Dani refuses to become President of Yara after overthrowing Castillo. The revolutionaries are confused by this but Clara said that whoever becomes President is bound to be assassinated in six months. Dani is Genre Savvy enough to know that becoming President will just make her a huge target. She's also someone good with guns but has no experience running a country or even leading.
Castillo's draconian economic policy seems like it is For the Evulz but due to the economic sanctions on their island, Yara is something that is hanging back 50 years. He is attempting to massively boost things to make up for that missing time, no matter the human cost. He's also dying of his cancer and his extreme measures are him trying to do as much as possible before he dies.
Why do they have smart phones and other technology but crappy cars? Most of the modern technology used is relatively small things such as mobile phones and computers, things much easier to smuggle into a blockaded country than huge vehicles.
A lot of Jose Castillo's Ax-Crazy behavior can be explained by visiting his villa and reading his "medication" list. He's basically added on uppers the entirety of the day then puts himself to sleep with downers. No wonder he's The Caligula engaged in every impulse-driven behavior imaginable.
The Legends distaste for La Moral isn't just a difference in ethics. The Legends are a bunch of elderly Luddite unreconstructed communists that live in the jungle while reminiscing on the past. La Moral is a socially media savvy group of modern anarchists looking to the future. They are nearly perfect Foils for one another.
It’s also mentioned how Castillo uses McKay industries to get around the embargo. This is similar to how in the real world, the US has an embargo against Cuba but Canada doesn’t, so you can buy Cuban products like rum and cigars in Canadian stores. Even if a US company owns a Canadian company, while the US company cannot trade with Cuba, the Canadian subsidiary can still trade with them.
Canada is also the base for most of the world's major pharmaceutical corporations so, of course, viviro would be distributed through it.
Gilberto working for La Moral is perfectly understandable despite their position as a propaganda icon. The FND is viciously homophobic and anti-trans, even having murdered outed soldiers.
Talia has nothing but contempt for Paolo's plan to leave for America but he maintains it despite her criticism of it as a land hostile to people of color. Paolo's reasons for being uninterested in saving Yara aren't related to color but the fact it is a deeply homophobic country with actual executions being performed of LGBT soldiers. At least parts of America are accepting to people like Paolo.
The promotional image for the season pass features the villains of the previous three games (from left to right: Joseph Seed, Vaas Montenegro, and Pagan Min) parodying the Three Wise Monkeys; Iwazaru (Speak-No-Evil), Kikazaru (Hear-No-Evil) and Mizaru (See-No-Evil) respectively. However, one can see that they're not actually covering the parts of the body the Three Wise Monkeys usually do, and for good reason. Sure, they're villains and the Three Wise Monkeys are often interpreted to be good-hearted, but it goes deeper than that. Joseph Seed holds his hands up to his lips in a prayer position, still allowing himself to speak. As a cult leader, Joseph speaks evil. Vaas Montenegro holds his hands up to his head but doesn’t actually cover his ears, still allowing himself to hear. As a violent madman who is aware of all the insanity around him, Vaas hears evil. Finally, Pagan Min puts his hands over his eyes but peeks through his fingers, still allowing himself to see. As a tyrant king who knows that he himself is evil yet views the Golden Path as a greater evil, Pagan Min sees evil.
Let's consider the currency used to buy upgrades in the DLCs and what they represent to the people the player plays as.
In Insanity, Vaas collects Cash. The deaths of all Vaas' enemies served to benefit him, making him more powerful as a result.
In Control, Pagan collects Respect. Throughout his DLC, Pagan is convincing himself that he has done nothing wrong and would rather see the things that people respect him for, which is where he believes is where he earns his power from.
In Collapse, Joseph collects Penance. Given that Joseph becomes The Atoner during his DLC, it makes sense that Joseph is trying to become stronger by paying for his sins.
Throughout each of the DLCs, enemies will have some kind of deformity covering parts of their bodies, like having red growths in "Insanity" or black tendrils in "Collapse". In "Control" enemies will have splotches of multi-colored paint splattered all over them, but this does not include characters like Ajay, Mohan, Yuma and the Tyrant. While there is still some paint on Mohan, it is few and only yellow, representing his role in the Golden Path's creation. Ajay and Yuma are completely unaffected, as Pagan views them as part of his family. The Tyrant, being a manifestation of Pagan's more ruthless side, has hints of blood on his clothing.
