Video Game / Call of Juarez: Gunslinger

The prototype of the first Call of Juarez game.

There's a time for grievin'
And a time to just pray
There's a time for forgivin'
But it's not for today.

The fourth game in the Call of Juarez series, Gunslinger was released May 22, 2013. Opening in 1910 when the Old West is dwindling, an old gunslinger enters a saloon in Abilene, Kansas. The said gunslinger, now well past fifty, introduces himself as the legendary (albeit former) Bounty Hunter Silas Greaves, and greets the handful of patrons gathered around: Dwight, Molly, Jack, Steve, and Ben.

Offered a drink by Dwight, Silas is asked if the penny dreadful books about him are true, and if he'd regale them with some tales of his past. Starting with when he crossed paths with Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, Silas finds himself rambling off his whole career, along with how he fought through half the West all in pursuit of vengeance.

The setting is the Old West again, but the gameplay is less plot-driven and veers away from free exploration towards arcade-like shooting sequences. The game is especially unique through the constant use of Lemony Narrator and Unreliable Narrator, with Silas occasionally arguing with running events and historical fact, claiming involvement in unsolved events, and occasionally chatting with the other patrons.

Released on multiple platforms, the game was met with widespread critical and consumer praise.

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Tropes found in the game:

A-F

• Ace Of Spades: John Wesley Hardin has two of this card in his hat, and the Nugget of Truth that relates to him is also an Ace of Spades. Fitting as the game outright refers to him as The Ace when it comes to the gunslingers of the Wild West. His Boss Subtitles also features him shooting through one.
• Affectionate Parody: The game is home to almost every single Spaghetti Western trope in existence: the Gunslinger, the Roaring Rampage of Revenge, the Showdown at High Noon, Violent Prison Escapes, bounty hunters, famous outlaws, Indians, an Unreliable Narrator framing the whole work in the guise of a story told over drinks... and yet while laying out all these tropes shamelessly for us to see, it still clearly embraces them all with joy, shown in its sincere and involved presentation of the story and characters, and the earnest interest of in-universe fanboy Dwight, who almost comes across as the surrogate voice for the devs themselves.
• Alternate History:
  • Surprisingly averted for the most part, any character Silas fights that is well-known to either be still alive long after he supposedly kills them, or died by other means survives their encounters with him. The only thing that is changed significantly is The fate of the Big Bad Roscoe "Bob" Bryant, who died in 1878. A whole 32 year difference from when Silas (possibly) killed him. Perhaps he faked his death by then in order to live the rest of his life peacefully as Ben, the bartender.
  • The various collectables throughout the game also provide the historically accurate story of what happened to who (as far as we know) and uses the Hand Wave excuse that Silas is exaggerating his stories to explain aspects of the game that don't match up point to point with real life evidence.
• Anachronistic Soundtrack: The "O Death" song sung by Silas at one point in the game (and again in the closing credit) is an actual song, written in 1920 (the game is explicitly stated to be set in 1910).
• Art Shift: Gunslinger uses this trope, stylizing the game with cartoony outlines and exaggerated blood effects, to name but a few.
• As the Good Book Says...: The Golden Rifle bears the inscription Luke 16:28. The quote (KJV) is as follows:
  For I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.
