I wonder if the “Agent” hat iconography was inspired by Forté Agent, the most (IMHO) popular Usenet software for Windows, which used a very similar motif: https://archive.org/details/forte-agent-1.6
Love reading this kind of history straight from the creator :)
I'm seeing Carmen Sandiego in it for some reason, but the modern version (from 2014) has a film noir detective in the same spot (the application icon is still the lady in the hat): https://youtu.be/h-_UNm_gycU?t=94
Sibling already mentions this, but the wording of the article almost directly but not quite says it's "Spy vs. Spy" based. I'm not aware of an official link to document this but
Love reading this kind of history straight from the creator :)