Grand Theft Auto San Andreas / Tropes G to N

Main Page | 0-F | G-N | O-Z

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G

• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • The infamous Madd Dogg glitch. A glitch in a mission where you had to save him from his own suicide attempt by positioning a truck full of crates under him before he could jump off a building would become unwinnable because he would jump off the building before the cutscene ended. This glitch also made the game unwinnable, and this is compounded by the fact that no one is certain what triggers this glitch; it seems to be completely random. Many suggestions have been made, the most commonly accepted "cause" being that it's caused by cheating extremely often, or using common cheats. This is discredited, since many people who never cheated once the entire game still had the glitch occur, while some that cheated extensively never saw it. One cause is the "pedestrians riot" cheat (which cannot be turned off apart from starting a new game or loading a save file before the cheat activated after quitting the game in PC or resetting or turning off the system for the console), causing everyone to become hostile to each other. This mission is affected because Madd Dogg's character attempts to run to the nearest NPC to fight them, and in doing so, runs off the roof and dies. This is made even worse by it being one of the last missions in the game, meaning that if you get this glitch, you're screwed and have to start all over and pray you don't get the glitch again. Though, mercifully, it seems as though it never happens in two new games in a row.
  • Also, if you save in Madd Dogg's mansion, all basketballs on the world map will be deleted from the game, meaning you can't play it again in that particular save. This one is minor, since basketball is not needed for 100% Completion, but another glitch involving the mansion that you should worry about involves saving there, which corrupts your file.
  • There's one in the Woozie mission "Mountain Cloud Boys" (reported to occur in at least the PC and PS2 versions). After you take Woozie around the block to the ambush Triad meeting, once you get out of the car and the cutscene plays, you won't be able to control C.J., the camera, or do anything except go to the pause menu. Fortunately, you can defuse this one by stopping at the target before Woozie stops talking about the Vietnamese gang, thus preventing the cutscene from running.
  • One of Zero's missions involving using a radio-controlled toy airplane to kill a team of couriers is rendered next to impossible by a glitch that depletes the plane's fuel at a steady rate instead of only being used when C.J. hits the gas, which means there's no way to conserve fuel; in the PS2 version, it's basically impossible to finish Zero's missions without cheating.
  • One of the missions early on in Los Santos requires you to impress a DJ with your dancing skills via button rhythm mini-game. Playing on an HDTV makes the game almost impossible to complete due to input lag or the controls simply not responding to any button pressing. Since the game was released in a time where HDTV was still a new format, the game wasn't exactly optimized for it.
  • Flying very far into the ocean is a Good Bad Bug in the PS2 version as it triggers the territory glitch, but in the PC and XBOX versions, it corrupts your file and prevents the game from spawning clients during the taxi sidequest. Considering the taxi sidequest is needed for 100% Completion, it's a big deal if it hadn't been completed before.
  • An extremely rare, but unfortunate, glitch can cause a constant game crash when approaching the Easter Basin docks. Very rarely, the game accidentally deletes the blackboard used for import / export when removing the traffic cones used for the car and bike school tests, and then has trouble when loading the area around the now-missing blackboard. The import / export sidequest and the NRG-500 challenge are located in this area, and they're both needed for 100% Completion.
  • An update to the Steam version of the game caused all save files to become corrupt, effectively wiping out all progress globally. On top of this, several resolution sizes (1920 x 1080 most notably) were mysteriously removed and mouse controls became bugged.
  • The "Definitive Edition" version of this game had a potential destructive bug that upon starting the Blood Bowl derby mission in San Fierro, failing or completing the mission it makes the game crash when attempting to save the game. Worse, upon rebooting the game it automatically starts the Blood Bowl mission making it unsaveable. This was fixed in the update 1.05 for Xbox consoles but for PlayStation consoles possibly still suffer this bug even to this nowadays. Because of this, this make the achievement/trophy "...Here we go again"^note A achievement/trophy that requires the player to start a new game after having a existing 100% save game. unobtainable.
• Game Mod: Various, from re-textures, re-models, to custom cars, to even the one which sparked controversy in 2005...
  • The infamous Hot Coffee mod, which is a simple event trigger. In the game, C.J. can have sex with various women, but the depiction is limited to seeing them entering the woman's house. Hot Coffee re-enables a Dummied Out sequence where the player not only gets to watch but controls the action to a degree. It was later patched out. The discovery led to a brief revival of the Games Are Evil panic. Incidentally, PC players tend to avoid said patch not because they want to enable it, but rather because it disables any modification to the game files, and later releases included measures against modding the game's files.
  • The SilentPatch, a fan-made patch that addresses many leftover issues present in the PC version and even adds features such as FLAC music format support and restore of the features missing from the PlayStation release. The same creator also has created mods such as GInput (enhances modern controller support for the game), and the Silent ASI Loader (a loader that allows use of .asi plugins such as Widescreen Fix).
  • Project 2DFX extends the draw distance dramatically to the point that you can see the desert from the tallest building in San Fierro or Mount Chilliad for a different Scenery Porn experience compared to the vanilla.
  • CLEO, a powerful scripting system that, despite being infamous for very buggy, is capable of doing stuff that outside of the games limitation itself. Examples such as adding customizable racing missions complete with ability to bring your own cars (N-Races), the ability system from Grand Theft Auto V, ability to automatically wear helmet when riding a motorcycle, and the ability to free aim while driving or riding.
  • GTA Vice City Stories: PC Edition, a standalone total conversion of San Andreas that brings Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories to PC. Due to copyright issues, it lacks the soundtracks and has no missions.
  • Things to do in San Andreas, a major total conversion project that restores many of the game's cut and missing content and aims to fix them. Unfortunately, this mod would require players to start a new game due to the sheer amount of content being added that would conflict with saves from older game scripts. There is however a lightweight and mod-friendly offshoot in the form of Storyline Enhancement Mod.
  • Mobile to PC Research Project, a community effort of bringing the enhancements from the mobile port of the game to the PC version.
  • The PC release of San Andreas has considerable popularity in Japan because of or leading to the mass number of Touhou Project mods made for it.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • C.J. is not a nice man, but in the cutscenes at least he's more of an Anti-Hero who cares about family and neighborhood and will not cross some moral lines. None of this prevents you from... say, beating old women to death with a baseball bat or going on a rampage just for kicks. Nor will anyone treat C.J. differently for doing such things.
  • In early cutscenes, Ryder will constantly criticize C.J. over his driving skills. While reckless driving is a GTA tradition, he'll still give you shit even if you've never so much as scratched a car.
  • Early on, Tenpenny and Pulaski force C.J. into doing their dirty work on threat of framing him for a cop-killing they committed. You can do worse than that over the course of the game, going so far as to kill hundreds of cops, federal agents, and soldiers, but the worst you'll ever get is a brief stay in jail and confiscation of weapons (and even that can be circumvented if you have a relationship with Barbara, herself a cop). It also helps that the officer Tenpenny ordered killed was on the verge of exposing internal corruption within the LSPD, and is thus of a greater concern for him.
  • You can take over gang territories by killing a few of the local members then taking out a few waves. Not only do the missions not recognize this fact, they will actively change territories back and force you to take them over again, facing much heavier resistance than is common for those regions.
  • At several times in the story, C.J. will mention that he has very little money, and sometimes that he is in desperate need of cash. This despite the fact that, without cheating, a player may have earned one dollar short of a billion via various side-missions and gambling at the off-track betting center.
  • Also, after finishing the race with Claude, Catalina hands him the papers for an old garage, instead of the pinkslip for Claude's car. C.J. is pissed and whines about how he feels cheated out of a cool car (acquireable through other means) and has to own a "crappy" safe house in a ridiculously convenient location with a spacious garage. His sister at least chews him out over this.
  • During the cutscene of the mission "Verdant Meadows", Toreno tells you to buy the airfield of the same name and says that you can optionally blackmail its current owners into selling it for you for a dollar. However, this is not possible in the actual gameplay, you have no other option but to pay the full price (80,000) for it.
