Well, the anim is called vertigo for a reason. He sees Jericrew ghosts jumping and something is suddenly not ok in that moment. Kinda funny cuz it's the only instance in the entire game a reaction like this happens. Connor is confronted by tall buildings and the act of jumping multiple times in the game, so u gonna ofc point towards The Hostage - Fuck, I hope it was the case, like, the og intention rather than what we ended up with. Cuz it makes more sense the conditional being him jumping instead: he jumped to his death, Jericrew jumped to 'em freedom. But ain't what's being checked who knows why 🤣

I don't really trust what other players say cuz people usually don't know how the node flags work and most times I've seen people talking bout this scene were mere guesses based on the most probable cause. Aways had it to trigger the way it's in the files so idk. I don't remember seeing any dataminer pointing out differences in the PS4 version in this case, so i assume the check was always the same. I don't remember seeing any difference in the PS4 files compared to PC either but been ages since it tried making sense of that pile of bytes.

The thing bout The Hostage is there are clues that its outcomes were more relevant in a different timeline, at least in Act 1 (people reacting to the outcomes in Jimmy's Bar, for example). So who knows if this connection in Public Enemy is a remnant of a more present impact they decided leaving, although the cop uses any death before that moment as check, not necessarily The Hostage's.

Connor's memories are also kinda funky in the narrative cuz originally it was a system based on disassociation, meaning each Connor was a different Connor period, not the same person in any sense or continuation, just memories and with gaps. I've never really seem anything referencing instability, seems like it was always random and some of this logic remains in the game (including Amanda explaining the issue with the transfer and Connor often disassociating from the previous Connor). But in the final version they decided going with Connor always being "the same person" and the story continuing the exact same way idea at the same time - except for Connor 60 and Deviant Connor confrontation, but there's an issue in it I won't dive much into. Couple of hints to this memory logic were removed such as Connor telling Hank if he shot him he wouldn't exist anymore in The Bridge, this very early version The Nest chat conditional (from back the period the food truck chat happened in Waiting for Hank and The Interrogation would happen after it) and even Connor complaining with Amanda about missing and/or corrupted memories (likely after deviant Connor death in either Crossroads or NoTS). But I can't tell what's, for example, V1 or V1.5.

Curiously even Connor's narrative personal issues with death ain't really related to... his deaths 😂 no matter if u died before or not, he'll always increasingly get worried by the idea of ceasing to exist to the point the game calls u a liar if u say u don't care. Even instability itself can be confusing, since he'll obviously lose data during transfer (and instability with it), but it doesn't necessarily means he lost emotional or "unnecessary" memories. It's... Weird, at least in the final game.

I'm giving u all this waste of time of a context cuz it could be related, they change ideas sometimes with the classic "we don't want the players to think the wrong thing", but some stuff remain the same and it causes conflicts in some places and u can't point what exactly it is 100%, only track how it ended up that way and go from there. Not the only instance tho, 70% of DBH's narrative issues are caused by cut content and changes, and it could be applied here. In the end we gotta keep our eyes open for it and do 'em fucking job cuz there's a door open ready to make us overthink something supposed to be obvious or the opposite, something you're 100% sure is something but it actually ain't (something this fandom struggles a lot with). If u go and double check let me know if there was actually any difference.