[SPOILERS] About Adam Jensen... [No really massive SPOILERS]

[Geo]

So I picked up many many hints in Mankind Divided and its prequel novel: Black Light, that the "Adam Jensen" we play as in Mankind Divided is actually some sort of duplucate. Be he a clone or a body double. I will try and lay out all the evidence for and against this I can find.

[In the game]:

1. Ti Yong Medical was experimenting with brain implants that would allow someone else to have the memories and personality of another. As seen in the "The Last Harvest" side quest and all associated emails and p-secretaries. This seems to be a continuation on their research on memory implants, as in Human Revolution, they had chips that could block out and supress memories.

Jensen also claims several memory problems. Between no memory for a year after the event (he claims he was in a coma) to saying there were "several months where the harder he tries to remember, the fuzzier it gets". He seeks to try and fill the gaps in his memory.

In the scene during the credits, TF29s psychatrist reports to DeBeers that Jensen's memories were "stable and still in line with the program".


2. There is a coin flip on whether the augmentations Jensen has ingame are his original Sarif models with unknown refits or entirely new augmentations.

In "The Mystery Augs", Koller mentions that the new augs "dont have Sarif's touch", saying that there are "loose wires", crude mountings, and shoddy PEDOT shells. He also says that the installs were made "within the last two years" aka after the Panchea incident.

On the other hand, when Jensen mentions that noone at the clinic he was placed in after the event (in which he woke up 1 year after Panchea) could identify him. Sarif says that it shouldnt have been hard to ID him, as all Sarif augmentations have a registered serial number. He also claims that the Titan shield aug Jensen now has was only a concept when he last saw it, not something he would have been able to install.

Now TYM acquired Sarif Industries and all its tech between the end of Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, I will have to go back and look at how long Sarif was out, as the company was sold while he was gone. This would let us know when TYM acquired SI.

Dr. Orlov (aka the Vistor) signed off on a few schematics you can find throughout the game, schematics of the nano blade launcher and ammo. Orlov worked with TYM, and he was at the clinic where Jensen woke up after Panchea, Sarif claims he was the only one who would have been capable of making the new augs work with a "competeing system" aka Sarif Industries augs, and he was in the 2 locations you can find augmentation schematics signed by him (Prague and GERN, which is in the Baltic region). Unfortunately, when Jensen had a chance to confront Orlav, Orlav was assassinated. Small note, the only people found with augs similar to Jensen's are from the GERN facility, in which you can find an Orlov schematic.

3. The timeline after Panchea. Sarif claims it was search and rescue the first week (7 days), then turned into a body recovery operation, then a few days after that, a unit of soldiers who were never publically identified intervened. Sarif thinks that is who found Jensen.

4. Jensen is the only known person with immunity from augmentation rejection syndrome. But he claims that that makes him "one in a billion" hinting that there are others. Also Megan Reed (now working for TYM) was last known to be working on a way to spread that immunity to others. Project Orchid is the last known result of that, but its unfinished state makes it a lethal poison that causes rapid rejection syndrome.

I saw in a forum somewhere that someone found a email ingame that states Reed was able to completely replicate the immunity, but I did not find this email.


[In the book]:

1. When Jensen wakes up in the Alaska clinic, the first thing he is asked (and the first words of the book) is "How much do you remember?". The first memories that come to him was Panchea collapsing (he describes it as flashes of action disconnected from one another), this includes the sounds of his own heartbeat slowing. He also thinks that he "should be dead". The first parts of the book is Jensen in the clinic, allowing his memories to come back.

This is explained by one of his attendants in the clinic while he had been clinically dead, the frigid cold waters combined with his Sential Implant kept him from being beyond reviving.

Dr. McFadden, a cover name for Dr. Orlov, was monitoring Jensen at the clinic and says that Jensen was extremely lucky, as someone doesnt cheat death twice.

2. Elizabeth DuClare using her command over WHO (World Health Organization) to investigate White Helix Labs, a defunct subsidary of VersaLife, and whose experiments on Jensen when he was a baby made him immune to augmentation rejection syndome. DuClare looks up a project "Black Light", when she later revisits the files, the books says she sees "The face of a dead man on her screen".

