Video Game / Hitman: Codename 47

It's the dawn of a new day.

Hitman: Codename 47, released in 2000, is the first game of the Hitman series by IO Interactive where you play as a Professional Killer. It's the only game so far to be developed solely for PC; PlayStation, Dreamcast, and N64 versions were planned but got cancelled for unknown reasons.

The game had obtuse controls and no save option, its chief redeeming feature being Mr. 47 himself (voiced by David Bateson); a well-dressed, well-built chap, polite in conversation and exuding inimitable charm. The story takes place in 47's early adulthood after he escapes from his creator and begins his career as a hitman.

The enemies in this go-round include a Hong Kong mob boss, a Colombian drug lord, two would-be terrorists in Budapest, and a weapons smuggler working out of Rotterdam Harbor. The climax takes place inside and underneath a lunatic asylum in Romania.

Starting from Silent Assassin onward, the series has been developed for both PC and consoles. For the semi-remake (which was available on console this time around), see Hitman: Contracts. Also, don't confuse it with the much later, similarly named, sixth entry of the Hitman Franchise; HITMAN, colloquially called by many^note including this very wiki for disambuiguation purposes Hitman (2016).

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Tropes:

• Action-Based Mission:
  • The first two Colombia missions have much less stealth and much more straightforward shooting.
  • The final level is a straightforward slugfest between 47 and ten 48-series clones.
• The All-Seeing A.I.:
  • Tzun, Hong, Pablo, Franz, Boris and Ivan (in the second Rotterdam level only, not the one where he comes to claim his money for an arms sale) are too smart to be caught by surprise. They will see through your disguise and sound the alert when you approach.
  • The Mr. 48s. Depending on 47's location, they will move to a nearby "attack" or "showdown" navigation point. Despite this, there's some gaps in the laboratory where a 48 will strafe with his back towards 47 (and therefore will not initiate combat).
• Angry Guard Dog:
  • In the first Rotterdam level, regardless of which warehouse you lead the train into, there should be some Doberman Pinchers waiting to take a bite out of your ass. Sometimes they don't attack (possibly out of some AI glitch, though they will automatically attack once you draw a weapon), but they're more likely to leap at the chance. They can take 20% off your health bar before you know it, so don't be squeamish about putting them down.
  • A few more appear in the second Rotterdam level, in the northern corridor and around the weapon cache.
• Archnemesis Dad: Otto Ort-Meyer shares the title along with the rest of his Légion Étrangère friends and bankrollers: Hong, Pablo, Boris, and Frantz. For a father, he definitely runs hot and cold: On the intercom, he expresses great pride in Mr. 47's rapid development ("You are an excellent pupil, my very best so far!"), but "The Setup" shows him in a much darker light. After summoning 47 back to his place of origin, he immediately rings the police to tell them there's an intruder on a rampage within the hospital, and to send armed backup (SWAT) right away.
• Artificial Stupidity: The enemies in this game aren't known for their smarts.
  • Most guards are begging to be strangled. No matter how many times they talk to you ("Do you have to stand that close to me?"), they won't react when you circle around to their backside. In later games, guards keep their eyes trained on you unless you're in sneak mode and react rapidly and violently.
  • The guards don't even blink at 47 absconding with one of their sex slaves. Also, use your machine gun to clear the rooftop of Red Dragons. The noise will definitely alert nearby Guards and they will start looking for a suspicious Red Dragon. But something else interesting happens. Head to the skylight where Lee and Tzun sit underneath. When you get there then you may find that Tzun has left Lee to fend for himself. Apparently the gunfire has caused Tzun to leave. Some Bodyguard he is.
    • You CAN get away scot free for killing Tzun. As soon as you regain control from the cutscene, 47 will be carrying a Hardballer. Put it away and then run out the way Hong went. If you make it out there before the guards discover what you did to poor Tzun and you aren't carrying a weapon, the guards outside won't attack you, and you won't be held under suspicion for the killing. (If you don't, be prepared for one hell of a shootout.)