• Been There, Shaped History: Over the course of the game, Silas claims to have fought against (and soundly beaten) pretty much every major gunslinger from the Old West, including John Wesley Hardin, the Cowboys, the Dalton Brothers, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The impressionable teenager he's telling the story to also turns out to be Dwight D. Eisenhower. He doesn't claim to have fought Billy the Kid, but he says he met him.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Revenge ending. Silas finally avenges his brothers after years of bloodshed, but he himself admits that his violent path has forever changed him and that, in the end, he was not so different from Bob and his henchmen after all.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: The skill tree includes special abilities which turn the guns into examples of the trope (and gives them more damages and accuracy).
• Boss Battle: Exists in two flavours. The first are classical boss battles against a named character with his own life bar, sometimes involving several mooks. The seconds are Showdown at High Noon.
• Boss Rush:
  • In the Duel Mode the player faces all the bosses from the main game, minus Roscoe Bryant and plus Billy the Kid who isn't a boss, in showdowns.
  • In the last level, before the final bosses, you have to fight against multiple ghost doppelgangers of each boss of the game; they are only as tough as a mook, though.
• Bottomless Magazines: Gattling Guns in real life fired from small box magazines, while the ones here follow typical video game mounted weapon rules with no need to reload. Also with the right skill, shotguns fired while using Concentration will fire directly from your ammo reserves with no reloading required, allowing you to blast mooks to you heart's content.
• Bounty Hunter: You play as one.
• Bullet Time: Concentration Mode slows down time temporarily, allowing you to both aim more effectively at enemies and dodge incoming fire.
• Cigar-Fuse Lighting: Henry Plummer uses his pipe to light fuses.
• The Climax: The ending of the last level is a big gunfight against ghost doppelgangers of the game's bosses, followed by a 1 VS 1 bossfight against the very tough Sundance Kid, then eventually a mêlée à trois duel between you, Sundance Kid, and Butch Cassidy.
• Collection Sidequest: The Nuggets of Truth which unlock real historical facts about the people and places in the game.
• Combat Pragmatist: During duels, drawing your gun early and shooting your opponent is an option, though it'll be considered a "Dishonorable Kill" and you get much less score for it.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The Spanish coin that starts the whole mess appears to be a piece of the cursed Treasure of Juarez.
  • The story in his Nugget of Truth profile is that Bob Bryant was a member of Juarez's gang, which disbanded due to the events of the first game. That coin was most likely all that he got away with.
  • There's even a Nugget of Truth about Ray McCall, one of the protagonists of the first two games.
• Cut and Paste Environments: Some of the levels seem to feature the same backdrops and assets swapped about like props on a set. These work to the game's favor, however, as they further lampshade how you're playing through Silas' memories and how the audience is perceiving his stories.
• Cycle of Hurting: The more you're wounded, the more faded are the game's colours and graphics, making the enemies harder to spot. Usually, you regain full health after a couple of second if you reach cover, but in some instances (like the fight in the end of "Dances with Renegades", in which you're surrounded by enemies standing above you, while there's no cover for you), it's very difficult to regenerate your health, and good luck to spot the guys who are depleting your health...
• Death Seeker/Leeroy Jenkins: At a moment in his tale, Silas lampshades that his tactics (the one he is describing in his story, anyway) were suicidal, but he didn't care about dying if it meant that he could kill a lot of outlaws.
• Deconstructed Trope: The final showdown, should Silas goes through with the revenge, is the deconstruction of the classic Showdown at High Noon (pretty jarring considering it, and other wild western tropes, are light-heartedly reconstructed in the whole game but the ending). The gunfight between Silas and Bob is short, brutal, and in no way heroic or romantic. It horrifies and disgusts the people who watch it.
