Hitman: The Best Kills In IO's Lethal Franchise

IO Interactive’s Hitman series is famed for its slow, methodical gameplay where you learn and interact with your environment, identify behaviour patterns in other characters and use that information to cause a chain of events which leads to the inevitable death of your intended target.

The series has had its fair share of iconic moments over the years, ranging from overtly serious to extremely comical, and to coincide with last week’s release of Hitman 3 we have looked over the series’ history to reflect on some of its best assassinations. Here are ten of the best kills that Agent 47 has accrued across his 20-year career.

Be warned for spoilers throughout.

Read More: Hitman 3 Interview: IO Discusses Closure, Creativity, and bringing Agent 47 to Fortnite

Hitman: The Best Kills In IO's Lethal Franchise

Sabotaging The Parachutes of Carl Ingram and Marcus Stuyvesant (Hitman III)

The opener mission of Hitman 3 takes you to the Burj Al-Ghazali – the tallest building in the world – to assassinate Providence partners Carl Ingram and Marcus Stuyvesant. After parachuting down from the skies, you carefully make your way up into the penthouse suite where you can overhear two security guards going over an evacuation protocol should either of the two targets be compromised.

Triggering an evacuation prompts the two targets to grab their parachutes and skydive off the building to safety. Fortunately, you can grab a knife from the nearby kitchen and sabotage the equipment without anyone suspecting a thing. As an added bonus, the game even gives you a little balcony to kick off your shoes and enjoy the show as the targets’ parachutes fail and they plummet to their deaths.

Blowing Up Silvio Caruso As He Plays Golf (Hitman 2016)

In what may well be one of Hitman’s most popular missions ever, you’re tasked with infiltrating an Italian mansion to kill Silvio Caruso, a bio-terrorist with a fancy playboy lifestyle who has recently taken up golfing as a hobby. Additionally, the ICA has provided Agent 47 with a golf ball near-identical to the ones Caruso uses, except it’s fitted with a small explosive that’ll detonate when hit with extreme force.

Placing it amongst the rest means Caruso is in for an explosive surprise the next time he plays. If you want to make an even bigger scene, you can actually sneak into a nearby castle tower and load up one of the ancient cannons that are primed directly on the spot he’s playing from.

Allowing A Rival Assassin To Take Out Dawood Rangan and Vanya Shah (Hitman 2)

Believe it or not, but Agent 47 isn’t the only assassin in the world, and Hitman 2’s Mumbai mission pits you alongside a rival contract killer, the Kashmirian, who’s contracted for the same targets as you. He’s set up a vantage point in the nearby slums which has a perfect view of both Dawood Rangan’s film set and Vanya Shah’s compound.

The truth is that both Rangan and Shah have hired the Kashmirian to take the other one out, resulting in a double contract for the professional killer. If you can manipulate the situation in both areas to put the targets in perfect view of the Kashmirian’s scope, he’ll complete his mission without any error, while also giving you access to Mumbai’s third target. An easy way of outsourcing your job to another without getting your hands dirty.

Swapping Alvaro D’Alvade’s Prop Gun With A Real One (Hitman: Blood Money)

The older Hitman titles also had their fair share of fun and creative kills to set up. Blood Money’s Curtains Down mission takes you to an illustrious theatre in Paris where you have to kill Alvaro D’Alvade, an eminent opera actor, who is in the middle of rehearsing for a famous opera.

Part of the production involves another actor shooting D’Alvade with a fake prop World War I handgun in a big dramatic finale. If you can sneak into the dressing rooms where the prop is located, you’re actually able to swap the fake gun for a real one, having the target die to a real bullet shot while in rehearsal, and the blame pinned on a freak mistake caused by the production team. 

Having Jordan Cross Kill Ken Morgan (Hitman 2016)

The Thailand level from Hitman 2016 invites you to the Himmapan Hotel, a grand establishment located in Bangkok that has welcomed many famous guests in the past. Your mission is to eliminate Jordan Cross, a lead singer for a band called The Class, and Ken Morgan, a corporate fixer who covered up a murder committed by Cross sometime before.

