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JC Denton can figure out the killswitches for each as the storyline progresses, he decrypts Anna Navarre's killswitch "Flatlander woman" on his escape from UNATCO headquarters, and Gunther Hermann's killswitch "Laputan machine" after speaking to Jaime Reyes in Paris.

What I want to know is, do these even mean anything? Searching it up online, I fail to find much information about Anna Navarre's killswitch code, and for Gunther's killswitch it seems to also be an achievement in DX:MD, but nothing more.

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    From the wiki (not sure if this is what you're looking for): "Navarre's killphrase, Flatlander Woman, is a reference to the novel Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott, about people living in a two-dimensional world, in which women are just lines. They are invisible when seen edge-on, and dangerous because they are very sharp and can inadvertently cut people in half. The killphrase is a reference to Navarre's cloaking power and her deadliness."
    – Tas
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 4:47
  • I've left the above as a comment, not an answer, as it's not clear if that was covered in the i fail to find much information, and it's a community edited wiki with no evidence to support it. A cursory search didn't reveal anything more about it.
    – Tas
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 4:49
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    I haven't played the original Deus Ex games, but Laputa was a land in Gulliver's Travels, populated by people who were very focused on knowledge, astronomy, microscopy, etc. They lived on a levitating island, but couldn't build straight buildings because they used sextants and telescopes instead of tape measures. Don't know if that's relevant to Gunther, but it's what immediately jumped out.
    – Kexlox
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 4:59
  • I agree with @Kexlox. The inhabitants of Laputa are called Laputans, so this seems plausible. It seems entirely possible the "laputan machine" is either one which uses magnetic levitation or astronomy, or more generally is one that is highly technical but serves no practical purpose.
    – Roijan says reinstate Monica
    Commented Feb 21, 2018 at 14:20

2 Answers 2

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Laputan Machine (source):

  • The phrase itself refers to the flying city of Laputa from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In the novel, the Laputans are masters of theoretical engineering but completely lacking in practical mechanical knowledge; the devices they produce are tremendously innovative "on paper" but badly flawed in practice (like Gunther himself).

Flatlander Woman (source):

  • Navarre's killphrase, Flatlander Woman, is a reference to the novel Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott, about people living in a two-dimensional world, in which women are just lines. They are invisible when seen edge-on, and dangerous because they are very sharp and can inadvertently cut people in half. The killphrase is a reference to Navarre's cloaking power and her deadliness.
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Laputan machine could be a more direct reference to the 1986 Ghibli film Laputa: Castle in the Sky. In this Japanese take on Laputa the Laputan civilisation is advanced enough to have robots.

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