  • In the last mission, Carl will mock Big Smoke for wearing body armor, even though any self-respecting player probably came into the place wearing some, not to mention the fact that there's an armor pickup in the room.
  • Prior to the "Reuniting the Families" mission, Seville Boulevard, Temple Drive and Grove Street are (allegedly) all feuding for unclear reasons. This rivalry is only seen in the "Sweet's Girl" mission, where CJ needs to kill a bunch of Seville Boulevard bangers and get Sweet and his girl back to the Grove. In free-roam, not only is Seville and Temple not hostile to CJ, he can recruit members from those sets like he could with Grove Street.
• Gameplay Roulette: Done right, since that's part of the fun.
• Game Within a Game: The game had clones of Tempest, Asteroids and Defender (Go Go Space Monkey, Let's Get Ready to Bumble, Duality, and They Crawled from Uranus). You could also play billiards at one of the local bars.
• Gangbangers: The Groves, the Ballas, the Varrios Los Aztecas and the Vagos.
• Gangsta Style: Naturally, this affects the gangstas here. You even see C.J. using it with Guns Akimbo. (He even fires a pair of luparas this way if you level your skill with that weapon up all the way.) Note that all other weapons are held conventionally (well, as conventionally as possible, for the minigun). This is also the standard stance for Mafia, highway patrol, and SWAT teams – as an exception, standard police patrols hold their pistols with both hands^note a rather simple Game Mod allows all characters to do the same.
• Gayborhood: The Queens district in San Fierro, based on, of course, the most famous Gayborhood in the world — The Castro, San Francisco.
• Gayngster: OG Loc. You first encounter him fresh off the prison, and he wants to kill his prison boyfriend for spreading rumors about their tryst, though of course he's in complete denial. Instead, you end up killing the boyfriend. OG Loc later does a radio interview where he stresses his macho-ness. Of course, it was a "prison thing", and the relationship seems to be not entirely consensual judging by the dialogue. It's impossible to know one way or the other, really. Loc isn't admitting any sex took place, let alone whether it was consensual or not. (Except when he slips up and yells "Your ass is mine! Oh, no no no, I didn't mean it like that!") You can judge for yourself by watching the mission.
  • Also, said prison boyfriend speaks in a very campy way, but is also a member of the Vagos.
• Gay Option: The game lets C.J. kiss men, but this only applies in multiplayer mode and if Player 2 chooses a male character.
• Generic Graffiti: The game lets you tag over rival gangs. Tag all 100, and a nice arsenal of weapons will spawn at your home in Grove Street.
• Geo Effects: Vehicles lose grip in the rain, especially on the grass. Aircraft experience wind and turbulence during a storm.
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: In the final mission, Carl Johnson's former friend and ally Big Smoke, who was stated to have become a yeyo kingpin when C.J. was forced out of Los Santos by corrupt cops, is seen taking a hit of crack implied to have come from his own stash, before facing C.J. in a final shootout.
• Ghibli Hills: The game featured expansive rural and unpopulated areas in stark contrast to the series' dense urban mainstay (though it has that too).
• The Ghost: Zero's Sitcom Archnemesis, Berkley, is never seen or heard, though you do have to deal with his various contraptions. C.J. lampshades this trope at the beginning of "Air Raid".
  Zero: Berkley is back!
  Carl Johnson: [Sympathetically] Ohhh, Berkley.
  Zero: Yes.
  [Beat]
  Carl Johnson: Who the fuck is Berkley?!
• Ghost Town: There are quite a few in the desert areas (Las Brujas and Aldea Malvada are two examples).
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Done quite literally. The 'hero', C.J. literally kills his way through Madd Dogg's orginization so a friend, OG Loc, can jumpstart a music career. Then, in order to restart Madd Dogg's career (a move which greatly benefits C.J.), he and Madd Dogg chase OG Loc through the streets of Los Santos... on go karts. In order to get the valued rhyme book back. Apparently Madd Dogg cannot make up new rhymes on his own. He has 'so far' not discovered that C.J. was the one to kill his co-workers and leave his mansion filled with bodies, and OG Loc conveniently never brings it up.
• Golf Clubbing: Golf clubs can be used as a melee weapon. If C.J. knocks someone down, he will then use a golf swing.
• Gonk: Some of the NPCs in the countryside look a lot like Sloth from The Goonies, or the mutated cannibals from The Hills Have Eyes (2006).
• Good Guns, Bad Guns: The protagonists allies in the Grove Street Families use the Tec-9 as their submachine gun of choice, while all other gangs in Los Santos use the Micro UZI. Unless you spray all rival gang tags in the city, when the GSF start using MP5s, playing the trope straight (mostly, as OGs like Sweet will, with very rare exceptions, still use the Tec-9 during missions, and in the late game, Sweet will carry an AK).
• Goofy Print Underwear: Available for purchase at Binco.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: Gang tags in Los Santos, pictures in San Fierro, horseshoes in Las Venturas, oysters everywhere on the map. Getting the tags make weapons appear in the Johnson house and gives Grove Street members stronger weapons, pictures give you free weapons at the Doherty garage, oysters give you full sex appeal and infinite swim if you find them all, and horseshoes rig the casino games in your favor and give you free weapons at the Four Dragons Casino. There's a reason why all that stuff is listed in Guide Dang It! below...
• Government Agency of Fiction: Mike Toreno's "government agency". Plus at least one (probably two) rival agencies.
• Graffiti of the Resistance: A variant is used. Finding graffiti done by rival gangs and spraypainting the Grove Street logo over it is a good way to build the Grove's respect early in the game.
• Grand Theft Prototype: In "Black Project", C.J. is tasked to infiltrate an army secret base to hijack a newly developed Jet Pack.
• Gratuitous Spanish:
  • The name of the town El Quebrados is gramatically incorrect, as "Quebrados" is the plural form of the word "Quebrado" — it should be either "El Quebrado" or "Los Quebrados".
  • The neighbourhoods of "Los Flores" and "El Corona" (which translate to "the flowers" and "the crown" respectively) in Los Santos. Since both of these names are feminine the correct forms are "Las Flores" and "La Corona".
• Grave Humor: On a more minor note, the game features "R.I.P. Opposition" tombstones at a San Fierro memorial, referring to the rivalry between Rockstar North and developers of "''GTA'' clones".
• Groin Attack: The Kickboxing Combo begins with one.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy:
  • The police: one can evade arrest by getting a haircut, or by changing shoes. Or putting on a pair of 'joke glasses', the type with fake nose and eyebrows attached. Or going into a gun shop and waiting. How does that look on their report?
  • The military guards. It is really easy to break into Area 69 and other supposedly well guarded places because of how stupid the guards behave. They don't mind when their colleagues get shot right next to them and if you run fast enough they even forget about you after you've stood right in front of you. Not to mention that they are completely deaf. You can fire your M4 all you want and they won't even raise an eyebrow.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • One of the most common questions seems to be: "Where do I find this 'Euros' car for the export list?" And rightfully so, since it only spawns in one specific location and only when it is wanted for the export list (and you need to know what it looks like, to boot). Fortunately the exporting of cars is optional for completing the storyline of the game, but for those playing for the coveted "100% completion" awards, you gotta grin and bear it. Or find a walkthrough.
  • There are a ton of collectibles in this game. C.J. has to find 50 photo locations, spray 100 gang tags, track down 50 oysters, and find 50 horseshoes. The San Andreas map is so huge and complex, and many of these items/jump sites are in hidden locations, that the only practical way to find them all is with a walkthrough or guidebook (although subverted by the Brady Games official strategy guide that gives incorrect locations or unhelpful directions for many of these). The photo locations, at least, do have one helpful way of tracking them (if you know about it); they glow in the dark. The others offer no such help. The only plus is that, oysters aside, all of these collectibles are limited to one section of the map.
  • Oh and there are also 70 hidden unique stunt jumps, too, though these aren't required for 100% completion. Many of these jumps are obvious (why else would a jump ramp be placed in the middle of trailer park?) but some - especially those that require the player to jump off a cliff or some such (one jump actually requires C.J. to launch a car from Red County, hope it flies high and fast enough to cross a bay, and land on the San Fierro Airport tarmac), are not intuitive and need a manual to locate/become aware of.
  • And without a guidebook, many players likely complete the storyline portion of the game unaware of things like the hidden courier challenges, the bicycle and motorbike challenges, the mountain biking races, and the two triathlons that are only accessible on certain days of the week!^note The time and locations for the triathlons are on posters found in gyms.Although also not needed for 100% completion, several of the women available for dating are not located in obvious places, either (one is hidden in a park in San Fierro that CJ is not required to visit for any mission or item pick-up).
  • As noted above, the Brady Games manual is rife with errors and inaccuracies. One of the most glaring is that the book features pick-up locations for adrenaline power boosts - even though none actually exist within the game itself!
• Guns Akimbo: You can dual-wield the standard pistol (although not the Desert Eagle or the silenced version), the sawed-off shotgun, and the two machine-pistols after you max out your skill with each respective weapon.

