"None leave the slaughter house! Not alive!" - Words that perfectly describes Smasher. A vile and sadistic psychopath who lives for the thrill of violence and slaughter.
| “ | I'll slaughter each and every one of you. You're all the same meat to me. | „ |
| ~ This quote really shows how much of a monster this machine truly. People are meat to him and he's a butcher who came to slaughter them. |
Hello everyone, and welcome to my first proposal of 2025! I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year event and I pray for a happy life for those among us in this new year.
After some thinking, I've finally decide to a proposal for perhaps one of the most god-awful villains in gaming history, mainly because of how much a monster he truly is and how he doesn't even hide it. He's badically the most classic example of a card-carrying villain. And I was geniunely surprised to learn that this bastard wasn't proposed a long time ago. But now, that changes here and now. We're finally getting this badass monster (badass but defintely hateable) the PE approval.
Ladies and gentleman, allow me to introduce to you: The Night City Boogeyman, Adam Smasher.
What's the Work?[]
Cyberpunk is a sci-fi dystopian multi-media franchise, that was kickstarted by its R. Talsorian Games' Cyberpunk. It tells stories of the harsh and miserable life in the setting of Cyberpunk, where society has broken down, the government has become inffectual, and anything that can be a good life must be obtained by working for one of the mega-corps who basically control the world, such as Arasaka Corporation. It's also very common to obtain and modify one's body with cybernatic augmentations, but the stacking up too much cyberware will cause a person to go insane, which people call them "cyber-psychosis". The lore of the franchise revoles around Night City, Califoria.
While the setting of Cyberpunk tends to have a lot of vile criminals, from mass murderers to torturers to rapists, there is ultimately one person who is literally the embodiment of the heinous crimes in Night City. And he's more like a thing than a person, given his sadistic and monstrous nature as well as the fact that the cybernatics has made him more of a monster than a man. This thing is none other than the infamous Boogeyman of Night City, Adam Smasher.
Who is Adam Smasher? What has he done?[]
Adam Smasher is the secondary antagonist of the Cyberpunk franchise. He is a sadistic and brutal mercenary who tends to live for one thing that greatly pleases him: slaughter. Because of his endless need to commit violence, he became an infamous legend in the city, giving him the title the "Night City Boogeyman".
Background[]
Adam was born on June 21st to an Bronx American father and an Russian mother on the streets of New York City. Growing up during the Collapse, he was known to be the toughest and meanest kid in his block, eventually joining his neighborhood gang. While being a fairly typical worthless punk, he became the gang's new leader and often rumble around what was left of the Yankee Stadium. However, the US Army would wipe out his entire gang, leaving Adam as the only survivor. Soon after his gang's wipeout, he would enlist in the army, but nout out of patritism, but simply because he found that the army had better guns he could find than he could on his own. He spent over six years in the Marine Corps, leaning many different skills and became a 108kg strong man. But he was eventually expelled from the army due to his insubordination. After returning to his hometown, Adam began taking up the life of a mercenary, where he would specializies in natsy and destructive gigs. For the following years, he considered New York his stomping ground, accepting all kinds of dangerous jobs that suited him, from extractions or harassment to assassination and demolition. Due to his sadistic nature and his lack of squeamishness, he found it to be a good life as it granted him attention and many things such as guns, gear, drugs, and one-stands, to which the latter were described to be very brutal, heavily implying Adam's status as a rapist.
But everything would change for Adam in 2015 when he and other mercs was employed by a local brach of Arasaka Corporation to steal a protype tech from a competitor. During the job, Adam was maimed bt two rocket-propelled grenades and was later transported to a medical center, where he was flatlined for over eight minutes before the doctors managed to reanimate his brain, but the remains of Adam were brought in back by his teammates in a backpack, and everyone could be able to communicate with his brain in the tank only through the interface. Although Adam considered suicide due to his condition, he was offered a deal by Arasaka; a full body conversion (AKA cyberware) in return for a 15 year employment contract. In his words for the reason "They figured I'd just walked into some bad luck and they liked my resume, performance record, skill, good looks, and all that.". Adam only knew a bit about cyberware and never had the money to afford an FBC, so he thought about it either, but knowing full well that if he refused the deal, his remains would be in someone's body bank the next day. Without any choice, he accepted the deal though it didn't gravely bother him since he never had any thoughts of humanity anyway.
