Hitman (video game series)

Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

"This room. This bullet. There's a bullet for everyone... and a time, and a place. An end."

Hitman is a series of third/first person action Stealth Based Games created by Danish developer IO Interactive, now a division of Eidos Interactive, which is now a part of Square Enix.

To date, there have been seven games released in the series, the sixth being episodic in nature:

  • Hitman: Codename 47 (2000)
  • Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (2002)
  • Hitman: Contracts (2004)
  • Hitman: Blood Money (2006)
  • Hitman: Absolution (2012)
  • Hitman (2016)
  • Hitman 2 (2018)

There has also been a movie based on the franchise.

Each title follows the story of the "Cloned Super Assassin" and eponymous Hitman, Agent 47, as he executes various contracts around the globe. Cold, merciless and pragmatic to a fault, 47 never fails to complete his mission, even if it means taking the lives of innocent civilians.

Despite this, 47 prides himself on professionalism, and the game will reward players for taking the stealthiest and least bloody route to achieve their objectives.

Hitman has developed a strong fan-base over the years, and remains a popular series to this day.

If you're looking for the trope for the hitman character type, see Professional Killer.

If you're looking for the comic book by Garth Ennis that Crosses the Line Twice several billion times, Look no further!

Side Releases

  • Hitman GO, an isometric puzzle game for mobile.
    • Hitman GO: Definitive Edition is the rebooted soup up version of the mobile game, but made for Steam.
Tropes used in Hitman (video game series) include:
  • AKA-47: Your default "Silverballers" are a pair of AMT Hardballers, a notoriously-flawed pistol which nevertheless appears in a lot of John Woo movies.
  • All Bikers Are Hells Angels: A notorious biker gang's leaders are marked in Contracts.
  • All Crimes Are Equal: If a guard sees you gun down a civilian in cold blood, he'll shoot you in the face. If a guard sees you running in public wearing nothing except a pair of swimming trunks, he'll shoot you in the face. If a guard sees you walk into the EMPLOYEES ONLY bathroom, he'll sternly warn you. Then shoot you in the face.
    • Taken to extremes in the New Orleans level of Blood Money, where a bouncer for a perfectly normal bar will shoot you in the face without warning for walking into a party without a costume.
    • In a funny sort of way, also applies to the targets 47 gets hired to take out. Ruthless, amoral arms dealer? Death. Spoilt rich kid who accidentally kills a stripper in a drunken rage? Death.
  • Already Done for You: The opening level of Contracts, "Asylum Aftermath", picks up right where the original game left off. As such, there's nothing to do in the basement but stroll past the corpses of the Mr. 48s.
  • Alternate Continuity: The film. Most notably, it has 47's backstory as a clone been replaced with one wherein he was an orphan raised by a mysterious contract-killer organization.
  • American Accents: Blood Money takes 47 to New Jersey, California, the Rockies, New Orleans, the Deep South, Las Vegas and Washington D.C.; appropriately, a wide range of accents are represented.
  • Anachronic Order: Contracts and Blood Money are all over the shop. In chronological order, the individual missions would go: the second mission of Blood Money, the third mission of Blood Money, the entirety of Contracts (which itself consists primarily of flashbacks to earlier missions, which are themselves not in chronological order), the first mission of Blood Money and then the fourth mission of Blood Money onwards.
  • An Axe to Grind: In Silent Assassin.
  • Anticlimax Boss: The promos (and the intro itself!) to Blood Money played up the rivalry and ultimate confrontation between 47 and Mark Parchezzi III. However, in the actual game the two never cross paths at all until the end, and the ultimate result is a 5 second cutscene and a brief and anti-climactic shootout. The most you get with tension are the Agency's operatives getting killed...
    • Inspector Albert Fournier in Contracts.
  • Anti-Hero: See Asshole Victim. 47 falls in between type IV and V, leaning towards V.
  • Anti-Villain: The Agency and Agent 47, as almost all of their targets are terrorists, scumbags, and all-around evil.
  • Artistic License Geography: The "A Vintage Year" mission in Blood Money is set on Chile, in a winery/drug-lab described to be outside Santiago. The place happens to be in the middle of a rainforest with an enormous waterfall behind it. There are no rainforests to be found in Chile, specially around Santiago, which is an arid and subtropical region.
  • Asexuality: Agent 47 is normally portrayed to be asexual, though there are some good reasons- number one, he is a clone engineered to be the perfect killer, and two- he has almost no social interactions with anyone at all except for Diana. Of note is a scene in the first game in which 47 rescues a Chinese prostitute from a brothel in Hong Kong. When thanking him, she kisses him goodbye- to which he actually recoils in disgust.
    • Interestingly, in the third game, which consists of 47's flashbacks of past missions, addled quite a bit with his own subconscious, his reaction to the prostitute's kiss is more one of surprise and bafflement than disgust, which is the only time he is seen smiling. So perhaps he's not asexual, but simply too socially awkward to show his sexual side.
  • Assassin Outclassin': The objective of the Blood Money mission "A Murder of Crows" is to kill other assassins before they can kill their target.
  • Asshole Victim: Almost all of 47's victims tend to be either criminals or just plain corrupt individuals. There are exceptions, such as a detective that has failed his job and was captured, a journalist who got too close (and was also captured), another journalist and a priest, and an unlucky Amusement Park owner whose unmaintained ride accidentally led to the death of the client's son.
  • The Atoner: 47 at the beginning of Silent Assassin. However, he soon returns to his career, if only to initially save the priest who took him in. At the end, he leaves the Priest to go back to working for the Agency.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: A few of the major super-criminals, notably Pablo Ochoa in the first game, Big Bad Sergei Zavrotko in the second game, and Lee Hong in the first and third games can survive significantly more damage than standard Mooks (they can take a few dozen 9mm rounds to the chest, as opposed to just 2 or 3 for everyone else). They all die instantly from headshots or assault rifle fire, though, so it's not too noticeable.
    • May be justified in that these guys would be expected to be wearing body armor.
    • And also Pablo Ochoa was coked up to the eyeballs, causing a Tony Montana style fight.
  • Awesome Yet Practical: Sure, you could take your target with your high-tech customized silenced sniper rifle. Or you could push them over a railing into the river, hit them with a hammer, or drop something on them.
  • Ax Crazy:
    • One of the assassins towards the end of Blood Money, should you wind up alone with her, will trigger a cutscene in which she leaps on top of you and stabs you to death while shrieking insanely. Instant Game Over. As there's no way to stop this once the scene triggers, it also manages to turn into Paranoia Fuel, as you try to deal with her WITHOUT the scene going off...
    • Malcolm Sturrock, brother of the Meat King from Contracts is also revealed to be an Ax Crazy Serial Killer during the Meat King's Party. When you find him, he is dancing around in his underwear in front of photos of his freshly mutilated and murdered victim.