H

• Hammerspace: When C.J. and Ryder go out to steal ammunition from various sources, C.J. notes that the truck they're driving appeared from nowhere and the fact that it wasn't on Ryder's 'curb when it showed up. Ryder tells him to chill. He says his homie LB brought it over during the previous scene and that C.J. didn't notice because Ryder's homie is like "a clockwork ninja".
  • Bonus points if you realize that Ryder's homie LB as actually a neat reference to the game's producer and then-president of Rockstar North, Leslie Benzies.
• Handicapped Badass: Wu Zi Mu (aka "Woozie") is a Triad boss who doesn't hesitate to go in guns blazing against gangs that try to muscle in on his turf and also loves to race cars. He's also blind.
  • Revealed to be a subversion: his Triad subordinates like to rig the casino games he plays with them, and he thinks C.J. must be very lucky to be able to beat him at things like blackjack. But he does have instances where his "incredible luck", as the Triads call it, allows him to beat C.J. at video games and drive a sports car in an illegal rural-road street race without wrecking. He's also the best shot in the game, next to C.J. himself.
• Handshake Refusal: C.J. does this with Woozie in their first meeting, though it's less out of disrespect and more because he's weirded out that Woozie is pointing slightly away from him (the first hint to his blindness).
• Happy Ending Override: Not for the main character, but Grand Theft Auto: Vice City ends with Tommy declaring a "beginning of a beautiful business relationship" only for Ken's cocaine addiction causing Tommy to disown him and he's end up being a liable asset to the Mafia operations in Las Venturas.
• Hard-Coded Hostility:
  • Played straight with the Ballas (enemy gang with territories that can be taken over at some point): Nine times out of ten, they'll attack you. If you are wearing green clothing, they'll definitely attack you on sight.
  • Partially averted with the Varrios and Vagos (the former being a small gang based on very little unmarked territories and the train station, and latter of which are enemy gang with territories that can be taken over at some point): There is a 50:50 chance that they attack you. Otherwise they're just either ganging on you or leaving you.
  • Averted with the San Fierro Rifas and Da Nang Boys: They'll never attack you outside mission unless you hijack their vehicle or attack first (and even then, they'll not always fight back)
  • Averted with the Las Venturas Mafias unless you deliberately gamble until your money is in the negative.
• Hard Truckin': Downplayed as it's just a side-mission, but there are Trucking missions where CJ takes control of a big rig and transports cargo to destinations within a time limit. And later missions have him hauling illegal goods with the cops pursuing him.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Ryder's homie LB, who Ryder mentions several times in the story.
• The Heart: Kendl, Carl's sister and Cesar's girlfriend (and later fiancee). She's smart enough to not let herself become a Damsel in Distress, but she does stay on the sidelines.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Officer Hernandez, the third, silent member of C.R.A.S.H (Well, not completely silent. The one time he speaks is on the phone with C.J. warning him that C.R.A.S.H is going to make sure he stays in Los Santos and works with them.) who acts as a Foil to the loudmouthed Tenpenny and Pulaski. Eventually however, he got fed up with Tenpenny and Pulaski's ways sometime offscreen as his final cutscene is of Tenpenny beating him with a shovel for being a snitch, and having C.J. dig his grave at gunpoint. Hernandez isn't dead though, and he gets back up to try and tackle Pulaski, only to get shot, finally dying.
  • The Introduction DVD expands on this. Hernandez speaks in it, telling a story about how he had to make a difficult decision between letting a man beat his crack addicted wife, or jailing the man and leaving the obviously unsuitable for children wife with their kids, establishing himself as a cop with morals. The other two cops scoff at that being a difficult decision, telling him that they're gonna be making difficult decisions on a regular basis. Later on, they force him to personally shoot a cop who had evidence proving that Tenpenny and Pulaski were crooked, so he can "be a fucking man." It makes Hernandez's death all the more tragic, as he was pretty much one of the handful of good cops in the whole series.
• Helicopter Blender: The mission "Reuniting the Families" ends with both versions of this trope: a police helicopter tilts forward, threatening to slice up the protagonists' vehicle, and a police officer on the hood of said vehicle ends up minced in the process. Additionally, if you yourself gain control of a helicopter, you can practice this trope on any random passersby you run across, just as you can in any other GTA game with helicopters.
• Hellish Copter: There's one mission where C.J. attempts to take out some rival criminals from a helicopter, only for it to be (scripted, no matter what you do you can't kill the rocket launcher wielding enemy) almost immediately blown up by a rocket launcher and crash in the ocean. C.J. gets out okay, but the pilot isn't as lucky and C.J. loses all of his weapons except for a knife (regardless of whatever melee weapon CJ actually had beforehand).
• Here We Go Again!: CJ's Trope Namer in the beginning of the game after Tenpenny drops him in the alleyway.
  • The Definitive Edition has an achievement/trophy with the name of that trope in which you must start a new game after having a 100% save file.
• Heroic Fire Rescue: C.J. has to enter a burning house to rescue a girl. From a fire he caused in the first place.
• Hero of Another Story: The protagonist, C.J. sees his insane girlfriend run off with a quiet racing competitor. Said quiet man is the main character, Claude, in the (chronologically later, though earlier release) Grand Theft Auto III.
• The Hero's Journey: The game's main storyline follows the monomyth surprisingly closely. CJ starts out in his Hometown of the Grove Street, but even though he agrees to help his family sort things out in Los Santos, his stint in Liberty City shows that he'd much rather go freelancing elsewhere. The Herald delivering the Call to Adventure is Officer Tenpenny forcing CJ out of Grove Street and Los Santos by way of Doomed Hometown. The First Threshold is CJ's journey to San Fierro, with the Truth and Catalina serving as Threshold Guardians who vet him for the challenges ahead, and Woozie (whom the Triads literally consider their Good Luck Charm), as Supernatural Aid. San Fierro is also the Land of Adventure where CJ finds new allies and expands on what he learned in the 'hood. The Road of Trials leads from San Fierro to Las Venturas (e.g. Toreno, as a agent of the State, enables a symbolic Atonement with the Father for CJ), with CJ's Spiritual Death and Rebirth occurring around the time he infiltrates Area 69, since when he reaches the Four Dragons Casino, he is already done being a dumb muscle and starts planning his own schemes. The Night Sea Voyage is the entire mob casino heist arc, which gives CJ all the money and street cred he's ever wanted, followed by the takeover of Madd Dogg's Vinewood mansion, which gives his family a prestigious place to live. The Apotheosis is CJ killing Pulaski, and while the main Big Bad Tenpenny escapes, CJ is at least free from C.R.A.S.H. from that point on. Soon thereafter, Toreno also gives him the Ultimate Boon by reuniting him with Sweet. CJ's Refusal of the Return takes place during said reunion, when he tries to convince Sweet to leave the 'hood behind, but ultimately decides to Return to Grove Street. The Return Threshold, however, is guarded by looters, drug dealers, and, eventually, rioters, whom CJ and Sweet must overcome before they can return to the Hometown of their childhood. Finally, CJ receives Freedom to Live after killing Tenpenny and returning to the Wide-Open Sandbox with no more storyline missions to beat.
• Hero Stole My Bike: Done twice early on in the game. Done either to escape being shot at or escape being run over and riddled with bullets. Returning either risks same.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Samuel L. Jackson's character Officer Frank Tenpenny.
• Hiding the Handicap: Woozie is blind, but won't reveal this to C.J. until the latter has done several missions on his behalf and earned his respect. C.J. however had already been informed of Woozie's disability by one of his subordinates.
• High-Altitude Battle: The plane missions.
• High-Speed Hijack: The game tried experimenting with the new engine^note Render Ware to create some unusual hijacks. The first Mike Toreno mission involved speeding alongside a fuel truck so your sidekick, Cesar, can leap into the cab and yank out the driver. Ouch. A later mission involves flying beside a private jet and then bailing out of the plane, whereupon C.J. grabs hold of the entry hatch and hijacks the jet in mid-air.
• Hippie Van: The Truth drives a VW with a psychedelic paint job called the Mothership.
• Historical In-Joke: The game is set in 1992. The primary antagonists of the game are police officers, Frank Tenpenny and Eddie Pulaski. Late in the game, their many, many crimes catch up with them and Tenpenny^note Pulaski dies in an earlier mission is arrested, put to trial... and acquitted. The city of Los Santos riots in response. Sound familiar?
• Hit So Hard, the Calendar Felt It: Invoked when a guy called The Truth gets something C.J. stole from a government base, he says "They shall call this Year Zero".
• Hollywood California: The game is heavily built upon imagery from all of these regions. Los Santos is a dead ringer for L.A., with East Los Santos standing for East L.A., and Ganton standing for Compton and Vinewood is a very obvious Hollywood reference. The city of San Fierro is analagous to San Francisco, while Las Venturas stands for Las Vegas (which is actually in Nevada).
• Hollywood Silencer: A silenced 9mm pistol is available and used during some stealth-based missions. It makes the classic fwip! sound and does not alert moderately distant guards.
• Honey Trap: As part of the plan to rob a casino, C.J. seduces a dealer who has an important keycard (as well as some... unusual tastes).
• Hood Film: The game is an homage the genre, initially being set in 1992 on the West Coast in an inner city roiling in the crack epidemic.
• Hope Spot: Between "Reuniting The Families" and "The Green Sabre". How long it lasts depends on the player.
• Hot Coffee Minigame: The Trope Namer. The original release of the game had a Dummied Out sex mini-game that played out when dates ended in "coffee". Given the graphics engine, C.J. is dating blocky girls — the game is about as saucy as banging Legomen together. When modders re-activated the game a scandal errupted and denials were issued, as mocked by Penny Arcade.
• House Music: One of the radio stations is "San Fierro Underground", which plays house.
• Hufflepuff House: Varrios Los Aztecas. Their leader, Cesar, could be considered a Supporting Leader.
• Hugh Mann: One of many UFO gags sprinkled. During the mission "Stowaway," Mike Toreno instructs Carl Johnson to destroy a jet carrying explosives for use in the Middle East. The Men in Black onboard the plane will spout strange phrases while attacking Carl, including: "you evolved from shrews", "this endangers everything", "carbon based buffoon", "idiotic mammal", and "the great day will come".
• Humiliation Conga:
  • In "Deconstruction", the foreman witnesses everything around him is completely destroyed, forcing him to hide where he was relieving himself. However, he ends up covered by his own feces when CJ pushes his porta-potty into a ditch. To add an insult to injury, CJ steals a cement truck to fill the ditch with cement, burying him alive.
  • In "End of the Line", Tenpenny crashes his fire truck off a bridge and lands into Grove Street, causing him to be surrounded by his enemies that he tormented and dying with no help incoming. After the riots ended, his corpse gets stripped naked and mutilated by the homeless.
• 100% Completion: The game gives neato whiz-bang prizes for completing 100% of all the optional tasks, tests, and races. All the required tasks for plot completion total around 20%. The player's childhood home in Ganton is upgraded with spawns for a Rhino tank and a Hydra jump jet.
• 100% Heroism Rating: There are various character ratings (fat, muscle, sex appeal, and respect), which affect how NPCs react in your presence. You can even say something back, determined by hitting Y or N.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: C.J. can heal by eating meals at fast-food restaurants or by purchasing snacks. Ingesting lots of food will fatten him up much faster than should be possible (eating too much at one time will make him puke though, keeping the health, but losing the fat that would have been gained), or conversely that exercising will make him lose body fat and gain muscle ridiculously quickly, could also be taken as evidence of a most unusual metabolism. Dining on salad will get around the fat problem.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: C.J. finds room for a very large arsenal in his pants. In fact, since C.J. is capable of changing his clothes, he could conceivably be carrying around a rocket launcher, a shotgun, and an assortment of other weapons in his boxers.
• Hypocritical Humor: The showdown between C.J. and Big Smoke has the former call out the latter for being soft for wearing body armor. The trope applies because you can also have C.J. wear body armor during the call out.
  • Also, in the beginning of the game, Ryder is the first one to tell C.J. that he needs a haircut.^note It may be taken as him thinking his haircut is good, as well.