• Determinator: Silas brothers are murdered by three outlaws. As a result Silas becomes a bounty hunter and spends most of his life hunting them down. The majority of the legendary outlaws he gunned down? Silas either assumed they knew something about the whereabouts of one of his targets or they were just unlucky enough to stand in his way.
• Dime Novel: Dwight is a great fan of this kind of books, where he learnt what he knows about the Far West and Silas.
• Dodge the Bullet: A mechanic in-game. It's possible to dodge the bullet that would have possibly killed you, though this ability takes time to recharge after you use it. Enemies will also express their astonishment when they see this.
  • This is also how you beat John Wesley Hardin. Silas has a greatly reduced accuracy in the duel, and instead has to avoid Hardin’s shots until he runs out of ammo. In case one of your bullets would have it, the game treats it as if you dodged all twelve shots.
• Dual Boss: The remaining two Dalton Brothers both challenge Silas to a duel after he escapes their trap and kills the rest of their men. You have to shoot them in the right order to win.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: The heartwarming Redemption ending ends the game on a cutscene. The Revenge ending, which is a lot bleaker, requires to win a final duel. It is somewhat downplayed, as said duel is a lot easier than the previous ones.
• Elaborate Equals Effective: The legendary weapons, unlocked by completing skill trees, are all very, very ornate. The only gun that doesn't get an upgrade is the Sawed-Off Rifle.
• Elite Mooks: Shielders and shotgunners can take a couple more bullets than normal, and have their own health bar. A headshot still drops them instantly, though. Armored shotgunners can take several bullets before dropping, but there's only one or two of them in the entire game.
• Enemy Mine: Silas joined Billy the Kid because Roscoe Bryant was with Billy the Kid's enemies.
• Exploding Barrels: Some levels include red barrels containing powder, which can be used to help cleaning the area.
• Expy: Silas Greaves is based on Harmonica, sharing the same motivation: avenging the murder of his brother(s). His appearance, on the other hand, is based on The Man With No Name.
• The Faceless: Silas' face is always at least partly obscured by his hat.
• Feuding Families: Pretty much every family in Coffeyville had a feud with another family, according to Silas. The Dalton brothers bank robberies in Coffeyville causes many of the feuds to turn violent, as different families either tries to kill the Daltons or protect them.
• Fission Mailed: In the mine, during Silas' narration, he runs after his target by entering inside the mine's tunnels. After several minutes inside this maze, you find yourself in a disaster's chain culminating with Silas smashed by the fall of an undodgeable mine cart. Cue Silas telling something like: "... of course, it is what would have happened if I really took this way". Then, the level is rewound, and Silas follows a more indirect path.
• Foregone Conclusion: Of course Silas survived all what happened to him, since he is telling his story in a saloon! This is actually lampshaded by his narration in the scene when he runs after the burning fuse of the dynamite which would destroy the bridge he is standing one.
• Framing Device: The idea behind the game is that Silas is telling stories about his past as a Bounty Hunter to the other patrons in a bar. However, our hero gets more and more drunk over the course of the game, and he starts exaggerating parts of his story, and eventually starts outright lying and making stuff up. He isn't quite as drunk as he makes himself out to be, though, and he has a reason to be lying. Interestingly, this actually affects the gameplay. Parts of the scenery and setting change as our hero points out things he didn't mention before, realizes that he isn't remembering what happened correctly, and, amusingly, when the other bar patrons misinterpret what he's saying or jump to conclusions about what happened next.