With Cross unaware that Morgan is located on the same premises as him, you can find ways of getting the two targets to meet and retreat to a private room on the top floor of the hotel to talk. Arguing by an open window, the two men’s outbursts go a little too far as Cross pushes him out of the window in a fit of rage. If you want to finish the job easily, you can then do the exact same to him and chuck him out yourself.

Letting Things Run Their Course For Alexa Carlisle (Hitman 3)

Part of your journey in Hitman 3 brings you to the gloomy country grounds of Thornbridge Manor located in Dartmoor. Here, you’re assigned to kill Alexa Carlisle, another Providence partner, and recover some important information she possesses. Upon your arrival to the estate, you soon discover there has already been a death in the family: an apparent suicide of Carlisle’s brother, and she suspects foul play.

It turns out Carlisle isn’t just paranoid, but there really is a killer inside the mansion. Not only that, but they plan to strike again by poisoning her. Here, you don’t even have to do anything further. You can just let events run their natural course, and Carlisle will keel over at the hands of her murderer without you needing to intervene.

Feeding Rico Delgado To His Pet Hippopotamus (Hitman 2)

One of Agent 47’s most dangerous missions takes him deep into the Colombian jungle as he infiltrates a drug cartel stronghold headed by the ruthless Rico Delgado. Judging by the man’s huge mansion, his priceless artefacts and huge staff, the man possesses both a wealthy and narcissistic demeanour before you even encounter him.

This also involves his prize hippopotamus that won’t come out to play. Delgado is upset his new expensive pet won’t show itself, much to the anguish of the handler in charge of the animal pen. It turns out the creature just needs feeding, and it’ll come out of its hiding spot. In his excitement at this new development, Delgado dismisses his staff and stands extremely closely to the edge of the pen…

Deciding Lenny Dexter’s Fate In The Desert (Hitman: Absolution)

Around the midpoint of Hitman: Absolution, Agent 47 brings his target, Lenny Dexter, out into the desert and has him dig a grave. After gaining the information you need from him, the game tells you to decide Dexter’s fate. There’s a wide range of firearms to grab from the boot of your car, as well as other lethal options littered around the area such as a tomahawk you can throw or a dog’s bone you can slap him with.

For a level that can be beaten in under a minute, there’s a huge amount of variation here and it’s entertaining to mess with Dexter with all the different tools at your disposal. As an added bonus – since the Hitman games are also known for their more comical moments – there’s an easter egg in the level that lets you trigger an ice cream van to run him down, complete with the creepy music.

Getting Tamara Vidal Killed By Her Own Security Detail (Hitman 3)

One of the later missions in Hitman 3 brings you to a large vineyard located in Argentina where you must assassinate Tamara Vidal, an enemy operative who rarely leaves the public areas of the party she’s attending. As she patrols this space, it seems impossible to find a way you can kill her without breaking cover. That is until you venture to the outskirts of the map and find the party’s security team keeping watch.

These snipers are trained to receive photo identification of any potential threats to the winery’s boss, Don Archibald Yates, and all they need is a photograph and a kill order. Stealing a spotter’s earpiece and snapping a photo of Vidal paints a target above her head for the snipers, and persuading her to move somewhere a little quieter gives you the perfect opportunity to order a proxy kill. She ends up dying by the very people paid to protect her.

Giving Erich Soders A Heart Attack On The Operating Table (Hitman 2016)

Agent 47 is the world’s greatest assassin, there’s no denying that. He’s capable of slipping into a location, eliminating his target and escaping before anyone has even had time to notice. As a former director of the International Contract Agency, Erich Soders understands just how dangerous 47 is, and how he won’t stop until his target takes their final breath.

So there can’t be anything more poetic than just strolling right into the operating theatre while Soders is undergoing a heart transplant and looking the man straight in the eye. The ensuing stress of seeing the most dangerous man in the world standing over him in his biggest moment of vulnerability is more than enough to give Soders a fatal heart attack.

Are there any of your favourite moments from the Hitman series that you feel we should have included? Let us know!