I

• I Can See My House from Here: If you're getting chased by a ghetto bird (police chopper), one of the gunners may shout this. The other gunner tells him to shut up, acutely embarrassed.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: One of the radio segments, Jack Howitzer threatens to kill host Billy Dexter unless he touches Jack's genitals (It Makes Sense in Context... sorta) and then says he was just fooling around and that his gun was unloaded, only for it to go off and kill Dexter.
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: Officers Tenpenny and Pulaski pull this, threatening to make sure Sweet dies if CJ doesn't do what they want him to do. Later Toreno pulls this as well but is less malicious about it, and ultimately frees Sweet once CJ has done enough for him.
• Idle Animation: C.J. will randomly start singing a song from the last radio station you listened to if he's standing still for a while. Amusingly, C.J.'s not so hot at recalling the lyrics. If you leave the controls untouched a little longer, the game will (temporarily) remove the radar and CJ's stats from the HUD, and the camera angle will change to show the game world from CJ's perspective, looking at other pedestrians and vehicles that walk/drive by.
• If It Bleeds, It Leads: Field reporter Richard Burns from WCTR news complains about the lack of casualties during the first news segment of the game.
  Richard Burns: "Officials say there are still no reported casualties, which is truly unfortunate, as it makes for incredibly boring news."
• I'll Take Two Beers Too: There is a mission where you and your homies get drive-thru. One of your homies, Big Smoke, orders an absurdly long list of foods while the others order casually. And then, when everyone else is busy trying to keep a rival gang from invading your neighborhood, Smoke eats all the food, even the stuff he didn't order. Of course, after you know he's betraying you, that scene can look much different.
• Image Song: Young Maylay, the voice of Carl 'C.J.' Johnson and accomplished rap musician, used the game's theme song as a backing track for the first song on his LP, San Andreas: The Original Mixtape, where he raps about the game in character.
• Immune to Fire: Completing all optional Firefighter missions will make CJ completely invulnerable to fire (he will still catch on it, just never take any damage). Among other things, this makes the final level, where he must escape from a burning building while being shot at from all directions, a trivial affair.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Throughout the game, you'll get in shootouts with all kinds of gangbangers, cops, "redneck survivalists", pedestrians, military, drug dealers, the Italian mob, the Russian mob, federal agents, federal agents who might be aliens, and not a single goddamn one of them can score a hit more than once per every ten bullets expended at the very most. Of course, due to the GTA games' infamously wonky targeting system, neither can C.J. sometimes.
• Impersonating an Officer:
  • Carl can wear a police uniform belonging to the LSPD after obtaining 100% progress with Barbara Schternvart. However, wearing the uniform does not make Carl immune from police attention.
  • During the casino heist, Woozie orders two of his men to wear police uniforms to escort their armored truck with stolen police bikes after stealing the money from the casino.
• Improbable Parking Skills: One of the Driving School missions requires you to parallel park by speeding at the spot then sliding into it sideways without touching either car and doing it so you're perfectly aligned to get gold.
• Improbable Weapon User: The game has the usual fare of melee weapons, including stick-like implements. But then you have fire extinguishers, spray cans, bunches of flowers, and even sex toys. The kicker? They can still incapacitate or kill, and can even be used to bash cars until they catch on fire.
  • Their primary purpose is to be given to girlfriends as gifts, but still. If C.J.'s strength is maxed out, he can beat any ped to a pulp with flowers in a matter of seconds.
• Inappropriate Hunger: Big Smoke eats the whole gang's takeout while being shot at by the Ballas. Of course, this is meant to foreshadow the fact that Smoke has been with the Ballas all along. When called out on it, Smoke replies:
  Big Smoke: "If you can eat your food while everyone else is losing theirs and blaming you, you straight, homie".
  • Gameplay-wise, to get fat or even get a lot of energy for working out, you often need to eat several of the largest combo available.
• Incoming Ham: Big Smoke's very first line in the game?^note Not counting his appearance in "The Introduction" in the special edition for PS2. "YOU PICKED THE WRONG HOUSE, FOOL!"
• Informed Equipment: Excellently avoided, you can change the main character's clothes and hairstyle, give him tattoos, and even alter his basic body shape (though this last is a long process, involving overeating to get fat or exercise to get muscular). Any changes to the character's appearance are worked seamlessly into all of the game's cutscenes. Body armour, on the other hand, is invisible, even if you are naked from the waist up.
• Ink-Suit Actor:
  • Officer Tenpenny was clearly designed with the knowledge that Samuel L. Jackson was going to be his voice actor.
  • CJ himself, at least his default appearance, bears resemblance to his voice actor Young Maylay.
  • For other characters, Zero to David Cross, Jizzy B. to Charlie Murphy, Mike Toreno to James Woods, Cesar Vialpando to Clifton Collins Jr. and Officer Eddie Pulaski to Chris Penn.
• Inside Job: The Casino Heist has Carl getting a job with Caligula's Casino to become the inside man for the upcoming heist.
• Instant Expert: The protagonist can learn how to use any weapon or vehicle from the moment they see it. The most ridiculous example, CJ can load and fire any weapon from an M1911 to an SA-7 Grail rocket missile launcher simply by picking it up, and goes through a few (videotaped) lessons to learn to fly any aircraft. The height of ridiculousness is "Vertical Bird", where he sneaks aboard an amphibious assault ship, eliminates about a dozen trained soldiers with either stealth or firepower, and hijacks a Harrier jumpjet to shoot down two other fighters and destroy several boats. Quite impressive for a two-bit gang member from the ghetto. God bless the idiot proof Air Force.
• Interface Screw: The games use a slight version of this to simulate substance abuse, like marijuana. Watch the screen move...
• Interrupted Suicide: In one mission, you have to save Madd Dogg from suicide.
• Ironic Echo: Carl, after coming back home after years of being away, meets Officer Tenpenny looking to "chat". Tenpenny proceeds to start screwing around with Carl and coerces Carl into his service via blackmail and a frame job. Tenpenny ends their "chat" by saying: ''See you around like a donut, Carl..." before walking (then driving away). Guess what Carl says later in the game when Tenpenny ends up dying on the street due to driving a firetruck off a bridge while being chased by Carl and Sweet.
  CJ: See you around...officer.
• Ironic Last Words: This happens to an unnamed Triad member during the mission "A Home in the Hills", once CJ and the Triads enter Madd Dogg's mansion to take it back from a drug dealer:
  Triad: We're heavily outnumbered, but if we all keep our heads, we should kick ass!
  (Boom, Headshot!)
• Irony: K-DST D.J. Tommy "The Nightmare" Smith occasionally makes cracks at other station Radio X. Radio X's playlist includes "Welcome To The Jungle" by Guns N' Roses. Tommy is voiced by Guns N' Roses lead singer Axl Rose.
• Is the Answer to This Question "Yes"?: CJ has a tendency to reply to Cesar Vialpando with, "Does the Pope shit in the woods?" whenever Cesar asks him if he was interested in making money by car racing. Confusion ensues.
  Cesar: Why you keep asking me that, holmes? I told you, I dunno. Where his Holiness does his business, is his business.
• It's All About Me: Tenpenny, in his dying breath, claims that only he can set San Andreas in the right direction.
• It's Personal: CJ's reasoning behind taking on Big Smoke alone at the end.
  CJ: Smoke played me. Tenpenny played me.
• It's Up to You:
  • The player's territory can be invaded by other gangs. However, it's solely the player's responsibility to defend it. No one else in the gang of presumably hundreds ever takes the initiative to help out or, better yet, handle the attack themselves.
  • The player must always be the driver, and apparently no one else who ever rides with the protagonist knows how to drive. Even when someone arrives to pick you up during a cutscene, they invariably scoot over to the passenger seat once the gameplay begins. This is lampshaded in one of the missions, where Ryder instructs; "You drive - seein' as you "Mister Driver" and all."
  • Averted, probably intentionally, in one of the later missions. At the end of the mission, the main character offers to drive his cohorts to the hospital, but they assure him that he's done enough.