G-L

• Gameplay and Story Integration: The gameplay has taken a noticeable shift from down to earth open world fair to more of an arcade-y shoot 'em up that encourages you to go for the highscore with bombastic and extravagant gunfights. This neatly supports the Framing Device of what you're playing merely being a story narrated by Silas, who is either exaggerating the events to be more entertaining or make himself look better, or just blatantly making up tall tales.
  • Another example would be that the levels get progressively harder. The levels are set out with five to ten years between them, and Silas lampshades the fact that he isn't getting any younger, so all in all it makes a surprising amount of sense. Not to mention the fact that Silas is also getting increasingly drunker as his stories progress and thus increasingly wilder.
  • As is mentioned in-game, Emmett Dalton was shot 23 times leading up to his arrest and survived, making him a rare Real Life bullet sponge.
• Gatling Good: A couple of bossfights are against a boss armed with a gatling. Also, there is a couple of occasions when you mow down mooks with a Gatling. The unlikelihood of finding this then-cutting edge military hardware in the hands of outlaws is lampshaded in this exchange:
  Silas: Just about then I was attacked by some asshole on a Gatling gun.
  Jack: Seems like you run into a lot of them.
  Silas: Assholes?
  Jack: Gatling guns!
• Ghost Town: The final level takes place in one, complete with ghost enemies! Earlier, there is a level set in a deserted half-sunken town (the place has been turned into a swamp).
• Grenade Hot Potato: A perk allows to throw lit dynamite back to the sender.
• Guns Akimbo: The first skill in the Gunslinger set allows you to dual wield revolvers. Another skill in the Trapper set allows for dual wielding sawed-off shotguns.
• The Gunslinger: Silas can specialize in either dual-wielding, rifles or shotguns depending on the player's choice.
• He Who Fights Monsters: By the end of the game Silas realizes that he isn’t much better than the men he’s hunting and probably has killed even more people. In the Redemption ending, he even tells that 1910!Bob seems to be a better man than Silas is after decades of his murderous revenge.
• Heavily Armored Mook:
  • Early parts of the game have mooks hiding behind big wooden boards serving as improvised shields when they aren't shooting.
  • Jesse James' gang includes one or two shotgunners wearing makeshift iron armor (seemingly based on the suits worn by Ned Kelly's gang). It takes several bodyshots to kill them, but a good headshot or two will still take care of them.
• Hero-Worshipper: Dwight.
• High-Pressure Blood: A side effect of scoring a headshot.
• Historical Badass Upgrade: Leaving aside the fact that the ordinary human boss characters (Emmett Dalton notwithstanding) are suddenly capable of taking dozens of bullets, this mainly gets applied to Billy the Kid. That tense shootout in the opening level was, in real life, a slower-paced siege after a few bullets were exchanged and a dead horse in the door trapped Billy's gang inside their hideout.
• Historical Person Punchline: Dwight is no one else than Dwight D. Eisenhower.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: You can kill enemies by blowing their thrown dynamite if the lit sticks are still close enough to them. The same result can be achieve if you shoot a dynamite tosser right in the dynamite he is carrying.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Ben refers to "Jim" as Jim Reed, even though Silas had only ever used his first name up until that point. Silas even points this out indirectly. This serves as one of many hints that Ben knows more about the 3 killers than would initially appear.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Silas is able to shoot dynamite sticks while they are in the air.
• Ironic Echo: "I won't have it said I left you with nothing..."
• It Will Never Catch On: At a moment during Silas' story (when he is inside a derelict steamer in the swamp, while chasing the Daltons), the audience begin chatting about the Titanic, which was being built. Steve expresses his doubts about such a big ship being able to float.
• Knew It All Along: Replaying the story in New Game Plus not only shows Silas' running thoughts in the loading screens, but reveals that he already figured out Ben is Bob early on.
• Last-Second Ending Choice: In the very end of the game, you get to choose between Revenge or Redemption, i.e. whether to kill Roscoe "Bob" Bryant or forgiving him after thirty years of hunting him. Picking Revenge leads to the final Showdown at High Noon and a cutscene where Dwight and the other bar patrons stare in shock, while Redemption cues to an ending cutscene which shows Silas returning the gold coin and giving some friendly advice to young Dwight, before walking off into the sunset.
• Lemony Narrator: Silas will often comment on the situation and will even get impatient if the player waits too long. He'll also change the scene to more correctly fit how he remembers things.
• Locomotive Level: The level with Jesse James takes place in a moving train which have been seized by the gang. Though the boss is on the front of the train, the example is double-subverted: the level starts somewhere in the middle of the train, then, after crossing a couple of wagons, Silas rewinds the action and, this time, you have to advance through the whole train.

