Johnny Silverhand, aka Rockerboy, aka Robert John Linder, aka Keanu Reeves, is both one of the main heroes and the main villains in the much-discussed Cyberpunk 2077 game. Fans of the game love to hate him or hate to love him, but either way, one thing is for certain: Johnny is one of the most interesting characters in gaming history.
One thing that makes him so legendary is not only the way he acts and talks, but the decisions he makes during Cyberpunk 2077 — especially, the terrible ones. After all, those are some of the most memorable.
8 The Nuke
Detonating a nuke is a huge problem on its own. But when someone detonates a nuke in the middle of a super populated city, then it’s not just a problem. It’s a mistake that people are not going to forget about.
Johnny might have had promising theories and good (although debatable) intentions, but the truth is that he killed a lot of innocent people because of it, not only his target. In a city with notorious gangs and lots of criminals, that can’t be that bad, can it? But it doesn’t take long to find out what happened before 2077, and see that no matter how monstrous Night City is, it is still a city full of people that want to live and didn’t deserve an ending like that.
7 Excessive Use Of Drugs
There are a lot of characters in games that use the occasional drug, either by chance or because they want to. But Johnny Silverhand takes it to a whole new level.
He didn’t only use drugs when he was a Rockerboy in his normal body, but when he took over V’s body, he had a huge party that included almost overdosing. It might be common in Night City, but it still wasn't one of his better choices.
6 Unlimited Ego
Johnny might want to act as the Robin Hood to those who are oppressed by the corporates, but in reality, his Rockerboy persona and his actions show a man who is deeply delusional. Most of all, he is someone who believes that he is the one that has to save people.
That has made him not only reckless but also careless, about how many people he hurts during the pursuit of his noble goals. Deep down, he has a bit of a god complex.
5 He Treated His Friends Badly
When the player tries to get the band together back for a concert, both V and the player learn a lot about Johnny’s relationship with his previous bandmates in Samurai: Denny, Nancy, Henry, and even more, Kerry, who was always in love with him or infatuated with him at least. And let’s just say, Silverhand did not treat all of them well.
But he didn’t stop there. Morgan Blackhand, Rogue Amendiares, Shaitan, Thompson, Spider Murphy, and some others, were the friends that he led to the Militech assault in Arasaka Towers. Again, things didn’t go as planned, and Johnny is to blame.
4 How He Tricked V
Johnny is the reason that V is dying, but nobody (well, almost nobody) can blame him for that, since it wasn’t exactly his choice. But a lot of the things that Silverhand did to V were his choices, and they weren’t choices that showed his good side. Who would forget getting V involved in a car crash? He also got into fist fights, smoked and drank excessively, used drugs, the whole nine yards.
But even before that, Johnny is manipulative, mean, and does not care about V. If the player chooses to try and befriend Johnny, then it does get better after the middle of the game, but still, there are moments where he still is his old Rockerboy self.
3 The Way He Treated His Girlfriends
Rogue and Alt are the two main relationships that Johnny has in the game. His relationship with Rogue is more than complicated, and that’s an understatement. She has been cheated on multiple times, she has been manipulated, and she has been abandoned. Still, Rogue risked her life three times for Johnny, and (depending on the choices) also sacrificed herself for him.
With Alt, things were different, but also very complicated. What the story makes clear though, is that Johnny cared for Alt much more than he cared for Rogue, and he wasn’t shy about it either.
2 The Way He Treated People In General
A good example is almost brutally killing Thomson, the reporter who filmed Johnny when he found Alt’s lifeless body. Rogue was there to put a stop to it and saved the man, who was part of their group, but the way Silverhand acted, with such rage and anger, it was clear that things wouldn’t have gone well.
His uncontrollable anger, partnered with his unlimited ego, is a combination that made Johnny a real danger to both his close ones and to the general public. Nobody ever knew how he would act.
1 He Was A Deserter
Although the ethic of this and whether it was good or bad is debatable (as almost all of Silverhand’s actions really), Johnny, before he became a Rockerboy, was enlisted in the military and then became a deserter.
He lied about his age to be able to enlist in the military, but after he realized that the whole war (which cost him the life of one of his friends) was led by a corrupt government, he left the military and hid in the Night City. There, he changed his name from Robert John Linder to Johnny Silverhand, because of the prosthetic silver hand he had, instead of his real one which he lost in the war.