Hitman (video game series)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


These things about Hitman (video game series) are subjective - not everyone will agree with all of them.

  • Best Level Ever: It's actually no exaggeration to say that half the missions in Silent Assassin could count, but special mention goes to St. Petersburg Stakeout (where 47 moves from the subway through the sewer into a locked-off apartment building to snipe a general in a meeting) and Shogun Showdown (where 47 sneaks around a Yakuza leader's private castle to steal a missile guidance system).
  • Complete Monster: Some of the targets, like the Beldingfords and the Meat King and his brother, qualify.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome: The ending of Blood Money has one objective. Leave no witnesses.
  • Crowning Moment of Funny: In Blood Money, you can complete one particularly grim mission (killing an FBI-protected witness in his home, in broad daylight, during his son's birthday party) while dressed as a clown.
    • The same level allows the player to obtain a child's air rifle, for use in any level.
    • Joseph Clarence can see it in your eyes - you're not a bald man - bad man...
    • The mission Flatline in Blood Money. 47 begins to yell then stops, having resigned himself to the fact that he's just going to have to rescue Agent Smith for the umpteenth time. Made more jarring when Smith speaks, sporting a far more cynical and self-aware tone of voice than in other instances.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Jesper Kyd's score for each game in the series. Offers a lot of variability - from atmospheric ambient tracks to cerebral symphonies. Many fans regard the soundtrack of the second game to be especially memorable.
  • Fan Nickname: Hitman Conviction is quickly becoming one for Absolution.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Blood Money has a mission where the character can disguise himself as a priest and even officiate a shotgun wedding. Silent Assassin had him training to be a priest.
    • One of the missions has guards grow extremely suspicious of running in the mansion, but it's completely accepted outside due to it raining.
    • In Blood Money, have you ever noticed when walking around disguised or not, that every NPC in your immediate vicinity will turn their head to follow you as you walk? This could be Handwaved by by applying 47's mode of thinking to what the player sees: In 47's mind, every other NPC he encounters save the target(s) could potentially be either a witness or an attacker, therefore he makes sure he stays out of their actual and potential line of sight, hence the moving heads.
  • Fridge Horror: the Nonstandard Game Over for the Final Boss in the first game is an exact recreation - and disturbingly so - of the beginning of the tutorial level, thus implying that basically all of the events of the first game could have happened all over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
  • Fridge Logic: 47 already wears a suit, and security outfits are exactly the same apart from a different coloured tie, some sunglasses and an earpiece. So why does Hitman feel the need to strip the security naked when he wants their disguise? Why doesn't he just nab their tie, sunglasses and earpiece?
    • Because the guards might get suspicious because his suit is not standard issue, or more expensive than theirs (5000$), therefore, he leaves his expensive Armani suit for the apparently standard issue FBI get up.
  • Genius Bonus: Mark Parchezzi III wields a customized Colt M1911. 47 wields customized AMT Hardballer(s). The Other Wiki describes the Hardballer as a "clone of the M1911". Parchezzi is a defective clone, while 47 easily kills him.
  • Good Bad Bugs: In Blood Money, Attempting to garrote people on an uneven surface (say, stairs) leads to an instant kill rather than being forced to make the victim struggle for five seconds. Very useful on the wedding level.
    • In Silent Assassin, opening and closing the map instantly completes certain actions, such as changing clothes, lockpicking, strangling with the fiber wire and using chloroform. Also in SA, it's possible to abuse a bug with the double silver ballers to dual-wield any pistol with any other, resulting in unbelievably fast fire rate and no need to reload. Useless for a stealth approach, but undeniably fun.
    • Tapping the start button while the game is saving on harder difficulties in Blood Money will cause the game to preserve the number of saves you are allowed to make, at least on the Xbox platforms. This allows unlimited saving as if the game were on Rookie mode (Professional difficulty cannot be saved at all however).
  • Growing the Beard: Many fans agree that Hitman has gotten progressively better with each instalment, with Blood Money being the best game so far. Absolution was seen by the fandom as the series nadir, but the World of Assasination trilogy more than made up for Absolution‍'‍s shortcomings.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • The "Patient Zero" arc in Hitman 2016 with Oybek Nabazov's plot to unleash a pandemic did not age well considering how the COVID-19 pandemic first took off around the same year as the events of the game. Indeed, there was at least one doomsday cult, namely the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, which has been blamed for the surge of COVID-19 cases in South Korea; South Koreans were none too pleased and petitioned the government to disband Shincheonji for its role in the pandemic.
    • The mission "Curtains Down" in Blood Money has an option for sabotaging an Tosca production by swapping a prop gun with a real gun so the actor playing the target's executioner will kill him for real. On October 21, 2021, actor Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza when Baldwin fired a prop gun which turned out to be loaded with a live round whilst filming Rust.
  • I Am Not Shazam: A lot of people seem to think that "Tobias Rieper" is 47's real name, rather than just one of the many pseudonyms he uses.
    • Another (odd) example of this was seen in Blood Money, the box of which seems to imply that the main character is called "Hitman".
  • Magnificent Bastard: 47, as well as Diana in Blood Money.
  • Memetic Outfit
  • Nightmare Fuel: Among the many examples, the aforementioned Knife Nut female assassin and the highly deranged Meat King's Party.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Hitman: Codename 47 was a lacklustre and buggy shooter with a few good ideas. Hitman is a swaggering juggernaut of a stealth series with some of the most inventive and well-designed levels to grace the genre.
    • If anyone ever uses the term "Hitman Trilogy", they're referring to 2-4. The first compilation pack of the series came with these three games, omitting the original - and Contracts is partially a remake of the original.
  • Tear Jerker: The bad ending of Blood Money, where failing to twirl your control stick or press W despite no on-screen instructions will result in 47 being cremated alive. The beautiful rendition of Ave Maria playing over this does not help.
    • The sound of a heartbeat and your health bar flickering to life are a good hint...
    • Silent Assassin manages one in a brief cutscene of a clearly distraught Hayamoto Sr attending Hayamoto Jr's funeral. Even if they're leading figures of the Yakuza, no father should ever have to bury his son.
  • That One Level: Hidden Valley and At The Gates in Silent Assassin. Long, bugged up the ass and covered in snipers that randomly target you. They're relatively easy once you know what to do, but good luck figuring it out!
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The reaction to parts of the fandom over the addition of a cover system, an optional "Intuition" mechanic that allows the player to sense enemies through walls and show the best route and kill possible, and tweaks to the stealth system in Absolution. Cue cries of dumbing down, consolitis, and the game being ruined.
    • Although, the real thing that's got the fandom riled up was news that 47s voice actor was being recast, despite him being around since the first game, being the physical basis for 47 as well, and despite his eagerness to return. He even stated he would have been thrilled to return, but the developers didn't bother to even ask him.
    • Also, Jesper Kyd isn't composing the score.
    • Cries of consolitis would seem particularly weird, given that at least three of the first four games were on consoles and not dumbed down in the least.


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