system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Hitman] How is 47 not notorious when he's a tall bald man with a very unmistakable barcode on the back of his head?
gpt
This is sort-of explained in a novel that serves as a prequel to the story of *Absolution* as well as some of the earlier games - Agent 47 is a boogeyman of sorts, only rumored to exist by federal agencies who aren't aware of him (the CIA knows since they've hired him before). But for everyone else, there's no reason to *believe* he's killing people.

And you want to know why? Because by official canon, all of 47's kills are declared to be *accidents*. There's always a way to kill his targets in-game using a non-obvious means and when taken, nobody bats an eye. In fact, killing people this way as of the game *Blood Money* means that they're not even registered as kills in the game's scoring system.

And going back to Absolution's prequel book, 47's reputation of doing so has actually become legendary in the ICA to the point where some of their agents botched a high-profile contract by attempting to perform their own accident kills and screwing things up.

And going back to Blood Money, it's actually a sort-of example because it's used to measure your overall performance in the game. As you complete each mission, you'll see a newspaper article discussing the events that happened during the level. This actually serves as your overall rating for the game up to that point, and the more obvious your murders are, the more the headlines talk about 47 and will slowly reveal more and more details about him, including better police sketches until they see your face. Later levels will also be harder since the NPCs will recognise you from the papers.

To lower your reputation, you need to replay the older levels and get a better mission rating, with the in-canon reason being that Agent 47 never left any evidence and was always ranked "Silent Assassin".

Also, he's surprisingly good at blending into disguises and fooling people, helped by his face being mixed-race and easily passing for no-one in particular, not helped by his wide range of skills.