Why do so many people hate Johnny Silverhand?

[a sentient mcnugget]

I thought he was cool, flawed (aren't we all?), selfish yet considerate too.
A well-written and well-acted character imho.

I equally liked Jacky too and wish he had a bigger part to play in the story.

[Dugaul]

if a future happens were corp rich people get to live forever on a chip, while the poor live in the dirt I do hope a terrorist pops up, then you need a v for vendetta type.

[Noodlesocks]

he reminds me of my little cousin during her early teen years where not being allowed to do whatever she wanted was "unfair" and she'd have a little tantrum and go in a huff.

[Tijger]

Originally posted by MGB | Screaming Internally:

I think he's a great character, but as a person he's a complete prick. I'd hate him in real life.

He grows on you though. Like cancer. Pretty much literally :D

In a way he's a fantastic character and you also start to realize as you go through the game, especially when you interact with Alt, that what Johnny shows or tells you might not actually be what happened...which leaves you with even more questions and possibly annoyance with him.

As much as I agree with you on the real life part, I think he's a great character for this game.

[mnita200012]

Originally posted by Heimdall313:

He lives in our heads rent free and for some reason people don't like having Uncle Ted (as voiced by the absolute champ that is Keeanu Reeves) in their head.
Mostly people dislike him because he's the drunk, woman beating dad template you're not supposed to like.

you are so right

[valium]

Johnny is an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but he grows on you.

Like a fungus.

[Gamefever]

There is a lot more going on than meets the eye.

For one Johnny was not supposed to be Johnny, he was supposed to be Morgan Blackhand, but the primary creator of the franchise put MB off limits.

So we got Johnny the Rocker Boy.
Johnnies entire Arasaka Tower story is actually a truncated version of Morgan Blackhands story.
Johnny died up on that tower distracting Adam Smasher so his friends could live.

Also Johnny the Rocker boy is blond in table top, not black haired like Morgan Blackhand.
Johnny is also nothing spectacular like Morgan Blackhand who is a crack shot.

Cyberpunk 2077 ended up being a success so the Pen an Paper game sort of did a retcon.
Johnny Engram version is an altered version of Johnny not even the original Johnny, it had Morgan Blackhands memories plus some of Johnnies.

Morgan Blackhand was the one that planned and planted the bomb(s) BTW.
Morgan faced off with Adam.
Even the retcon version Johnny still bit the dust.
The Rockerboy was better known so he got the rap for being a terrorist which lorewise he never was actually, maybe a bit of a jerk here an there but nothing like the crew he ended up with.
Johnnie was a Rockerboy first and formost, he only ended up being involved because his girlfriend ALT was kidnapped by Arasaka.
Johnnie Engram was kept on hand in case the company ever needed to prove to NUSA that they were on the up an up with all the events that went down at the Tower.
WHY?
Because Arasaka tower nuclear bomb was property of Arasaka which they had on site illegally and it was pinned on Johnny.
In other words everything that people blame on Johnny well it was never actually Johnny he really is just an ex-military guy turned Rock n Roller, he was only involved because his programmer girlfriend ended up turning out to be the key programmer of Soul Killer which Arasaka kidnapped her for.

Oh an,
The reason why Adam Smasher says "who?"
When you tell him greetings from Johnny in the video game, is because Adam Smasher has no clue who the heck Johnny actually is, sure he knew he was a rock star....BUT Adam and Johnny never were rivals.
Adam Smasher literally only bought Johnnies car probably was a fan even.
Adam an Morgan Blackhand are the real rivals.

Thus the Engram is not actually Johnny Silverhand, its actually an Engram of Morgan Blackhand with imprints of Johnies Memories.
Johnny was a well known "rebel"
Morgan Blackhand was a well known Merc, it would not have gone done well for Arasaka to have Morgan dead on scene up there.

[Silverbane7]

yes, Morgan was planned in the game. his 'body' is init to this day, being used (or rather, being re-used) by Mr BlueEyes.
(no, that does not mean he is what's left of Morgan. CDPR reused the stuff rather than waste it)

but Morgan did not plant or detonate the bomb.
Johnny and the others were Alpha team, Morgan and his covert group were Omega Team and the ones with the MiliTech nuke were player characters.
Beta Team lost the nuke when they were trying to remove the last world database from Arasaka Towers.
Arasaka had the only remaining uncorrupted database of world history and events, after the DataKrash.
(stupid world governments had first copied everything to digital, then destroyed the hard copies. so when Bartmoss ripped the Net a new one with the R.A.B.I.D.S., everything stored on the net went up in derezed digits)

as of currently, no one knows if Morgan is alive of dead. (other than Mike Pondsmith. Morgan is his character from back in the day)
so suggesting that Johnny's memories are a mash up of his and Morgans (mostly Morgan's) don't add up.

i lean towards the idea that Arasaka were planning to use Johnny's engram to prove they were the innocent party. they just never got the chance to plead their case. Johnny's engram languished there, forgotten till the VooDoo's found out about him.
Morgan dropped the deets for the mission on the president of the NUsa's desk (Elizabeth Cress iirc) before vanishing into the night after the events in the city.
she used that data to blackmail MiliTech into becoming an NUsa asset, property of the New United States of America.
she used the events of the AHQ incident to then have Arasaka banned form setting foot/doing biz on US soil for a couple decades.

it wasn't untill sentiment changed in the 2045's that Arasaka regained a hold on the US area via Night City.
Nomad Santiago's son, Trace Santiago (who was a media) dug into the info, because he smelled something wasn't adding up.
he later published a book detailing about how Arasaka's ADD (Area Denial Device, locked in the basement with Mikoshi, which was being constructed/ nearing completion of construction that day) was NOT the bomb that detonated, but that it was actually MiliTech's.
this was when Arasaka was able to get back into the NUsa area via Night City. this is also why both Corps have such a high interest in the city, and have so many units there.