Flipside of that, she tells DeBeers that maybe they should have "left him in the sea" when DeBeers brings up that Jensen had resurfaced after escaping the Alaska clinic (of which it was DuClare's operatives duty to watch him).

3. When Jensen first contacts Pritchard, Pritchard is suspecious he maybe a fake, and when they meet up, he runs a hair he pulls from Jensen's jacket through a handheld DNA scanner. It comes up as a match for Jensen.

4. Jensen moves to stop the Motor City Banger gang from selling prototype, military augmentations. stoeln from the recently abandoned Sarif Manufacturing Plant. When he confronts the former Sarif Security guard that gave the MCBs access, the traitor claims that he skimmed some augs from the best picks before he gave the MCBs the place. This is immediately before he hits Jensen with the PEPs cannon hidden in the arm. This is one of the hidden augs that Jensen finds he has in Mankind Divided.

5. Jensen breaks into the abandoned Sarif Industries lab to use a system scanner to check his augmentation, all it detects wrong is some kind of implanted tracker, when Jensen swiftly removes.

6. While Jensen was in the abandoned offices and labs, he claims it makes a feeling he had sense he woke up stronger, a feeling of being disconnected. He felt a glimmer of unfimilarity of the building, despite knowing its layout and rooms intimately.

7. When fighting Agent Thorne for the last time. She claims that Jensen is only alive (aka being spared by the Illumanti) thanks to "the blood in his veins".

Analysis:

Timeline of events:

Jensen is recovered from Panchea, probably over a week after the incident (tho the Illumanti had other assests in the wreckage they hoped to salvage). He is flown to the GERN facility and held there, either dead or in a coma. Here he is either upgraded, or replaced with a body double. During this time, TYM acquired Sarif Industries and all of thier patents. They also had been testing thier memory implants. With doctor Orlov's help, they either install the new test augmentations in Jensen, or installs fresh augmentations taken from Sarif Industries (with the new modifications) into a clone/body double. They also install the memory implant, either with the original Jensen's memories in it, or to confused Jensen as well as record any new memories. Jensen is flown to the facility in Alaska. Either he has totally new augmentations that lack Sarif Industry's registry codes, or the Illumanti pull strings to prevent anyone from looking the registry numbers up, but the clinic claims that Jensen had been there since a week after the event and that they had no idea who he was before he awoke. One month after waking up (1 week in the book) Jensen stages a break out and returns to Detroit.


I am not completely convinced the Jensen in Black Light and Mankind Divided is a body double/clone.

On his memories, personally I think they did install a memory implant in him, but its not Jensen's memories, its someone elses. They are one of the Illumanti's personality drive to locate Janus. When you confront Daria, the only person with a known implant, she can clearly distinguish herself from the killer whose memories and motivations inhabit the chip, even fighting the personality and asking for help (in her own way). Everyone associated with her claim that while the memories and personality on implanted in her, its her decision, independant of the chip, to act on them. But this info comes from Dr. Cipra who wants Jensen to kill Daria and remove the chip, thus covering up TYM's involvement.

On his DNA and immunity, Jensen is still the only human shown to have the ARS immunity. While Reed was working on a way to give this to everyone, the latest we have is Project orchid, an incomplete version which causes immediate and severe ARS. Also Pritchard tested Jensen's DNA from that hair on Jensen's jacket. While its possible Jensen is a clone, the Illumanti have not been shown to have the ability to flash grow clones that fast. Even in games later in the timeline, clones take years to grow. They would have had to made a Jensen clone within 1 year. The Illumanti also has not been shown to be able to restructure someone's DNA so completely.

On his augs, I think that most of his augmentations are his originals. Koller implies that only the experimental augs lack Sarif Industries skill. These experimental augs are TYM refits. With the possible exception of his PEPs cannon in his arm, that seems to have been a Sarif Industries prototype, probably acquired after buying Sarif Industries.

Jensen's feelings of disconnect comes from reawakening in a world so vastly changed from what he left. This shows when he infiltrates the abandoned Sarif Industries building. The darkened building, abandoned offices, and damaged suffered from riots, combined with that the last time he saw the place, it was bright and alive with employees and Sarif Industry marketings everywhere.