    • Following this, head to the 2nd floor of the mansion and you'll see Hong pacing away, wondering when the killer is coming. Just behind the doorway is a tiny alcove hidden away from the door's view. The fun part of all this is that the guards will rush to Hong's body to see what's going on, and their backs will be turned to you. Let 'er rip! Sooner or later, they stop coming. (So long as none of them fire at you, the guards downstairs won't have a single clue as to what just happened.)
  • If you die in the showdown with Pablo, you should reawaken in one of the tents. Just plod your way back to the mansion. Nobody will be giving you any trouble as long as you're still in uniform. What's funny is that if you approach the mansion, you can hear that Pablo's still firing away at you. That guy's nuts.
  • With the exception of the front door, all of the detectors in the hotel can be circumvented. But if you snag a security uniform, there really isn't need. They won't even buzz when you pass through. (Must be them futuristic clothes-scanning detectors)
  • Once enough time passes, regardless of whether or not you killed Kovacs, a SWAT team will raid the asylum. Of all the AI in the game, they are the stupidest people to ever populate it. At times you will see them get stuck inside door thresholds. Quite amusing. Still, as stupid as they are, they will kill anyone who looks like they don't belong in the asylum.
  • "Meet Your Brother." After killing the orderly at the start of the mission, run to the left of the map where the locker room is. The 48s follow a very predictable pattern where they emerge to the left of the door and you can pop out and kill them pretty easily without giving them a chance to fight back. Once the MP5 runs out of ammo, just grab another one from the dead 48s. Pretty cheap but it gets the job done.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The fiber wire. The animation when killing someone is pretty long, and the weapon is only really useful in one single level, "Traditions of the Trade", since it can't be spotted by metal detectors. You're better off with knives in the other levels, since they are less expensive (or can be found easily) and kill the victim faster. Not to mention you can hack enemies to death with them (though you'll likely die before the enemy if said enemy has an automatic weapon), whereas the fiber wire requires you to stay behind the victim. This was fixed in the following games, where the fiber wire became much more practical, especially because it doesn't leave blood behind and, starting with Hitman: Blood Money, can be used facing the victim in any direction.
• Awful Truth: The protagonist uncovers at the end of the game that he's the end-result of a dedicated cloning program.
• Bad Guy Bar: The Flamin' Windmills punk gangsters own an exotic dance club at the Rotterdam docks.
• Bad Moon Rising: The Rotterdam levels. Both Ivan and 47 make a beeline for the ship as soon as the meet's over, so it's safe to assume it takes place over the course of a night.
• Badass Creed: "Blood and Muscle", a shorthand used by members of Ort-Meyer's old unit.
• Bedlam House: Ort-Meyer doubles as Administrator of a ramshackle mental hospital on the tip of Romania. The hospital is a front for his illicit research, and the only witnesses are gibbering madmen.
• Blackshirt: Fritz's letter tells of a special delivery at the florist's shop. The florist is "sympathetic to [the] cause".
• Bloodless Carnage: Killing someone with a firearm leaves the body in a pool of blood. Slitting someone's throat... doesn't.
• Blow Gun: The U'wa tribe carry them and won't hesitate to use them on 47 if he shoots a gun in their presence.
• Bomb Disposal:
  • "Traditions of the Trade". Two terrorists, one chemical bomb, and a hotel full of VIP guests. The bomb is not set to explode, however.
  • When Boris arms the nuke, he also stomps on the bomb controls for good measure. But worry not. Just walk up to the exposed control panel and bring up your action menu to disarm Boris' nuke. Guess Mr. 47's a good bomb technician, too.
• Borrowed Biometric Bypass: In the final level, 47 must drag the corpse of a 48 over to the barcode scanner. This permits entry into Ort-Meyer's chamber.
• Brawn Hilda: Take a dip in the five-star Thermal Bath... on the men's side, you pervert. An ogress is guarding the changing room on the ladies' side.
• Broken Bridge:
  • Sure, you could just kill the Jungle God, but you'll get a fail. The tribe is your ally and killing their sacred animal won't be a good thing. The reason why you need to avoid this jaguar is because it stands in front of the passage to Pablo Ochoa's camp that the Chief mentioned. What you need to do for this relatively easy mission is to find a suitable sacrifice for the god. I.e., feed it one of the pigs that you can find near the river.
