History VideoGame / MafiaIII

** Silenced firearms in general make stealth killing every enemy in an area a trivial affair, allowing you to clear entire bases without getting into a firefight. You can unlock them as early as about 1/3rd of the way through the game depending on how you portion out the districts to your capos. Alternatively, buy the Judge, Jury & Executioner Weapons Pack DLC and you get access to the Silentium silenced pistol the minute you can access the Arms Dealer, which will be immediately following the prologue.

* BottomlessMagazines: Definitely averted: Lincoln can only carry a limited amount of spare ammo for each gun-two magazine's worth, three if you're lucky. Played straight with enemies of course, who do have to reload but never run out of bullets.

* AluminumChristmasTrees:
** TheMafia actually had a major presence in New Orleans from the 19th century to 1993. It reached its heyday under Carlos Marcello (the inspiration for [[BigBad Sal Marcano]]). While not having had as big a media presence as the New York Crime families, it was one of the largest and most powerful mafia families in the world with over 300 made men and 3000 criminal associates. Sal Marcano's ridiculously large organization is actually just historically accurate.
** [[GenericEthnicCrimeGang Black Mobs]] like Sammy's actually did exist. After [=WW2=], many black communities had individuals consolidate control over the crime going on in their neighborhoods and worked to keep out other gangs. They invested heavily in local businesses and had "complicated" relationships with TheMafia. Famously, fixed lotteries like the primary source of income Sammy had were a RL thing too.
** TheKlan actually has a large presence in Louisiana despite the state's large Catholic population. Indeed, Grand Wizard David Duke would form his branch and base it there. That was in the 1970s rather than Sixties, though. So, the Southern Union is not remotely out of place.
** "Sundown Towns" where black folk would be assaulted and killed for no other crime than being black were a real phenomenon. It became a race against time as they would be subject to violence the moment that it was night. Many of these towns' violence were enforced by local law enforcement. Sheriff Beaumont is, horrifyingly, TruthInTelevision.

** Also broken with ''Faster, Baby!'' which is all about using the system to bring down Sheriff Beaumont legitimately rather than just killing him for being the HateSink PoliticallyIncorrectVillain CorruptHick he is. You break dozens of laws, probably kill more than a dozen cops as well as TheKlan, and more to get him put behind bars. [[spoiler: He's then assassinated as soon as he gets out of jail anyway.]]

* CorruptHick:
** After wiping out the Black Mob, Sal Marcano assigns Ritchie Doucet and the "Dixie Mafia" to run Delray Hollow.
** The racist [[TheKlan Southern Union]] is settled in the affluent neighborhood of Frisco Fields, where they enjoy a considerable amount of power in the public and in the criminal underworld.
** The "Faster Baby" DLC pits Lincoln and an ActionGirl named Roxy against a sheriff who is harassing civil rights activists outside of New Bordeaux.

** The Dixie Mob is a generic redneck DeepSouth CorruptHick gang of poor white stereotypes.

* BookEnds: Lincoln's quest for revenge starts and ends to a song by Music/TheRollingStones ; [[spoiler: The Black Mob is slaughtered to ''Paint it Black'', and after dealing with Marcano, Lincoln makes his ultimate choice of whether to rule or leave New Bordeaux to ''Sympathy for the Devil''.]]

* DarkerAndEdgier: While the ''Mafia'' series was already quite dark, Mafia III seems to have made things UpToEleven. [[spoiler: Lincoln's adoptive family is betrayed and murdered in front of him]], the place is extremely racist and hostile, executions are excessively brutal, there's a lot of mass murder and disturbing content, and the antagonists are even more despicable than before. Interestingly, Mafia III has much more muted colors in pictures. Heck, the "Sign of the Times" DLC doubles with BloodierAndGorier and features a homicidal Satanic cult.

** Lincoln's war with Sal Marcano didn't go unnoticed. Keep in mind that Sal is a member of the Commission, a syndicate of other crime families, so when one of them is under attack, it's only natural that the other families will soon hear about it. [[spoiler: By the end of the game, after killing Sal and his son, the Commission sends over Leo Galante to confront Lincoln over what he's doing; unsurprisingly, they want him dead out of fear that they might be next.]]

