#my boy probably has sooooooooo much survivor's guilt that he's bottling up

[volixia669]

Sure Bioware, I totally believe that Joker, the guy calling Cerberus assholes back in Mass Effect 1, and probably read the report where Shepherd shot the Cerberus scientist behind Akuze, joined Cerberus because "The Alliance wouldn't let me fly."

ESPECIALLY since I refuse to believe an Earth military would ACTUALLY ground one of their best pilots (particularly given the whole LOSING A CHUNK OF THE ALLIANCE FLEET bit) as well as just LET him go awol.

See, I read a theory on here that Chakwas is actually an Alliance plant via Hackett and yknow what I believe that.

But I think Anderson did some finangling behind the scenes as well. (Maybe in league with Hackett...) Council position or no, he DOES still have plenty of weight, and I BET one of the first things Joker did was report all the oddities of the attack. Add to that no body found? Anderson is going to go digging, contact some spies, and discover Project Lazarus.

But of course getting close, and finding specifics would be difficult. Gonna need someone in Cerberus that Shepherd, if they're really them, is going to trust on the spot.

And oh look at that, Joker is temporarily grounded for psych evals. Perfect.

Tl;dr: Anderson pulled strings to get Joker permenantly grounded so his "turn" to Cerberus looked more legit. Joker played his part as, well, a snarky pilot that had quite a few gripes with the Alliance. (Hey, easier to lie when part of its true.) All the pieces came together just as Anderson hoped.

Bonus: Between Joker, Chakwas, and Tali all sending Anderson and Hackett WTF SHEPHERD IS ALIVE messages, it explains how those two find out fast enough to send you emails when you first check your terminal.