J-K

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sweet constantly criticizes his brother, C.J., and blames him for the death of his brother and mother when he ran away to Liberty City. Sweet refuses to give Carl his due respect and is willing to keep the family in poverty to get back at Tenpenny, but on a better day he's quite a caring brother. It also helps that at his worst, he's going to stop at nothing (including Carl's success) to get back at the man who tore both his family and his circle of comrades apart with murder, abuse, and the allure of power and riches (as what he had successfully done with Ryder and Big Smoke). Sweet does eventually ease up and gives his brother his support in a big brother love kind of way.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Ryder is one of the more troublesome members of the Grove Street Families, often high, always sarcastic, and excessively rude to everyone, especially C.J. However, he puts in work for the gang and does his part (though he always seems like that guy people keep around to kick around). And then it turns out he had betrayed the Grove Street Families along with Big Smoke, had a hand in the death of Sweet and C.J.'s mother, and has been arming the gang's enemies the entire time.
• Jerkass:
  • Ryder is just an asshole.
  • So is Pulaski, repeatedly making racist remarks, insulting C.J., and making vulgar statements about his family.
  • Oh, and not far behind is Tenpenny. He's an epic jerkass, especially in his first meeting with C.J. in Los Santos.
  • And adding one more to the list, Catalina. Dear God, she's an extreme bitch.
• Jet Pack: The game has one, and it is arguably one of the most fun vehicles in the entire game. It's pretty much mandatory for horseshoe collection, as they're scattered in places high and low you can't really park a helicopter on.
• Jiggle Physics: The one single instance, and easy to miss, in the whole series; there's a particular female civilian clad in red bikini seen near the beaches and pool areas who's notable for a constantly jiggling rack if she's laying around sunbathing, but not when walking.
• Joke Item:
  • There is a dildo you can obtain relatively easily and use as a melee weapon. It's possible to kill people with it, but it's almost as weak as punching someone with the beginning game stats. The vibrator is hard to find and does the same amount of damage as the dildo so it's more of a novelty. The last one is flowers, which can be found all over the place and only real use is to give to girlfriends like all the above items.
  • The flowers are a surprisingly effective melee weapon. Not lethal, but about as good as a baseball bat and ten times as funny to blow up a car with.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: C.J., despite being the hero, gets a few of these moments. These include murdering Madd Dogg's manager for OG Loc and attacking a nearby gang at a funeral for someone he killed. The mission "Deconstruction" have him killing the construction workers who were rude to his sister. He also was forced to kill certain people for Tenpenny and Pulaski or either he or his family will be killed.
• Just Eat Gilligan: C.J. could have solved a lot of problems for himself and Grove Street if he just capped Tenpenny and the rest of C.R.A.S.H. at the first chance he got (like what he can do to all the other cops in normal gameplay) rather than let them blackmail him with a cop killing he didn't commit.
• Justified Criminal:
  • The game includes references to this, including one instance where Sweet outright says that he and Carl robbed people at gunpoint for the money for both their mother's lifesaving operation and to put their sister through college.
  • In fact, the whole plot employs this trope, as C.J. involves himself in many dangerous, morally questionable activities (stealing cars to fund a dealership, infiltrating Area 69, robbing a mob-owned casino) in order to rescue his brother from prison and his family/neighborhood from internal and external destruction.
• Justified Tutorial:
  • The game has the tutorial sections slowly spread out throughout the game. Melee weapons are taught when you and an ally decide to go bust up a crack house, shooting when you visit a back-alley gun dealer, turf wars when Sweet enlists you to reconquer some lost territory, etc.
  • You have to do the pilot school before you can access the piloting missions (or legally enter the airports at all). Doesn't quite work out when the piloting school is only defeated through trial-and-error, as the starter prop plane will stall if the player goes too high. It does lead one to question what kind of demented pilot test is your PC being forced through. What average pilot would need to know how to do a loop-the-loop or barrel roll? Or how to blow up moving trucks from an aircraft? Most of the succeeding story missions that involve flying don't even require those aforementioned maneuvers.
• Karma Houdini: One of the Ballas (probably from the OGs) that appears in missions like "Madd Dogg Rhymes", "Ice Cold Killa" and the video "The Introduction" count as this. He was never mentioned, seen or killed by Carl.
  • C.J. himself, as well. He always wins, killing even people who do not deserve it, but this only makes for money or sent by their bosses.
• Karmic Death: At the end of the final mission, "End of the Line", Tenpenny crashes his fire truck right in the Grove cul-de-sac, with the people he harrassed and abused for years standing over him as he dies, broken, humiliated, and accidentally slipping his self-centered mentality, more or less bringing the story full circle.
  C.J.: See you around... officer.
• Katanas Are Just Better: There's a moment in one of the missions where your enemy throws you a katana, inviting you to a duel. Of course, nothing's stopping you from gunning him down with that TEC-9 you likely salvaged earlier.
• Kent Brockman News: WCTR.
• Kick Them While They Are Down: The game lets you attack other people in various ways, some of which inevitably knocks the victim down to the ground. What you can do later to the grounded pedestrian ranges from a simple barrage of punches and kicks, to gunning them relentlessly, to even saw them off in half with a chainsaw, right in the ground, most of which will be incapable to escape their fate while they get smacked around.
  • Extra points if the victim is already dead.
  • In fact, you're taught this by the fighting gym instructors. Apparently boxing has fewer rules there.
• Kill on Sight: The only town available in the early game is Los Santos, trying to get into the other towns gets an instant four-star wanted level with cops pursuing and trying to shoot you down. The in-game explanation is that there's an earthquake, and Officer Hernandez calls CJ, explicitly warning him not to leave town.
• Knight of Cerebus: The game is largely a Black Comedy with most less than moral actions the protagonist CJ or the other criminals commit being treated humorously and most the characters being extremely quirky. The exceptions to this involve the game's Big Bad Frank Tenpenny. The scenes with him are almost entirely humorless, any humor involving him is mostly played to show how much of Jerkass he is, along with the rest of his personality, and unlike the other characters, he shows that he has no absolutely no sense of loyalty to others and flat-out scoffs on the idea.
• Knight Templar: Tenpenny and Pulaski claims to be this; every action they take says otherwise. To a lesser extent, Toreno, too.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: C.J. during the mission, "Deconstruction".
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Ryder is convinced he's a genius, but he's probably the stupidest person in the whole game.
  Ryder: Hey, C.J., tell me why I didn't finish high school.
  C.J.: 'Cause you been dealin' drugs, man. Since the age of ten. (Laughs)
  Ryder: (Laughs) Nope. That ain't it.
  C.J.: 'Cause you put your hands on that teacher for wearin' Ballas colors. (Laughs)
  Ryder: (Laughs) But, nope. That ain't it either. It's cause I'm too intelligent for this shit. I am the real deal fool, oh, yeah. A genius.

L

• Lampshade Hanging:
  • A Ryder mission has you break into a National Guard depot. A van waits outside for Ryder and C.J., who immediately says...
    C.J.: That van wasn't outside when I came in!
  • Also, there's this conversation...
    Toreno's mook: This is all about speed and commitment. You got a GPS in the cab. Get to each set of map coordinates as quick as you can. Make it to all the coordinates then get the truck back here. Lose the truck and you fail.
    CJ: First, what's a GPS? Second, fail what? Third, who the fuck are you?
• The Lancer: Technically, you are this to Sweet early on. Later, Cesar is this to you.
• Large Ham: Ryder. He's probably the most charismatic character of the whole game.
• The Last Straw: C.J. can eat up to eleven super-size fast food meals perfectly comfortably. Try finishing it off with a salad though...
• Laughably Evil:
  • You have Mike Toreno, the paranoid government agent. Disrespecting dead women to a monologue on how all modern conspiracy theories are nowhere near the truth.
  • Then there's Ryder who, despite being an asshole and a traitor, provides a lot of humor in many cutscenes and missions he appears in.
• Le Parkour: The first game in the series (and probably Wide-Open Sandbox games in general) that allowed your character to grab and jump over objects taller than himself. A godsend when avoiding police or getting across the city. It also provides a boost to immersion: it removes the jarring Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence. However, you still can't climb ladders...
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Ryder's derogatory comments on C.J.'s driving is basically a reference to how many players of the GTA series are so whimsical when it comes to driving controls.
• Legion of Doom: In the final mission, while fighting your way through Big Smoke's fortress you'll encounter mooks from almost every gang you have faced throughout the game, such as the Ballas, Vagos, Rifa, and Russian Mob. Later in the mission while chasing Tenpenny, the LSPD join the chase.
• Leitmotif: A specific hip-hop tune is played whenever Officer Tenpenny and Pulaski show up.