Morgan has been 'unoficialy' spotted multiple times out in the wild.
(that is, he's been described but never filmed, thus never actually reported)
guy fitting his description has saved people before all over. he's a fireside Legend for some people, tho they don't actually know who he is. and he's been showing up since after the AHQ events.
untill Mike actually gets his finger out and drops more on what's happened to Morgan, we are still just speculating.
(it's true, he did say 'Morgan's off limits, guys. i have plans for him' to CDPR, which is why they ended up reusing the skin/mesh/body for BlueEyes rather than just delete it and start over. they even had a white haired, older Morgan buried in the files. dataminers have found them)

Morgan was last officially seen, standing on the top of the Tower, facing off against Smasher.
(he called him, Pipsqueak XD)
it even says 'Johnny MUST die in the attack, Morgan MUST dissapear' in the notes for the mission in the tabletop that the events are based on.
not die, like Johnny. but dissapear. Even back then, Mike was smart enough to make Morgan just vanish, and to leave himself options for Johnny (Spider and the chip she had)

[Okkuas]

Other than Johnny being a complete asshat for 95% of the time he appears (you need to play up into the oil fields scene for him to show any redeeming features, and that's pretty close to the end game), there are also the unskippable Johnny scenes that add absolutely nothing to the game and take you out of playing V and drop you quite literally into his shoes. You can only ever play them one way (there are few different convo options that you could choose, but since they have no effect on the end result, why bother), so they could just as well be cutscenes that could be skipped, because if you play the game more than once, they get really annoying and make you despise Johnny for stealing the scene yet again.

So even if Johnny himself doesn't quite deserve it, the way he is implemented together with being his narcissistic self for the majority of the game, does.

[Silverbane7]

Originally posted by Okkuas:

Other than Johnny being a complete asshat for 95% of the time he appears (you need to play up into the oil fields scene for him to show any redeeming features, and that's pretty close to the end game), there are also the unskippable Johnny scenes that add absolutely nothing to the game and take you out of playing V and drop you quite literally into his shoes. You can only ever play them one way (there are few different convo options that you could choose, but since they have no effect on the end result, why bother), so they could just as well be cutscenes that could be skipped, because if you play the game more than once, they get really annoying and make you despise Johnny for stealing the scene yet again.

So even if Johnny himself doesn't quite deserve it, the way he is implemented together with being his narcissistic self for the majority of the game, does.

there is a little change if you are less of an arse to Alt.
if 'Johnny' restrains himself when talking back to her, if you choose to let him and Rogue go, you can tell Alt you are sorry as him when you talk to her before entering Arasaka.

does not help that, if you played thru the original basegame, made peace with him up to a point and then start Phantom Liberty, he reverts back to being a arse for a good chunk of the expansion.

i understand that they are working off the 'everyone is jumping into the game just to start the expansion' premis. but it's kind of jarring to have someone who is kinda your buddy by then, suddenly hate you all over again.

i work off of him being a grumpy motherf*#her because Songbird muted him to the point he feels irrelivent. for someone with an ego as big as his (as big as ALL Rockers have, if they make it past the 'singing in a dive' point) that's going to hurt hard. and as is his way, he lashes out at V, since he can't lash out at Song.

also, you can't just 'side' with him on everything, to get him to be a better person. you have to call out his bulls#*t sometimes, but be sensitive at other times. can't give him all his own way, but can't treat him like he's not worth the time to talk.

that's why the journo's grumbled the game was 'too short' and did not satisfy with the endings.
they treated him to a blue pill special every time he needed to talk with V, ignored Panam's quests (probably because they were obsessing over Judy lol) so never unlocked her ending option. never bothered to let him talk to Rogue, so never unlocked that path ether.
never even found out Kerry existed XD since he and River are not tied to the main questline.
so all they had left was Yeetus Deleteus on the rooftop, or side with Hanako. and one grumpy as f#*k Rocker who they had never even spent a moment to try to get along with.

[Tokenn]

I would agree that Johnny is the master of bad takes (abandon Takemura? Distrust Judy?) but his development into a more reasonable and sympathetic character is all part of the story. I suspect a lot of the people who 'hate' him either aren't very far into the story, or just aren't paying attention to it.

[Fluclox]

Yeah I have no idea why people dislike him. He's clearly paranoid, trusts no-one, but does seem to genuinely care that V survives over the course of the game, and the change in his own character is really cool as the game progresses.

I love the moments where Johnny appears

[Lil Grandpa]

Johnny was my best bud.

[Ciaran Zagami]

He's based and they're libtards

[Waskustobaskus]

I love Silverhand.

[Myyrä]

I can see why people would hate him on just the base optics of his character, but when you take a deep dive, you'll see that beneath his "chaotic evil" character is actually a misunderstood chaotic good character, he's an anti-hero that obviously has done some rather heinous stuff, but there's a reason why he's like that, he was a kid that jumped head first into corpowar and got ♥♥♥♥♥♥ over heavily by it, becoming disillusioned because of it and turned into a firebrand iconoclast rebel rockerboy (there's more to it, but i'm not gonna write a novel about it in a steam forum section and there's already the official stuff and character studies done far better than i could do justice for his character here).