M-R

• Made of Iron: Curly Bill, Emmett Dalton, and the Sundance Kid are fought as traditional FPS bosses, requiring more than 3 dozen pistol shots to kill as they run around and shoot at you. This is Gameplay and Story Integration in the case of Emmett Dalton, who really did survive being shot 23 times. The Sundance Kid deserves a special mention because he survives the punishment doled out to him during his boss battle so Silas has to deal with both him and Butch Cassidy in a three way showdown.
• Master of None: The Sixshooter. Intended to be the middle ground between the killing power of the Ranger and the rapid-fire Quickshooter, in practice using means getting neither the Ranger's near-guaranteed One Hit Kills nor the Quickshooter's combo-extending speed-reloads.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
  • The entire Grey Wolf mission. There's several supernatural events that happen throughout it, and dreams that detail events that happen decades later into Silas' life. It's left ambiguous if Grey Wolf was really supernatural, and was warning Silas of what he might become, or if he was a part of Silas' imagination.
  • The ghosts in the ghost town. Were they actual ghosts, hallucinations (guilt-triggered?) that really happened to Silas, or just something he totally made up on the spot as a way of soul-searching after having really dipped into the whiskey/realizing the meaning of what Grey Wolf told him?
• Mêlée à Trois: The climax of the game is a three-way duel between Silas, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid. The latter are no longer friends.
• More Dakka:
  • Several sections of the game feature Gatling Guns that the player can use. Some bosses also use these.
  • The quickshooter is a fast-fire revolver, designed for fast fire.
  • Akimbo Sawed-Off Shotguns with infinite shotgun ammo.
• The Mountains of Illinois: Several scenes set in what are supposed to be flat prairie regions of the USA have huge forested mountains visible in the background. Justified due to the fact that the game takes place inside the imaginations of the other bar patrons, who could be either unaware of what these areas look like in real life or deliberately embellishing the scenery in their minds.
• Mutual Kill: Can happen during a duel if you're unlucky.
• Mythology Gag:
  • One of the Nuggets Of Truth you can find tells the story of Ray McCall, essentially detailing the plot of the original game in the series.
  • Silas is not fond of heights, which is something he shares with Ray.
  • One of the upgrades available is a cuirass like Ray's which grants Silas greater durability.
• Narrative Backpedaling: The game is full of these. Even the very first Showdown at High Noon turns out to be an example of this. One great example is when Silas tells of how he found himself surrounded by Apaches. An audience member asks him what happened to the attacking cowboys he spoke of a moment ago, and Silas quickly corrects himself to saying that the cowboys attacked him in Apache style. At the same moment the gunslinging Indians the player is fighting are suddenly replaced by cowboys.
• New Game Plus: Unlocked when you beat the game one time. The New Game + makes you play the story again but you retain your skills, the unique weapons unlocked, and the Nuggets of Truth already discovered; the difficulty can even be raised for the next round to keep it interesting. It also adds new Loading Screen tips, lampshading the later impact of events and Silas' running thoughts on the "present day" bar events, specifically on his build-up to the reveal.
• Notice This:
  • Ammunitions, guns, and secrets are surrounded by some glowing stars.
  • During bullet time, enemies are glowing in red (while the surrounding area appears lighter).
    • If there's not enough Concentration you can still tap the Concentration button to give a faint highlight at enemies within your field of view.
  • There is a skill (from the Ranger skill tree) which gives a signal when you're near to a secret.
• Of Corsets Sexy: Molly the salon girl wears a burlesque corset that shows off her incredibly impressive bust.
• Ominous Fog: Covers the ghost town of the final level, especially in the cemetery.
• Once More, with Clarity:
  • After the first third of the game is completed, most missions start right as Silas catches up with the famous outlaw of each mission and dispatches them in heavy, stylistic ways. As soon as he does this, however, one of the bar patrons listening to his story will point out any inconsistencies, which then starts the mission over as it actually happened, often leading to anticlimactic confrontations and some of the outlaws surviving their wounds.
  • One part of the story is told twice more with "clarity", first by Ben(who was there), then by Dwight(who read about what Silas did), then by Silas(who was there). All three are mutually exclusive.