  • The railroad track in Gunrunner's Paradise. Once you know which random warehouse the target's car stopped off at, you can go ahead and turn a switch so that the train turns southward at the bend and breaks down the barrier.
• Calling Card: The Triad amulet. Placing it at the scene of a crime will leave no doubt as to "who" did it.
• Can't Bathe Without a Weapon: In the Thermal Bath Hotel, the pool guy will direct you to the changing booth where you'll find some complimentary swimming trunks. If you wish, you can pick up your weapons after changing (and magically stuff them all into your chest, mind you), but it's not necessary to shoot anyone there.
• Carpet of Virility: The loading screens will give you an eyeful of Pablo and Boris' body hair.
• Chased by Angry Natives: The U'Wa tribe worships Tezcatlipoca as their god; thus, killing it will provoke their anger and turn them hostile against 47. Also, firing a weapon in their presence is a very dumb idea.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: One of the first missions requires Agent 47 to blow up a Triad limo. This is just a practice run for a later level, "Plutonium Runs Loose": Remember the earlier mission, where Ivan tells you the location of his weapons cache (he thinks you are the arms dealer, remember?). That armory is in this mission. Just install the bomb you find in Boris's car, and that's that.
• Chopper on Standby: In the first Hong Kong mission, the Blue Lotus Triad immediately dispatches a helicopter with a M-60 machine gun onboard in the direction of the roof 47 is on after 47 kills the Red Dragon Triad ambassador, so it's better for 47 to leave that roof as fast as possible.
• Clone Army: The 48s. Unlike 47, they were designed to be puppets for Ort-Meyer, doing everything they are told and lacking free will.
• Codename Title: The title comes from the "name" of the main protagonist, a genetically-engineered assassin known only by his serial number, 47.
• Connected All Along: As the game progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that your main targets are all connected. They all served in the same unit in the French Foreign Legion in the early 1950s, and all contributed their genes to create the perfect super-soldier - 47.
• Continuing is Painful: If you die in the middle of a mission, don't bother re-starting unless you want to spend the three grand it takes to continue. If you're on easy mode, you won't get any penalties for dying (at least if you only die once).
• Creepy Crosses: The asylum is shaped like an inverse cross when viewed from above.
• Cutscene Power to the Max:
  • Pablo's goons can't shoot down your plane once you're in it, so just click "fly plane" and wave goodbye to Columbia.
  • If you feel like doing one crossing of a metal detector without unpleasant consequences in "Traditions of the Trade", do it at the entrance with the bomb in its suitcase. The limo will pick you up... while most of the hotel's cops are chasing it and aiming their guns at it.
• Danger Room Cold Open: Ort-Meyer's Training is straightforward, but with some jet-black humor added in.
  Intercom: The choice of a discerning connoisseur. When a high-profile army like the Israelis swear by it, then you know it is quality hardware!
• Deadly Gas: "Meet Your Brother". If you don't drag a clone along with you, then you will be killed when you enter the Biohazard room. The reason is because you are not a Series 48, and when the scanner reads the barcode on the back of your head, then the doors will close and you will be killed with poisonous gas.
• Desperate Object Catch: In the struggle with Lee Hong's bodyguard, the dying Tzun grabs 47 by the leg to stop his pursuit, but in the process, he loses his gun. In classic John Woo style, the action slows down as 47 catches the gun in midair, plugging Tzun between the eyes.
• Dungeon Bypass:
  • "Gunrunner's Paradise": The warehouse with the dogs in front of it is the one that the gangsters are hiding in, and it's determined randomly at the start of the mission. Binoculars help you check which is the right warehouse without having to bother with the GPS. You can skip putting in the GPS, and the car will arrive anyway after you're done emptying the warehouse of its original occupants.
  • It's possible to get to Boris' ship by completely skipping the weapon cache. If he was never disturbed, enter Boris' room, trigger his cutscene and then drill him while he's at your mercy. If you scout out the ship beforehand and know which stairs to take, you won't have a problem finding the bomb.
