Lina Malina
Lina Malina is a braindance actress encountered in Dogtown during the Phantom Liberty side job Dazed and Confused, where her professional identity becomes central to the situation.
Key Takeaways
Lina Malina is a Phantom Liberty character whose story centers on braindance production, identity, and the consequences of treating people as entertainment.
Braindance performer
Lina Malina is a braindance actress and media personality rather than a combat-focused character or playable party member.
Phantom Liberty appearance
Her main role is in the Side Job “Dazed and Confused,” set in Dogtown during Phantom Liberty.
Connected to Tool
Lina’s story is closely tied to Tool, whose identity and circumstances create the central personal conflict of the job.
Quest-focused role
V’s interaction with Lina concerns her participation in a braindance production and the difficult circumstances surrounding it.
Narrative significance
Lina’s importance comes from the job’s questions about identity, consent, and the exploitation of personal suffering, not from a unique combat ability or equipment.
Overview
Lina Malina is a supporting character in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, where she appears as a braindance celebrity connected to the Side Job “Dazed and Confused.” Her role is built around the expansion’s interest in identity, media, and the unstable boundary between a person and a performed persona.
Lina is introduced through an unusual investigation involving her disappearance and a confused individual who appears to have adopted her identity. Rather than serving as a fixer, gang member, or conventional mission giver, she belongs to Dogtown’s entertainment scene and becomes the focus of a situation shaped by braindance technology and psychological disorientation.
Her importance comes from the way “Dazed and Confused” turns a relatively small celebrity case into a question about identity and exploitation. Lina is not the protagonist of a major faction conflict, but her connection to the case gives V a view of how entertainment technologies and commercial interests can affect vulnerable people in Night City.
Lina also stands out because the job presents her through competing accounts of who she is and what has happened to her. That framing makes her role less about combat or equipment and more about resolving a personal and ethically uncertain situation. The character is therefore best understood through her place in the Side Job and its identity-related conflict.
Lina Malina’s page is useful for readers tracking the characters, relationships, and choices connected to “Dazed and Confused.” Her appearance is limited compared with the expansion’s major companions and political figures, but she helps illustrate Phantom Liberty’s broader focus on damaged identities, manufactured personas, and the human consequences of Night City’s technology.
Background
A Braindance Career in Dogtown
Lina Malina is established as a prominent braindance actress working in Dogtown during Phantom Liberty. Her public identity is built around recorded performances and celebrity status rather than a documented military, corporate, or gang affiliation. Cyberpunk 2077 does not provide a detailed account of her childhood, family, or early career, so her background before becoming a recognized braindance performer remains largely undefined.
Role in the Story
SpoilersPersonality & Motivations
A Performer Protecting Her Brand
Lina Malina presents herself first as a professional entertainer whose public image has tangible value. In *Dazed and Confused*, she is concerned with the consequences of Tool’s appearance and behavior, treating the situation as a threat to the identity associated with her performances rather than as a purely personal dispute. Her response reflects a practical, reputation-conscious outlook: problems are evaluated according to how they affect her work, her audience, and the commercial value of the Lina Malina persona.
That self-protective attitude does not make her completely inflexible. Lina can recognize that Tool’s situation has consequences beyond simple imitation, and the available resolution allows her to respond according to the circumstances surrounding his identity crisis. The contrast between her initial defensiveness and her willingness to consider a workable arrangement suggests that she is motivated by control and self-preservation more than by a simple desire to punish him.
Lina’s behavior also reflects the unstable boundaries between personhood and performance in Night City. Her career depends on a recognizable image that can be reproduced, marketed, and consumed, while Tool’s condition turns that reproduction into an immediate personal and business problem. Lina therefore treats identity as something that must be managed as carefully as any other part of her career. The encounter does not establish a broad philosophy for her, but it does show a character accustomed to protecting the distinction between the performer, the brand, and anyone who might be mistaken for either.
Relationships
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Tool
Tool's identity crisis is intertwined with Lina's braindance persona.
Phantom Liberty
Lina Malina is introduced in the Phantom Liberty expansion.
Mission Appearances
Lina Malina appears in this Phantom Liberty Side Job, which follows V's investigation into the disappearance of the actor Tool. Lina is closely connected to the case and becomes central to the job's identity-focused conflict. Her role makes this the character's primary story appearance in Cyberpunk 2077.
Locations and Properties
Brainporium
Lina Malina is associated with the Brainporium, a braindance studio in Dogtown where V meets her during the Side Job “Dazed and Confused.” The location functions as Lina’s professional base and the setting for the job’s investigation into the troubled braindance performer Tool. It is not presented as Lina’s private residence or personal safehouse.
Character Development
Lina Malina Confronts the Cost of Her Public Persona
Lina Malina does not undergo a sweeping transformation across Cyberpunk 2077. Her development is concentrated in the Phantom Liberty Side Job [Dazed and Confused], where her career as a braindance performer is placed alongside a crisis involving Tool, a fan whose identity has been altered to resemble hers. The situation forces the boundary between Lina Malina as a marketable persona and Lina as a person to become difficult to ignore.
The job gives Lina more agency than her celebrity image initially suggests. Rather than existing only as a performer whose likeness can be reproduced or exploited, she must respond to the consequences of that exploitation and decide how far she is willing to participate in the situation surrounding Tool. Her arc is therefore less about a permanent change in beliefs and more about being pushed to acknowledge the human cost behind the image that made her famous.
Because Lina appears primarily in this contained storyline, the game leaves her long-term development largely unresolved. Her significance comes from the contrast between performance and identity: Lina's public role depends on a carefully maintained image, while the events of the job show how damaging that image can become when other people treat it as something that can be copied, imposed, or commercially controlled.
Endings and Fate
SpoilersAppearance and Design
Lina Malina as a Braindance Celebrity
In Phantom Liberty’s Side Job “Dazed and Confused,” Lina Malina is presented as a recognizable braindance celebrity rather than a combat-focused character. Her appearance is polished and highly performative, matching the manufactured image expected of a public entertainment figure in Night City. The contrast between her celebrity presentation and the rougher environment of Dogtown reinforces how much of her identity is tied to media, branding, and controlled appearances.
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