Trivia / Hitman

The film based on the game series

• Actor-Shared Background: During the restaurant sequence, the scene in which Nika talks about owning a squirrel/chipmunk when she was young was actually true for Olga Kurylenko, and the scene was improvised during filming.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Olyphant put on 20 pounds of muscle and shaved his head for the role.
• Executive Meddling: The infamous train duel was filmed in a rush after director Xavier Gens was fired over conflicts with the studio.
• Money, Dear Boy: Timothy Olyphant has admitted in interviews that he did the film as a means to help pay for his house after Deadwood was cancelled.
• Release Date Change: The movie was delayed from its October 2007 release to late November 2007 to facilitate for the re-shoots.
• Spared by the Cut: An alternate ending has Nika being shot in a drive-by.
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to a leaked near-final (or even final) script, the Executive Meddling ruined the plot. The script involved Markov, the FSB agent, hiring 47 to assassinate the real president, intending to rule Russia through the president's Body Double loyal to the FSB and sending a Spetsnaz team called back from Chechnya after 47. The intrigue would be foiled by Agent Whittier, who plants a bug on Markov and gives the recording of Markov's conversation with the body double to a Russian general. This also explains why 47 kidnaps Nika: he interrogates her, and she mentions that sometimes the president was Not Himself, hinting at the double's existence early on, leading to The Reveal during the meeting between Markov and the double in the morgue. 47 manipulates Markov into shooting the President during Udre's funeral, and then blows him up anyway.
  • Vin Diesel was originally cast as Agent 47. After he dropped out, the first choice to replace him was Jason Statham.

The video game series

Individual games:

• Hitman: Codename 47
• Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
• Hitman: Contracts
• Hitman: Absolution
• Hitman (2016)
• Hitman 2
• Hitman 3

General trivia

• Acting for Two: Traci Lords voiced Layla Stockton in Absolution. Evidently, her performance impressed IO enough that she returned for the World Of Assassination trilogy as Maya Parvatti and Dexy Barratt.
• Ascended Fan Fic: Hakan Abrak (the head of IO interactive) considers the Overachiever novel to be effectively a fanfic. It was never intended to be anything more than a one-shot story to give to fans, but it was later canonised in Hitman 3 when you can hear Dolores recite the whole story in full.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • After it initially looked like Agent 47's long time voice actor, David Bateson, was being replaced in Absolution, IO listened to fan complaints about the new voice and got Bateson to reprise his role as 47. Bateson himself even confirmed he will continue to voice 47 for the forseeable future, returning also to voice him in Hitman (2016), Hitman 2 and Hitman 3.
  • The sixth game in the series (simply titled Hitman, referred to as Hitman (2016) to avoid confusion with the first game) seems to be this. IO Interactive stated numerous times that Hitman (2016) was to be a return to the gameplay style of earlier entries (Blood Money in particular), as they're aware that not many fans liked the more linear gameplay used in Absolution. Absolution had a lot of paid DLC released for it, IO have stated that Hitman (2016) wouldn't feature paid DLC or micro-transactions, but rather all new content will be free to anyone who owns the game. They only broke this rule after Square Enix dropped IOI as publisher, and needed money to keep the franchise afloat.
• Defictionalization:
  • Replica "Silverballers" have gone up for bid on eBay.
  • Article about the concept and development of a fictional band. Shame about that 'accident' in Thailand which killed their lead vocalist.
• Dueling Works: The Hitman series has traditionally gone up against Sam Fisher in the console wars, particularly Absolution. Jesper Kyd also composed some tracks for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory.
• Fake Nationality: A multi-ethnic assassin with a South African accent (courtesy of his voice actor) who is Romanian by birth.
• Production Foreshadowing: of Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp makes a brief appearance in the opening of Blood Money's "Curtains Down".
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • An extremely quick example. David Bateson was working on a completely different project in 2000, and happened to overhear that IOI needed a voice for the Player Character. He contacted them and after he heard the premise, he was instantly hooked. He considers himself to be 47's biggest fan, and has played through every single Hitman game (As of this writing, he has yet to play Hitman (2016) because he's been too busy), and has said that as long as IOI doesn't decide to replace him, he's completely willing to voice the character even after he retires.^Source Finnish only, unfortunately
  • Philip Rosch—voice of The Constant/Arthur Edwards in the “World of Assassination” trilogy—revealed in an interview that he’s been a long time Hitman fan since 2002, recounting how frustrating it was to not be able to save in Codename 47. Likewise, John Hopkins (The Shadow Client/Lucas Grey) mentioned in the same interview that he once missed out on an audition because he was preoccupied with the St. Petersburg mission in Hitman 2: Silent Assassin being That One Level for him.
• Real Song Theme Tune:
  • Ave Maria in Blood Money.
  • The TV commercials for Hitman 2 use Andrew W.K.'s song Ready to Die, which disappointingly does not feature in the game.
  • The song Eve sings on the stage is actually made by a Danish band called Swan Lee. The song is called "Tomorrow Never Dies" (a rejected theme for the Bond movie of the same name).
  • Absolution: "Roadgame" is a great track, albeit a weird choice for Hitman.
  • Hitman (2016) trailer:" "Between Two Points" by The Glitch Mob (feat. Swan).
• Referenced by...:
  • One guard is named "Agent 47" in Detroit: Become Human.
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has Ocelot refer to Quiet as "our Silent Assassin".
  • Mutant: Year Zero has a perk called "Silent Assassin", which increases Critical Hit chances. The flavor text reads "Like the dome-headed assassins of the past, you are able to do great damage while hidden from your target. That's as long as you hit... Man."
• What Could Have Been: Iron Galaxy Studios bet on the right to make Hitman GO and lost, according to CEO Dave Lang, although he also states that the end result is probably way better than whatever they would have come up with.

The Game Show

• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The show hasn't been seen since its cancellation, primarily because the "fact videos" were licensed for one showing each and Wolpert didn't negotiate new terms for them. Before his death in 2022, he did confirm that the whole series was intact.
• What Could Have Been: Jay Wolpert hosted the pilot. When the series was picked up, NBC requested that Wolpert drop 20 pounds and wear a toupee. Wolpert balked and Tomarken was hired to host.

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