  • You can skip the asylum level by getting in an elevator, choosing a floor and quickly getting out. Reenter the now-empty shaft and you have passed the level.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Codename 47 was much more akin to a game that was throwing darts at a wall to see what stuck; you have to remember that you can't compare it to new games, it was designed to run on 64 Mb of ram.
  • There are no default weapons to begin with, all weapons have to be bought. The fiber wire especially. 47's famed Silverballers don't even make an appearance. Instead, the game offers a standard AMT Hardballer and this is the only game in the series where it doesn't come in a silenced variant.
  • There are lots of foes standing between you and your target, and no way to dispose of them non-lethally. As long as you don't grease any civilians or police, which would dock some of your pay, then you could pretty much kill with impunity, unlike the scoring system of the following games, which favors much less lethality. It was when Silent Assassin rolled around that the series' trademark stealth style was being truly improved.
  • The Colombian missions are fast-paced noisy action. They effectively force the player to gun down numerous guards in order to complete a hit.
  • The game's map function didn't indicate the presence of individuals... and don't indicate the main target's location either.
  • On every mission, you'll be able to purchase the compass. While this is a nice feature, it's really not necessary to spend your hard-earned funds on it on the earlier levels. It's likely that you'll never look at it and if you ever get lost, just check the map and reorient yourself to where you want to go. (Later on, when the maps get impossibly huge, you might find that constant map-checking gets tedious, but this is less of an issue in the sequels.) Silent Assassin added a compass in the HUD by default.
  • No in-game save feature. Instead, it has an odd life system where each mission would let you die and respawn a set number of times. Respawning doesn't reset the guards' alert status though, so if you died you'd either have to gun your way through the rest of the level or restart from the beginning.
  • Guards are a lot more gullible around 47. The only caution when procuring disguises is that nobody sees the one guard in his boxers. If they do, you'll be under suspicion and you'll need to find yourself another uniform. Funny enough, the uniform can look exactly the same. It just needs to be fresh.
  • Players are expected to pocket the jade dragon/gold totem themselves to avoid detection, whereas in sequels, 47 does such things automatically.
  • At this early stage, 47's trademark Walther 2000 rifle is as hard to obtain as it is in real life. It only appears in the late game of Codename 47 and Silent Assassin, and then only as an unsilenced version.
  • The interesting thing about the syringe is that it has "infinite ammo". You can, if you're so inclined, use it to kill every patient and guard in the asylum.
• Elite Mooks: The SWAT officer squads in the second-to-last level, the Asylum, are equipped with automatic weapons and body armor and will actively sweep the entire building room-to-room searching for you, as opposed to all earlier opponents who simply stood guard or patrolled along fixed paths as long as you didn't alert them.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Ort-Meyer's laboratory, which seems to grow in size and scope with each game.
• Escort Mission: Talk to Mei Ling, and she'll begin to... trot, very quickly, out of the brothel. Once outside the restaurant, a cutscene will take over as 47 hides Mei Ling from the guards' line of sight.
• Facial Horror: If the player looks at the inscription at the top of "The Setup's" loading screen, they can see the person in front of 47 is a failed clone experiment, "Beta 39".
• Fast-Roping: How 47 makes his entrance into Columbia.
• Fetch Quest:
  • The Jade Figurine and the gold idol.
  • It's not necessary to talk to the inmates and collect their stuff for them. In fact, it's annoying as they can't open doors for themselves and sometimes run off before you can progress. It's only beneficial in that somewhat helps advance the storyline. There's only one guy who sticks out, and he's sitting hunched over on the chair. Yup, it's Agent Smith again. He needs an antidote before he can be of any use.
• Fictional Counterpart: The Hotel Gallard is the site of an upcoming "GM" Summit (United Nations FCK in Contracts, a reference to the FCK soccer team). This hotel is probably based on a real life Hotel Gellért.
• Fictionary: Walk straight when you enter Hong's restaurant, and you'll see a door up ahead with the word "BAR" above it in fake Kanji.
