History VideoGame / GrandTheftAutoOnline

* FalseFlagOperation: Lamar's plan in ''Lowriders'' is to provoke a [[MobWar Gang War]] between the Ballas and Vagos by having players perpetrate drive by shootings on members of the two gangs while disguised as their opposites.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: One of the random dialogue Pavel says[[spoiler: after being caught and thrown off of Cayo Perico says it's a long swim back to Los Santos. You can escape the island during the heist by swimming out to the ocean.]]

* Retcon: The Enhanced & Expanded version of the game changes the introduction when creating a new character thanks to the new Career Builder which reveals that they were arrested for robbing over 4 million Dollars and had the money kept through laundering businesses and was already either a Business owner, Biker Club owner, Gunrunner, or a Nightclub owner instead of arriving in San Andreas for the first time and meeting Lamar in person after becoming friends with him on Lifeinvader. Because of this, the introduction missions along with the first meeting cutscenes for Lamar, Gerald, Lester, Simeon, Ron and Trevor, and Martin Madrazo are no longer shown with some of them implying that they already know the player. However, the original introduction missions and first meetings are still considered Canon.

** When the game launched, players could only have a single apartment or garage property at a time and you would be given a refund of half the price you paid for said property when you switched it out for another one. As the game continued, the amount of properties you could keep was increased.

* ''San Andreas Mercenaries'': Released 13 June 2023. Merryweather Security Consulting is plotting to muscle out San Andreas's various criminal enterprises for more power in the state. Charlie Reed, the online protagonist's personal hangar technician, is one of the few criminals not willing to take this sitting down, enlisting the protagonist and a few others as part of his own personal military unit, the "Los Santos Angels". The update includes a new mission line for the Los Santos Angels, as well as a few quality of life updates for the Hangar business to bring its earnings more in line with other content.

** Further clothes and tattoos are unlocked by completing various challenges, playing some missions a certain way, through rising in ranks at the LS Car Meet and Arena War. There are also rare clothes that can be only unlocked during certain one time events.

** The Short Trip mission "Fire It Up" from ''The Contract'' ends with Lamar insulting Franklin in a similar manner to Story Mode's first mission (after the prologue) back from eight years ago.

* TimeSkip: The recent ''Gunrunner'' and ''Smuggler's Run'' updates seem to take place after the events of the single-player game. On one gunrunning mission, Agent 14 mentions that it is now 2017. And on the ''Smuggler's Run'' introduction, Ron states that Trevor had gone "Vinewood" on him and left the business to him to run.

*** In qddition to Reputation Points leveling your rank, players earn 15 [=JP=] after completing every mission. What does it do? Nothing. Literally. Apparently it's a hold over from when certain content would be locked behind having done enough jobs, but that was abandoned and the [=JP=] remains

* {{Aesop}}:
** Having your character smoke will damage your health a tiny bit, much like ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid''.
** On the flip side, green drinks in apartments fully restore health. Moral of the story: vegetable juice is healthy for you. [[ZigzaggedTrope Zigzagged]] in that a can of soda has the same effect.

* VillainHasAPoint: During a setup mission in ''Series A Funding'', Trevor tells the Online Protagonists [[AnAesop to be careful on what they post online and make sure their settings are secure.]] After all, a bunch of public photos featuring the Ballas posing with weapons and drugs along with said photos apparently being ''geotagged'' were how Trevor found a target to rob.

* AbsurdlyHighLevelCap: The rank cap is 8000. It used to be a whole order of magnitude lower on the [[UsefulNotes/TheSeventhGenerationOfConsoleVideoGames 7th gen]] version of the game, but Rockstar ended up increasing the cap at the behest of players who hit the old one. The new rank cap was actually used as a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_(computing) honeypot]] for modders on consoles back then (especially Xbox 360) -- [[StupidCrooks particularly stupid modders]] would just max out their experience point counter and subsequently get banned for attaining an unattainable rank. It should be noted that the last item that ever gets unlocked for players is at rank 120 (135 if one were to count armor carrying capacity in the inventory), and even the most dedicated players who've been playing for practically every waking moment since launch day are very rarely past rank 1800.

** The [[UsefulNotes/TheNinthGenerationOfConsoleVideoGames 9th gen]] "Expanded & Enhanced" edition has a few:

* DefunctOnlineVideoGames: The UsefulNotes/Xbox360 and UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 versions of ''Grand Theft Auto Online'' became examples of this trope on December 16, 2021, six years after Rockstar officially stopped updating them.

* CoolGuns: You can cusotmize certain guns to absurd lengths, and there are [[AKA47 fictionlized counterparts]] to various real life rare and exotic weapons. And that's before you get to the futuristic EnergyWeapons.