A bit of Fridge Horror for Dani. Its established early on that inhaling the Poison can lead to long lasting effects, most prominently cancer. Dani inhales the stuff by the buckets in gameplay and, even ignoring that since it can be avoided, they’re unavoidably laced with the stuff numerous times in cutscenes. Lets hope they don’t contract anything after the game…
Even worse, think about how many chemical weapons, be they gas bombs, gas grenades, or spray guns, that employ the poison as a weapon. How many Yarans, be they civilians, conscripted soldiers, or your fellow guerillas, are going to be dealing with cancer later in their life? The whole island could be contaminated.
Castillo may be dead at the end and his son but Yara is still an economically depressed country that has just fought a brutal civil war. Indeed, Clara Garcia outright states that overthrowing Castillo is just going to result in a generation of civil war.
Clara's prediction comes true as Dani discovers that large parts of Yara are taken back by the FND as soon as she turns her back and continue to be lost. The allied resistance groups are either unable to keep the territory or the The Remnant of the FND is much more competent under their new leadership.
Much of the revolution is based around waging war on Castillo's effective cancer treatment in order to cripple his finances. A lot of innocent people are going to suffer for lacking it.
The "Museum of the False Revolution" is an unvarnished propaganda setpiece for the Castillo family dictatorship that centers around lionizing the Castillo Dynasty's members (especially that of Gabriel, Anton, and Diego), demonizing their enemies, and justifying a hereditary dictatorship. As such, Blatant Lies are part of its stock and trade and it is hard to know how much to take seriously. However, a close examination of it says a lot about the Revolution of '67 and the Castillos.
The Museum's main purpose is to relentlessly demonize the Legends of '67 and their role in overthrowing Gabriel Castillo. As such, the museum pulls out no stops vilifying them as useful idiots of Santos Espionza, usually portraying them as utterly dumb, naive idealists with no real life experience that were exploited by Santos in his climb to power. This would be easy enough to justify as more self-serving lies unless you actually spend time studying the Legends and the Espinoza regime, and in particular understand the Awful Truth about Lobo's death. Few of the surviving Legends are particularly proud of their history in the '67 Revolution, and none have gone through it without regrets ranging from Lorzeno's hookups leading to lots of illegitimate children to El Tigre killing his best friend for jumping off the slippery slope and living with the guilt. With this in mind, the museum's discussions about Santos and the Legends reads more like Accentuate the Negative than complete falsification and show that Santos was almost certainly planning his dictatorship from the time he landed with the others, ending or ruining the lives of brave, young, and idealistic would-be freedom fighters to replace one tyranny with his own.
"Santos Espinoza manipulated the hearts and brainwashed the minds of Yarans through his careful selection of corrupt officials." - Diego Castillo in voiceover.
"The Liberation - of Provisions: It is likely that the student traitors had no skills to enable survivalin the harsh mountains ofSierra Perdita. They would have crept into surrounding farms under the cover of night to steal food and supplies, robbing the very people they claimed to fight for. They must have slept well under the stars, their bellies full of their own hypocrisy."
But at least as important is the snippet of text accompanying one of the display cases that go back to before the Revolution of '67. To many players, it might simply represent a unique weapon to pad out their collection. But on close scrutiny, it helps underline just what kind of clan the Castillos are, and why they keep making the same mistakes.
Maximas Matanzas is astounded that Anton would use slave labor on Viviro in spite of his African ancestry and thus probable slave heritage, but she's ignoring that (like many Yarans) Anton isn't merely descended from slaves but also Slave Owners and it's clear which side he chooses to emphasize and exalt. Anton still sees himself as the harsh, paternal patriarch of a great estate and family dynasty - one who lacks his father's naivety and sentimentality and is willing to do the "hard things" he insists are necessary - and who has taken Yara back to a revised, industrialized form of the chattel plantation agriculture system where slaves work the field to produce crops that can then be shipped abroad in exchange for wealth. Anton tells himself and everybody who listens that this will help industrialize and develop Yara, but he is conveniently ignoring how utterly this failed Yara in the 18th and 19th centuries.
