Design
All Agents (other than Agents Perry and Pace from The Matrix Online game) are Caucasian males, as opposed to the population of Zion, which contains people of many ethnic groups. Agents wear dark sunglasses with corners or smooth angles and near-identical dark green business suits. The Agents show blandness and an apathy for the human race, with the exception of Smith and his acute disgust with humanity. In the first film, he expresses a desire to leave the Matrix to escape its repulsive taint, and reasons that with Zion destroyed his services will no longer be required, allowing him in some sense to 'leave' the construct. This at least partially explains his extreme antagonism towards Neo, who fights relentlessly to save Zion.
Other Agents have common Anglo-Saxon names like Brown, Jones, and Thompson. It was mentioned in the Philosopher Commentary on the DVD collection that the names of Smith, Brown, and Jones may be endemic to the system itself, demonstrating a very "robotic" mindset on the part of the Machines.
The name "Smith" is explicitly attributed (as "IS 5416" on the license plate of Smith's car in The Matrix Reloaded) to Isaiah 54:16 in the Old Testament (King James Version):
"Behold, I have created the Smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy."
Neo's solitary role as the One is contrasted by Smith, who, by replicating himself, becomes "the many." When Neo asks the Oracle about Smith, the Oracle explains that Smith is Neo's opposite and his negative.
Unlike the other characters in The Matrix, Smith almost always refers to Neo as "Mr. Anderson." He calls him "Neo" only once in each part of the trilogy: the first time when he is interviewing Neo about his double life, the second when he is dropping off an Agent earplug in a package for Neo, and the third when he is repeating a line of his vision to Neo.
Read more about this topic: Agent Smith
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