"The Laughing Man" is a short story written by J. D. Salinger and originally published in The New Yorker magazine on March 19, 1949. It largely takes the structure of a story within a story and is thematically occupied with the relationship between narrative and narrator, and the end of youth. The story also appears in Salinger's short story collection Nine Stories.
The Laughing Man (笑い男, Warai Otoko?) is a fictional hacker character in the anime series
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex:HistoryThe hacker's first appearance in the GITS: SAC storyline is six years before the anime starts, when he assaulted the head of Serano Genomics in public on February 3, 2024, hiding his face from eyewitnesses and cameras with his Laughing Man logo. The Laughing Man is such an expert that he can "steal eyes" of entire crowds, in real time—hacking their visual cyber-brain implants, either to make himself appear invisible or to hide his face with the cartoon logo. He can also alter memories, erasing all records of his existence. Many of those who indeed saw his face would only recall and refer to the stylized logo as depicted above. Togusa was one such person, as were many of the witnesses of the initial incident involving the head of Serano Genomics. His talents were recognized even by Motoko Kusanagi and Aramaki. When Section 9 finally tracked him down, they offered him a position on the Section 9 payroll; The Laughing Man was flattered by the offer but politely declined it.
The Laughing Man has quite a fascination with The Catcher in the Rye, as if the work greatly influenced him: like that novel's main character, Holden Caulfield, he can't stand "phonies" (corrupt politicians in this case). He also kept a prized left-handed baseball catcher's mitt for a time with a quote from The Catcher in the Rye written on it: "You know what I'd like to be? I mean, if I had my goddamn choice, I'd just be a catcher in the rye and all". Ironically, while the mitt is actually real, the term "a lefty's catcher mitt" is described in an episode as being net jargon for "something people think exists, but really doesn't." Aoi also has stated fairly out front that he is an atheist (or is, at the very least, completely comfortable with using blasphemous statements such as directly insulting God).
For an unknown amount of time before the storyline begins, the Laughing Man lived in the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's Rehabilitation Center, posing as, not-coincidentally, a deaf-mute in a wheelchair. He apparently revealed his ability to walk and talk to the other patients at the center, who knew him as "leader" ("chief" in the English dub) and referred to his occasional periods of communication as "visits." When Togusa comes to investigate the center, he discovers that someone has written the famous Laughing Man logo text in a PBX cabinet but has added "or should I?" Apparently feeling that he was about to be discovered, the Laughing Man erases all record of his existence from the center, including wiping the memories of his friends (who apparently not only consent to this treatment, but seem to expect it as if they know of it happening before) and vanishes again before Section 9 can track him down.
The Laughing Man has made it a point that he never came up with the name "The Laughing Man" for himself, it was a label that the media gave based on the J.D. Salinger quote on the logo that eventually stuck.
The Laughing Man's kidnapping of the head of Serano Genomics was actually a spontaneous act, and he did not strike again until some six years later. However, following the kidnapping there was, for some time, a large wave of "Laughing Man"-related graffiti attacks, corporate vandalism and extortion. It was later revealed that a corrupt power cabal in the Japanese government used the sudden appearance of the Laughing Man to their own advantage by carrying out acts of corporate sabotage, then heavily using the "Laughing Man" motif in order to fool the media into thinking it was the Laughing Man's doing, thus shifting suspicion from themselves and their illegal actions.
An unexpected element was that 39 people who were arrested in regard to the assassination attempt on Secretary General Daido all showed no sign of external influence by The Laughing Man, or anyone else. It was thought that many of the direct attackers were not influenced at all; they attempted the assassination to be a part of The Laughing Man's effort for the truth. The police, however, informed the public that they were forced to do it through ghost hacking.
"The Laughing Man" became something of a pop culture obsession. Much to the chagrin of the actual Laughing Man - the irony being that since everybody used his icon and name for their own purposes, the original meaning of his actions, an artful forced confession of the truth through fear in the public eye, became "phony" itself. The effort to stand for and demand the truth was also lost forever. A further irony is that the Laughing Man icon itself is a retooling by the Laughing Man of the fictional Starchild Coffee company logo (itself a reference to the Starbucks logo) and the Sunflower Society logo.
The Laughing Man admitted that he embarked on his notorious kidnapping caper after chancing upon a file in the depths of the Net detailing the extensive corruption in the corporate world, leaving the true identity of the propagator of the aforementioned incidents a mystery. The identified Laughing Man confesses to have been a brash student at the time, but had mellowed out somewhat over the six years since the Serano Genomics event, seeming to now prefer a more intellectual approach over his former overzealous and radical approach. His real name, as far as can be ascertained from the number of events where he appears, is Aoi, meaning Blue in Japanese.
After the events of the Section 9 raid by the Umibozu and the last meeting with Motoko and Aramaki, it was discovered that Aoi, though responsible for the initial incident that made the Laughing Man a phenomenon, was not in fact its true originator. He chose to confront Serano only because of the file he found, and despite years of extensive investigation on his own part, he never discovered the origin of that file. It could be said that whoever abandoned the file was in fact the "real" Laughing Man - and it is possible that he obtained it from someone else. Aoi tells Aramaki to make of that what he will.
Aramaki understands the sheer absurdity of it all, but is still impressed enough with Aoi's skills to offer him a position with Section 9. Though Aoi is deeply flattered by the offer, he declined. Afterwards, he disappeared again for the last time from Japanese society; he is probably employed as a librarian in the National Library. Earlier in the series when trying to crack the Laughing Man case, Togusa theorizes that because the Laughing Man was such a superb hacker, he placed no value at all in digital media because it could easily be overwritten or deleted. This would explain Aoi's choice to work in a library, because paper media, existing in a real, physical state, cannot be so easily gotten rid of or altered.