• Follow That Car: In "Gunrunner's Paradise", the bikers will lead you straight to the meet with Ivan. The gang plays a smaller, but similar role in the remake, "Deadly Cargo": The gang is re-dubbed the Flamin' Rotterdam (foreshadowing the fate of Rotterdam should you fail to disarm the bomb), and Ivan is replaced with the biker Vice-President, who presumably took over once their leader died.
• Gang of Hats: Blue Lotuses wear traditional clothes and have queue hairstyles. The Red Dragons have more variety: guards wear bandanas, the staff wear black-on-red suits with sunglasses.
• Gas Mask Mooks: The mercenaries who guard doors on the docks in "Plutonium Runs Loose" have gas masks.
• Gatling Good: The M134 Minigun (simply shortened to the "Minigun") is a weapon which can only be found in Hitman: Codename 47 and Contracts. The Minigun is the most powerful weapon in the entire series by sheer firepower.
• Genre Shift: You have to wonder what was going on in the dev teams' minds during C47. Feels like they didn't exactly want to commit to stealth or didn't have enough experience in creating such levels, so they decided "shooting is good enough". At the same time, the game was pretty much an experiment; they never expected the stealth concept to get so big.
• Gigantic Moon: One of the CG renderings has 47 silhouetted against the moon as he readies his sniper rifle.
• Gonk: The loading screens definitely channel this, such as "Traditions of the Trade" which shows Frantz Fuchs looking like a wart-covered water balloon filled with nightmares, and "Say Hello To My Little Friend" in which Pablo Ochoa looks like a rotting zombie. (And Boris is quite the hirsute fellow.)
• Good Morning, Crono: The Asylum Training level opens on 47 strapped onto a bed in a padded cell. An enigmatic voice orders him to wake up and releases the straps. After donning the Suit, and with the voice as his guide, the game starts.
• The Goomba: Ort-Meyer's ghoulish orderlies. They are barely a threat. If they somehow manage to stun you, you will restart at the beginning of the tutorial. In Contracts, the SWAT guys have no qualms about shooting them, since they visibly carry stunguns.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The map is sometimes missing some important aspects, such as, oh....YOUR MAIN OBJECTIVES. Your first task in Mission 3 is to get to the Red Dragon negotiator before he reaches the restaurant for the summit. Since the developers didn't feel the need to put his location on the map (or even where he's entering from), you'll end up running all over the block like an idiot. It should only take about two laps to spot him, but it's still pretty odd not to include him on the map.
  • "Plutonium Runs Loose": The guards at the gates say, "You have no right to be here!", while letting other guards through. This is one of the most baffling obstacles in the entire series. If you get behind a patrolling guard and follow them through a gate, for some reason, NOW you're allowed through.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: The inmates are aware of 47's map. They will mark the locations of high-grade weapons on his laptop.
• Inconsistent Spelling: The prostitute is named Lei Ling in this installment, whereas Hitman 2 and Contracts refers to her as Mei Ling. Also see Ort-Meyer / Orthmeyer.
• Incredibly Obvious Bomb: The Fuchs Bros. have stashed a chemical bomb in the top floor of the hotel they're staying in. If you attempt to carry the bomb past any guards or civilians without the suitcase (or stupidly try to carry the suitcase through a metal detector), they will be alerted to it and begin to hunt you.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The MP5SD is everything a murderous assassin could ever want in a firearm. It's concealable so you can carry it around without arousing suspicion, it's silenced so you can fire it without bringing the enemy base down on your head, and it's fully automatic in case you have to get into a macho slugfest for whatever reason. Befitting its power, it's only obtainable in the final missions of the game.
• Jungle Japes: Unlike the later games, your stint in Colombia will consist of fast-paced, noisy action in the mists of the jungle. Pablo's coke factory is hidden somewhere in this wilderness. The lush forest keeps his rivals at bay, but Pablo is still getting harried by the local Indians.
• Leave No Witnesses:
  • All of the bikers of the warehouse must be gunned down before the meet with Ivan. Otherwise he'll rabbit, and Boris can never be found.
  • If anyone is left alive in the engine room ("Hey! He's een zee engine room!"), the freighter will refuse to start.
