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00:12Welcome to MojoPlays, and today we're counting down Night City's strangest stories hidden in shards, conversations, tabletop sourcebooks, and blinking
00:21you'll miss it details.
00:23This was never about corporate colonialism. This was about your groupie output, wasn't it?
00:28No, you wouldn't understand, Rogue.
00:32158 years old.
00:34Saburo Arasaka?
00:36The Emperor?
00:39Yet another ass-looking legend.
00:42Shush.
00:43Doubt this could be soundproof.
00:44When Saburo Arasaka walks into Konpeki Plaza, you're looking at someone born all the way back in 1919.
00:51By 2077, the Arasaka Patriarch was 158 years old, having lived through World War II, the rise of megacorporations, and
01:00multiple corporate wars.
01:06He even served as a fighter pilot in the Imperial Japanese Navy before transforming his family company into one of
01:13the planet's dominant powers.
01:15Advanced medicine and cybernetics pushed Saburo far beyond a normal lifespan, although Yorinobu ultimately demonstrated that none of that technology
01:24provides immunity from irate sons.
01:26Saburo Arasaka has been murdered.
01:29Code re-initiated.
01:30Considering how much history separates V from our own world, Saburo effectively serves as a living bridge between a 20th
01:38century and cyberpunk's dystopian future.
01:40The Original Voodoo Boys.
01:47The Voodoo Boys of 2077 aren't simply an updated version of the Original Tabletop Gang.
01:53Creator Mike Pondsmith explained that the Original Voodoo Boys were largely white criminals appropriating Haitian and Creole imagery because they
02:01thought it looked intimidating.
02:02By 2077, the name had been inherited, or effectively reclaimed, by Caribbean refugees and netrunners in Pacifica whose culture and
02:12beliefs are very real.
02:13How much we talkin' and how am I gonna collect?
02:16Answer, you not in this for cash.
02:19You in this for problem.
02:212G-I-M for us.
02:23We shit can solve it.
02:24They don't even call themselves Voodoo Boys.
02:27That's just an outsider label.
02:29After Haiti becomes uninhabitable, its displaced population helped build Pacifica and eventually created a community where these netrunners become protectors,
02:38criminals, and spiritual authorities simultaneously.
02:41It's one of the setting's most interesting examples of a gang changing completely across generations.
02:47What exactly do you want from Hope?
02:49All of you.
02:51Hope the only one can give a safe passage past the Black Wall.
02:55AI Black Wall.
03:02The Black Wall sounds like the world's most sophisticated firewall, and that description is only half right.
03:09Behind the digital facade is an artificial intelligence designed to recognize and contain the rogue AIs infesting the ruins of
03:16the old net.
03:18Few have gone through to the other side, and none have yet returned.
03:24Netwatch began developing it after the data crash made huge portions of cyberspace effectively unusable, creating a protected section where
03:32humanity could continue operating.
03:34Which means humanity's primary defense against incomprehensibly dangerous artificial intelligence is... another artificial intelligence.
03:42Nothing ominous about that.
03:44By 2077, everyone from Netwatch to the Voodoo Boys understands that the Black Wall isn't an impenetrable permanent solution, either.
03:52It's essentially an incredibly powerful digital bouncer holding the door shut while something terrifying keeps pushing from the other side.
04:00Old Cunningham.
04:04Old?
04:06What's going on?
04:08Sinashore vs. Soulkiller.
04:12Talking about Sinashore?
04:14The Black Wall algorithms?
04:16What went down in that bunker?
04:18Indeed.
04:19Deep beneath Dogtown sits one of the nastiest leftovers from the corporate wars, Project Sinashore.
04:25While Arasaka developed Soulkiller to capture human minds as Ingrams, Militech pursued its own digital superweapon.
04:33Sinashore was designed to locate, capture, and potentially harness rogue AIs from cyberspace, essentially turning some of the most dangerous
04:41entities in existence into weapons, and essentially making it Militech's answer to Arasaka's Soulkiller, and the cyberspace equivalent of a
04:49nuclear weapon.
04:57The project was eventually abandoned, leaving its underground facility to rot beneath Pacifica.
05:03Naturally, because this is cyberpunk, abandoned doesn't mean harmless.
05:08If you insist, you will be detecting.
05:22Phantom Liberty makes it painfully clear that whatever Militech left underground is still perfectly capable of ruining your evening.
05:29Breaching the Black Wall.
05:31I gave myself one last chance, and you stripped me of it.
05:37Why?
05:38Songbird isn't simply an extraordinarily talented netrunner.
05:43President Rosalind Myers turned her into something the NUSA wasn't legally supposed to be doing at all.
05:49Solomon Reed reveals that Myers repeatedly ordered Song Soomi to probe beyond the Black Wall, violating international law in pursuit
05:57of intelligence and power.
05:59Thinking about Song Soomi?
06:02Her link to the Black Wall.
06:05Correct.
06:05The woman merely touched, yet you witnessed the consequences.
06:10Those excursions exposed Songbird to rogue entities beyond the barrier, and eventually devastated both her body and mind.
06:18By the time Phantom Liberty begins, she's essentially being consumed from inside.
06:22It makes Myers' determination to retrieve her considerably more sinister.
06:27Songbird isn't merely a missing agent.
06:30She's living evidence that the president of the NUSA has been repeatedly messing with one of humanity's most dangerous technological
06:37boundaries.