  • Badass: 47.
  • Bad Habits: In the Till Death Do Us Part mission of Blood Money, 47 can get his hands on a priest's uniform, and carry out the eponymous marriage ceremony. Given that the real priest was drunk, he does it better.
  • Battle in the Rain: 47's final shootout with Parchezzi on the White House roof.
  • Bilingual Bonus: Multiple references to Danish soccer team FC Copenhagen, which is the developers' favorite team, and phrases written in Danish such as "Ægte pizza med lort på" (Real pizza with shit on top).
  • Big Bad: Dr Ort-Meyer in Codename 47, Sergei Zavorotko in Silent Assassin and Alexander Leland Cayne in Blood Money.
  • Bling Bling Bang: 47's silverballers are decorated with wood polish grips, custom-fitted for his hand, and engraved with his insignia.
  • Blown Across the Room: In Blood Money, the magnum rounds for the Silverballer can do this if fired at close range.
    • The shotguns in all four of the Hitman games will do this.
  • Bodyguard Babes: Some targets have them, notably Charlie Sidjan in Silent Assassin.
  • Book Ends: the bad ending (sort of) of the first game.
    • Also, the end of Blood Money shows 47 about to carry out an assassination in a Chinese brothel, recalling the Hong Kong setting of the first missions in Codename 47.
  • Boring but Practical: In deference to the Awesome Yet Practical section, you could just simply shoot your targets or even massacre the everyone in the level instead of resorting to some sort of dastardly plot to making it look like an accident. The latter route is subverted in that your rating falls apart if you take out people other than the target(s).
  • Butt Monkey: Agent Smith. Shot, stabbed, drugged up and tortured, having his head smashed into a steering wheel, and yelled at.
  • The Chessmaster: 47 is one of these if you play as the ideal, stealthy "Silent Assassin".
    • Also Diana Burnwood (or her principals) in Blood Money.
  • Call to Agriculture: Agent 47 became a gardener at a church following the events of the first game. Too bad the mafia had to kidnap the local priest...
  • Candlelit Bath: In the "Shockingly Executed" ad for Blood Money shown above, 47 kills a woman by throwing a toaster into her candlelit bath. This was a controversial ad campaign.
    • The Meat King's Party has a candlelit bath. Replace "bath" with "gore-streaked meathouse bloodbath with sweaty fat guy dancing like an idiot", actually.
  • Celibate Hero: in one mission, a prostitute kisses 47 - and he reacts with utter revulsion (in a remake of the mission from 47's POV, he merely reacts with bemusement).
  • Chekhov's Gun: The death serum in Blood Money.
  • Cloning Blues: Averted. 47 never angsts over being the clone of some of the worst criminals on the planet and its not until Blood Money that his being a clone becomes really relevant to the plot.
  • Combat Pragmatist
  • Contract on the Hitman: Has happened to 47 a number of times, and becomes a problem for the Agency in Blood Money.
  • Cool Shades: 47's targets often sport these. Most notably invoked by Mr. 17.
  • Cool Guns: For instance, by the end of Blood Money you can carry around dual silenced scoped automatic Silverballers with extended magazines, very heavy magnum ammo, and laser sights.
    • The .22 Suppressed in Silent Assassin. To highlight its simplistic beauty, Hayamoto has one in his highly secure basement museum.
  • Cover Identity Anomaly: In a mission in Hitman 2, 47 can adopt a disguise of a "Lord Sinclair" to get close to his target (a female doctor). If she asks 47 for the name of "his" wife, though, he won't know what to say before eventually randomly coming up with "Elsie" (which is way off the mark), blowing his cover.
  • Les Cops Sportif: The final level of Contracts has 47 escaping a GIGN assault on his hotel chamber. He must eliminate a French inspector as well.
  • Cradling Your Kill - If you've poisoned or tranquilized someone.
  • The Crime Job: Hitman 2 has a level called "The Jacuzzi Job".
  • Dead Man's Chest: A common method of disposing of bodies in Blood Money
  • Death by Falling Over: The "Accident" gameplay mechanic in Blood Money leads to some quite ludicrous results at times. Shoving someone off a high balcony which overlooks a frozen lake? Fine. Shoving them down a ten-foot flight of stairs? Not quite so believable, but plausible. Shoving someone into a three-foot deep pool of water? Oh come on...
  • The Deep South: Death On The Mississippi and Till Death Do Us Part in Blood Money.
  • Depraved Bisexual: Skip Muldoon, a redneck drug smuggler who is sleeping with several male pursers aboard his riverboat, while also having an incestuous affair with his niece. He'll chase you around if you're dressed as a purser.
  • The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: It's possible to get a Silent Assassin rating in Blood Money's training level.
    • Many levels offer a broad spectrum of options - the Opera, for example, allows you to, among other things, replace the prop gun for the execution in the play with a real one for the actor to do your job for you, you can do it yourself by taking the actor's place, you can shoot the target with a gun from a hidden vantage point at the appropriate moment in the execution scene of the play, you can drop the stage lights on him... Though you can always try to do it with More Dakka or Stuff Blowing Up, being inventive is quite possible.
  • DLC: How the "episodes" and related content are delivered in the 2016 Hitman.
  • Dressing as the Enemy: A simple method of infiltration, and the game's main feature.
  • Drop the Hammer: An ordinary household hammer is one of the many weapons that 47 can use to execute his targets (or anyone else for that matter). Made all the more gruesome by a special head-crunching animation when 47 successfully pulls off a sneak attack on his victim.
  • Easter Egg: Dolph the Fascist Hippo, FCK , Dopefish, Pokey the Penguin and others.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: The first Hitman game, for starters, didn't have the iconic Silverballers (technically you could have a Hardballer, but you couldn't go Guns Akimbo with two of them and they couldn't be silenced) and there were much more sequences that wouldn't feel out of place in a third person shooter. Codename 47 was much more akin to a game that was throwing darts at a wall to see what stuck, and it was when Silent Assassin rolled around that the trademark style of the Hitman games was being truly developed and polished.
    • Actually, you can go Guns Akimbo with two Hardballers, it's just you need to have one from the start and find another on the level itself: if you pick up second Hardballer, while wielding first, you will dual wield. Still, chances to find second Hardballer outside of training level are really slim.
  • Elite Mooks: SWAT officers are equipped with body armor, assault rifles, and have a unique A.I. that actually sweeps through the level in squads searching for you, instead of simply guarding one location and reacting to your actions like every other enemy type in the game. They also attack much faster than regular enemies.
  • Episodic Game: The 2016 Hitman game, with each "episode" being a particular level or setting. Each one larger and generally more elaborate than the last.
    • The first episode, The Showstopper is set in a Paris fashion show.
    • The second, World of Tomorrow has Agent 47 travelling to the fictional, picturesque Italian town of Sapienza.
    • The third, A Gilded Cage moves the setting to Marrakesh, Morocco amidst growing social unrest.
  • Everyone calls him Agent 47:

