What Happened to Johnny Silverhand's Body?

In Cyberpunk 2077, Johnny Silverhand's body was thrown into an unmarked grave in the oil fields outside Night City. After Arasaka captured him in 2023 and Soulkiller took his mind, there was nothing left that the company wanted, so the body was dumped. V learns this from one of Adam Smasher's men and can visit the spot with Johnny himself. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Why there was a body to get rid of#

In Cyberpunk 2077's flashback, Johnny doesn't die on the roof of Arasaka Tower. Smasher shoots him, Arasaka staff carry him off on a stretcher, and after an interrogation Saburo Arasaka orders him put through Soulkiller. The program copied Johnny's mind into an engram, which Arasaka kept in its vault, Mikoshi, and left his body dead. (Cyberpunk 2077)

So Arasaka had what it wanted, a captive copy of its loudest enemy, and a corpse it had no use for. The full sequence is on how Johnny died. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Chippin' In: Grayson and the oil fields#

The side job Chippin' In starts after Johnny borrows V's body to talk Rogue into helping him go after Smasher. Rogue finds that a mercenary called Grayson, who works for Smasher, is aboard an old container ship moored in Northside. She and V go in after him. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Grayson has pieces of Johnny. Smasher gave him Johnny's Malorian Arms 3516 pistol as thanks for a job, and the ship holds a container with Johnny's Porsche 911 in it. After the fight, Grayson tells them Smasher is now head of Arasaka security in Japan, and reveals what was done with Johnny's body: it was dumped in the Northern Oil Fields. (Cyberpunk 2077)

V drives out there, in the Porsche if they've freed it, and finds the spot where Johnny was supposedly buried. There's no headstone. (Cyberpunk 2077)

A conversation at his own grave#

What happens at the grave is a talk, not a discovery. Standing on the place where his body went into the ground, Johnny and V look back at everything since the Relic and argue about what comes next. (Cyberpunk 2077)

It matters more than it looks. The choices here decide whether V gives Johnny a second chance. If V does, Johnny asks V to call Rogue for him and set up a last night out, the side job Blistering Love. Getting this conversation right is also part of unlocking the game's secret ending, (Don't Fear) The Reaper. (Cyberpunk 2077)

No body is dug up or shown, and the game never proves the remains are really there. The only physical piece of Johnny V recovers is his dog tags, from a hidden cache Johnny guides V to at the end of the main job Tapeworm, still stamped with his birth name, Robert John Linder. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The memorial niche#

Night City remembers him anyway. The North Oak Columbarium, where the city's dead are honoured, has a niche for Robert John Linder whose epitaph calls him a son of a bitch who never gave up and a legend among legends. It's a memorial, not a tomb: by the game's own account, his body is out in the oil fields. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The tabletop version#

The tabletop books tell Johnny's death differently. In Cyberpunk RED's account of the raid, Smasher cuts him in half inside the tower, minutes before the nuke goes off. That leaves his remains in the ruins of the tower, not in an Arasaka grave. (Cyberpunk RED)

Cyberpunk RED then plays with that in its story Black Dog, set years after the war. Samantha Stevens, a full-conversion firefighter who went into the ruins after the blast, has kept a crate hidden in her garage, and a crew of edgerunners is hired to drive it to Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico. Inside is a body. When the woman waiting there, Angel, opens it, she whispers "Hello, my love." The book never names the body. Interpretation: most readers take it to be Johnny's, given the story's hunt for an unreleased Samurai song and the way the clues line up, but Cyberpunk RED leaves that for players to work out. (Cyberpunk RED)

Which is right?#

They can't both be. Cyberpunk 2077 puts the body in the oil fields; Cyberpunk RED hints it was pulled from the tower ruins. Interpretation: the cleanest reading follows the rule the game sets for Johnny's memories: the engram's version of 2023, capture and all, isn't a reliable record, and Grayson is a man who has just lost a fight to V and Rogue. (Cyberpunk 2077; Cyberpunk RED)

Read more#

Johnny Silverhand covers his whole life, and Arasaka Tower 2023 has the raid team by team. (Cyberpunk 2077; Cyberpunk RED)