06:39What the hell's going on?
06:48On the hunt for more great gaming videos, Choom?
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06:58Two basements.
07:00Two basements.
07:03Nomad Massacre and Experimentation.
07:08You've got a gig.
07:10Some Biotechnica big shot.
07:12Those polished corporate advertisements look slightly different once you learn about Project Nightingale.
07:17In 2077, Biotechnica researchers secretly used members of the Red Ochre Nomad Clan as human test subjects.
07:24Remember your little science experiment with the Red Ochre Clan?
07:28At least 70 people died during the experiments, with survivors describing horrifying physical effects, including collapsing lungs.
07:36Biotechnica personnel subsequently worked to suppress evidence, silence potential whistleblowers, and prevent the project becoming public knowledge.
07:44Yeah, I heard all about that project.
07:46Real triumph.
07:49Wonder how many from Red Ochre died.
07:52You recall?
07:53Ah, who can get back?
07:55Besides, they're like roaches.
07:56V can uncover pieces of this conspiracy through gigs, shards, and cyber-sacko encounters, but it's remarkably easy to miss
08:04how large the atrocity actually was.
08:07What?
08:07Did I say?
08:09Wait!
08:09We must have other mutual friends!
08:11Dying for performance art.
08:13Your body can be chrome, but the heart never changes.
08:16It wants what it wants.
08:18There's taking your craft seriously, and then there's Lizzy Wizzy.
08:22In 2069, she turned her own transformation into a five-and-a-half-hour performance piece.
08:28During a concert, Lizzy ate a specially-prepared poisoned apple that deliberately induced cardiac arrest, leaving her heart flatlined on
08:36stage for approximately a minute.
08:38Yes, I... the media can't hear about this.
08:41Got it?
08:41That would be...
08:43Mmm.
08:43Ripper Docs then spent hours replacing her biological body with cybernetic components before she returned in the chrome form fans
08:51recognized in 2077.
08:53The entire event was presented as an erotic reimagining of Snow White.
08:59Most musicians debut a new costume or hairstyle.
09:02Lizzy undid her own physiology in real time.
09:05Someone should give you a check-up.
09:07See if you're okay, Lizzy.
09:09Someone you trust.
09:11I... like what's happening to me.
09:13Unreliable narrator.
09:15You're coming with us.
09:18Sure.
09:19Let me just finish this.
09:23If something in Johnny's flashbacks don't match established cyberpunk history, that isn't necessarily a continuity error.
09:30Alt Cunningham directly tells V that the memories they witnessed were Johnny's subjective and distorted version of events.
09:37So was his subjective view of what happened.
09:39A warped account of events he locked away in his subconscious and replayed time and again.
09:45It bears no resemblance to the truth.
09:48Mike Pondsmith has gone even further, explaining that radiation damage and the process of recording Johnny's Engram scrambled his recollections.
09:56That explains why his version of the 2023 Arasaka Tower Raid dramatically exaggerates his own role and omits important figures
10:04such as Morgan Blackhand.
10:06Johnny remembers himself as the star of the revolution because, naturally, Johnny Silverhand would.
10:11The flashbacks aren't objective historical footage.
10:14They're 50-year-old memories filtered through the ego of a narcissistic rocker boy terrorist.
10:25Death Lottery.
10:26Because, of course, Night City successfully found a way to monetize its murder rate.
10:31In 2077, they voted my city the worst place to live in America.
10:35The Body Lotto is a daily lottery where winning numbers are generated from the number of corpses discovered in randomly
10:42selected city districts on the previous day.
10:45Yes, people can essentially win money by correctly guessing how many residents are going to die.
10:56The concept predates Cyberpunk 2077, appearing in the tabletop setting, but it remains part of the world in 2077.
11:04Earlier lore describes criminals attempting to manipulate similar lotteries by storing corpses before strategically dumping them.
11:12Night City is a place where gun violence, corporate oppression, and organized crime have become mundane background noise.
11:19So, naturally, somebody eventually looked at the casualty statistics and thought,
11:23We could gamble on this.
11:25It's a city of dreams.
11:27And I'm a big dreamer.
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11:56Johnny's Corpse.
11:57The body of Johnny Silverhand has a much stranger history than his own memories suggest.
12:04Smasher.
12:05Told you, Johnny boy.
12:08Told you I'd end you someday.
12:10In the canonical cyberpunk red story, Black Dog, firefighter Samantha Stevens discovers Johnny's corpse beneath the ruined Arasaka Towers alongside
12:19an unexploded nuclear device.
12:22Which terrorist organization do you belong to?
12:26How did you acquire fissile material?
12:28She removes the bomb itself, dumps it in Del Coronado Bay, and uses the heavy nuclear casing to secretly preserve
12:35Johnny's remains.
12:36Years later, the container is transported toward Los Alamos, while various factions hunt for what they believe is still a
12:43nuclear weapon.
12:44So, while Johnny's Ingram spends 2077 telling V his version of how he died, his actual corpse spent decades hidden
12:52inside the shell of another nuke.
12:54Even by Johnny Silverhand standards, that is an absurdly rock and roll burial arrangement.
13:01Hot damn.
13:03Done and gone.
13:05What piece of Night City surprised you the most?
13:08Let us know in the comments below.
13:14What piece of Night City surprised you the most?