* KneeCapping: At some point Sal Marcano sent Roman Barbieri (AKA "[[TheButcher The Butcher]]") after Burke, who now has a permanent limp in his left leg.
** After Burke and Lincoln take down Roman, Burke drags him off to take revenge. Back in the present, Maguire talks about that when Roman's body was found years later, the police had trouble identifying it. Among the many mutilations, Roman's legs had been broken so many times there was barely any bone left in them.

* ChekhovsGun: The Federal Reserve heist goes sideways when Giorgi opens up a cage in the vault with its own alarm. [[spoiler:Giorgi was stealing printing plates to use in a counterfeiting operation the Marcano's are setting up.]]

* KnifeNut: Lincoln uses his army-issue combat knife for his lethal takedowns, and also uses it to kill Giorgi and Marcano.
** The female cultists in Sign of the Times prefer to rush Lincoln with a knife.

** The Big Hank at Hank's Burger Bar is one for the [[UsefulNotes/McDonalds Big Mac]], which went nationwide in '68.\

** Some of the communist propaganda posters aren't about communism at all, but rather anti-capitalism. Even to this day, this remains a common misconception against right-wingers, intentional or no.

* DickDastardlyStopsToCheat: Marcano needlessly betrays Lincoln rather than just taking his share of the Federal Reserve Heist and waiting a little longer [[spoiler: to build his casino. He could have also have gotten other investors or settled for something slightly less grandiose and impractical. 2 million dollars is a helluva lot of money in 1960s dollars even without however much Sal has from his other investments.]] Justified as Marcano's time running a criminal empire is wearing down on him and while he wants out he still has an ego.

** Taken up to eleven in the Faster, Baby! DLC with the Sinclair Parish Sheriff Department, who are so obsessed in keeping the village an all-white community that they keep the town in constant terror, and are (unsurprisingly) in very good terms with the Southern Union as well. Their racial hatred is also indicated in actual gameplay: unlike New Bordeaux cops, the uniformed sheriff deputies are programmed as enemies (similarly to mobsters, they have red blips on the minimap), and attack Lincoln on sight even if he commits no crime, solely because he is biracial.

* DrugsAreBad: A point that is hammered home multiple times throughout the game, though not for the reasons you might think. The drug trade is bad because it will inevitably draw the attention of the South Americans, who are both far more ruthless and bloodthirsty as well as more heavily armed than the Mafia. [[spoiler: In Burke's ending where he becomes the Boss of New Bourdeaux, he turns the city into a drug dealing capital; as a result the Cubans comes in and kill him, turning the city into a war-zone which it remains to this day.]]

** Lincoln's gang is an alliance between the Italian, Irish and Haitian mob run by a half-black man though this is born more out of a combination of PragmaticVillainy and mutual hatred for Marcano.
** Marcano's outfit seems to be a deconstruction. They worked with the Irish and Black Mobs when it suited them, then tossed them aside for white supremacist groups like the Southern Union and Dixie Mob. Note that they don't seem get along with them well (Remy Duvall calls Sal a "greasy wop" and Sal was just using him to ahold of some land contracts). They also deal with Cuban communists, but talk in private about how much they hate them. They're equal-opportunists not because they welcome everyone, but because they're willing to ''use'' everyone.

** Lincoln normally has no qualms about continuing established rackets, but once he discovers what the Southern Union are really up to in Bellaire's (human trafficking) he wants absolutely no part of it, once you take over the store, Lincoln makes it very clear to his lieutenants that they will NOT be in the business of selling people and will find some other way to make money through the store. This is reinforced when Lincoln is interrogating the racket bosses, as unlike every other racket in the game, there is no option to spare them.

** [[spoiler: Despite being on Lincoln's hit list, Olivia Marcano was spared as despite being part of the crime family Lincoln holds a deep-seated grudge to, he is not above killing women, innocent or otherwise; her own nephew Giorgi murdered her in Lincoln's place instead.]]

* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Both Clay and Marcano's family has one female lieutenant, Cassandra and Olivia Marcano. Donovan is actually shocked that a woman could be a capo in Sal's mafia.

* GenreShift: ''Sign of the Times'' which takes a turn right into horror game territory, ''Stones Unturned'' has the plot of an action-war film, and ''Faster, Baby!'' is a mystery thriller.

