Why Did Adam Smasher Go Full Borg? The 2015 Deal

Adam Smasher is a full borg, and he went that way in 2015 after a rocket attack wrecked his body. Arasaka offered a full body conversion in exchange for a service contract, the alternative was being switched off, and Smasher took the deal. (Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebooks; Cyberpunk 2077)

Is Adam Smasher full borg?#

Yes. The Cyberpunk Wiki calls him a full borg mercenary. By 2020 he liked calling himself a true borg with hardly any real flesh left, and he wrote a piece for the in-universe magazine Solo of Fortune telling readers that anyone who refuses conversion gets wiped out. (Solo of Fortune 2)

Why did Adam Smasher go full borg?#

He didn't have much of a choice, and he didn't want one. The job in 2015 was a theft of prototype tech from a rival firm, run by Arasaka's local branch with a crew of hired mercs. Two rocket-propelled grenades maimed Smasher, and he was taken to a medical centre, where his teammates had brought what was left of his body in a backpack. (Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebooks)

Arasaka had already prepared a deal: a full body conversion in exchange for an employment contract that the wiki gives as 15 years. He knew little about cyberware and had never had the money for it. He also knew that if he refused, his remains would be in somebody's body bank the next day. The wiki adds that he felt no pull toward his lost humanity, so he signed. (Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebooks)

Once he was inside the new chrome body, he decided it was the best decision he'd ever made. He treated the conversion as an upgrade, and that attitude drives everything he does afterwards.

When did Adam Smasher go full borg?#

In 2015, according to the wiki's biography. The timeline after that runs like this. (Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebooks)

1. 2015: the job that maimed him, the reanimated brain and the conversion.
2. The years after: Arasaka lets him freelance between assignments and keeps him on offensive field duty, harassing rivals and sometimes retrieving stolen files.
3. 2020: he calls himself a true borg and publishes his pro-conversion article.
4. 2022: he is fully employed by Arasaka for the Fourth Corporate War.
5. 2023: he kills Johnny Silverhand at Arasaka Tower and fights Morgan Blackhand shortly before the bomb goes off. The wiki says the outcome of that fight was never determined.

How much borg is Adam Smasher?#

Cyberpunk 2077 gives the one hard number: scan him and he reads 96% cybernetic. The tabletop sources I read don't put a percentage on him. (Cyberpunk 2077)

His body has changed over the years. The wiki says a heavily modified Samson frame was his first body and lasted him into the Fourth Corporate War, and that before the war he also had a Gemini frame styled in look and voice as a young, overmuscled Elvis Presley. After the Fourth Corporate War he stopped using humanoid bodies, and by 2077 he's said to be in a heavily modified Dragoon. For the assault on the tower in 2023 he also wore an Arasaka DaiOni power armour. (Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebooks; Cyberpunk Wiki)

Mike Pondsmith has called Smasher a high functioning cyberpsycho. My read is that this is the scariest version of the idea, a man who has lost his empathy but none of his control.

How did Adam Smasher become a cyborg?#

In steps, and the first was just getting hit. Before 2015 he'd been a South Bronx gang leader during the Collapse, then a Marine for six years until he was discharged for insubordination, then a New York merc taking assassination and demolition jobs. When the grenades hit, the doctors couldn't save his body, but they reanimated his brain after he'd been effectively dead for over eight minutes. Around then he noticed that everything he sensed reached him through an interface, with his senses housed in gel at corporate installations. (Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebooks)

The conversion came after that.

What is Adam Smasher's real name?#

I can't give you a different one, because the sources I read don't have one. The wiki's biography calls him Adam from childhood, and his in-universe aliases are NC boogeyman and Chrome-dome. Out of universe, the wiki notes that the name is a pun on an atom smasher, meaning a particle accelerator. (Cyberpunk Wiki)

Why does Adam Smasher work for Arasaka?#

Arasaka kept him alive, and the wiki describes him as someone who repays that by killing the company's enemies on command. In the Fourth Corporate War he took the job gladly, partly because Morgan Blackhand was working for Militech, Arasaka's rival. By the early to mid 2070s he was Yorinobu Arasaka's bodyguard, and after Yorinobu became CEO he was promoted to head of security. (Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebooks; Cyberpunk 2077)

My read is that the contract stopped being the reason a long time ago. Fifteen years from 2015 ends around 2030, and Smasher is still working for Arasaka in 2077. None of the sources I read explains a renewal. He seems to stay because Arasaka gives him the one thing he wants, which is a war to be good at.

Canon Notes#

The Cyberpunk 2020 books and Cyberpunk 2077 agree that Smasher is a full borg who works for Arasaka. They don't say how much human is left. The 2077 scan leaves four percent unexplained, and the game's database entry says only that little of the man remains. My guess is that the 4% is game shorthand and not a hidden organ, but nothing I read confirms it. (Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebooks; Cyberpunk 2077)

The same warning applies to Edgerunners. Its English dub has Smasher call people meat and talk about slaughter, and the Japanese script drops his habit of calling others meat. The English dub restores it. (Cyberpunk: Edgerunners)

If you want the rest of his story, see what happened to Adam Smasher in Edgerunners and the show's full explainer.