What can I say; my treating the backstories of fictional characters like actual documented history and storing them in my encyclopedic brain for use in situations like this is my only real talent.
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Classic IOI 
20 missing outstanding performance coins
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The Minnulescu Incident?
As you said, some time when they were kids, I don’t remember it ever being stated anywhere either. 70’s is the best approximation I’d wager, given Grey and 47 look like they’re about 10-12-ish there.
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To me, Grey looks significantly older, relatively speaking. Don’t know when Ort-Meyer actually started doing his work, but I’d guess Grey to be about 4 years older than 47, but I agree that 47 is in that approximate age range.
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@Mini, ignore my previous answer.
March 23rd 1977 is the most probable. (well the night of the 23-24 March)
47’s childhood escape has been told twice, each with their own clue on the timeline:
- the first telling, in Hitman: Enemy Within, is as follow :
- 47 kills 6, his bully, during the night at 03.00 before escaping, and being recaptured the day after, he is congratulated for his skills and in a way rewarded/accepted by the Institute higher ups.
- During his capture the novel says “so all the twelve-year-old could do was throw up his arms”.
- So this telling happens between September 5th 1976, and September 5th 1977.
- the second telling, in Agent 47: Birth of a Hitman, is as follow:
- 47 and 6 escape together before being recaptured, and the village they took refuge in is wiped out in a “salt protocol”.
- Much later, in 1989, they rebel against the institute. 6 escapes, 47 is captured/covered for 6’s escape, after which his memory (and emotions) are wiped (well, detached). The first telling become a false memory (well, false reading). Implemented to help 47’s brain make passive sense of his memory, with the bonus of making 47 more alone and co-dependant toward the Institute.
- To quote the comic “your memory remain intact. But now they are a series of events with no significance. Like when you killed your tormentor, 6, at the age of twelve. Your baptism”
- This telling is on page explicitly said to happen with 6 and 47 last being seen a March 23rd.
So if the two event are supposed to be the same, it would be March 23rd-24th 1977.
(yes I found, downloaded, and made a quick read of a copy of Enemy Within just for you)
Now, obviously, this is not certain. This is Broad Strokes. In the writing it makes sense that the two telling were made to conflate, conservation of detail, following the natural reader instinct and understanding, all that…
It’s not confirmed that the false memory is made to replace precisely the childhood escape with 6, as a matter of fact the comic doesn’t even say that this first killing was followed by an escape. So it could be a general lie, and one that is parallel, but not identical to the one in Enemy Within.
Narratively, and from what was apparently the author intent, it makes more sense that they are both conflated, and that the telling is entirely identical. It keeps the novel canon, if misleading.
And I think the “Your baptism” is key : before the serum. the escape was the formative event of 6 and 47 life (and it still is for 6), so acknowledging its psychological weight but transforming it into one of detachment, control, while keeping the “your gift and your curse touching life only be ending them”/your purpose is giving death lesson make sense in story, and to Ort-Meyer.
I expect @Dribbleondo, or @Heisenberg to be able to better put in writing how much interpretations can still be open. (not a diss, I genuinely think you are better at that, and with heavy standards)
But I still see it as the most probable.
It’s more fun. 
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Wow, thank you so much for the detailed answer 
I wasn’t thinking about Enemy Within, it’s been years when I last read it 
@Heisenberg I stick to it, that Grey is about one year oolder than 47, even though it’s hard to see in his blurry passport.
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Well, I mean “significantly older” in the flashbacks as kids. He looks a full head over 47, at least. Given how human male growth spurts are, assuming they aren’t reaching physical maturity faster than normal because of their genetic advantages, Subject 6 looks between 14-16 to me in these flashbacks. Given how far apart their numbers are, unless Ort-Meyer did huge batches of clones at once, a few years between them seems reasonable.
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Funnily enough in the comic, Ort-meyer never says wipe (though Edwards Janus does though), Ort-meyer likens it to some forgettable memories:
Also, and i’m surprised I completely missed this, but there’s a call-back to what 47 says in the below panel in H2’s Long Shot cutscene (“Enough. You have a choice. But I made mine a long time ago. I will finish what I started.”):
By the sounds of things, I don’t think Broad Strokes are at play. There isn’t really any reason to employ this. I mentioned this a few times, but this is a Retool; basically a retcon to fit into events established in a later entry, which isn’t inherently a bad plan here, considering how, frankly, obscure the damn novel is. Honestly, they could’ve not mentioned it, but the writers seemed to deliberately go out of their way to make a deep cut to Hitman lore when they could’ve easily considered it non-canon or ignored it. God, I love the writers sometimes.
This also happens to H2’s notoriously badly written ending for Haven Island as the Implication of Grey working with Edwards is…very…against his established “I’m a chessmaster who has to kill people, but only to dismantle Providence, and 47 and co. are my bestest buddies in the world” characterisation. If you’re wondering why Dubai’s briefing has Diana do a lot of infodumping; that’s why, as they had to explain around the mess they had made.
I do think you are mostly right though, I really cannot improve on what you said!