• Let the Boss Win: Woozie's men constantly do this whenever they play games with him. Ironically, Woozie seems like an nice enough guy - especially to his men, with whom he is very loyal - such that it's likely he wouldn't go Bad Boss on them if he did lose once in a while.
  • This is further shown when he loses to C.J. in blackjack by a ridiculous margin. He has no hard feelings, though he does lightly complain that he has much better luck with his underlings.
• Let the Bully Win: Played with: His underlings blatantly let Wu Zi Mu, a powerful but blind Chinese gangster, win whenever they play anything, including moving the cup when he plays Office Golf or lying about their cards in Blackjack, which leads to funny moments when Carl, not caring, beats him regularly. Judging by his personality, "Woozie" a nice enough guy, especially to his men, that he probably wouldn't care if his minions beat him or not, but to his experienced mooks it's better being safe than sorry.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: After spending time bangin' with his recruited homies, C.J. can respectfully disband his team with sayings like "I'll see you fools later", "Check the spot!", "We'd better split up", "I've had a cool time rolling with y'all but I've gotta go now" and "OK homie I'll see you latter".
• Let's You and Him Fight: Tenpenny claims to be setting the gangs against each other to weaken them.
• Level Grinding: The game lets you level up several skills, such as sprinting, biking, and individual weapons, by repeatedly using them. Maxing them out offers various benefits, such as dual-wielding pistols and SMGs.
• Level in Reverse: Madd Dogg's Mansion is visited twice in the game, with the start and end points being reversed for the second visit.
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: While it doesn't directly affect C.J.'s stats, dating the girlfriends bestow various abilities and bonuses.
  • Unlike other girlfriends, dating Millie, Sexy Secretary at Caligula's by day and Dominatrix by night, is crucial to the story, as she holds the keycard to Caligula's restricted areas; you can either kill her or date her to 35% to get it.
  • Starting a relationship with Helena and Michelle grants access to an armory (of chainsaws, flamethrowers, Molotovs and pistols) and a free car repair shop, respectively.
  • Starting a relationship with Katie and Barbara allows you to keep your weapons even when hospitalized or arrested, respectively (and in the former, you also get healed for free).
  • At 50%, you get cars fitting your girlfriends' personalities: a Hustler from Denise, a Club from Millie, a Bandito from Helena ^note obtainable once you start dating since it has no doors, a Romero from Katie, a Monster Truck from Michelle, and a Ranger from Barbara.
  • At 100%, you get clothes: Pimp Suit from Denise, Rural Clothes from Helena, Medic Suit from Katie, Racing Suit from Michelle, and a Police Uniform from Barbara.
• Lighter and Softer: Somewhat. C.J.^note at least in cutscenes and most of his allies are far closer to the antiheroic side of the scale than Claude and Tommy, and he also clearly has fun and smiles now and again, the world is much lighter than GTA III (still crapsack, but more for Black Comedy) and the story is fairly optimistic.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: C.J. and every criminal organization he associates with (Grove Street Families, the Varrios Los Aztecas, and the Triads) are Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters who oppose the drug trade and work to stop the sale of cocaine all across the state. The Big Bad, Officer Frank Tenpenny, has not only been largely been giving the coke-dealers more power for his own benefit, but he's deeply corrupt and is set to kill everyone who could possibly expose his crimes. Including his own partners.
• Limited Sound Effects: The game has many such limited sound effects, for example, the sound for water spraying from a fire hose, water spraying from a fire hydrant, a boat skipping on water, and even the sound of a car scraping against a wall are one and the same.
• Limited Wardrobe: Averted by CJ himself, which, in addition to changing clothes (and no longer exclusively a full-set change unlike Tommy did), but CJ also able to change appearance through the barber shop and tattoo parlor as well. CJ in fact is given a non-standard character design to facilitate the feature. However, other characters, due to only having two models (one for gameplay and another for the lip-sync, animated model for cutscenes), play it straight with the exception of Big Smoke, who have three models, his normal self, his armored self, and his near-death self.
• The Load: Any character who is supposed to shoot at the bad guys while you drive. They all have worse aiming than seems humanly possible. To the point where the "let's go do a drive-by" mission is easier (and quicker) if you just run over the targets. At least Woozie is literally blind. What's everyone else's excuse? Not to mention he arguably has the best aim out of everyone else.
• Load-Bearing Boss: A variation: after the final battle (which is against a former ally who betrayed you, rather than against the Big Bad), the Big Bad shows up and then runs away again, stopping only to set some explosives that will destroy the building, giving you just enough time to escape. The mechanics of the mission fit this trope (you fight the Boss, then have to escape before the building is destroyed), but the explanation is different (in that there actually is an explanation).
• Loads and Loads of Loading: San Andreas for the PS2 was lightly touched on above but deserves an official spot. The biggest game environment for its time? Perhaps, but it took quite a while to bring it up. The title screen alone took several minutes to load, so much so that it almost seems that it freezes. And if you go inside or outside a building during the game? At least thirty seconds.
  • While the ability to buy and change C.J.'s clothes is awesome, it takes forever. You choose the piece of clothing from a menu, C.J. goes into the dressing room, takes about five to ten seconds to load his changed character model, and then comes out and does a "checking out my duds" animation that takes another few seconds. Then, you choose whether to buy or wear it or not, and C.J. either just goes back into the dressing room or does a "hot damn!" pose that takes another few seconds. Repeat for every single item you select. And if you've got a lot of money, and want to buy every item a store has... well, you'll probably be able to read the manual from front to back in the time it takes to do this.
  • Still, at the time San Andreas was a big step forward, since it not only had a massive map, but loaded it seamlessly, as opposed to its predecessors, where there would be annoying loading screens everytime you went from a half of the (already small) city, to another. So while the game takes a while to load once you booted it up, you won't have to suffer much loading again for the rest of the session once the game gets going. One way or another, these problems were mitigated in the PC port, which loaded the in-game map, clothes changing animations etc. pretty fast; on a modern gaming computer, the loading screen for traveling to a new part of the city or changing clothes is less than a second.
• Loads and Loads of Sidequests: The series in general, with its trademark Wide-Open Sandbox gameplay, falls into this. San Andreas is the biggest offender in this regard, as the story missions only count for a very limited percentage for the 100% Completion.
• Locked in a Freezer: This is what can happen in one mission. Ken Rosenberg will get scared by the gun fight and runs to a meat locker to hide in. If you follow him in and there's mooks around, a mook can actually lock you and your friend inside the freezer, making the mission a failure.
• Locomotive Level: Three — one where you rob a train by riding it and tossing boxes to Ryder, one where you're on a motorcycle keeping up alongside the train, and one where you're on a jetpack flying around the train. There are side-missions where you can drive a train, but nothing interesting happens. At all. Unless you go so recklessly fast that you derail the train.
• Logo Joke: The game has the Rockstar Games and Rockstar North logos appearing on screen with the sound of spray cans, kinda like graffiti (fitting for the game's '90s-era hip-hop mood).
• Long Song, Short Scene: The game cuts off "Cult Of Personality" during the instrumental, skipping the final verse.
• Look Behind You: Tenpenny has C.J. at gunpoint. C.J. looks over Tennpenny's shoulder and shouts his brother's name, getting Tenpenny to look away and giving C.J. a chance to escape.
• Loophole Abuse: Gang wars can only be started by killing gang members on foot. However, there's nothing stopping you from parking a tank there, killing a few, then using the tank to finish the job.
• Luck-Based Mission: Getting all gold in the Driving School courses. Expect to be playing Burn and Lap for a good hour or more to get gold. Flight school is similar, but there the difficulty lies in the controls, rather than the precision.
• Ludicrous Gibs: An interesting case, as it's not one of the main reasons behind the controversy attached to the game. It also occurs quite rarely, namely, in these instances:
  • In "Reuniting The Families", you are being chased by a SWAT helicopter and a squad of motorcycle policemen. One of the biker cops jumps onto the hood of your car. Meanwhile, the chopper pilot, at a loss as to how to kill you after losing his door gunners, decides to tilt the chopper rotors-first towards your car. Guess what happens to the cop on the hood.
  • You can also do this by driving over pedestrians with a Combine Harvester. Doing so causes the chute on the Harvester's rear normally used for ejecting bundles of hay to spew out body parts.
• Lured into a Trap: In the Green Sabre mission, Sweet and the Grove Street crew are preparing to take the fight to their enemies, the Ballas. But when C.J. is called away by Cesar, he learns that Smoke and Ryder have sold them out and have joined Tenpenny and the Ballas, and that Sweet and the others are being led into a trap. It ends badly, for C.J., Sweet and Grove Street in general.
• Lysistrata Gambit: In one of the commercials. "I want a new fence! That's IT! We're never having sex AGAIN!"

