The Illusive Man wears an open suit that connotes both futuristic style and the "casual swagger of a charming billionaire".

The Illusive Man later appears in Mass Effect 3 as the secondary antagonist, where he works against Shepard's attempts to destroy the Reapers, wishing to control them instead.

Mass Effect: Evolution reveals the character's origin story as a mercenary named Jack Harper, who worked for the Human System Alliance during the First Contact War.

The Illusive Man is the leader of Cerberus, a pro-human group officially regarded as a terrorist organisation by the Citadel Council and the humans' Systems Alliance.

The holographic computer terminals surrounding his office desk serve two functions: to show his connection to "a vast web of information" while decreasing his humanity for only communicating through holograms.

[13] John Jackson Miller, who penned the script for Mass Effect: Evolution, Invasion, and Redemption, personally viewed him as a searcher that saw a "darker side to some of the great things humanity's discovered", the object of his search.

The player character and protagonist, Commander Shepard, is recalled to life by the Illusive Man's Cerberus after being killed by an unknown ship at the beginning of the game.

The Illusive Man debriefs and tells Shepard about how someone has been abducting human colonies and may be working with the Reapers, a sentient machine race dedicated to wiping out all advanced intelligent life.

In response, the Illusive Man commands the assassin Kai Leng to steal vital information necessary to combat the Reapers.

In one incident, Jack leads two other mercenaries, Ben Hislop and Eva Coré, in attacking a group of turians, and captures one as prisoner.

The turian, named Desolas Arterius, lead them to an artifact that turns Ben into a zombie-like monster and leaves Jack with strange eyes and the mysterious ability to understand alien languages.

The character appears in the fourth issue of the 2012 Mass Effect: Homeworlds, where he monitors Liara for her Prothean research on Reaper-defeating technologies.

[24] Game Informer's Joe Juba listed the Illusive Man's appearance in Mass Effect: Retribution as a reason to read the book.

[25] Dan Ryckert, also writing for Game Informer, felt that Bruce Greenwood would best suit the character in the forthcoming Mass Effect film.

[29][30] Seth Schiesel from the New York Times singled out Sheen's performance as an example of BioWare's superbly evocative and believable voice acting and direction, alluding to the perceived similarities between the Illusive Man and Sheen's character Captain Benjamin L. Willard from the film Apocalypse Now as a "a wonderful, delicious riff".

[32] When reviewing Mass Effect 2, IGN's Erik Brudvig called Sheen's performance a "high point" in the game's cast.

[35] Nic Vargus, writing for GamesRadar, felt similarly and called it "one of the biggest narrative stretches in Mass Effect".

[36] In April 2016, a propaganda video promoted on various social media channels attracted media attention for its appropriation of audio assets from Mass Effect 2, which included the voice performance of the Illusive Man by Martin Sheen, in an ostensible show of support for the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

[37] The original video, which was uploaded on YouTube and had stylistic similarities to a promotional trailer for Mass Effect 2, was liked and shared on Donald Trump's Twitter and Instagram accounts shortly before it was taken down due to copyright infringement claims by publisher EA, with an issued statement condemning the use of their intellectual property for political campaigns, though the video was still briefly visible on Trump's Twitter account before it was permanently removed.