If you have addition evidence or analysis, please leave a comment.

UPDATE: Imgur user Spamlobster has uploaded pictures of a closer look of some chests with windows in the VersaLife Vault that seem to have Adam Jensen's upper body (minus his arms) cyrogeniocally frozen within them:

https://imgur.com/a/5wsZO#4IhdVRb

Of note, whoever or whatever is in those boxes does not have Jensen's eye shield augments nor scars that would indicat he ever had them, so we atleast know that it is not the original Jensen in those boxes. Along those same lines, if you have noticed, Jensen's eye shield augments in DX:MD are NOT the same as the ones in DX:HR.

At the very least, this proves the Illumanti is capable of somehow flash cloning Jensen. The contents of these boxes may have been a failed cloning attempt. The "Jensen" in the boxes has some of Jensen's augmentations.

[Top Secret Name]

This all adds up definitely. But I think that after Jensen was recovered his augs were modified or possibly swapped out for new ones without serial numbers and his memories were edited in some way, forced to forget the year in which he underwent some kind of programming.

[Mars]

I'm not convinced by the clone theory people are talking about. I think Top Secret Name is closer to the mark—that Adam has had some Illuminati programming done to him while he was in a coma at Facility 451.

[SomeUnregPunk]

Sarif claims in HR that he's an impossibility. He can't not need the anti-rejection drug. Human bodies aren't made like that.

and since Sariff investigated him prior to bringing him into his company, he knows that Jensen may have been born in an illegal lab and inserted into a female's womb. The PI was killed and MiB shows up when you investigate the storage container that holds the Private Investigator's work.

It's clear that he's someone's pet project. Illumanti or another groups.
Whether or not DXMD Jensen is the same Jensen as HR though is kinda of blurry.
Some members of Illumanti in MD doesn't seem to recognize Jensen even they should since he's probably the reason their plans got screwed up in the last game. And some members of the illuminati knows more about him than others. It's odd. Almost as if the Illumanti is divided and not united.

[Ξ ＮＹＯ]

Honestly I think that the illuminati probably installed a small bug somewhere in him, allowing them to tap into his occular and other implants and thus obtain the relevant data regarding his activities. They then proceeded to program him with the relevant memeories and the ability to operate as a mole that does not know that he is a mole.

I mean seriously, it is not like they could have simply supressed data regarding his identity at the facility and then whent from there, And when Kholler is talking about the augs "not having Sarif's touch" he was talking about the retrofits, not the others.

[GRU-Vy]

He aint no clone and he hasnt been given the memory chip. They wouldnt suppress memories if they could just import the personalty of an illuminati henchmen like namir for example.

My take is who ever gave jenson the prototype augs got rid of the serial numbers to prevent somone identifying him in order to protect him. If his ID was know tai yong would have killed his ass.

The new augs seemed to be designed by orlov but doesnt mean he put them there also jensen says orlov was going by a different name in the alaskan hospital and when you go find him in prague hes dead. Maybe orlov was a juggernaut agent watching over jensen?

[Mars]

Originally posted by SomeUnregPunk:

It's odd. Almost as if the Illumanti is divided and not united.

Well, Bob Page does end up breaking off from the Illuminati with his Majestic 12. Whether all that is happening during the events of these games, I'm not entirely sure. I posited a theory in another thread relating to Janus. Given the origins of Janus' name (Roman god, depicted with two faces), I suggested the possibility that Janus is related to Bob Page and the MJ12, and that Adam is being used to help Page overthrow the other Illuminati members.

[Geo]

Originally posted by Mad Mike Marsbergen:

Originally posted by SomeUnregPunk:

It's odd. Almost as if the Illumanti is divided and not united.

Well, Bob Page does end up breaking off from the Illuminati with his Majestic 12. Whether all that is happening during the events of these games, I'm not entirely sure. I posited a theory in another thread relating to Janus. Given the origins of Janus' name (Roman god, depicted with two faces), I suggested the possibility that Janus is related to Bob Page and the MJ12, and that Adam is being used to help Page overthrow the other Illuminati members.

