Happy to see someone notice the little sleight of hand thing going with the UI patterns.
We didn't use one for Jean because that puts him on par with Greta or Ismael or Nini (who also don't have one), and gives players the first impression that he's just another not too important NPC. He only gets one when he's revealed as Hermes (don't know if it came across well, but his UI pattern is meant to be a caduceus; since the patterns don't have a beginning or end it's hard to convey it).
It also helps that a lot of the npcs also have multiple sprites so him having more than one doesn't look conspicuous right away.
Getting off topic, I guess this is now a vent post related to that last paragraph. I think this a game/narrative design obstacle in general when you're presenting players with a mystery: if you don't want players to pick up on an obvious clue, you kind of have to put the same amount of detail on everything else around it to have a decent number of elements fighting for the players' attention, so discovering the clue feels rewarding.
I bumped into this when making a small D&D campaign in a Resident Evil style puzzlebox mansion: you can't just go "you enter the library. There are books. On one of the tables, there is a silver ring with a scarlet jewel on it". If you want to make the players feel smart you can't half ass your description of the location, you have to give them at least three points of interest with an equal amount of detail. Likewise, in order for Jean to not stand out as a plot relevant NPC, we only show two of his sprites on his first two scenes, and the other NPCs like the trucker, Nini, or Ismael get multiple sprites too. Which can become a scope issue.