One Depressing Johnny Silverhand Detail Gets Resolved, But Not In Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty

Summary Some of Cyberpunk 2077's mysteries are answered in obscure lore, like the story of Johnny Silverhand's body from Cyberpunk RED.

Grayson claims to know what happened to Johnny's body, but conflicts arise about his burial location in Cyberpunk 2077.

Despite some answers about Johnny's body, many questions remain unanswered, leaving room for more Cyberpunk 2077 mysteries.

A long-standing Cyberpunk 2077 mystery finally has a satisfactory solution - but it wasn't answered by Phantom Liberty. Cyberpunk's massive, game-changing Phantom Liberty DLC resolved many secrets, answering a number of lingering questions about people, places, and things otherwise unexplained. But it couldn't turn over every stone. The setting still retains a lot of mystique. Whether someone at CD Projekt Red is saving these secrets for the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, or no one's come up with a good answer yet, varies from case to case.

But some of Cyberpunk 2077's biggest mysteries are answered in unexpected places. Between the tabletop game, the video game, and the Edgerunners anime, the Cyberpunk setting has an extensive body of lore, and sometimes details are hidden away in obscure sourcebooks that have been out of print for 20 years. And sometimes, unexpected details have a major impact on figures central to the Cyberpunk continuity - at least one of them details an important character's ultimate fate.

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What Really Happened To Johnny Silverhand's Body In Cyberpunk 2077?

The Columbarium Doesn't Line Up With Grayson’s Story

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Everyone knows that Johnny Silverhand died following the raid on Arasaka Tower that catapulted him into eternal superstardom, and his consciousness was eventually uploaded into the Relic that V steals and eventually installs during Cyberpunk 2077. But the question of what really happened to his body after the fact is a much more complicated one.

Just by running through the game normally, players may eventually encounter the side job “Chippin’ In.” This involves sneaking onto the Ebunike container ship alongside Rogue, where V encounters Adam Smasher's right-hand man, Jeremiah Grayson. V interrogates Grayson to find out what Adam Smasher did with Johnny after Arasaka killed him, and Grayson reveals that Johnny's body was dumped in the Northern Oilfields after his death. V will then ride out to the spot where Johnny was buried in an unmarked grave, and the two will have a heart-to-heart.

V's dialogue with Johnny during this quest may determine whether the player unlocks the secret ending of Cyberpunk 2077, “(Don't Fear) The Reaper.”

But something doesn't add up. Head to the Columbarium in North Oak instead, and there'll be a grave dedicated to Johnny, alongside references to Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and various other characters from the Cyberpunk continuity. His epitaph even uses his birth name, reading, "Robert John Linder: Son of a bitch who never gave up. A legend among legends." So what gives? One could readily make the argument that Johnny's grave lies empty, his body remains in the Oilfields, and his space in the Columbarium is just a symbolic monument. But peer a little deeper into Cyberpunk lore, and there's a better answer.

Edgerunners Retrived Johnny's Body & Brought It To Los Alamos Lab

A Cyberpunk RED Theory Confirmed By Mike Pondsmith

But Johnny's body definitely didn't remain at the Oilfields forever: a story contained in the tabletop sourcebook Cyberpunk RED suggests that a group of edgerunners was once tasked with retrieving it. The story, entitled "Black Dog," revolves around a gang of six edgerunners, collectively called the Cyber6. Searching for a lost Samurai song, they run into a firefighter and fellow fan named Samantha Stevens, who hires them to transport a mysterious crate from a pickup spot in Night City to Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico.

"Black Dog" has at least one other connection to Cyberpunk 2077: it's implied that the character who greets the Cyber6 in Los Alamos, Angel, is actually Johnny's girlfriend Alt Cunningham.

When the crate arrives, Angel opens it to find a dead body and an active mini-nuke. She greets the former with, "Hello, my love," implying that this is indeed Johnny Silverhand. This theory was later confirmed by Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith via a Reddit comment under the username therealmaxmike. According to Pondsmith, this story was originally intended to be included in Firestorm III: Aftershock, but didn't make it - it was later incorporated into Cyberpunk RED instead.

The Los Alamos setting - where the Manhattan Project, which resulted in the development of the atomic bomb, took place - seems to imply that the true purpose of the mission was to get the mini-nuke safely away from anyone who might use it. But in truth, there's reason to believe the whole operation was orchestrated by Angel/Alt in an effort to retrieve Johnny's remains. After all, she was the reason Samantha went into the Hot Zone and came across Johnny's body in the first place. Samantha, a fan of Samurai herself, probably recognized Johnny and took care to get him to Angel.

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So Angel was the last person in possession of Johnny's body, but it's not totally clear what she did with it. She cares for Johnny, so it's unlikely she went and dumped him in the Oilfields. She may have had him quietly cremated and restored to his niche at the Columbarium, or buried privately elsewhere. In truth, Angel/Alt is the only one who actually knows what happened to Johnny in the end.

Why Grayson Claims To Know What Happened To Johnny In Cyberpunk 2077

Who's Really Buried At The Oilfield?

Custom Image by Katarina Cimbaljevic

As Adam Smasher's right-hand man, it makes sense that Grayson knows what happened to Johnny Silverhand in the end. After all, Adam killed him. But there's a clear conflict in the two stories, and while it's certainly possible that Adam and Grayson went after Johnny's body after Alt retrieved it and returned it to an unmarked grave, that doesn't seem like their style. Consider that Grayson only claims to know where Johnny ended up under duress - V has a gun pointed at him. He could just be lying to get V off his back.

Grayson may have also just lied to upset V (and Johnny by extension). He clearly knows someone was buried out in the Oilfields in an unmarked grave, and that kind of unceremonious anonymity inevitably upsets the fame-obsessed Johnny. When he finds the spot that Grayson indicates, he's disappointed that there's no marker. V can dream up a simple fix by scribbling Johnny's initials in the dust, but even then, he's upset. This may have been a negotiating tactic by Grayson, attempting to take V down a peg to improve his own position, or just trying to get a rise out of them.

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But it's still not totally clear who's buried in the Oilfields. There's a patch of disturbed earth there, so it's obviously someone. It doesn't seem to be Johnny, but it's not like V digs up the grave to find out. Johnny's probably not the only body Grayson dumped for Adam Smasher. He may have sent V out to the Oilfields just to appease them, or worse, gotten confused about which body was buried where.

Ultimately, while there's a lot more lore around Johnny's body than it may seem, there are still several questions left unanswered. Although he's addressed some questions about "Black Dog," Mike Pondsmith has never officially confirmed whether Angel and Alt are really the same person. And it's still not totally clear who was buried in the Oilfields, or why Grayson sent V there. For now, those can be chalked up as two more Cyberpunk 2077 mysteries yet to be solved.

Source; therealmaxmike/Reddit