M

• Made of Iron: Used as a gameplay mechanic in the races to curtail the obvious shortcut of murdering your competition. Both the cars and the drivers are extremely difficult to kill, able to soak up entire clips from an assault rifle. The only exception is the demolition derby. It also appears in a few missions.
• The Mafiya: C.J. and Big Smoke butt heads with Russian arms dealers in an early mission. Whether they were true bratvas or just gopniki is rather unclear. Most likely bratva, because gunrunning is usually too big and dangerous a business for gopnik gangs to organize.
• Make It Look Like an Accident:
  • If you're wanted in San Fierro, sometimes the cops would say...
    SFPD Cop: I can make this look like a suicide, you know?
  • At the end of the game, after a lengthy chase through half of Los Santos, Tenpenny lost control of his fire truck and crashes off the bridge overlooking Grove Street. C.J. is about to finally shoot him dead when Sweet stops him, saying that there's no need to put a bullet in the dying Tenpenny. He's just a cop who killed himself in a traffic accident, with no one to blame.
• Make-Out Point: Referenced; there's a region south of Las Venturas called Hankypanky Point.
• Malcolm Xerox: There's a pedestrian in the San Fierro section that fits this trope. He's even wearing a kente cloth dashiki and hat.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: The game features a relationship between African-American Kendl and Hispanic Cesar. Her brother Sweet has trouble with the relationship. The fact that Cesar is from another gang does not help.
• Man Hug: Many — C.J. and his brother Sweet, C.J. and his best friend Cesar.
• Manipulative Bastard: Officer Tenpenny, who's constantly getting people who are "beneath him" (like C.J.) to do his dirty work for him, and he appears to take sadistic pleasure in manipulating those he has under his thumb.
• Marathon Level: Literally, as there are several in-game races that C.J. can compete in, including a full-fledged triathlon that crosses the game map.
• Meaningful Background Event: During the cutscene for the "Wu Zi Mu" mission, a man in a black jacket and green jeans is sitting casually on a car in the background. That man is Claude, the player character of Grand Theft Auto III, who is Catalina's new boyfriend in the next mission and who gives C.J. his car garage in San Fierro.
• Meaningful Name: The Grove Street Families gang frontrunners all have special meanings to their nicknames.
  • Ryder is a burglar and uses trucks to unload stolen goods from private property.
  • Sweet spends most of the game conning C.J. into doing most of his bidding (in other words, "sweet-talking")
  • C.J. has no real nickname, just his initials, signifying his status as a player avatar with no strong personality traits.
  • Big Smoke is Tenpenny's Dragon and helped orchestrate all of the game's events from killing C.J.'s mother on so that he could operate a crack-dealing empire. Not to mention his initials are "BS", which he is full of this in more ways than one.
  • The GTA III main character is finally given a name: Claude.
  • Pulaski is the town where the first Ku Klux Klan was founded.
• The Men in Black: Toreno has the vibe. Definitely the "people" on the mysterious plane that shows up at your airfield in "Stowaway". Their lines seem to imply that they're the aliens: "Carbon-based buffon!" and "You evolved from shrews!". In "Interdiction", they are also using black helicopters to destroy the helicopter that transports Toreno's package.
• Mercy Mode: Minor example, which gives you the option of skipping the commute at the start of the mission after you fail it a few times. This is pretty much just an Anti-Frustration Feature to make up for the fact that so many missions are set halfway across the map from where you have to go to begin them (and if you fail the mission, you'll have to drive all the way back again to restart...)
  • In addition, the rather overlong Final Boss (involving, in order, Storming the Castle, killing one boss, Outrunning The Fireball, chasing the next boss, tailing him to avoid injuring your brother, and finally running Samuel L. Jackson off the road) will eventually load from the beginning of the car chase section, if you repeatedly complete the first part but fail the mission.
• The Millstone: Jeffrey Cross, better known by his gang name of OG Loc. He thinks he's a rapper, but is not shown to have any quality as a rapper (or any other profession, for that matter). Exactly why he deserves your help is unclear. The missions you get from him:
  • Help get revenge on Freddy who supposedly stole his rhymes.
  • He tells you to steal the rhyme book from Madd Dogg, an actual rapper.
  • Steal a van with a sound system at a beach party. Between OG Loc being a complete joke and the people at the party just having a good time and doing no harm, you might actually feel bad that you ruined their party.
  • Kill Madd Dogg's manager. After all this trouble, he just decides to violate his parole so he would go back to jail.
  • None of these missions earn you any money; only your respect stat will go up.
• Minigame Zone: Minigames are all over the place in San Andreas, but Las Venturas has the highest concentration.
• Minus World:
  • There was a mission where you had to fly on a jet to Liberty City, which was really just a small area situated on the northwest corner of the map, so high up physically that there's normally no way to get there without the mission triggering it. However, there are several methods that one can use (either with glitching or by using a Game Shark) to get there. You can even walk around in parts of the area which you never use in the mission, but are there anyway for the cutscene - just be careful, because it was never intended for use beyond the one mission, and most of the street outside isn't actually there. Unless you have a jetpack with you, coupled with the unlimited height Game Shark code, you'll fall through and end up out in the middle of the ocean back in San Andreas.
  • San Andreas also had a whole weird, trippy section of the game world reachable by using the jetpack in a particular store, or during a sneaking-related glitch in some indoor missions. Flying around this part of the world with the jetpack, one could find things such as corridors and doors floating in the void with people walking across them, various indoor spaces and some buildings. The game uses parts of this world for the indoor missions, but not everything is used, and what isn't is apparently left there with no purpose.
• Missile Lock-On: The game has this feature on the handheld Stinger missile, The Apache helicopter and the Jump Jet.
• Mistaken for Thief: In a cutscene, Big Smoke mistakes CJ for a burglar.
• Mob War:
  • Grove Street Families and the Varrios Los Aztecas vs Ballas and the Los Santos Vagos.
  • The Leones vs The Forellis vs The Sindaccos as well, in Las Venturas.
• The Mole: Late in the game, it is revealed that Officer Jimmy Hernandez, who was never an overly willing participant of C.R.A.S.H. to begin with, has been feeding dirt on Tenpenny and Pulaski to Internal Affairs.
• Molotov Cocktail: The game features a mission where you have to torch a house with Molotovs (and then battle your own flames, to save a girl you trapped inside without knowing she was in there). Later on in the game, pedestrians riot and throw molotovs around, including at you.
  • However, outside of said mission and the riot mode at the last legs of the game, Molotovs are only in three or four spots across the entire state map.
• Money for Nothing: There is a mission that requires you to spend about $80,000 on an abandoned airstrip to proceed; however, it is about two thirds of the way into the game, so it's possible to complete.
  • In an earlier mission thread, C.J. moans and whines about needing ten grand... even when his bankroll is ten times as much.
• Mood Whiplash: The early missions in Los Santos are very grim and gritty and, for the most part, realistic. Once C.J. is exiled to the countryside, however, the mood quickly takes a turn for the silly. Mundane characters like C.J.'s "homies" are replaced by aging hippies and blind Triad bosses, while drive-bys and housebreaking are replaced by casino heists and covert missions for the CIA.
  • The tone becomes downright unstable after the rioting starts, making for even more frequent mood whiplashes. One particularly glaring example is when you're driving Sweet through Los Santos while virtually all the pedestrians are rioting, looting and just generally causing chaos all around; one conversation eventually devolves into an enumeration of several masturbation euphemisms.
• Mooks: One of the biggest and most egregious abusers. Most of these time these mooks just magically appear after a cutscene with no real explanation why they're there other than an out-of-hand implication that they're working for an antagonist that was in said cutscene. There are even entire missions where the whole point of the mission is to kill a specific collection of mooks.
• More Dakka: The Minigun is a classic example of this, but the more common ways to get more dakka are micro submachineguns & sawn-off shotgun, which can be dual-wielded with maximum skill, the latter unloads four shells quick enough to reduce any car into a burning wreckage in seconds. Also you can bring 3 homies with SMGs in a four-door car, basically turning it into a ground gunship, first demonstrated in the mission Drive By.
• More Friends, More Benefits: CJ's girlfriends each have their own bonuses for dating them. There is a cop who lets CJ keep his money and weapons after getting arrested, a nurse who does the same if he's wasted (even if the incident doesn't happen in the ladies' jurisdictions), a mechanic who fixes and paint his cars for free (but only if you go to her garage in San Fierro), and a few others with minor bonuses. At some point you can even drive your girlfriends' cars, despite the fact that they're never returned in one piece (if at all). Dating one of the girls is necessary to complete the game, and only to a certain extent; the rest are optional.
• Motorcycle on the Coast Road: The game lets you do this in several places, notably near Angel Pine and Blueberry. It's very cathartic... until you hit a randomly-generated traffic accident, and get hurled off your bike and into the sea. Then you have to jack another bike.
• Mugging the Monster:
  • Ryder attempts to rob a pizza joint he is a regular at ("Ryder? Not this again!") with a pistol. Ryder turns to C.J. long enough for the clerk to pull out his shotgun.
  • Big Smoke's infamous entrance with a baseball bat would've turned out this way had C.J. been an actual burglar in his house.
• Murder by Mistake: The introduction shows that the Ballas were really trying to kill Sweet in the drive-by shooting, but instead killed Beverly.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: The notorious C.R.A.S.H. unit is exaggerated for effect — but not by much. Frank Tenpenny's jobs revolve entirely around rubbing out witnesses who can implicate him. He also killed an Internal Affairs officer who uncovered evidence of his corruption, Ralph Pendelbury, before the game began, and plots to ice his two partners as well.
• Mushroom Samba: Something similar happens, where you end up driving a van under the influence of weed after helping the van's owner torch an entire field of weed with a flamethrower.
• My Hero, Zero: Zero is an irritating nerd who gives you some of the worst Scrappy Levels of the game. One gets the impression he is thinking of the "special and badass" sense of the name, while everyone else is thinking "loser". He does make weaponized RC planes though...
• My Little Panzer: Subsequently, after you buy Zero's shop, all of the three missions you must do for Zero involve My Little Panzers. The first involves defending from a swarm of RC planes dropping bombs with a minigun, and the second has you using a prototype RC biplane armed with an infinite-ammo cannon to kill employees of Berkley RC, Zero's arch-rival in the business of RC toys. Serious business indeed.
  Zero: They're not toys! They're just smaller!
  • Oh, and the third? Seems like the actual use for these things: a car tries to drive a road into a base. Berkley's helicopter drops obstacles that your helicopter has to remove. Berkley also has actual tanks shooting at his car, albeit with low-powered ammo for their size. You have access to tiny antitank bombs.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Both Sweet and C.J. have some problems with Kendl's boyfriend, Cesar. C.J. warms up to him not long after their first meeting.
• Mysterious Employer: The game had C.J. being led around by a mysterious voice on a loudspeaker who reveals himself to be the thought-dead Mike Toreno.