** The [[DownloadableContent mission set "Faster Baby"]] has Lincoln help out a Black Panther like organization trying to file a federal Civil Rights case against [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain Sherif Walter "Slim" Beaumont]] of Sinclair Parish, just outside New Bordeaux, and whose deputies gleefully enforce the Sheriff's unofficial "Sundown Policy," which states that any non-white that hasn't vacated the "Whites Only Parish" by sundown [[UnPerson will never be seen or heard from ever again.]] To take down Sheriff Beaumont, Lincoln partners up with [[AfroAssKicker Roxy Laveau, a fast talking ass kicking activist.]] For better effect, play these missions with Lincoln wearing the "Revolutionary" outfit which has him sporting a BaldOfAwesome, as well as a Black Panther style outfit.

* EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys: Plow House hookers in monkey costumes.

Taking place in the city of New Bordeaux in the year 1968, the game puts you in the place of Lincoln Clay, a mixed-race Vietnam veteran and a member of the Black Mob who seeks vengeance on the Italian Mafia for wiping out his family.

* MixedAncestry: Lincoln is half-black (Dominican, according to Father James) and half-white.

** "Madeline LaCroix' House of Voodoo is a French Ward stand in for the real "Marie LaVeau's House of Voodoo" museum and trinket shop.

* BlandNameProduct: The Big Hank at Hank's Burger Bar is one for the [[UsefulNotes/McDonalds Big Mac]], which went nationwide in '68.

** The [[DownloadableContent mission set "Faster Baby"]] has Lincoln help out a Black Panther like organization trying to file a federal Civil Rights case against [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain Sherif Walter "Slim" Beaumont]] of Sinclair Parish, just outside New Bordeaux, and whose deputies gleefully enforce the Sherif's unofficial "Sundown Policy," which states that any non-white that hasn't vacated the "Whites Only Parish" by sundown [[UnPerson will never be seen or heard from ever again.]] To take down Sheriff Beaumont, Lincoln partners up with [[AfroAssKicker Roxy Laveau, a fast talking ass kicking activist.]] For better effect, play these missions with Lincoln wearing the "Revolutionary" outfit which has him sporting a BaldOfAwesome, as well as a Black Panther style outfit.

* FullCircleRevolution: After dismantling the Marcanos' crime rackets, Clay can strike a deal with the rest of the Mafia to rule New Bordeaux's underworld in their place.

* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: The Haitians. Whether's a plainly exaggerated French accent forcing Haitian Creole words into their mouths or an Jamaican accent trying to sound Haitian. At least Emmanuel's Haitian accent stood out the most.

* RealityEnsues:
** As you play as a (half) black man in 1960s Louisiana, not only do normal white people not trust you, but no other race does, either. You can't even walk in front of the (white) police without raising some suspicion, and they are all too happy for an excuse to beat you up.
** If enemies see Lincoln, they'll be hostile to him. If they hear a gunshot or find a dead body, they'll go looking around and attack Clay when they see him.
** The people running Marcano's businesses aren't blindly loyal to him; if faced with death, they will offer to work for Lincoln Clay instead.
** If you kill the witnesses of your crimes, nobody will report them to the police.
** When Lincoln is asked for the most striking Vietnam memory, his tale is that of brutally torturing a Vietcong soldier's mother to make him surrender.
** The hastily-planned loosing of a safe with explosives ends up with Danny Burke getting his leg crushed by the falling safe.
** The fact that the Marcano crime family helped organize the opening bank heist does not stop them from killing the rest of the heist crew except Lincoln, who lives after the bullet merely graces his skull, leaving him with a permament scar.
** In the final mission, Sal Marcano's [[spoiler: death is not the result of a spectacular boss fight, but rather Sal, depressed after losing his son and criminal enterprise, begging Lincoln to shoot him or shooting himself.]]
** The Commission does not care if [[spoiler: the Marcano crime family is replaced by the Clay Mob]], as long as the new mob pays its kickback.

* AdvertisedExtra:
** The Southern Union, curiously enough. Much of the game's advertisement and magazine coverage has mentioned Lincoln fighting both TheMafia as well as TheKlan. In fact, [[TheKlan the Southern Union]] is only one gang in one district.
** A strange case is this with one of the in-game cars, the De'Leo Stiletto (based upon the first generation Maserati Ghibli). Despite appearing as the getaway car in at least three missions in the game, and being featured in the ''Faster, Baby!'' concept art, it's not one of Lincoln's fleet vehicles he can use. The ''Stones Unturned'' DLC finally makes it a car that Lincoln can unlock after doing a bounty-hunting sidequest.