#much.

What happened to Hoxton’s face, anyway? That scar happened between games, right?

For either question, although the second is down the the specificity of when the injury happened.

See, the thing is, OVK are kind of bad at writing. Kind of really bad at writing. Not the worst I've seen, mind you, but still bad. The reason I say this is that the company was founded and helmed by a bunch of white, Swedish dudes that grew up in the '80s—"In the Bible Belt of Sweden at that," as my buddy, Erik, put it (He's Mid/Northern Swedish [Erik, don't kill me. You were asleep as I typed this, so I couldn't ask how you would describe it.]). So, they VERY MUCH live on the Rule of Cool, and it's VERY OBVIOUS. This isn't usually a problem with writers, but in this case, they go, "Doesn't this concept sound cool?" and they just leave it at that.

A floating concept.

With nothing connecting it to anything else.

So, this is why Sokol, for example, is a walking Russian meme. And that, yes, Jacket and Sydney and Wolf are all CANONICALLY 'crazy', and the dev team just expects us all to be fine with that. It's all surface level with every character in the PAYDAY universe—hence why I said to ignore characterization. Because otherwise you'll end up a jaded, foaming-at-the-mouth, feral bastard like me that wants to throw all of my shoes at the writers in STRBRZ.

I'm locked and loaded, you shits.

Anyway, to get back on track, they dumped Pete Gold from PD2 and replaced Hoxton with Houston/Derek Ray, 'cause Simon Viklund thought that, "None of the fans would care." Like an idiot. So, there was a petition (which I signed) calling for Hoxton to come back. They responded with the first Christmas album, which we were all hyped about but also bummed over, and then, years later, they finally gave us HoxOut.

They just plopped him on our proverbial laps with his scar and continued the 'he's in prison' explanation, but that. was. it. Sure, the Dentist pokes at Dallas for 'leaving him behind', but this is pretty innocuous and vague, so it's not a for definite on what even happened to get Hox in the slammer in the first place. Honestly, knowing OVK/STRBRZ, they were just like, "Well, he was in prison, so wouldn't it be badass if he came back with, like, a gnarly scar? Wouldn't that be cool?!" And then they proceeded to add it without coming up with a why, so... We're fucked outta luck on that one, chief.

As a result, and to no one's surprise, the fandom stepped in to fill in the gaps. You'll see loads of headcanons about it. I've seen some posit that he was burned mid-cop raid when he was taken into custody, or that he was chemically attacked while in prison—either by his fellow inmates or by the cops/guards getting revenge on the copkiller. Some peeps have created meme art for it, showing that he fell off a scooter or bike or whatever, or that he had a cooking accident, and so on and so forth. Others have also made body horror art for it—I have one that I'm specifically thinking of buried somewhere in my blog.

So, yeah. Whatever you think happened is just as good of an explanation as anything else. You'll just have to use your

If that wasn’t obvious

Jolie adopted me into this family so hello new siblings and various other relatives 😻

And yes Ken I am alive

Ive ALWAYS have been…