47: Names are for friends... so I don't need one.

  • Evil Counterpart: Mark Parchezzi III, the Evil Albino Hitman from Blood Money. He even points out the similarities between 47 and himself when the two finally confront each other. 47 is characteristically unimpressed.
    • There's also Mark Purrayah II, one of the assassins you kill in the Mardi Gras mission, although he's not particularly remarkable. He supposedly was a partial clone, but it's rather vague.
  • Evil-Detecting Dog: Dobermans in the Rotterdam levels from Codename 47 and hunting dogs in Beldingford Manor from Contracts will attack 47 on sight and alert nearby guards. Pets dogs in Blood Money are inoffensive yet still detect 47. It's possible to shut them with drugged sausages.
  • Evil Twin: The various other Hitman clones, namely the ten Mr. 48s in the final shootout of Hitman: Codename 47, and Mr. 17 towards the end of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin.
  • Executive Meddling: The movie. The infamous "train duel" scene was filmed in a rush after the director was fired over creative differences. Also, in the near-final script, agent Markov is revealed to be the Big Bad who wants to replace the president-to-be with an Evil Doppelganger loyal to him, 47 is chased by Spetsnaz (not the other clones) and the whole Evil Plan is foiled by Mike Whittier (who recorded Markov's Engineered Public Confession after slipping one of 47's spy microphones under the collar of his coat and gave the tape to a Russian general) and 47 (who manipulates Markov into ordering his Dragon to shoot the President during Udre's funeral and blows him up anyway).
    • This is also the reason why there's been such a long gap since Blood Money. Apparently the developers started work on a new game for release in 2009 or 2010, but Eidos decided that the Kane and Lynch franchise (also developed by IO Interactive) was going to be the next big thing and ordered them to produce a sequel to that game instead.
  • Expy: A (probably) unintentional example, but the reporter in the cutscenes from Blood Money acts a lot like Togusa, save for appearing older and having a career change away from detective work to journalism. It helps that they have the exact same voice.
    • Vinnie Sinistra is probably one of Tony Montana. He doesn't look anything like Al Pacino, but his backstory is practically identical.
    • Pablo Ochoa is also one of Tony. Guess Scarface is quite popular in the IO Interactive office.
  • The Faceless: Diana, 47's handler at The Agency. In the first 3 games, she's just a voice on the phone. In Blood Money, she's only seen at a distance and from behind.
    • Though you do see her face (reflected in the window) in the game's final cutscene.
  • Fat Bastard: The Meat King, of course. Most of the stealthy ways of killing him involve serving him a whole roast chicken.
    • Ditto Skip Muldoon from Blood Money, considering the stealthy ways to kill him involve tampering with an entire cake.
  • Fat Sweaty Southerner in a White Suit: Skip Muldoon.
  • Flower Motifs: The lily symbol of the series.
  • Film Noir: The later games started to veer into this territory by virtue of aiming for a more Darker and Edgier feel. Several missions in Contracts and Blood Money are genuinely noir in tone, as well as the two missions in Rotterdam from Codename 47.
  • First-Person Snapshooter: In one level of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, you are given a camera and instructed to photograph two thugs after killing them.
  • 555: The barcode featured in a trailer for Absolution is an unfortunate aversion, it's a fully legal bar-code in a day where bar-code scaning aps for smart phones are common, making the fact that belongs to a dildo holder all the more noticeable.
    • Given the team's established sense of humour with Easter eggs, this was almost certainly intentional.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: In-story, a single bullet to the gut disables 47 and necessitates an emergency operation. In gameplay, he can be shot through the leg, the heart and the skull and be fine as long as his health bar isn't empty.
  • Gatling Good: The Infinity+1 Sword of Contracts. Awesome but Impractical - 47's damn slow. One of the Mr. 48s come after 47 with one.
  • Genre Shift: The gameplay is fairly consistent, but in terms of story and tone, Codename 47, Silent Assassin and Blood Money are rather akin to conspiracy/political thrillers, while Contracts is very much in the vein of a Psychological Thriller.
  • Gray and Grey Morality: Depending on your outlook, the games fall into either this or Black and Gray Morality. 47 is a violent, unrepentant killer who has no qualms about killing for money and is not above killing innocent people in order to get his man (although he does feel some guilt about his actions, as Contracts makes apparent). However, his targets are almost exclusively people even nastier and more vicious than him. Almost exclusively.
    • Part of the motivation behind the World of Tomorrow Sapienza mission in the 2016 Hitman is as much on eliminating potential competition from "armchair assassins" as it is stopping a lethal, weaponized virus from being unleashed upon the world.
    • The "Summer Bonus Episodes" for the 2016 Hitman so far are this.
      • The Icon, set in Sapienza, has 47 being hired to kill the egotistical Prima Donna Director and star of the titular movie by the film studio making it because he's bankrupting said studio.
      • A House Built on Sand, which takes place in Marrakesh, is pretty much about 47 involved in a shady affair between two construction companies.
  • Graying Morality: Contracts has the first time 47's primary target is an innocent man. In Blood Money, he kills more other innocent men, signaling a shift from the earlier games' morality - and what's more, Blood Money is the first game since Silent Assassin in which the player is not penalized for killing innocent people who are not targets (47 can kill as many people as he likes as long as they are unseen "accidents").
  • The Guards Must Be Crazy: Apparently the penalty for running in public, using the wrong bathroom, walking into the EMPLOYEES ONLY lounge, or setting off a metal detector is always a bullet to the head.
    • Egregious. If you sneak a weapon into the White House by placing it in a tourist's briefcase, she gets off scot-free, unlike 47.
    • Well, 47 is a pretty suspicious looking guy.
    • In the Mardi Gras level of Blood Money - if you enter a (perfectly normal, ordinary-bar, not-very-fancy) party without a costume? The bouncer at the door will open fire. Instantly. In the middle of a huge crowd.
      • Public Indecency is a serious crime in the Hitman world.