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• Near-Miss Groin Attack: The intro to the "Saint Mark's Bistro" mission has Maccer tied up to the wall, with Salvatore and Maria working on practicing knife-throwing. They flirt, with Maccer demanding they let him go. Salvatore throws the knife, hitting right below Maccer's crotch.
• Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters: The Grove Street Families, especially Sweet and C.J., are very keen on traditional family values. Their allies, the Varrios Los Aztecas and the Mountain Cloud Boys Triads, fit as well.
• Nerf Arm: The game featured a purple double-ended dildo (which can be found the Los Santos Police Station Showers among other places) as a surprisingly strong melee weapon. And it can be given as a gift to your girlfriends. Same with a secret silver vibrator that can be found in the northernmost town of Bone County.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: No matter how many guns the player has when invading Madd Dogg's mansion for the first time, he ends up with just a knife. The player is not even allowed to pick up dropped weapons until halfway through. A much later mission ends with a helicopter crash leaving the water-treading protaganist outside of the ship he has to infiltrate. All his weapons (sob) are at the bottom of the drink except his knife. However, here, a quick swim to shore and knowledge of respawning weapon locations makes the ship much easier to overcome.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: The Truth, a tie-dye wearing, weed-growing, long-haired Conspiracy Theorist and hippie. At first he seems like a crackpot, but when Carl starts being shadowed by government spooks, those wild theories suddenly don't seem so far-fetched.
  The Truth: Carl, do you know how many satellites the government has in space?
  Carl: No. How many?
  The Truth: Twenty-three. Do you know how many biblical artifacts the government is keeping at the Pentagon?
  Carl Johnson: No.
  The Truth: Twenty-three. Don't you see a pattern here?
  Carl: Man I'm seeing patterns all over the place! Get that smoke out my face.
• Newbie Immunity: The game begins when Officer Tenpenny drops CJ off at an enemy neighborhood after framing evidence against CJ for the murder of a police officer to hold as leverage against him. However, the enemy gang members won't attack CJ, and the player can kill police without getting a wanted level during the mission.
• New World Tease: It's possible to travel to San Fierro and Las Venturas before they've been officially unlocked (you just can't get there by road). However, until you progress far enough in the storyline, there's nothing to do there except look at the scenery and run from the hordes of murderous cops — did we not mention the four-star wanted level you get the moment you skip town?
• Nice Guy: In contrast to the music he plays on Radio Los Santos, Julio G is actually a chill dude who is against gang violence, drugs, and later, rioting, encouraging listeners to take a non-violent approach to all things, making him one of the few characters in the whole franchise to do so.
  • Cesar, Woozie, Emmet, Madd Dogg, and to some extent, The Truth are some of the more pleasant of Carl's allies.
• Nice Mean And In Between: CJ's friends: Big Smoke is the nicest to C.J. and enjoys his company the most Though that being said, he is dishonest and later turns on C.J., Ryder is the mean one who constantly berates C.J. and never hesitates to call him out on leaving five years ago, and Sweet is in-between, as while he's just as much of a Jerkass to C.J. as Ryder, he still shows love towards him when C.J. does help out and is the only one who doesn't stab C.J. in the back.
  • The living Johnson siblings as well. Kendl is easily the nicest of the three, as she welcomes C.J. back with open arms and gets along with him well for the most part, as well as refusing to partake into any illegal activities. Sweet takes on the role as the mean since he is rather stubborn and bullheaded and would berate C.J. for not putting in work for the hood. This leaves C.J. himself in-between, as he is more of a Noble Demon who has enough morals to be considered more of an Anti-Hero.
  • The three fast-food cashiers found in the game: The Burger Shot one is a Nice Girl who geniunely expresses concern when C.J. vomits after eating too much, the Cluckin' Bell one is basically the GTA equivalent to Squidward Tentacles in terms of attitude and customer service, while the Well Stacked Pizza one is apathetic and somewhat rude (and certainly no pushover, as C.J. and Ryder learned the hard way), but not as contemptuous as the Cluckin' Bell cashier.
  • Despite being the main antagonists, the C.R.A.S.H. unit are a downplayed case of this: Officer Hernandez is the most moral one of the trio, only killing Pendlebury and warning Carl not to leave Los Santos because Tenpenny forced him too and selling them out to Internal Affairs, along with taking a bullet for Carl when Pulaski tries to kill him, Pulaski is a short-tempered "asshole to the end" who definitely isn't above snide and racist remarks, while Tenpenny is equally malevolent, but much more laid-back.
• The '90s: Specifically, 1992. Thug life, livin' in the 'hood, lowriders, N.W.A, Public Enemy and Ice Cube on the radio.
• Nintendo Hard: GTA forums contain numerous accounts by players who have abandoned the game due to inability to complete a number of levels, with "Wrong Side of the Tracks" (a mission requiring the player to drive a bike alongside a train while Smoke, a terrible shot, attempts to shoot enemy gang member off the top) and the Flight School (aka "Learning to Fly") missions being declared impossible by some. The latter is affected particularly on PS2 and PC versions by poor controls, and forums include accounts of people making hundreds of attempts to complete just the third test (circling the airfield).
• Nitro Boost: One of the two performance upgrades you can acquire for your car at the mod garages. Comes in the "Stored Nitro Charges" type. Also, the reward for finishing the Taxi Driver side missions includes unlimited nitrous on all taxis.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Madd Dogg is an amalgam of Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg, and voiced by Ice T.
  • One of the barbers looks and sounds exactly like Morgan Freeman, and another is pretty clearly Vanilla Ice (and has hilariously bad street slang skills, just like him).
  • OG Loc's appearance is based heavily on Tupac Shakur, but his personality is anachronistically Ja Rule (apparently a leftover from when C.J. was going to be voiced by Ja's then-rival 50 Cent).
  • Ryder is very obviously Eazy-E with the exaggeration turned up to eleven.
  • Kurt Cobain is commonly seen on the streets.
  • A blonde woman dressed like Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct is seen everywhere.
  • In the countryside one of the men seeing walking the streets looks like the villain from the original The Hills Have Eyes (1977). (This man also makes a cameo appearance in the game as Millie's gimp.)
  • The scant details that the fictional band The Gurning Chimps are from "Madchester", Maccer's appearance and accent and the early '90s setting suggest that they are expys of The Stone Roses (who do appear on Radio X). Or Oasis. Or the Happy Mondays, whose frontman provides the voice.
• No Communities Were Harmed: Not only are the names of the cities parallels for real-world locations (Los Santos = Los Angeles, San Fierro = San Francisco, Las Venturas = Las Vegas), but the names of the districts also imitate those of their real-world counterparts (Ganton = Compton, Idlewood = Inglewood, Vinewood = Hollywood, etc.). This leads into a bit of a Celebrity Paradox when the music on the radio references places that the locations in the game have replaced.
• No Fair Cheating:
  • If you activate the cheat that causes every NPC in the game to become an active combatant, the mission to prevent Madd Dogg's suicide becomes impossible and the game unwinnable. Quite harsh considering it happens in the final third of the game. Also, there's no way to disable the cheat once it's activated.
  • If you use the "full health" cheat during a mission that has a health bar for the car, it will explode instead of restoring the car.
• No-Gear Level: Twice. C.J. loses all his guns several times. After you've finished the story missions for the first city, you're dumped out of town with no weapons. Later on, the helicopter he's on gets gunned down and crashes in the water. You must then make your way aboard the gangster-ridden container ship you were attacking and acquire guns by killing gang members (or you can simply swim ashore, buy new weapons, and go back). Another mission, "Stowaway", has C.J. inside a plane loaded with explosives (possibly landmines). Shooting in there is not forbidden, no - but one shot that misses a government agent mook in there means hitting the explosives and the whole thing goes kaboom. Players are likely to resort to melee weapons or unarmed combat in there, risking no such thing - especially since getting into the plane in the first place is especially finnicky.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: In their introduction Mike Toreno oversees T-Bone Mendez beating a guy down pretty hard to the point of death.
• No OSHA Compliance: The meat locker in Las Venturas has no unlocking mechanism from inside.
• No One Could Survive That!:
  • Yes, this happens to the hero, during the "The Da Nang Thang" mission. Carl plays door gunner for a Triad mission, but his chopper is shot down. One bad guy asks about survivors, and a nearer gunman says that no, no one could survive that. Properly played, C.J. would then sneak up on the gunman and slit his throat.
  • After shooting down Mike Toreno's helicopter during one mission, you're told that "there's no way he could have survived that fireball" (bordering on Suspiciously Specific Denial, as this is the only time you see such sort of a message after mission). Guess who you talk to later?
• No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: Ironically, this is enforced in a certain mission. C.J. has fly to Liberty City to kill Forelli gangsters at the St. Mark's Bistro. Once Carl wipes out the Forellis, he immediately files back to Las Venturas.
• No Stat Atrophy: Averted. Physical exertion will consume the character's energy, first in the form of his reserves of body fat. If that is used up, his muscles will start to decay, making him weaker.
  • This is also an example of why it's rarely used. Many gamers complained about having their wanton violence, setting things on fire and parachuting off of high buildings interrupted by mandatory visits to the nearest restaurant. It was removed in Grand Theft Auto IV despite it being the most realistic of the series otherwise, possibly due to complaints.
• No, You: The normally fairly quick tongued Carl Johnson comes off looking brilliant when he first meets Cesar and some of his friends.
  Azteca: I think he thinks he's gangsta, and he should fuck off.
  Carl: No, you fuck off.
• Noble Demon: C.J. may be willing to steal, murder, and do violent criminal acts, but he has a good side as well.
• Nobody's That Dumb: When C.J. learns that Woozie is really blind, he assumes that Woozie doesn't know what's really going on around his surroundings, which he sometimes does. So after Woozie reveals to C.J. that he's blind:
  C.J.: Uh... Woozie... You do know I'm black, right? And not Chinese?
  Woozie: I'm blind, Carl, not stupid.
• Non Sequitur:
  • C.J.'s girlfriends repeat the same non-sequiturs ad nauseum during car trips. C.J. feigns interest.
  • Throughout the game, NPCs can have conversations with each other. However, these conversations consist entirely of random voice clips, so they are literally nothing but a series of strung-together non-sequiturs.
• Nonstandard Game Over:
  • During "Home Invasion", waking up the occupant of the house before getting the minimum amount of crates results in Ryder ditching you, leaving you to fend off a wanted level.
  • During "Tanker Commander", detaching the trailer of the truck will result in a quick cutscene of Catalina saying "I don't love you no more, I can't love a stupid man!" before leaving the cab.
  • During the mission "Stowaway", you can jump out the plane without a parachute, which leads into a cutscene showing C.J. crashing into a parked car at a drive-in.
  • During one mission, Ken Rosenberg will get scared by the gun fight and runs to a meat locker to hide in. If you follow him in and there's mooks around, a mook can actually lock you and your friend inside the freezer, making the mission a failure.
• Nostalgia Level: One mission late in the game is set in Liberty City, the setting of Grand Theft Auto III.
• Not My Driver: The main character has to imitate the chauffeur of a recording artist's manager, in order to kill him by driving into the sea.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: While OG Loc at first appears to be an idiot who is ridiculed for their friends, even too harmless to consider him a "villain", this is inmediately inverted when he sends C.J. to commit several atrocities: stealing Madd Dogg's rhyme book, then killing Madd Dogg's manager and his girlfriend. It gets worse when he becomes famous, driving Madd Dogg to almost commit suicide!
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: This is the first Grand Theft Auto game to adopt a comparatively realistic set of Jump Physics and the appropriate fall damage to accompany drops of varying distances. However, there are still some absurd methods of negating this damage, such as:
  • Soft Water
  • So long as you are in a vehicle, you will receive no damage from impacts, including falls from great heights. This becomes especially absurd when you fall while on a bicycle or motorbike. Even if the impact ejects you from the bike, you will only receive minor damage, if any.
  • If you are on full health and fall from a great height that would usually kill you, you will still survive with just barely enough health on the verge of death.
• Nothing but Hits: The soundtrack is heavily stacked with hits from the early '90s.
  • Averted with several songs, which may sound and feel like the '80s/'90s, but are not necessarily widely remembered hits, many being acts that are majorly unknown for people who didn't live in that time period. As well as songs that weren't actually hits outside of the genre charts.
  • Also subverted, while the game does contain plenty of late '80s and early '90s hip-hop and rock, it also contains representations of genres that were experiencing Popularity Polynomial during the early '90s, such as '70s rock, rare groove and funk.
• Nothing Is Scarier: C.J.'s mom's murder. Aside from the fact that she makes no physical appearance in the game, we are never given the visual depiction of her death. Sweet's reaction after he ran to her (off-screen) corpse, along with Pulaski's delineation of her face prior to her burial, infers that it definitely had to be a rather brutal assassination on her part.
• Numerological Motif: The game correlates the number 23 to something sinister. Discussed in a conversation between protagonist Carl Johnson and The Truth:
  Carl Johnson: What's with all the aluminum foil, man?
  The Truth: Protection from mind control, dude.
  Carl Johnson: Mind control?
  The Truth: Induction of images, sound or emotion using microwave radiation. D'you know how many government satellites are watching any citizen at any moment?
  Carl Johnson: No.
  The Truth: Twenty-three. Do you know how many religious relics are kept at The Pentagon?
  Carl Johnson: No, I don't.
  The Truth: Twenty three. You see a pattern emerging here, man?
  Carl Johnson: Man, I'm seeing patterns all over the place! Get that smoke out of my face!

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