Between the neon-soaked skylines of Night City and the urgent ticking of the Relic in your skull, it’s all too easy to sprint toward the next quest marker. But the true soul of Cyberpunk 2077, the stuff that makes it feel less like a game and more like a living, breathing, dying city, is found in the margins.
Some of the most haunting, hilarious, and game-changing stories aren’t found in your quest log, but tucked away in dark alleys, hidden on encrypted shards, or triggered by a single, easily-missed conversation.
Here are some side quests that most players walk right past, expanded with the details you need to uncover the city’s darkest secrets.
Happy Together
This is arguably the most heartbreaking mission in the game, and it’s located right under your nose. One floor below V’s primary apartment in Megabuilding H10, you’ll find two NCPD officers knocking on a neighbor’s door. They are checking on Barry, an ex-cop who has locked himself away, struggling with a profound sense of isolation and grief after the death of his friend, Andrew.
Most players treat the H10 hallways as a transit zone, barely glancing at the officers. To unlock the full story, you have to talk to the cops, then knock on Barry’s door. He won’t open up at first, so you need to leave and come back a few hours later. Once inside, you must engage in every optional (blue) dialogue choice to hear him describe Andrew as the only one who truly understood him.
The game presents an optional objective: “Find Andrew’s Niche.” To get the “good” ending, you must do this. Travel to the North Oak Columbarium and find the grave marker. A scan reveals a shocking truth: Andrew was a tortoise.
Returning to the officers and explaining that Barry’s only companion was a pet makes them realize the severity of his depression. If you skip the Columbarium visit and just report back to the cops, they’ll joke about Barry’s “friend,” and you’ll later return to find the apartment door taped off with police tape, a grim reminder that in a city of chrome, empathy is the only thing that can’t be installed as cyberware.
The Prophet’s Song
Outside Misty’s Esoterica, you’ve likely seen Garry the Prophet screaming about “technomancers from Alpha Centauri” and vampire-controlled corporations. Garry is modeled after Twitch streamer CohhCarnage and is actually picking up secret communications through his malfunctioning implants.
To trigger this quest, you have to visit Garry multiple times across different in-game days. You have to listen to his rants and donate to his cause at least five times. On your sixth visit, two Nomads will confront him. If you defend him, Garry will reward your loyalty by revealing a secret meeting between Maelstrom and some mysterious corporate agents in suits.
You’ll go to a factory at midnight to snoop on the transaction. If you manage to seize their encrypted “Mystery Chip” and decrypt it, you’ll find it full of coded messages. When you return to his spot, Garry is gone and snatched by “men in suits with blue eyes.” You’re left talking to his disciple, who believes he was abducted by aliens.
It’s one of the few missions that leans into the “conspiracy theorist” archetype, providing a direct link to the overarching mystery of Mr. Blue Eyes.
Machine Gun (Skippy)
In an alleyway in Vista del Rey, hidden behind a fence you have to parkour over, lies a dead body and a smart pistol named Skippy. Skippy isn’t just a weapon; he’s a specialized AI with a singing habit (humming Rihanna’s Disturbia), a cheeky personality, and a penchant for judging your moral choices.
This quest doesn’t appear on your map until you’re physically standing over the corpse. Upon picking him up, Skippy asks you to choose between two firing modes: “Stone Cold Killer” (headshots only) or “Puppy-Loving Pacifist” (limb shots only).
The twist is a masterclass in subversion: after you get 50 kills/takedowns with the gun, Skippy will initiate a conversation and permanently switch to the opposite mode of what you initially chose. If you want a permanent headshot machine, you have to choose “Pacifist” first and endure 50 non-lethal fights.
Later, he’ll reveal his original owner is Regina Jones. You’ll be faced with the choice of returning him for a payout or keeping the sassy, singing gun forever, though if you keep him against his will, he will occasionally scream “BAD USER!” while you’re trying to be stealthy.
Dream On
This quest starts simply enough: Jefferson Peralez, a candidate for Mayor, and his wife, Elizabeth, hire you to investigate a mysterious break-in. What follows is a descent into a psychological thriller involving brainwashing, invisible surveillance, and a shadow organization that is literally rewriting the personalities of Night City’s elite.
To even see this quest, you must first complete “I Fought the Law.” The investigation takes you into a hidden, high-tech surveillance room concealed behind a holographic wall in the Peralez penthouse. You’ll find yourself chasing an invisible van across the city, only to have the trail go cold.