Ever since accepting the deal, Smasher relized that being inside his new chromed body, accepting the deal was the best decision he ever made. After returning to NYC, he quickly used his new cyberware power to spill the blood of anyone who dared crossed in his path and claiming the lives of many people, including boosterpunks, power armored soldiers, corporate hit men, and even children. For him, metal was better than meat. Adam then began taking many missions and gigs as long as they honored two conditions; the first being that it wasn't obvious suicide or double-cross missions; and the second was to have as much collateral damage and cilvilian casualties as possible. Most of his contracts were from Arasaka and they often put Smasher on the offensive field duty, handing the competiton they were dealing with and often doing retrieval missions.
In the following years, Adam would defend the New York branch of Arasaka, killing off dozens of merc crews that tried to infiltrate the building, while at the same time cleansing the city of what he considered to be a "fleshy infection". In one special mission, a team of mercenaries were successful in stealing Arasaka files from the local offices, so Smasher proceed to pursue the last remaining member of the the crew who tried to flee after going into a nearby mallplex. Adam catched up to her though she was hiding among a mallpex crowd. In response, he used his Tsunami Helix arm-shooting shotgun and began killing countless people. Once the survivors dispered, Smasher approached the countless bodies and retrieve the files from the corpse of the merc girl.
Adam also developed a quiet rivalry with Morgan Blackhand, seeing the elite solo as a threat to his worldview of "metal-is-better-than-meat ". Adam had tried to challenge to a face-off repeatedly but Morgan only ignore his confrontations, which only stoked the cyborg's psychotic rage towards him higher.
Cyberpunk 2020[]
By 2020, Smasher began having multiple custom FBC designs at his dispoal and later on began trying to get his hands on the new Cybermatrix Reactive Body Plating (CRBP), which was also equipped with body sensors that would warn him of any laser-targeted weapons, allowing Smasher to dodge any incoming bullets with his boosterware.
By 2022, Smasher was fully employed by his contractor to fight in the Fourth Corporate War, something that made Adam extremely gleeful since he knew his arch-nemesis Blackhand was hired by Arasaka's rival Militech. During the conflict, He led the strike force against Militech, joyfully specialized in slaughtering not just Militech soldiers but even their own families,with one of these notorious attack happening in Connecticut during Sept 7th, 2022. On August 20th of 2023, when a Militech inscurision team led by Blackhand and Johnny Silverhand inflitrated the Soulkiller lab at the 120th floor in Arasaka Towers, Smasher and his team eagerly arrives to ambush the force. Silverhand tries to district him to help his team escape, but this proved to be futile and he was cut in half by Smasher as a result. This gave Shaitan however an opportunity to hold Smasher off.
Smasher, supplied with everything he could ever wanted, then reappared at the top of the towers equipped in an Arasaka DaiOni power armor, turning him into an unstopable machine. In his hand was Shaitian's biopod head, still allive. He then waves at Blackhand and presented Shaitan's hand, taking the solo by surprise and he confronts the cyborg, who also provokes Blackhand about Silverhand's death and mentioning that Shaitan would soon follow unless Blackhand recovered the biopod from his hands. An enraged Blackhand ordered his people to evacuate without him and once the AV lifts off, Morgan proceeds to remark about testing Smasher's "meat vs metal" philosophy before the two lauched themselves at each other in a last desperate attempt to kill each ohter. The outcome of the duel was never officially shown and the building then began to shake from the detonation of a nuclear device, causing the NIght City Holoucast.
Somehow miraclously Adam surviced the blast and was tasked by Saburo Arasaka to take care of Silverhand's body and his possessions, being one of the few people who knew where the Night City rockstar was buried. Shortly after this, he would fell off the radar and disappeared for many years. During the next decades, there were multiple rumours of an unstoppable metal juggernaunt going on multiple operations around the globe, although it is unknown if majority of them were done by Smasher or it was someone claiming to be him. He appeared in Night City from time to time, and even teamed up with Rogue Amendiares on several occassions, despite the mutal hatred they have each for each other.