      • On the same level, turning the lights in the hotel foyer on and off repeatedly sends a woman running to the nearest policeman, who decides that the best way to deal with a man harmlessly playing with a light-switch is to open fire.
    • Starting with Contracts, it's possible to kill some people "by accident". When civilians see the target go down, they will run in panic and 47 can watch them try to alert the guards who stand with a Flat What. Eventually, one will approach 47, try a search for weapons, and upon finding nothing of interest, returns to his guard post.
      • The whole idea of accidents is lack of any connection with the hitman, co there is no reason why the guards should harass a bald guy in a suit only because someone got nailed by a falling piano.
  • Guide Dang It: Getting Silent Assassin on some missions.
  • Guns Akimbo: His weapon of choice...two "Silverballers."
    • It is interesting to note that 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 also count as two separate gunshots, so you'd never actually use them for a perfect run!
  • Guns in Church: In the Deep South mission "'Til Death Do Us Part" 47 can actually openly carry guns without provoking return fire.
    • And justified by it being a really, really redneck wedding; out in front, a bunch of guys are going shooting, presumably at frogs or something, and several other guests openly carry as well.
      • When 47 starts the level (the boat dock), those particular rednecks are shooting at alligators. (Shoot the alligators to get them to stop to watch you in awe. Or jealously.) The rest of the wedding participants will just shoot up into the air whenever they're collectively happy.
  • Gun Porn: The whole series. You can slap a ton of mods to your five custom weapons in Blood Money.
  • Hand Cannon: Smith&Wesson Model 500 in Contracts and Bull.480 in Blood Money.
    • Plus, the Desert Eagle in every game.
  • Hell Hotel: Hotel Galar's east wing, where there's been a brutal murder.
  • Here We Go Again: see Book Ends and Fridge Horror above.
  • Hide Your Children: There are no children in any mission of any game.
  • Hitman with a Heart: Unless it's required (which is extremely rare, as in 2 cases), 47 canonically doesn't kill civilians (or even his target's goons) to minimize collateral damage and the possibility of witnesses.
    • That's not having a heart, that's just being careful. The bird he keeps counts, though. On the other hand he kills it without hesitation, when someone tries to sneak up to him in his hideout, just so it won't give away his position.
    • If the dark, bleak fever-dreams of Contracts mean anything at all, 47 certainly does feel some guilt about his crimes. Not that that's stopping him, of course...
  • Hollywood Silencer: In Blood Money, if you spring for the premium suppressor for your Silverballer, you can shoot someone in the head and guards standing less than 10 feet away won't hear it.
    • Averted in Silent Assassin suppressed weapons can be heard by people nearby, sometimes even through doors/walls.
  • Homing Boulders: Silent Assassin has an infamous bug in which 47's briefcase can be thrown -- and will slowly but inevitably follow its target around corners and curves before hitting them. It was patched out four months after release, but was then re-instituted as the "Executive Briefcase Mark II" with all its homing flight powers intact.
  • How We Got Here: The main menu of Blood Money displays scenes from 47's impending cremation. How he has ended up on that cremation table is for you to find out.
  • Human Shield: You can do this in Blood Money, and it's usually a very easy way to manipulate a pesky guard or civilian. Once you have the gun to their back, you can march them to wherever you want, and buffalo them into unconsciousness.
  • Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: Contracts contains a level where the protagonist must rescue the potential victim of a human hunt from an English manor.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: In Blood Money, 47 can conceal anything up to the size of an MP 5 SMG under his clothing. A nameless female assassin, also in Blood Money, despite wearing an extremely skimpy outfit turns out be carrying five different stiletto knives if you examine her body.
    • Special mention goes to the coins 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.
  • IKEA Weaponry: 47's sniper rifle. He assembles and disassembles it with ease, but even with his speed, there's still a five-second wait.
    • Although the disassembling makes no sense if he was a professional. Check the Headscratchers for details.
  • Implacable Man: 47 can take a bullet to the face and keep walking (and shooting).
  • Ink Suit Actor: 47's face and body is modeled after that of his original voice actor, David Bateson.
  • In Medias Res: One of the objectives of the last mission of Contracts showed Richard Delahunt as a completed objective. He was one of the two targets in "Curtains Down", implying that Contracts takes place during Blood Money, after which Diana informs 47 of ICA agents getting picked off. (There is a bit of a continuity gaffe, however, in that the opera singer changed names from Philippe Berceuse to Alvaro D'Alvade between Contracts and Blood Money.)
    • This explains the ominous Dramatic Gun Cock in the ending cutscene of the opera mission in Blood Money, and in the next mission Diana asks, "How's that wound healing up?"
    • It's also implied that Albert Fournier, the Inspector you were to kill in Contracts was tipped off to 47's location by the Franchise.
      • Seeing as how Blood Money takes place during a very long timeframe, almost two years, with sometimes months between missions, there is plenty of time inbetween the missions for 47 to have been doing other missions.
  • Instant Death Bullet: The plot of Contracts centres on averting this.
    • Mostly averted in-gameplay, where killing enemies (or other NPCs) depends on your weapon, where you hit them (even more so if they're wearing body armor), and random chance. Sometimes, they'll still be able to run, they'll be knocked out, they'll be incapacitated and might bleed to death or just die. Mostly averted because it doesn't apply to you.
      • It's also played dead straight with head shots. Head shots are universally fatal, regardless of caliber, distance traveled, or angle of impact. Victims crumple to the ground instantaneously and without a sound.
        • In Silent Assassin, head-shots with the suppressed .22 are not always fatal.
        • Same with the SG220 in Contracts.
  • Instant Sedation: The chloroform-soaked rags and syringes filled with sedatives. Takes a few seconds of struggling against, so you better do it in an area that's not prone to have people walking in on you.
    • Chloroform is played slightly more realistically than the sedative syringes, as the victim will eventually wake up (sometimes without their clothes).
