User blog comment:Doodpeal/PE Proposal: Manny Pardo/@comment-14660436-20190530183610

Familiar with the work, so I feel inclined to make a response. Manny is a little complicated in a few aspects. I'll start off by saying that although the heinous standards are insanely high, Pardo is unique in that he is one of the few characters in the series who has genuinely no valid excuse for what he's doing, as well as the fact that he's an actual serial killer in contrast to the other characters. We know he's an attention seeker who kills tons of people (as both a cop and as a serial killer) for media fame, but do we get any justification for his actions? No. And even the G-Man-esque Richard cannot grasp why Pardo does what he does, which is a stark contrast to how Richard interacts with the other main characters, who usually have genuine motives.

Now, Pardo may not have the highest body count in the games; that honor would probably go to Jacket and The General (both have redeeming qualities) and to some extend, The Janitors (orchestrated a large amount of mass murders); however, Pardo ends up killing at least 100 people in Hotline Miami 2 and the bulk of it is made up of criminals he had killed during his rampages. It isn't made clear that he killed tons of hoodlums and mobsters for a noble cause either and when he carried out his mass murders, he was knowingly abusing his status as a police officer, was frowned upon by his colleagues for violations and at times undermined the authority of his superiors. I wouldn't consider Pardo's work as a police officer to be "incompetent" necessarily, since he knows what he's doing and is an outright killing machine during fights, he just doesn't care about playing by the rules at all.

It's also important to note that Pardo has limited resources compared to the likes of the two Janitors (who spearheaded the whole 50 Blessings operation in the first game and are the only other characters in the series who I could see qualifying as PE) and The General (who founded 50 Blessings and killed both the US and Russian presidents respectively, causing a nuclear war at the end of the series, but he can't qualify anyway because he's genuinely affable and has a somewhat tragic backstory)

His serial killings are a new level of low for Pardo because he only does it so he can investigate his own killings for attention from the media while passing them off as someone else's doing and even tries to frame Alex (one of the Fans copycatting Jacket's killings) for one of the murders by planting his victims' wallet in her house. He has at least 7 victims to his "Miami Mutilator" name and three of them are shown (thus, offscreen villainy isn't at play here, since we actually see the bodies). His modus operandi consists of killing his victims and then desecrating them post-mortem and each victim we see gets progressively worse to the point that his final victim is completely mutilated beyond recognition (see image file "HM2MiamiMutilatorVictim3.jpg" under Manny Pardo's Manny Pardo/Gallery|gallery]] page). One victim had their throat slashed, the second was kidnapped and strangled to death and the last one was shot, which implies that Pardo once again abused his authority as a police officer by having his victim let him in, since there were no signs that Pardo broke in. Then of course there's the fact that he's jealous of the attention the 50 Blessings "animal mask killings" get, further emphasized by him shooting Tony out of spite and lying to the SWAT team about it, framing Alex and telling Evan to write about the Miami Mutilator instead.

Speaking of Evan, I think it's worth discussing that Manny does seem to have an odd friendship with him and seems to help Evan with his own investigation. I'm not sure if it's a mitigating though, since one of the leads Manny gave to Evan was a Russian mobster held up in a heavily guarded casino which could have gotten Evan killed. Pardo is pretty reluctant about helping Evan in general and seems like he just wants Evan off his tail. Even Evan admits that Pardo isn't a particularly good friend and calls Pardo a douchebag. Then he tries to manipulate Evan into writing about the Miami Mutilator, his own serial killer identity, instead of the masked killings so he can get more attention from the press. There's also Evan appearing to be interrogated by the police in Pardo's nightmare, which implies that Pardo is paranoid of Evan catching on to what he's doing eventually. In addition, Pardo being friendly to women is very faux affable, since his whole "You wouldn't believe what they have me doing" statement to the waitress didn't mean much after he gunned down the hoodlums at the grocery store without showing remorse for it afterwards, while Pardo hitting on Alex just made him look like a creep.

What I'm really concerned about with Pardo is the existence of the ventriloquists dummy in Pardo's nightmare (or the "Phantom" if you will). The Phantom is apparently supposed to represent Pardo's Miami Mutilator identity and makes sharp accusations towards Pardo in his dream (saying that "murderers always return to the scene of a crime" and claiming that Pardo "created" him), which Pardo ignores. Since the Hotline Miami games have a confusing storyline, we can't take this for granted, but some people theorize that Pardo was not in control of himself while committing his serial killings and that Pardo pushing the Phantom off of him when it tries to "hug" him was supposedly him fighting his Miami Mutilator persona. Again, these are merely theories, so we don't know if we could take this as factual information as the in-game information is vague. There are also the crazed messages the "Miami Mutilator" had left behind at the crime scenes which could also imply that Pardo isn't in control of his own state of mind, but I honestly don't buy that. We know for a fact that Pardo must have been completely aware of what he was doing when he tried to frame Alex, held one of his victims in the trunk of his car, telling Evan to write about the Miami Mutilator (wouldn't have said this otherwise if he wasn't so obsessed about media attention and fame), asking investigators if the Miami Mutilator left any clues behind so he can cover his tracks better, killing Tony in cold blood for "stealing" his thunder and getting defensive and hostile towards Richard for condemning his actions. It might be easier to go by what information we've been given in-game rather than speculating. There's also the part in the nightmare where the Police Chief condemns Pardo's actions, but Pardo keeps denying his claims, refuses to give himself up and tries to prove his "innocence" with his badge.

Overall, I think I'll let the rest of you be the judge for now, so I won't be giving a definite "yes" or "no" quite yet.