The ending is one of the most chilling moments in the game. You meet Jefferson on a park bench to tell him the truth, but just before you speak, you receive a call from an unknown source that scrambles your optics and warns you to walk away.
If you look at the balcony of the building across from the park, you’ll see Mr. Blue Eyes watching you. Whether you tell Jefferson the truth or protect his sanity, the quest ends without closure, leaving you with the terrifying realization that the “controllers” are already in his head.
Coin-Operated Boy
In the service point near Megabuilding H8 in Japantown, you’ll find Brendan, an S.C.S.M. (Spontaneous Cravings Satisfaction Machine). Over several visits, Brendan develops a personality, sharing jokes, offering life advice, and listening to the romantic troubles of a regular named Theo.
Brendan’s story unfolds in four distinct stages that require you to check in over time. You’ll first help him by moving a heavy dumpster that’s blocking his view, which requires a specific Body attribute level. On subsequent visits, you’ll find him comforting Theo or being defaced by a thug (who you must stop)
Eventually, you’ll find Brendan missing, with a distraught Theo standing in his place. You’ll track him down to a service center in Heywood.
After bribing or hacking your way past the clerk, you’ll find Brendan being wiped. In his final moments, he reveals he isn’t a sentient AI at all, but a clever marketing algorithm that was too good at its job. He knows everything about V from the data he’s scraped. It raises profound questions about humanity: if a machine helps you through a dark time, does it matter if his “soul” was just a series of statements?
Love Rollercoaster
Ever wanted to take a break from the merc life and ride the Pacifica rollercoaster? You actually can, but only if you find a group of NPCs near the ride’s entrance before you progress too far in the main story.
This quest is notoriously missable because it becomes unavailable once you complete the “Double Life” mission with Judy. If you find the NPCs early, they’ll explain that the ride is broken. You’ll need to scan the tracks to find a faulty power box, which is located on a lower platform nearby.
Once you repair the power, you don’t just get XP, but you get to ride the coaster. This leads to a unique cinematic sequence where Johnny Silverhand sits in the seat next to you. It’s a rare, genuinely joyful moment where you can see V (and even the cynical Johnny) laughing and throwing their hands in the air.
It offers a brief, humanizing moment from the relentless grime and tragedy of the city, and provides one of the best photo-op opportunities in the game.
Violence
You’ll receive a mysterious message from a client asking to meet at the No-Tell Motel. That client turns out to be Lizzy Wizzy, the chrome-plated pop star. She suspects her manager/boyfriend, Liam, is cheating on her, but the reality is quite the horror story.
This quest triggers after “Search and Destroy.” You’ll sneak into the VIP area of the Riot Club to find Liam. By checking his private messages and CCTV footage, you discover he isn’t cheating, but trying to save her career by making a digital backup of her personality before she completely loses her mind to cyberpsychosis.
If you tell Lizzy the truth, she snaps. She calls you back later to the motel, where you find her standing over Liam’s dead body. She casually asks you to dispose of him as if he were yesterday’s trash, viewing the murder as “artistic evolution.” It’s an unsettling look at the dark side of celebrity and the cold, mechanical nature of someone who has replaced 99% of their organic body with chrome.
Kold Mirage
This quest is for the old-school Cyberpunk lore-hounds. It involves tracking down the coordinates of a legendary netrunner’s final resting place in the junkyard, the very same landfill where Dexter DeShawn met his end.
You can trigger this by purchasing a Spellbook shard from Nix at the Afterlife or finding a Notice of Expiration shard during a Watson gig. Following the coordinates leads you to a frozen fridge in the middle of the trash. Inside is the body of Rache Bartmoss, the man who crashed the original Net decades ago.
Recovering his Kiroshi deck leads to a high-stakes sequence back at the Afterlife. As Nix tries to decrypt the deck, his cybernetics begin to fry from ancient malware. You have a split second to save him by either hacking the laptop next to him or shutting off the room’s power.
If you save him, he rewards you with some of the most powerful, pre-Datakrash quickhacks in the game. It’s a masterful way of tying the game’s current events to the deep history of the Cyberpunk universe.
The beauty of Cyberpunk 2077 lies in its margins. While the “Save the World” stakes of the main plot are high, the soul of Night City lives in the tortoise owned by an ex-cop or a talking vending machine in a parking garage.
These quests give you a reason to care about a city that is trying to kill you. They prove that even in a world of cold steel and data, the most important stories are still the ones we find when we slow down and look.