  • Intercontinuity Crossover: Some of the articles in the post-mission newspapers from Blood Money reference the exploits of Kane and Lynch. Since Blood Money was released a year before Dead Men, it also counts as early promotion.
  • Intimate Healing: Diana resurrecting 47 with an antidote hidden on her lips.
  • It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans: The New Orleans level in Blood Money centers around preventing an assassination during a Mardi Gras parade—all fine and dandy, except that the mission takes place in late October. (To be fair, Bourbon Street often does look like that in late October, but for entirely different reasons.)
  • Joisey: The setting of the first mission in Blood Money.
  • Joke Weapon: The air rifle. Also, some of the sillier melee weapons.
  • Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: 47 himself. Initially he's sort of like a paid vigilante, going around the world exclusively assassinating vicious, amoral criminals, and suffering significant penalties if he ever kills "innocent" people. Then in Contracts he's hired to kill an undercover journalist who messed up. And by the time of Blood Money he's able to kill perfectly innocent people who have nothing to do with his target with no penalties whatsoever, so long as he makes it look like an accident. Darker and Edgier is right.
    • In Silent Assassin, he tracks down a target by murdering the man's son and planting a tracker on the corpse.
    • By the 2016 game however, the penalties for killing non-targets have returned. At the same time however, it's strongly implied that 47's actions over the past games may be catching up to him.
  • Justified Tutorial: Three of the four games in the Hitman series (Codename 47, Silent Assassin, and Blood Money) has this. Contracts has a dreamscape training ground instead.
    • The prologue for the 2016 Hitman has this as well, given that it follows a young Agent 47's initial "hiring" by the ICA.
  • Kick the Dog: Blood Money has 47 kill an innocent mail-man, and (in the final bloody shootout) a reporter, and a priest, just to nail the point home that he's not a hero.
    • 47's paid to whack a desperate, depressed former carnival operator for an accident caused by negligence that killed the contractor's son. When you reach him, his wife just left him, his dilapidated park has been taken over by a gang of drug dealers, and he begs pathetically for his life when you confront him.
    • A literal example occurs in the same game, as you can kill a target's pet dog so that its barking won't alert the guards.
  • Kick the Son of a Bitch: More often than not, however, the people 47 is hired to kill do honestly have it coming.
  • Kill It with Fire: One option for killing one of the targets at the Hell Rave in the "Dance With the Devil" mission from Blood Money. It involves tampering with a pyrotechnics display so that the flame jets will fry her during her stage show.
  • Knife Nut: The psychotic female assassin from Blood Money.
  • Laxative Prank: In one level of Contracts you can poison some soup with laxative to help lure your target to the toilets.
  • Leave No Witnesses: The final mission of Hitman: Blood Money starts with a whole lot of people learning something 47 can't afford for them to know (namely, that he's not actually dead). He has a way of fixing that.
  • Level Map Display: On easier difficulties, it also shows positions of enemies.
  • Let's Play: Blood Money has Tom Bowen's 'How Not To Play Hitman' series, which combines hilarious amounts of carnage and Soundtrack Dissonance.
    • There's also the more recent LP by TheAuZZieGamer, who goes through every mission with vulgarity, running gags, carnage and general surgical precision. There's only one mission he doesn't get Silent Assassin on, and it's the tutorial (which, as mentioned above, isn't very easy to get Silent Assassin on).
  • Like Reality Unless Noted
  • Literary Agent Hypothesis: Contracts and Blood Money use framing devices reminiscent of this trope. The other games use it in a more subtle manner also.
  • Mad Scientist: Dr. Ortmeyer, 47's megalomaniac creator.
  • Make the Dog Testify: Apparently so, because if you leave a pet dog alive after killing its owner, it counts as a witness.
  • A Match Made in Stockholm: As noted by the SpoonyOne, 47's "relationship" with Olga Kurylenko's character in The Movie strongly comes across as this. He drives across Russia while she's stuffed in his car trunk with a dead body, constantly threatens to torture and murder her, and drags her out of a restaurant by her hair. She becomes strangely attracted to him, very overtly tries to seduce him several times, and continues to accompany him when she has several opportunities to make a run for it. Being asexual 47 ignores her sexual advances, but does eventually show some degree of protection for her.
  • Mental Story: All but the last mission of Contracts.
  • Miser Advisor: Not exactly an advisor, but 47 fits this trope. When the Agency had 47 perform a job for them in Silent Assassin, a mission after the information exchange, he said that he was to be paid triple the going rate (which is 100,000 USD), in gold.
  • Mix-and-Match Man: Agent 47.
  • Monster Clown: In Blood Money, there's a level where it's possible to put on a clown costume and cut people's throats open with hedgeclippers. Hilarity does not ensue... unless you're that sort of person.
  • Morality Pet: 47 picks up a canary and keeps it as a pet over the course of Blood Money. He then kills it at the end of the game, because he thinks his hideout is being raided, and the bird is giving away his position by chirping. There's also Mei-Ling, a Chinese prostitute that 47 ends up saving in each of the first 3 games.
    • Although, since the third game was mostly a series of recapped (an often incorrectly remembered) memories of missions from the first game, he technically only rescued her twice.
    • She's nowhere to be found in Blood Money... instead, Agent Smith is in her place.
      • She's mentioned in Blood Money in one of the newspaper's advertisements. An Easter Egg, really, since it's a dish named after her.
      • In the very final cutscene in Blood Money, 47 is in some kind of Chinese... establishment, that has all the telltale signs of a brothel. In all likelihood he is there to "see" Mei-Ling.
    • His background story also mentions that he kept a mouse and later a runaway laboratory rabbit as pets when he lived at the asylum.
  • Multiple Endings: Blood Money, depending on whether you randomly pan the camera around and find out you're supposed to frantically analog-twirl/press W..
  • Murder by Cremation: How the Big Bad tries to deal with 47 in the final chapter of Blood Money. Whether it works or not depends on if you spin the joystick/press W enough to wake 47 out of his drug induced coma, which in turn gives you the opportunity to kill everyone assembled.