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I’ll also point out here, as I have elsewhere, that Enemy Within can no longer be considered a canon event in the franchise, if it ever was. Never mind the changes to the backstory regarding Subject 6; it is explicitly stated in the novel that 47 had never seen Diana and sometimes wonders what she looks like. The very first piece of WoA content ever released renders that statement an impossibility. Throw in everything else, and the novel is now merely fanfiction with an official publication.
I am not so good in history things or geography 
but was the institute for human betterment part of the soviet union? And did Ort-Meyer work for the soviet union? I remember that Diana said something about the institute and Janus was working for the KGB, right?
Sorry if that question is somehow dumb, I am just curious 
I don’t know enough about history on that either, but if Romania was part of the SU, then yes, the Institute was by default. However, Ort-Meyer was not, as far as we know. He was of German descent, and was more of a fascist mind than a communist one. His goal, before Providence was introduced into the series, was to eventually use his clones to create an army of superior and loyal soldiers and conquer the world in a kind of 4th Reich sort of situation. Think of Palpatine in Star Wars, now confine it to Earth only and you get the idea.
Providence’s involvement makes this motivation murkier, but he either still believed in it and thought Providence was the way to do that with his clones as their enforcers, or he planned on eventually betraying Providence and overthrowing them in the process of his world takeover.
Janus was a Soviet, but his involvement with Providence as their Constant came after he’d concluded that the SU would eventually fail because both they and the US were too political and politics itself was too flawed for a sustainable world. Providence recruited him and he devoted himself to their way of doing things, and so his dealings with Ort-Meyer were as members of Providence, not as Soviets.
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For the record: Romania was not part of the USSR.
It was part of the Warsaw pact though.
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Romania was part of the USSR but only till the mid 1960s.
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We were only communists just because we liked it 
Yep, up until Ceausescu said FU to the Kremlin. Cueasuescu was strongly against the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
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But Diana says the Institue was a soviet research fund. And it was established somewhat in the early 60s, so I guess when romania was still part of the USSR 
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To be clear: Romania was never part of the USSR.
First, an essential point: one of the text cornerstone of being a nation member of the USSR is that one loses its sovereignty in matters of foreign policies, and gives it to Moscow.
Now, a bit of a timeline! (yay):
- In 1945, at the end of WW2, a Moscow aligned government is “encouraged” by soviet occupation forces. (Romania was axis aligned)
- In 1952, the more Romanian minded communist leaders were able to purge some of the more muscovite aligned leaders
- In 1955, the Warsaw Pact was formed. The Soviet Union is still largely dominant, and most of the Romanian policies are defacto guided by Moscow, if not by a legal obligation (also see: Comecon in 1949 for economy alignment, in general the complete siphoning of Romanian resources by the USSR, and other means of centring the interests and power to Moscow. It was textbook colonization.)
- In the start of the 60s, a general relaxation occurs, Romania starts to actualize its independent foreign policy, even have some opening with the west, and other exchanges. This creates a bit of nationalism in the party (as in “national sovereignty, it seems beneficial, let’s have some in action”)
- In 1964 this culminate with the Romanian communist party leaders issuing a “Declaration of Independence”
- In 1965 after the death of the previous leader, Ceausescu become leader, he makes the affirmation of Romanian independence a pillar of his policies. (“tell them FU” as previously stated above)
- In 1968, the soviet invade Czechoslovakia, Romania is not only the only Warsaw Pact country to not participate, but loudly condemns it.
@EvilGeniusRo, tell me if I have anything grossly wrong.
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Someone did his homework about how things went. 
You can add that right at the end of the war, Romania turned its weapons against the axis after Ion Antonescu was removed from power by King Michael’s coup. It’s the only reason why Romania kept his borders mostly intact after the war, except Moldova became fully part of the USSR. Moldova was the reason why it joined the axis’ side during the war in the first place.
As for Romania being / not being part of the USSR, no. We were under occupation several times but never fully annexed to it like Moldova was though in my mind, I always saw the early years of occupation as “being part of” 
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Thanks.
I actually started with having the whole WW2, Moldova intricacies. And also the whole 1945-1948 transition to communist/soviet control, the peace negotiations/west involvement. But then I had flashback of when I had to learn my own country clusterf that passes for its political history, and went for the broad strokes version.
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How do we get food delivery people to start coming up to your floor again? Covid happened… I get why food was left with the doorman, but now it’s high time the food delivery people started taking the elevator ride and actually delivering the food again. My building will allow them up, but no matter HOW MANY TIMES I USE ALL CAPS TO WRITE “BRING THE FOOD TO MY UNIT,” they just leave it at the doorman. I have gotten a bunch of free food, but that’s not the point.
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We couldn’t get gig drivers that delivered to the right address for the longest time. Eventually we just started figuring out who ran menus through their apps but used their own drivers. I suggest you do likewise.
But if I were a DoorDash deliverer I would have absolutely no incentive to do anything other than leave it with the door man. There is simply no reason I would do so if I had the time and order crunch those workers have
It seems your other solutions are either reform employment laws in America or dismantle capitalism. So good luck with that I guess.
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