  • Also, the story relevant messages that pop up during loading screens change from your first playthrough to what they say during a new game plus. Mainly giving some insight into Silas' stories as they work as foreshadowing (for the Gray Wolf chapter) or how they relate to his suspicious that Ben the Bartender is actually Bob and the ways he tries to get him to confirm those suspicions.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: The duels, for both Silas and his enemy. The first one who hit the other wins, but it's possible to dodge.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Silas only wounds most of the famous figures he ends up fighting throughout the game, so that they go on to die later on in the (often anticlimactic) manner recorded in history.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Silas suddenly stops his over the top, almost fantastical story of hunting Frank James and goes on a determined, almost frightening reciting of an old poem on death. This is because he realizes at that exact moment (in retrospect to what Gray Wolf had said to him) that Ben/Bob is the person that Gray Wolf said will cause him to lose his soul if Silas kills him. From this point on, Silas begins to occasionally question his own motives as he narrates the story.
• Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Part of the game's art style involves this, especially with full blast shotgun kills.
• Philosophical Choice Endings: The protagonist Silas Greaves spent decades working as a bounty hunter in the Old West to chase after the outlaws who murdered his brothers. He finds the last of them in the final mission and discovers that he has done his best to repent for his sins and start a new life. You then have to decide whether Silas is finally able to let go of his revenge, or carries it out to the end. The situation is further compounded by the presence of Dwight—a young idealistic boy who looks up to Silas and who is none other than Dwight D. Eisenhower—at the scene, as either choice has a profound impact on him, too.
• Pistol-Whipping: The mêlée attack doesn't use a tomahawk or a knife, but is a hit with the stock of the weapon you're wielding.
• Post-Final Boss: Old, retired, and having not been that much of a fighter in the first place, Roscoe "Bob" Bryant is hardly a challenging final duel. Killing him is really just to conclude the plot if you choose the "Revenge" path. The shootout with Sundance Kid and the subsequent three-way duel with him and Butch Cassidy were the real final boss fights.
• Potty Emergency: During the part when Silas is chasing Jesse James, he interrupts the story to go to the toilets. Follows a slow-mo sequence in which the fictional Silas crosses several wagons devoided of enemies, while the audience is debating whether the tales are true or not.
• Press X to Not Die:
  • When you're about to be hit by a One-Hit Kill bullet (which is shown in slow-mo), you must dodge it by strafing left or right (the direction in which you must go isn't specified and must be guessed by observing the bullet's trajectory), and failing it means death.
  • There are some scripted sequences in which Silas shoots enemies in slow-mo through quick-time events, by pressing W-A-S-D when the right button is displayed. Failing the sequence triggers the One-Hit Kill bullet sequence mentioned above.
• Punny Name: Silas Greaves grieves for his brothers.
• Pyrrhic Victory/Vengeance Feels Empty: In the Revenge ending, Silas gets his revenge on Bob at long last, but admits that he has willingly sold his soul for the chance and considers himself hell bound, recognizing that he failed to heed Gray Wolf's warnings and advice to not succumb to the poison of his rage and is beyond redemption, having become no better then the men he sought to kill through his long life of death begetting more and more death.
• Reconstruction: of classic westerns, as well as Spaghetti Western. However, should Silas goes with through with his revenge in the end, it turn into a Genre Deconstruction instead, though only for the ending scene.
• Retired Outlaw: Ben, a.k.a. Roscoe "Bob" Bryant
• "Rashomon"-Style: The tale of how the Dalton brothers met their fate in Coffeyville is told three different ways by three different characters; Ben (a Coffeyville native), Dwight (who has read about the event) and Silas (who may or may not have been part of the posse tracking the Daltons). About the only thing they can agree on is that the Daltons robbed banks in Coffeyville on a certain day.
• Rewarding Vandalism: Destroying some scenery props (bottles, pumpkins, etc) grants a few experience points.
• Riding into the Sunset: Referred by the Steam achievement gained with the Redemption ending.
• Revenge Reveal Story: The whole game is explained as the whole big chain of the events. To the person that wronged him.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The whole game is one for Silas, as he keeps chasing after the men who killed his brothers for forty years. You decide whether to go through with revenge or redeem yourself.
• RPG Elements: Killing enemies and finding secrets grant experience, which allows to gain skills (cf Skill Scores and Perks). Notably, your skill upgrades can't be used when replaying levels using the level select, only when restarting the game completely in New Game Plus.