At some point after 2045, Smasher found more of Silverhand's possessions in Samantha Stevens' garage and around other parts of Night City. Although he sold majority of the rockstar's items, he decided to keep some of them as souvenirs, such as Silverhand's Porsche and his signature weapon the Malorian Arms 3516. Then in early-mid 2070s, Adam was assigned as the bodyguard of Yorinobu Arasaka, and was placed in charge of carrying out Arasaka's dirty work, gaining a reputation for his expert management of handing loose ends. Then during his return in NIght City, he made the Ebunike Docks in Watson one of his bases of operations, promoting one of his loyal followers Jeremiah Gray to be his right-hand man and gifting him Silverhand's signature weapon.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners[]
Adam Smasher appears as the final antagonist of the anime series Edgerunners. He's the final character presented in the series, as well as the more dangerous and hard enemy to face against, even more so than the main baddie Faraday.
In the year of 2076, Smasher was met with counter-intelligence division agents Kate and Douglass, who tasked him in stopping a rampage from a cyberpyscho named David Martinez, a young rising Cyberpunk who donned an experimental Arasaka exoskelton that utilized in gravity manipulation technology, something Adam is unimpressed by. Apparently, David and his crew were on a warpath to rescue an important Netrunner to Arasaka named Lucyna "Lucy" Kushinada, who had been kidnaped by Faraday, who was planning to deliever her to Arasaka Tower. Smasher accompanied Douglass at the docking bay, where they met up with Faraday, who had Lucy in his grasp.
David then entered the dock within the blink of eye and uses his anti-gravity technology on Douglass and the Arasaka soldiers in the docking bay, killing all of them save for Douglass who was protected by Smasher. Faraday then tries to order Smasher to kill David, but the latter ignores and begins to focus his attention on David, shooting him in the stomach, prompting the boy to use his Sandevistan and rescues Lucy while escaping Smasher. This prompts Smasher to do the same and even fired a misslie that directly hit the back of David's exo-skeleton with enough force to eject him, Lucy, and Faraday (who was still straped to the Trauma Team's stretcher) out of Arasaka Tower, to which Faraday falls to his demise.
David and Lucy managed to briefly make it to the plaza outside of Arasaka Tower, where they would regropup with Rebecca and Falco. But Smasher pursues David, descending to the plaza, landing on and brutally smashes Rebecca, killing her in the process. He then blasts off Falco's arm and quickly his Sandevistan to avoid attacks from David's attack, much to his shock as the former scoffs that it was a "rudimentary implant". Lucy tries to hack quickhack Smasher, but it had little effect on him other than briefly annoying him before Lucy's cyberdeck fried. Smasher then tries to kill an escpaing Lucy and Falco, but David quickly uses this as a chance to immoblize the psychotic cyborg, which amused Smasher and he responds by ripping off the anti-grav devices from the exo-skeleton, causing it to crumble under its own weight, and beating down a crippled David.
Before finishing off David, Adam admits he had some fun and offers David to make him a construct but the latter rejects this offer, to which Adam responds by shooting him in the face, ending the young Cyberpunk's life.
Cyberpunk 2077[]
Smasher makes his appearance in 2077 as the secondary antagonist of the game, as well as the final boss.
By 2077, Adam still remains as Yorinobu's bodyguard. He is first seen in a braindance of Evelyn Parker, where he taunts the fearful Parker that she looks like a cut of "f*ckable meat". A number of weeks later, Smasher is seen accompanying Yorinobu in the penthouse, meeting with Saburo to talk to him about the Relic (In a horrifying realization, if V has the Threat Senser, Adam's color is immediately red, which all but implies he knows that V and Jackie are in the penthouse behind the screen). Smasher and Saburo's bodyguard Goro Takemura then left shortly to let the Arasaka relatives talk to each other before coming back inside to find Saburo dead, with Yorinobu claiming he was assassinated. Smasher then attempted to stop the witnessess to Saburo's death, V and Jackie, but they managed to escape before Smasher could catch them.