  • Murder, Inc.: Both the Agency and the Franchise.
  • My Car Hates Me: Working in your favor in the final level of Blood Money.
  • My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Averted; every time a rival assassin shows up, there's a hidden body somewhere nearby, like you'd need to do, and they can take about the same (or less) punishment as 47.
  • Nail'Em: Why, yes, you can use a nail gun. Not very effective from anywhere but point-blank, and it requires a headshot to take down someone.
  • A Nazi by Any Other Name: Dr Ort Meyer in the first game (of the Mengele sort). And Hendrik Schmutz in Blood Money to some extent (white race supremacist).
  • Nazi Grandpa: According to his small biography in the first game, Frantz Fuchs is one.
  • Name's the Same: Agent Smith. Lampshaded in Contracts, where he resembles his other namesake.
  • Nintendo Hard: In the first two games it's very hard to achieve a completely stealthful mission, due to the fact that the guards are extremely skittish and will instantly raise the alarm if they see you doing anything even remotely suspicious. Contracts and Blood Money tone this down a lot; so long as you have the right disguise and don't commit any criminal acts, the guards will generally ignore you.
  • Nobody Poops: 47 doesn't, but there are bathrooms around, and lots of other people can be counted on to use them. Makes your job easier.
    • The guard in 2's "Anathema" mission occasionally pees.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Lorne de Havilland in Blood Money is a clone of Hugh Hefner.
    • The two targets during the Murder at the Bazaar level in Hitman 2 are clones of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.
  • No-Gear Level: Especially the last two missions in the second game, where you start with only your trusty strangulation wire. The last level takes place in your home base, and it is immensely satisfying when you get to your weapons storage after skulking around extremely vulnerable.
  • Nonstandard Game Over: You can get two in cutscene form in Blood Money, the first one at Lorne de Havilland's party, where a Franchise assassin stabs you in the neck if you don't kill her quickly enough, the second being stabbed to death by the completely psychotic Eve at the Heaven and Hell party, once again if you stand still and let her kill you.
    • Also, at the end of Codename 47, if you let Dr. Oort-Meyer get too close to you without killing him, he'll stab you with a syringe and you black out... and wake up in the sanitorium again, in a sequence that's disturbingly similar to the very start of the game...
  • Nostalgia Level: many of the missions from Contracts are remade from part 1.
  • Not-So-Fake Prop Weapon: In Blood Money, Agent 47 has the option of switching a prop World War I pistol for a genuine working one to off an opera tenor during the execution scene in Tosca.
  • The Other Darrin: For Absolution the original voice actors of 47 (David Bateson) and Diana (Vivienne Mc Kee) havebeen replaced.
  • Once an Episode: There'll be a sniper mission, a mission at a crowded party, a mission in the snow (or at least with it), a rescue mission involving Smith, a double-cross in the penultimate mission, and a firefight at the end.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: Hitman 2's theme and various tracks from Contracts and Blood Money. The track 'Apocalypse' for example, features lyrics that speak of a great eternal race of builders that threaten the listener with complete cosmic destruction.
  • Opium Den: The Meat King's Party in Contracts.
  • Palette Swap: Shows up on occasion, most notably the tour group in Amendment XXV.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: The main game-play premise of the series.
  • Pay Evil Unto Evil: 47's targets are invariably incredibly depraved criminals. It's only in Blood Money that 47 is seen killing "innocents" as part of the story.
  • Perpetual Frowner: I don't think 47 can smile...
  • Pet the Dog: He didn't have to save Mei-Ling, especially in Hitman 2 where rescuing her led to a lower stealth rating.
  • Pistol-Whipping: 47 can do this in Blood Money.
  • Precision F-Strike: In Blood Money, 47 reacts to Diana's apparent betrayal by shouting "Bitch!" at her. This is the only time 47 has ever been verbally aggressive on-screen.
  • Pretty in Mink: Nika in The Movie. Some female bystanders.
  • Professional Killer: All instalments have 47 working for money. In Silent Assassin, his asking price starts at double the regular rate and increases as the game progresses.
  • Psychological Thriller: Contracts.
  • Rare Guns: All over the place...gold plated, silenced, you name it, he's fired it. His default pistols are rare enough as is.
  • The Rashomon: minor differences exist between several missions in Codename: 47 and their remade versions in Contracts: which versions are "true" is never made explicit.
  • Rated "M" for Manly: This is a series about a genetically-engineered assassin violently killing arms dealers and drug barons whilst wearing awesome suits and finding big guns.
  • 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, being essentially a Super Soldier, he can't turn his back on the business of death and goes back to being an assassin.
  • Remixed Level: The asylum level from the first game appears as the first level in Contracts.
  • Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: Many of the missions allow you to kill your targets through the use of indirect and often ingenious methods, though most are rather obvious or hard to pull off without getting spotted.
  • Sauna of Death: You can rig a sauna room to explode.
    • You can also tamper with thermostat and bar the door trapping a victim with coronary problems inside.
  • Save Scumming: Initially averted. The first installment had no in-mission saves, with limited saves being available on later games. The number of saves decreases until you reach professional, where you only get a saved game slot as a progress bonus (but don't count on it). Blood Money introduced a "Rookie" mode, which allowed infinite saves.
  • Scannable Man: Agent 47. Right on the back of his head.
  • Schedule Slip: Hitman 5 was first announced in 2007. Development apparently only got going in 2009, only to stall again (if not be canned completely and subsequently restarted; reports vary) because Eidos wanted more Kane and Lynch games.
  • Seen It All: By the 2016 Hitman game, Agent 47 has pretty much become this, being such a professional at his field for so long.
  • Self-Serving Memory: Jack Alexander's summary of the missions afterwards are completely different from what actually happened, or leave out vital details. Not surprising, since he's the Big Bad.
