Cannot figure out why vc-git.elc is always loaded on startup

Question

This is more a curiosity, than a necessity.

I'm playing around with startup times, and to have something to compare with, I wanted to see how fast emacs could start up pure.

Running emacs -Q, emacs-init-time reported 0.3~ secs on average.

With a blank config, I installed esup (Emacs Start Up Profiler), and the init.el file became:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/packages/esup-0.7")
(require 'esup)

To test it out, I launched emacs normally, and ran esup.

Huh, look that. vc-git is loaded.

Curious on how low the start up time can get, I try to disable it.

And so it begins.

To disable VC entirely, set the customizable variable vc-handled-backends to nil https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Version-Control.html

I insert (setq-default vc-handled-backends nil) into init.el

Still being loaded.

Perhaps removing the vc entry it from load-path does the trick.

So I also add (delete "/usr/share/emacs/27.1/lisp/vc" load-path) to the config.

Still being loaded. Challenge accepted.

I try to add (add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/overwrites") to the newly supported early-init.el config file, and add a dummy vc-git.el file into the folder specified, containing just (provide 'vc-git)

Still being loaded. Same if I move the line from early-init.el to init.el.

No effect by adding (setq-default load-suffixes '(".el")) either.

Seeing no other way to prevent it from loading, I try the nuclear option of moving the offending file /usr/share/emacs/27.1/lisp/vc/vc-git.elc temporarily.

Finally it does not load.

So it is possible.

Now I'm just wondering if it is possible without going nuclear.

For science (and negible reduced startup time)