeled in the final game. A space station level is also firmly hinted at if you look around. The option for a female player character was planned, but abandoned because of the lack of disc space for the female player's and he/she him/her brother/sister lines, hence why JC has a gender neutral name (this feature would appear in Invisible War).
    • Like mentioned in the main section, some Dummied Out code hinted that you could have stayed loyal to UNATCO. A video of the conversation can be seen here. There was also a planned cutscene if the player died at Area 51 and would be able to see Bob Page take over, or if the player wanted to join up with him. Check it out here.