At the beginning the mission, the camera follows the NAA employee npc you're supposed to persuade as your first objective. In typical fashion, on my 3rd attempt at the mission, I was fiddling with the camera to pass the time and noticed a strange civ leaving the building the NAA employee is going to go into. If you don't touch the camera then this stranger is conveniently off screen by the time the camera shows the door, which is one thing that makes me suspicious.
The character themself is wearing an all black getup with a cape and a wide-brimmed hat. They also have an odd purple kind of aura. Been playing this game off and on for nearly 30 years and I've never noticed this person before. I was able to persuade them but I've yet to clear the mission with them in tow to see if there's any significance to them or if they're just a little easter egg of some kind. Some cursory searching hasn't come up with any references to this character so I wanted to put this here to see if anyone knows what's up.

Frankly Im thrilled to find something new, even if they serve no other purpose than just being interesting.

Update: I finally managed after like almost 20 attempts to make it out of the mission with the Shadow Man in tow. As far as I can tell from my debriefing, having him persuaded did nothing that the game tells you directly.

"Shady Guy" is just a kind of civilian, a bit tougher than normal ones.

He's visible on the Official Guide poster, with his round hat. You can find the poster here:
http://syndicate.lubiki.pl/swars/gallery/swars_photos_artwork.php

Shady Guy was widely used in early version of the game; but in final he's mostly a rare NPC, besides the one mission when you play as this character (introduced as former Eurocorp agent).

The name I'm using comes from Official Guide, but the same name was also used in game code, evidence being files from pre-alpha version containing:

```
#define F_shady_m_walk_n 721
#define F_shady_m_walk_ne 722
#define F_shady_m_walk_e 723
```

(the pre-alpha version also defined female version of this character, but looks like sprites for that were never created)

If you find this fascinating try searching "Syndicate Wars TCRF".

Thank you sooooo much!

I did notice this afternoon when I was carting him around that he had no problem keeping up with my agents and took a beating from some debris that killed everyone around him, so I knew there had to be more to him in some way.

Looking through TCRF right now and I'm frankly in awe of how much got cut. Especially the unguided campaign. I would've loved a finished version of that.

Now that I know the origins of Shady Guy I can stop spamming my friends with pictures of Robert Stack and making Unsolved Mysteries jokes. Well... maybe just one more time.