• Legion of Lost Souls: Each of 47's genetic donors fled to France in the early fifties for their own reasons: Ort-Meyer found himself out of work after the Germans rejected him about as hard as God rejected Lucifer; Boris was disowned by his family for arming anti-Soviets; Pablo was on the run for assassinating a judge, and so on. They each served in the same unit until 1955, when the five went their separate ways again. They still sign their letters with "Blood and Muscle", the slogan of their old unit.
• Locomotive Level: A train will circle around the tracks in the first portion of Rotterdam. This train plays an important part in this mission. It is used to smash through the gates that block access to three warehouses.
• Locked Door: Fritz isn't on the hit list initially. He gets promoted to "Target" once 47 learns the whereabouts of his bomb, which is squirreled away in his X-Ray room. You need to kill Fritz to get his key.
• Master Key: You may or may not have noticed, but there is a cleaning boy going from room to room in the hotel. In fact, it seems like there are hundreds of them. At any rate, you'll note when you follow him that he uses the same key to open every door. This would be the master key, which is exactly what you need. So, once the bumbling idiot enters the room and leaves the key in the door, 47 will be free to snatch it up.
• Maurice Chevalier Accent: Some of Boris' mooks on his boat in "Plutonium Runs Loose" when you get spotted onboard.
  Mook: Hon-hon, he's on ze deck!
• Mayincatec: The second set of levels involves indigenous people in the Colombian jungle worshipping a jaguar god named Tezcatlipoca. While there is a Mesoamerican god named Tezcatlipoca whose nahual or animal counterpart is the jaguar, this is an Aztec god with a nahuatl name represented in the mythology of central Mexico, quite a far cry from the people of the Muisca confederation who largely dominated pre-Hispanic Colombia.
• Mook Maker: Ort-Meyer's barcode room. Since each clone is scanned individually, the 48s can only fight you one at a time, so 47 makes quick work of them. There's around 15 of them in the original corridor, but Contracts expanded the lab and included more corpses littering the rooms (25 in this version), including three inside of the chamber where you shot Ort-Meyer.
• Napoleon Delusion: One of the inmates quotes Winston Churchill while looking for his lost book.
• Neck Snap: As a Coup de Grâce, 47 snaps the neck of his final "father" Ort-Meyer, then the game's end credits roll.
• Never Hurt an Innocent: Moreso than in other Hitmans, killing civilians and security guards is a no-no.
• No Honor Among Thieves: The cloning facility helped to keep his bankrollers in business, which is very good for Ort-Meyer. But after forty-odd years, the march of time took its toll, and the aged gangsters began to quarrel.
• Older Than They Look: Although well into their 60s and 70s, your targets look much younger thanks to Ort-Meyer providing them with a fresh supply of organs.
• Panthera Awesome: The U'Wa Chief knows of a secret passage to Pablo's Camp. The passage is guarded by what the tribe calls "Tezcatlipoca", the god of death. However, the Agency knows that this god is nothing more than a very large jaguar. But it is still dangerous, nonetheless.
• People Farms: In exchange for research funding, Ort-Meyer provided his colleagues with donor organs harvested from clone bodies, significantly extending their longevity. A special room in Hitman: Contracts has several clones hidden behind glass, each labeled as one of 47's targets in the original game, even Ort-Meyer himself. Here is where Ort-Meyer farms his supply of organs.
• People Jars: "Meet Your Brother". In the remade Asylum level (Contracts), the jars closest to Ort-Meyer's room are holding little baby 48s, and they mature as you fan outward.
• Randomly Generated Levels:
  • Talk to the bound Agent Smith, and he'll tell you where the jade dragon is stashed. If you haven't noticed already, Hong has several decoy safes in the building: the warehouse, the VIP area, the brothel, and the guard's quarters. Opening the wrong one alerts the guards and you'll soon be surrounded.
  • Once you plant the GPS on the gunrunner's sedan, open up your map and you should see the blip stopped off at one of three general locations: east, west, or south. Each warehouse is blocked off by a locked gate, so you'll need the train to smash on through it for you.
• Remixed Level: "Lee Hong Assassination" starts you off outside the Wang Fou Restaurant from the second mission. There is nothing to do out here other than reminisce about missions' past.