Im feeling this too. The Juggernaut Collective functions too much like the Illumanti. Also, call me weird, but Juggernaut Collective can be shortened to J.C., and the protag of the original Deus Ex is J.C. Denton. Who is a MJ12 project......

[icleus]

Originally posted by Remi:

Originally posted by Mad Mike Marsbergen:

Well, Bob Page does end up breaking off from the Illuminati with his Majestic 12. Whether all that is happening during the events of these games, I'm not entirely sure. I posited a theory in another thread relating to Janus. Given the origins of Janus' name (Roman god, depicted with two faces), I suggested the possibility that Janus is related to Bob Page and the MJ12, and that Adam is being used to help Page overthrow the other Illuminati members.

Im feeling this too. The Juggernaut Collective functions too much like the Illumanti. Also, call me weird, but Juggernaut Collective can be shortened to J.C., and the protag of the original Deus Ex is J.C. Denton. Who is a MJ12 project......

The main old man is the popsicle old fart that Everett kept in the closest. He was the original leader of the Illuminati. The black guy in the illuminati is Everett. BP hasn't defected away from the illuminati to start MJ12 yet. Obviously since he's in their counsel.

Manderly is a corrupt puppet. In the end he's a tired old man following orders.

Paul denton is currently being developed since the end of HR.

NSF has started which is an illuminati front from Paris. Shiollete, at the end of the game is in Paris, started from K.

Orchid could possibly be an offshoot of the gray death or created by the same R&D team.

The kill switch was designed to control the main villain. Guess who created it? He is not ARC.

[Geo]

Originally posted by icleus:

Originally posted by Remi:

Im feeling this too. The Juggernaut Collective functions too much like the Illumanti. Also, call me weird, but Juggernaut Collective can be shortened to J.C., and the protag of the original Deus Ex is J.C. Denton. Who is a MJ12 project......

The main old man is the popsicle old fart that Everett kept in the closest. He was the original leader of the Illuminati. The black guy in the illuminati is Everett. BP hasn't defected away from the illuminati to start MJ12 yet. Obviously since he's in their counsel.

Manderly is a corrupt puppet. In the end he's a tired old man following orders.

Paul denton is currently being developed since the end of HR.

NSF has started which is an illuminati front from Paris. Shiollete, at the end of the game is in Paris, started from K.

Orchid could possibly be an offshoot of the gray death, nano virus.

The kill switch was designed to control the main villain. Guess who created it? He is not ARC.

The Illumanti are all about subtly. So chances are Bob Page HAS created MJ12, just the rest dont know. As obvious at the end of the Mankind Divided, even the counsel are secretly working against each other for their own ends. And the Orchid is specfically stated to be an incomplete version of a gene editor that grants the user immunity to aug rejection.

[icleus]

Originally posted by Remi:

Originally posted by icleus:

The main old man is the popsicle old fart that Everett kept in the closest. He was the original leader of the Illuminati. The black guy in the illuminati is Everett. BP hasn't defected away from the illuminati to start MJ12 yet. Obviously since he's in their counsel.

Manderly is a corrupt puppet. In the end he's a tired old man following orders.

Paul denton is currently being developed since the end of HR.

NSF has started which is an illuminati front from Paris. Shiollete, at the end of the game is in Paris, started from K.

Orchid could possibly be an offshoot of the gray death, nano virus.

The kill switch was designed to control the main villain. Guess who created it? He is not ARC.

The Illumanti are all about subtly. So chances are Bob Page HAS created MJ12, just the rest dont know. As obvious at the end of the Mankind Divided, even the counsel are secretly working against each other for their own ends. And the Orchid is specfically stated to be an incomplete version of a gene editor that grants the user immunity to aug rejection.

If I had to guess who Janus is it's probably a rogue AI or some form of AI. It would fit the bill along with Morpheus, Icarus, and Helios.

Janus could be the echleon IV AI that was captured by Everett in the original deus ex.
He was an old outdated system by the time of JC denton.

I'm still waiting for Jenson to be turned into the Icarus AI. That would be a crazy twist. Since, essentually, he was Icarus in the dreams from the original HR.

[Mars]

I still feel Janus' name is important. This is a series where the names of characters often provide information as to what inspired their creation. Janus could be AI, certainly.

