Character Analysis
More Than Skin Deep
Cypher seems like a nice person. Sure, he likes to tease Trinity about having a thing for Neo… but maybe Cypher is just a little immature. And he seems to genuinely care about Neo; he empathizes with him about the craziness about being The One and even offers him some pretty sage advice about running from the agents. He doesn't sound so bad after all.
But Cypher is incredibly selfish, and incredibly disloyal. In order to keep Morpheus alive so that he can be hacked, Cypher must kill the entire crew of the Nebuchadnezzar. And if you think that's bad, he's actually giving up the codes to Zion's mainframe, essentially selling the lives of every single free human being. He really is a Judas of sorts, betraying The One for his own benefit.
The Philosophy of the Real
Let's take a step back, though. Cypher is a bad dude: that's a given. But just because he's incredibly evil doesn't mean he's… wrong.
Let's think about his dinner with Smith, where he talks about the steak. He knows that the steak isn't real, that it's a simulation of the Matrix. But, as he says, ignorance is bliss. Even knowing the steak isn't "real" it tastes "juicy and delicious." When someone is ignorant of the fact they're in the Matrix, then the steak is exactly like "real" steak. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck… it's probably a succulent t-bone.
Cypher's problem, of course, is that there is no steak in the real world. Instead, he is stuck eating goop that maybe tastes like runny eggs if you close your eyes. Cypher seems to be the only character to truly realize that one's experience in the Matrix cannot be defined as unreal. It is not an opposition to the physical world; it is simply alternative, and an alternate that Cypher prefers with good reason—there are steaks in the Matrix.
Cypher adds a depth to the film that would otherwise be absent. The Matrix could simply be another of the films binaries: the "real" world is real (therefore good) and the Matrix is false (and therefore bad).
But chew on this: if the world, our world right now, were actually a Matrix, would you suddenly consider all your experiences (and, in consequence, your very identity) to be unreal? That is an incredibly tricky question.
We hope you wouldn't be willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of people to live a better life, but Cypher certainly makes us question the nature of what makes a thing real, as well as the inherent value of a physical reality. Who knows, in a hundred years people who value the physical world just might end up sounding like your grandpa complaining about how nobody talks face-to-face anymore.
As a side note, Cypher also makes us think of other "realities", not just our own world, as matrixes. In the scene where he talks to Smith at the restaurant, Cypher describes the person he wants to be in the Matrix when he's reinserted. He says he wants to be rich and important, "like an actor."
But uh, he is an actor. Neo, Trinity, Morpheus: they're all actors. It's a sly joke that seems perfectly sensible within the confines of the movie. But it also makes us think about movies themselves as a kind of Matrix: a virtual reality that we can escape into. Surely, it's not a stretch to think of video games and even books in the same way.
So thanks, Cypher! Not only do you inject some drama-rama into this film, you also make our brains hurt from rigorous philosophizing: we feel the burn, and it is sweet.
Cypher's Timeline