• Roaming Enemy: The SWAT officers in the penultimate level are unique in that they active sweep throughout the entire level searching for you, rather than sticking to a simple patrol area like regular guards.
• Schmuck Bait:
  • One of the more popular methods of killing Lee Hong is by spiking his food with the poison which is available in Herbal Shop. However, using it will involve killing one of the Waiters to gain an outfit (this will incur a $5,000 penalty against your reward) and alert guards to your presence, thus triggering a lockdown. So, to prevent unnecessary casualties and to save money, you can use another method which will involve shooting Lee Hong through a skylight.
  • There's a service closet on each floor of the hotel. Whatever you do, don't pick up the bellboy uniform. Even if the door is closed when you change, Frantz's bodyguard—for some reason or another—will come and shoot you. (Interesting fact: you can also pose as a cleaning boy, but not by taking one of the uniforms in a closet, to get into Frantz's room.)
    • You may see Fritz in the pool (he's the one floating on his back staring up at the ceiling...it's a nice ceiling). Killing him here means having several swimmers just itching to rat you out, not to mention the big—and we mean BIG—woman guarding the women's changing room. If he's in the pool, just wait for him to get out. Also, since the sauna is deserted, you can kill him more easily if he winds up there.
    • If you try on Fritz's dentist disguise, his secretary will see right through it.
  • "Meet Your Brother": If you enter the barscan room without a Mr. 48 in tow, 47 will try scanning his own barcode. A red light and klaxons will go off, the room will be gassed and 47 will die.
• Send in the Clones: Mr. 48 (or "Number 48") is a replica of 47, right down to his stamina, accuracy with a gun, and strafing ability.
• Shout-Out: In "Traditions of the Trade", 47 can pick up a box of roses with a shotgun hidden inside. Like what the T-800 did in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
• Show Some Leg: Talk to the bartender in the Rotterdam strip joint, and he'll tell you that he can arrange a private session for you. How thoughtful. But, being the efficient killer you are, know that the private session would be better used to get that transmitter on the gunrunners' car. She's more than happy to lead the wheelman away down to the alley, using the lamppost for a pole dance.
• Slasher Smile: Mister 48 has an extreme loyalty to the scientist and constantly displays a psychotic smile, even in death.
• So Much for Stealth:
  • Tzun will put his life on the line to protect Hong from possible danger, including tasting Lee Hong's food for poison.
  • Escaping out the front door of the hotel offers 47 an adrenaline-pumping escape as you hit the final metal detector: all the guards will come out as you sprint past it. A cutscene will play of the limo screeching up and you'll get a nice view of all the guards who showed up to wish him farewell. Escaping through the kitchens is easier and you get a cool, classy cutscene to go along with it. Hang a left into an alley and you'll be picked up by the Agency limo.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: If at any time a body is discovered, Lee Hong will lock the front door to his mansion. The elevator to the basement is completely unguarded, so not to worry.
• Suspicious Videogame Generosity: When you emerge out of the cave in Pablo's compound, there will be a crate near by. If you decided not to bring a knife, or if you lost your vest in the last two missions, it's your birthday.
• Super Window Jump: You can also shoot out one of the restaurant windows and attempt to sprint back to your car that way. Or just leap out the bathroom window so you don't have to bother with the guards out front.
• Take It to the Bridge: You need a safe path to Pablo's compound, but it's blocked. 47 will have to save the U'Wa chief's brother, who is being held captive on the bridge, to gain passage.
• Teleporting Keycard Squad:
  • "Plutonium Runs Loose": Heading to the weapons stash on the eastern side of the map causes a bunch of guards to stop their patrols and take up stationary positions, preventing you from latching onto guards who go through the gates.
  • Once Kovacs bites the dust, the local police force arrive and the building is placed on lockdown. There's a key on the wall which unlocks the rest of the sanitarium.
• That Poor Cat: An alley cat is prowling around the harbor levels. If Boris manages to detonate his bomb, you'll see a cutscene of the cat flying through the air. The kitty makes a return appearance in Silent Assassin, when Sergei scours his brother's ship for clues.