    • 47 himself also counts: his recollections of events from the first game as he remembers them in Contracts paint him in much kinder light than he was presented in the first game itself. For example, when Mei Ling kisses him in the first game, he shudders in disgust, but in Contracts he's merely surprised.
  • Shout-Out: The animation of someone in elevator being strangled from above is a tribute to Leon.
    • In the newspaper article after "The Murder of Crows" level in Blood Money, the police chief investigating the murders is named Police Chief Wiggum, and even if you've run around, blowing up targets, and generally being visible, he STILL doesn't know who you are.
      • A previous newspaper had the non-existent month in which Groundskeeper Willie died in its date - Smarch.
    • In "Traditions of the Trade" from Contracts, you can visit a certain florist to retrieve a shotgun hidden in a box of red roses.
    • In the first game, one mission has you taking out gangsters by posing as the mediator, getting up and then killing them with a gun you hid in the bathroom.
    • In Blood Money, you can kill one target by dropping the chandelier of the Opera Garnier onto him.
    • Jesper Kyd's score for Blood Money features snippets, samples and remixes of tracks from his various previous works - most notably, "Apocalypse" is based on a track from Scorcher, which was in turn based on "Spinner", a track from Red Zone.
  • Shower Scene: In the Hitman: Absolution teaser trailer, 47 looks like he's preparing to plug Diana (or someone else?..um, we'll get back to you on that) through her shower door.
  • Shrouded in Myth: 47. Even the Journalist doesn't believe the FBI Director at first that they've killed 47.
  • Sigil Spam: The movie abuses the Organization's logo to ridiculous extremes.
  • Sniper Scope Sway: Depending on your weapon. If you are using a fully upgraded W2000, there is little sway, though it only gets a single shot. Also, sway is affected if you move and by the length of time you hold the rifle after sighting. Sway can be eliminated by canceling the sighting and adjusting your position to the next target before sighting again.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: "Ave Maria" is the main menu song and on some maps, upbeat music is playing while you can happily slaughter your way through the innocent crowd. Furthermore, the Ave Maria returns at the very end of the game, where it plays in the background of the final mission when 47 wakes up at his funeral and starts blowing mooks away left, right, and center.
    • Specifically, the scene starts with Ave Maria goes into a downer tune as the shooting begins, and goes back to Ave Maria as 47 leaves the church to finish off the survivors.
      • Don't forget that part of "The Meat King's Party" in Contracts. Finding a mutilated body while Paul Anka's "Put Your Head on My Shoulder" is unnerving, to say the least.
  • Spanner in the Works: In Blood Money, it's possible to ruin the plans of the person who hired you for The Deep South missions by killing her. If you can't tell, she's the bride in the wedding.
    • It's a bad idea, since that means you fail the mission. However, she does show up in a later mission, where you can kill her and get away scot-free.
  • Stealth Run: Required for the "Silent Assassin" title.
  • Stealth Based Game
  • Stock Footage: For some strange reasons, the movie uses clips from Dark Angel to show 47's childhood.
  • The Straight and Arrow Path: In Hitman 2, 47 brings along a crossbow for his trip into the Japanese snow mountains. Sound obviously carries far there, and a gun wouldn't be as practical for long-range shooting.
  • Strictly Formula: But the formula is improved and expanded on with each installment. See Once an Episode.
  • Stylistic Suck: In the 2016 game, the prologue missions involve recreations of various "greatest hit" assassinations that 47 has to accomplish. Said recreations also have blatantly fake props and ICA "extras" who can't act to save their lives.
  • Super Drowning Skills: In Blood Money, arranging an "accidental" drowning is as simple as pushing an NPC headfirst into a hot tub.
    • Or better yet, pushing someone over into a pool as they're walking into it for a swim instantly kills them.
  • Surprisingly Similar Stories/Whole-Plot Reference: An old Soviet-Polish movie called "Deja Vu" introduces its protagonist in a scene that can be recreated shot-for-shot in this game with the Opera level - here, too, a hitman has to assassinate a performer in a play of "Tosca", and his on-stage execution scene is the perfect opportune moment for it. In the movie, he is shot with a sniper rifle, though other options are also available to 47.
  • The Stinger: The final stage of Blood Money starts with the credits rolling while 47 is laying on a cremation table at his own funeral.
  • SWAT Team: 47 has to deal with various special police forces, mainly in Romania (penultimate level of Codename 47 and first level of Contracts) and France (the GIGN in the last level of Contracts). They're usually deadlier than previous mooks, armed with the best submachine guns and equipped with bulletproof vests.
  • Tap on the Head: In Blood Money, 47 can knock people out by smacking them on the back of the head with his pistol. It's never specified how much long-term damage this causes, so it's hard to say whether it's a straight example or not (although considering that people who get smacked on the back of the head don't count as witnesses at the end of the mission...)
  • Third-Person Shooter
  • Throw It In: According to Word of God, Absolution's Intuition mechanic began life as a developer tool to determine pathfinding after the AI became so insanely complex they could no longer playtest properly. It was later added to the game proper, provoking much outcry, but IO have hinted that it's not quite so forgiving on higher difficulties.
  • Tragic Bromance: Tommy and Natt, two of the cops from the Absolution E3 demo.
  • Trailers Always Lie: After watching the trailer for Blood Money you'd rather expect Parchezzi to be your nemesis throughout the game rather than two rather lackluster encounters. It also portrays the game as more of an action shooter than a stealth game, leaving dozens of dead bodies would give you a terrible score in any Hitman game, but is especially out of place here, where the game gives you much more of an emphasis on stealth. It also shows 47 taking a bead on a senator with a sniper rifle; in the actual game, your mission is to save that senator.
  • Translation Convention: Cringe-inducingly played straight in Codename 47, and notably (and thoroughly) averted thereafter.
  • Twenty Minutes Into the Future: Downplayed, but the 2016 Hitman game is hinted at as being set a few years into the future.