[TCPippin]

Adam Jensen can't be a clone, body double or anything else.
As you said, the cloning tech isn't there yet: sure, Paul Denton is cloned around this time, leading to birth of JC, but it's traditional cloning technique available even in our timeline; not some kind of flash-cloning that lets the "product" mature into an adult within a year.
MD's protagonist can't be a body double either - he doesn't need N-poz, and Jensen is the only person in the world who can say that about himself. It's not a naturally occuring phenomen, it's unprecedented and unthinkable to the point even people in TF29 refuse to believe him.

So, in my opinion, the only case in which MD's protagonist might not be real Jensen is if Adam was cloned after he received his experimental gene therapy, and very soon after his birth.

But even then there's one important detail revealed by Harvester quest: to get "brainscan" that can be implanted into other people, donor must be actively participating in the process. Daria's "doctor" explains that they had to bribe inmates with better living conditions to get them to go along with it, so it couldn't be something as simple as CAT scan (when you can simply restrain the subject and proceed with it).

In other words, for fake Jensen to have memories of Panchea, you'd need to fish out real Jensen and somehow make him participate in "personality-recoding".

[SomeUnregPunk]

Originally posted by Eel:

But even then there's one important detail revealed by Harvester quest: to get "brainscan" that can be implanted into other people, donor must be actively participating in the process. Daria's "doctor" explains that they had to bribe inmates with better living conditions to get them to go along with it, so it couldn't be something as simple as CAT scan (when you can simply restrain the subject and proceed with it).

that doctor also says that the only reason they used the Harvester for Daria is because they fit the best. Which implies that you need more than just an active participant.

If the Jensen in MD is a clone... then he probably is the best fit for the Jensen in HR.
which can make sense since his birth origin in HR is from a lab setting that is protected by MiBs looking to kill everyone that finds out about the project. They also don't actually need an active participant since TYM showed that you can link people's minds together to form a greater mind that they can control. As long as they have a good match with each other, they survive the process for a short to medium period of time.

Now you got Jensen who is born in a lab. Doesn't need Neuropyze and somehow survives orchid. Hook him up the same way with a copy of himself that he doesn't know about and you get another version that you can control. The only problem then is what to do with the original Jensen. I'm betting he's sitting on ice in some storage locker near Panchea.

[Frosty]

I'm just gonna repost this from the other thread because I don't want to rewrite it:

Originally posted by Frosty:

I don't think Jensen is a clone, too many people are mis-interpreting what Sarif said and not seeing it as more of a red herring. Sarif was making a point that all Jensen's Sarif Industries augments are serialized and recorded; meaning there is no excuse for him being labeled a "John Doe" unless [they] were intentionally hiding his identity. Additionally Sarif pokes a lot of holes in Jensen's fuzzy memory regarding him being rescued and put in a facility in Alaska.

The implication here is that Jensen's story that he was rescued and put in a recovery center for Augs in Alaska is more than likely false. It's likely that the Illuminati (particularly Lucius DeBeers) recovered Jensen after Panchea and utilizing Orlov and TYM resources (who aquired Sarif Industries and thus has access to much of their technology/information) not only reverse engineered Jensen's Augs, but improved them (Orlov's plans for the Nano-Blade Augment, ect).

Additionally it seems that Lucius was aware that Janus had or would take an interest in Jensen and the more likely thing is that Jensen has been "conditioned" to seek out Janus. Most likely Daria's memory treatment was used to alter Jensen's memories of his conditioning and to give him false memories/urges, mainly to seek out Janus and specifically their identity. The thing about Daria's side mission is that she's aware of the memories, but the urges/instincts that those memories exert on her are strong enough to convince her to become the Harvester. There's the stronger implication that memories define us, our drives, and choices; this is most likely what the memory alteration was used for in Jensen. To make him a "willing" Trojan Horse by manipulating his memories to drive him to be DeBeers' personal Janus bloodhound.

[[Countess]Vol†z]

It's a good therory but I'm not bought until it's cannon, personally though my interpritation of the story I don't think it's a clone, I am reading the book currently and somethings just don't add up and I hope not either xT