• Thriving Ghost Town: In Lee Hong's cathouse, you'll find an old lady and a younger lady in purple. Talk to the old lady and she'll offer you her best girl (how generous, considering that the girl standing next to her is the ONLY girl in the brothel).
• Timed Mission:
  • If Pablo's soldiers have secured the crash site before you arrive, then you'll have a bit more of a problem.
  • Gunrunner's Paradise. First, you need to plant your transmitter on a car so you can find out where the buy is going to take place. Second, you're going to crash that meeting and turn it into a blood bath. Third, you'll have three minutes to mop it up before Ivan gets there. These three minutes are not for farting around. If Ivan sees any bodies on the floor (but he doesn't care about blood, fancy that), he'll take off before you can hand him the briefcase with the tracking device in it.
  • If you fail to catch Boris in time, the whole shipyard burns up in a nuclear explosion.
• The Triads and the Tongs: The two reigning gangs in Hong Kong are the Red Dragons and the Blue Lotuses. By the time 47 is finished, the leadership of both gangs is in disarray.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: H:C47 comes from the "keep dying until you get it juuuust right" school of game design.
  • "Plutonium Runs Loose" is hard to do stealthily. You can spend hours sneaking through all of the gates to the ship only to get caught by two guards ("He's in ze gangways") over and over again.
  • Splinter Cell is pretty similar in this aspect, but at least you have autosave in that game. Granted, 47 usually get two "lives", but it's not the same, because most of the time your cover has been blown after dying, and it's almost impossible to get a clean disguise when both civilians and guards are now aware of your presence. This is especially annoying in the Rotterdam mission, where you'll have to go through a laundry list of objectives before getting anywhere near your hit. Keeping a low profile in that mission is a MUST, because if you're spotted once, Boris scurries away in his car and the harbor goes up in flames.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: At the end of the Asylum, the genetically engineered clone Agent 47 faces not one, but an entire army of the new-and-improved Mr. "48s". He manages to defeat them all, but it helps that he finds a minigun lying around. You have to kill one of the Mr. 48s to get said minigun.
• Vehicular Assault: In "Slaying a Dragon", there are a copious number of Triads overseeing this small meeting, including a helicopter carrying a sniper.
• Villainous Widow's Peak: Lee Hong and Boris both sport this.
• Wacky Wayside Tribe: The U'Wa tribe in Columbia. We knew 47 spoke a lot of languages but we didn't know he understood Uw Cuwa, too!
• Welcome to Corneria: The same phrases are shouted by mooks from different continents and culture when 47 is spotted/unmasked/draws a gun, just with a different accent.
  • "He's packing!"
  • "Weapon! Weapon! Watch out!"
  • "This guy's loaded!"
  • "We have a situation here!"
  • Civilians, whether they're from Hong Kong or Hungary, have "Don't do this!", "What are you doing?!" and "Have mercy!"
  • The Wang Fou staff will always address you as an "honorable guest", even if you're dressed as a guard.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Phony as they may be, most of the accents in the series are identifiable, with the notorious exception of the bartender from "Gunrunner's Paradise", who can't seem to decide whether he's Russian, Scottish or German.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The nameless "Asylum" is located in an undisclosed place in Romania, although a letter from Ort-Meyer to Pablo suggests the county in which the building resides is Satu Mare.
• You ALL Look Familiar: Mei Ling uses the same model as the Rotterdam stripper, only with a different hair coloring. There are other examples (the identical Red Dragon negotiators), but this is the most glaring.
• Zerg Rush: In "Meet Your Brother", the final battle is a shootout in a maze-like arena against a respawning opponent (ten clones that are released one after the other) that constantly run around while shooting instead of standing still and aiming like every other enemy in the game. So, after a game of witty, disguise-based stealth gameplay, the finale is an Unreal Tournament deathmatch. The level opening suggests that the intended method for winning the fight is not to go toe-to-toe against them, but rather to use your brain and camp using a convenient nearby minigun and ambush them as they appear one by one. Bear in mind that 47 still needs to locate a disguise of sorts (a Mister 48) to enter Ort-Meyer's room.

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