  • Two Shots From Behind the Bar: In the "Massacre at Cheung Chau Fish Restaurant" level of Codename 47, if 47 pulls a weapon on the bartender, he will duck behind the bar and unload a sawed-off shotgun on him.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: In the first game, Hitman: Codename 47. The final battle is a shootout in a maze-like arena against a respawning opponent (10 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 an entire game of witty, disguise-based stealth gameplay, the finale is basically an Unreal Tournament deathmatch. The level opening suggests that the intended method for winning the fight is not to go toe-to-toe against the clones, but rather to use your brain and camp using a convenient nearby minigun and ambush the clones as they appear one by one.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Jack Alexander in Hitman: Blood Money. Turns out he's the Big Bad.
    • And 47 himself in Contracts: all of the missions are really him remembering past missions, but his memory is clearly colored by his present state (i.e.: ambushed, shot and dying alone in a shitty hotel room).
    • One could argue that all of the games, even those without an explicit narrator, feature this to one degree or another.
  • Vertical Kidnapping: You can do this via hiding at the top of an elevator and scooping up unlucky victims with your fibre wire. Also something of a Game Breaker, as it makes no noise and automatically hides the corpse on top of the elevator.
    • It's not really a gamebreaker, since there's only two levels where you can take out a target that way, and doing it to anyone but a target ruins your "Silent Assassin" rating.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: While the series puts an emphasis on stealth from Silent Assassin and onwards, players can complete a mission by using any means available to them.
    • Some people see how many people they can murder with a hammer without being discovered in Blood Money.
    • Even more so, it's possible to complete nearly every mission in the second game with the golf club alone, with a Silent Assassin rating.
    • Most of the settings take this Up to Eleven—nothing says heroism like slaughtering the entire population of quiet suburb or massacring all the patients and staff of a rehab clinic. Its entirely possibly to kill everyone on most levels; sometimes, you can even do so stealthily, though obviously that requires a bit of patience.
    • Large number of possible ratings (Terrorist, Mass Murderer, Sociopath, Deranged Slayer etc.) motivates one to experiment.
    • Here's a fun trick in Blood Money: in one mission, a woman will invite you to a private room, only to reveal herself to be an assassin herself. After you kill her, a guard passes by outside. Sedate him, take his clothes, and hide the body in the other room...by dragging him on top of the assassin's body. What's he going to think when he wakes up?
    • Hell, one of the achievements in Blood Money is to get exactly 47 kills. This game encourages reckless abandon and merciless slaughter. Especially made fun on the "A New Life" when you set up a sniping spot and gun down each and every FBI agent and neighbor they can manage.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment: In general, killing non-targets indiscriminately penalises 47.
  • Video Game Remake: Contracts remade several levels from the PC-exclusive original Codename 47.
  • Villain Protagonist: He is a hitman, after all...
  • Villainous Incest: In the "Death on the Mississippi" mission in Blood Money, 47 is told to recover photographs proving that his target, drug runner Skip Muldoon, has been having an affair with his niece. It is heavily implied that the niece is the client who hired him for the job in question.
    • Also, the bride and groom in the "Til' Death Do Us Part" mission in the same game are cousins.
      • Which means that the bride was the niece from the previous mission and she was the one who hired 47 for both missions.
  • Walking the Earth
  • Weapon of Choice: 47's signature weapons are a pair of custom silver AMT Hardballer pistols with stylized fleur-de-lis' engraved on the grip. He also carries a Fiber Wire for silent, stealthy strangulations.
  • We Gotta Stop Meeting Like This: Agent Smith, an incompetent CIA agent that 47 keeps having to rescue, says this eventually. 47 notes that it's unlikely.
  • 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' in Codename 47, who can't seem to decide whether he's Russian, Scottish or German.
  • White Void Room: The original game ends in one; its loose remake, Contracts, begins in that same room and has you escape from the facility before the SWAT team busts in.
  • Worst News Judgment Ever: The newspapers ending each level in Blood Money will always give the 72 point treatment to whichever assassination 47 has just pulled off. Meanwhile, stories like the death of the United States vice president are relegated to minor blurbs. Vaguely justified in that the report about the Veep's death is in a foreign newspaper.
  • Xanatos Roulette: Most of Agent 47's methods of causing "accidental" deaths, especially in Blood Money, might seem this way to the characters, but that's because they don't know that he's actually done this a couple of dozen times before getting it right.
  • You All Look Familiar: Quite a few points in the games, but most notably the crowd in New Orleans in Blood Money, which consists of no more than a dozen individual character templates, cloned across hundreds, if not thousands of people. Needless to say, it's quite noticeable. Having said that, Blood Money was one of the very first games to have such a huge crowd of completely autonomous polygonal characters, so they probably had to make compromises somewhere.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: 47 doesn't want to be an assassin, but it's his genetic destiny.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Dr. Ort-Meyer had 47 kill the other four genetic donors of the cloning project so he wouldn't have to share the fruits of his work, and he tried to have 47 killed off, deeming him obsolete after completing the 48 series of clones. Naturally, 47 doesn't take that well and kills his last father and all of his brothers.
  • Zombie Apocalypse - No, seriously. It's a Easter egg on the "Death on the Mississippi" level of Blood Money. Everyone is given limping animation or the dragging animation, and anything but sufficient damage from explosives or a headshot can kill them. They use melee attacks, which are incredibly ineffective against 47, so the mission's a cakewalk. Of course, having to murder everyone on the cruise ship gets you a much lower ranking than Silent Assassin, but whatever.
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