Following Saburo's death, Yorinobu became the new CEO of Arasaka while promoting Smasher to become the Head of Security. During the memorial parade for Saburo, Sandayu Oda warned Smasher that the parade was going to be sabotaged in an effort to harm and kidnap Yorinobu's sister Hanako, but Smasher brushed off Oda's warnings, even accusing him of disobeying Yorinobu as Oda persists in questioning his actions. But Oda was ultimately proven correct as Hanako was kidnap by Takemura with V's assist. Shortly afterwards, Smasher led an Arasaka strike team to personally rescue and takes Takemura, demanding for him and V to be killed (which can be carried out in one of the endings except the Devil ending).
The fate of Adam Smasher is then decided in the finale of the game. While he can become a Karma Houdini in the Tower ending and a certain route in Phantom Liberty to cure V's condition, Adam can be fought in all of the endings by either V or Johnny who now has control of V (permanently or temporary) but can kill Rogue (in the Sun route where Rogue sacrifices herself to weaken Adam) or Saul (the Star route) during the endings. You can also decide whether to finish Adam's off or give him a cruel mercy and spare him, leaving him utterly humiliated as a result.
Either, should you choose one of these endings route, V or Johnny will finally bring an end to the infamous Night City Boogeyman and avenge all the people he had murdered all these years.
Mitigating Factors[]
| “ | Survival favors the strong. | „ |
| ~ Words that showcases Adam's nature. He believes in the strong, not the weak. |
Night City is full of many criminals and mercenaries, but the majority of them are proven to be decent people, as flawed as they can be. But with Adam Smasher? The guy has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. He has no empathy for anyone or anything whatsoever, and he will gladly kill anyone for the smallest of reasons. He doesn't have any well-intentioned motives, no tragedy he is motivated by. He absolutely has nothing. He just wants to cause endless slaughter and is even willing to watch the world burn just so he could be amused.
Adam is a firm believer in his Social Darwinism beliefs and as such, he greatly loathes things such as weaklings and mercy. For example, if V spared Oda, he will call it a human act and it is disgusting to him. And not to mention that he has no qualms about causing unnecessary casualties and destruction, even wanting to list that as part of his condition to do mercenary jobs offered to him. Even when getting cybernatics, Adam still proves himself to be a monster even before getting more cybernatic upgrades as he's more amazd about himself gaining more and more upgrades to test out and kill people. All of this further proves that Adam is a card-carrying villain who is not unaware of his evil nature and is very proud of it.
While he does serve loyally under the Arasaka Corporations (hell, he was even willing to side with Yorinobu during the Arasaka Civil War), that's mainly because they allowed him to do as he pleased while granting him upgrades for his cybernatic body, so that's nothing more but pragmatic bussiness between them. And even though Adam tends to be a benelovent boss towards his crew and even offered them rewards, Adam doesn't care about them and merely sees them as expandables. Although Adam does seem to have respect for certain enemies, that doesn't really stop him from murdering them. And even then, he will mostly likely forget about them anyway as to him, there will just meat to his eyes.
So overall no. Adam has no mitigating factors or redeeming qualties whatsoever. He's just a monster, even before gaining cybernatics that would normally consume a human's soul.
Heinous Standards[]
I won't lie, the heinous standards in Cyberpunk is very high. And we mean very high. The franchise tends to have a lot of heinous crimes such as murder, torture, assault, rape, horrific experiments, trafficking, you name it. And majority of them are committed by corrupt CEOs of mega corps, large gangs, and even small-time criminals such as assassins and mercenaries.
But with Adam Smasher? Oh yeah, he definitely passess big time, even with villains who seem to have higher heinous crimes than him. And that's because of his needless desire to slaughter as many people as possible, as well as to cause chaos and havoc. And unlike most villains of Cyberpunk, this guy has no real motivations behind his crimes. He's only motivated by his desire to kill and destroy anyone and anything in his path.
Firstly, during the Collapse, Adam served as a gang leader, having conflict with reparations before he joined the army simply so he could find better guns to use and after years of service, he was fired for insubordination. Following that, he became a solo mercenary where he took on jobs in New Yorks that were desribe to be nasty and destructive, something he gained attention for, due to his sadistic and brutal nature. These endless jobs he did gained him such as guns, gear, and drugs. It is also stated that he engaged in brutal one-stands, and juding from this, the one-stands he did were mostly likely raped by him. And then after accepting Arasaka's corpo deal and becoming a killing machine for them, he began killing anyone in his way as a way to celebrate his newfound body, such as boosterpunks, corporate hit men, and even children. And he did many missions, mainly from Arasaka, with one condition: to cause as much collateral damage and civillian casualties possible. In fact, during his time defending a branch of Arakasaka in New York, he killed off dozens of merc crews while murdering more civilians in the city, considering them as a "fleshly infection". In one of these missions, he killed countless people with his Tsunami Helix arm-shooting shotgun just to get the files that were stolen by the merc girl. All of these horrific actions managed to get him a terrible reputation in the eastern seabord.
Then during the year of 2023, he gleefully takes part in the Fourth Corporate War, mainly because he knew that his arch-nemesis Blackhand was in the Militech forces. He led the strike force against Militech, slaughtering not just Militech soldiers but even their own families, with one of these infamous slaughters happening in Connecitut. Then, there was the Night City Holocaust on August 20th, where he would kill Johnny Silverhand (the man was cut in half and barely alive before Rogue inserted an Engram chip in the dying rockboy, and ultimately led to Johnny being forced to serve as Arasaka's prisoner in the Reliec and the biochip was then placed into V's head, which slowly erased their personality, which will "killed" them in the end) and critically wound Shaitan, presenting the latter's head to Blackhand.
Following the Night City Holocaust, Adam would go on multiple operations around the globe (although it's currently unknown if majority of them were done by Smasher) and he appeared in Night City from time to time, and even teamed up with Rogue on several occassions (much to her displeasure). Then in early-mid 2070s, after becoming Yorinobu's bodyguard, he became in charge of carrying out Arasaka's dirty work, gaining a dreadful reputation of handing loose ends. Then around in 2076 (Cyberpunk Edgerunners), Adam becomes responsible for killing off David Martinez and Rebecca, the former he brutally tortured the boy, cripping him severely and after rejecting his offer, he brutally shots him in the head, killing him and as for the latter, Smasher crushed Rebecca to death by landing above her. He even tries to kill Lucy and Falco, simply because he refuses to let the "lambs" escape the slaughterhouse, but thanks to David, the two managed to survive but they are clearly affected by what happened, especially in the case of Lucy, who is now living with grief that her boyfriend is dead because of Smasher. Then in 2077, after becoming the Head of Security following Yorinobu becoming the new CEO of Arasaka, Adam carries out the heavy lifting on killing those who opposes Yorinobu, which is best seen when he personally attacks V and Takemura, capturing the latter and rescuing Hanako, while ordering V to be killed. And unless you choose to do the Don't Fear the Reaper ending, should you choose Rogue or the Aldecaldos, Adam will kill her (though more like causing her death) or the Aldecaldos' former leader Saul, right before trying to kill V.
And again, the resources in Cyberpunk are high, since we are dealing with factions such as mega-corps (such as Arasaka), milita factions like Militech, and large-scale gangs, such as Maelstrom and the Scavengers. But in the case of Adam Smasher, he really doesn't have much resources. All he has is a highly adavanced cybernatic body, alongside with having an highly experienced of being a dangerous mercenary and war hero, who worked as a dangerous and effective mercenary for Arasaka before becoming the Head of Security by Yorinobu. The fact he has so much casualties and destruction on his hands, even before becoming an Corpo dog and had gained a dreadful reputation in Night City speaks volumes of just how terrible Adam Smasher is.
Final Verdict[]
A huge yes to this machine of a man. Even in a crapsack setting like Cyberpunk, this guy defintely shows how much of a monster he truly is, even without cybernatics.