S-Z

• Sawed-Off Shotgun: One of the available one-handed gun. You can dual wield it if you have a specific perk.
• Scenery Porn: The game does a damn good job at showing of the beauty of the American south west. Even highlighted in Gunfight at the Sawmill.
  Silas: I'm painting a Picture here. There was this Beautiful waterfall and a crystal clear stream that led to a verdant valley that was truly-
  Ben: Consider your picture painted. What Happened next?
• Secret Test of Character: In the Redemption ending, Silas claims the reason he rambled on with his story in the first place was to see if Ben/Bob had really changed or not, and is implied that seeing as how the bartender didn't just gun him down as soon as it became obvious the bounty hunter knew the truth means there's still hope for Graves to move on from all the death and vengeance in much the same way.
• The Seven Western Plots: The game takes quite a bit of time to get to its main plot (which is initially deliberately obscured by the protagonist Silas' Tall Tales), but when it does, it turns out to be a classic Revenge story, detailing Silas' pursuit of the three outlaws who murdered his brothers and left him for dead. The last of said outlaws is actually among the audience he tells his story to, and it is up to the player to decide whether Silas kills him, too, or lets go of his past.
• Shout-Out: Plenty to classic western stories, in particular all the chapter titles reference famous western movies:
  • Once Upon A Time In Stinking Springs references Once Upon a Time in the West
  • A Fistful of Hot Lead is to A Fistful of Dollars
  • A Bullet for the Old Man is a reference to A Bullet for the General
  • Gunfight at the Sawmill is likely a shout out to Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
  • The Magnificent One is an obvious play on The Magnificent Seven
  • Be Quick or Be Dead is a reference to The Quick and the Dead
  • "Dances with Renegades" references "Dances with Wolves".
  • The chapters "They Call Me Bounty Hunter" and "Bounty Hunter is STILL My Name" directly reference the Trinity movies.
  • Not So Great Train Robbery is a play on ''The Great Train Robbery'" (the first western movie ever)
  • 1:30 To Hell for 3:10 to Yuma (1957)
  • Death Rides A Steel Stallion is for Death Rides a Horse.
  • Without Forgiveness is a play on Unforgiven
  • The final chapter, The Good, The Bad, And The Dead would be familiar to almost everyone even remotely familiar with the western genre, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly being one of the single most famous western movies of all time. The climax is a 1 VS 1 VS 1 duel in a cemetery, introduced with a title screen saying "The Good, the Bad, and the Dying".
  • Not a title reference, but Jessie James bears a strong resemblance to Brad Pitt, who played him in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
  • When Silas recounts his pursuit of Grey Wolf, the locator tag says "long time ago, on a mountain far, far away..."
  • During the comic book-style cutscene introducing the Dalton Brothers, there is a line saying that they shouldn't be confused with their cousins. During the same chapter, the Nugget of Truth about the Dalton Brothers makes another similar reference to Lucky Luke.
  • When introducing Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, the cutscene shows a recreation of the Bolivian Army Ending from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
• Showdown at High Noon: Most of the Wild West celebrities are dealt with in duels. The player has to keep the aiming cursor onto their opponent without it drifting off of them to gain focus, while moving their hand closer to the revolver for a faster draw. The duels can be won Honorably, by drawing after your opponent, or Dishonorably, by drawing after the heartbeat sound plays but before the enemy drawing first, with the latter awarding fewer points.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Silas apparently thinks highly about Bob Olinger's double barrel, as it's the only weapon to get its own introductory cutscene. In-game, they suffer from lack of range and poor magazine capacity... Until you upgrade your skills completely, at which point they become the deadliest force in the game, capable of mowing down enemies in Concentration with auto-lock head shots, instant reloads, and a near endless ammo supply.
• Shown Their Work:
  • Not only was Bob Olinger a real person, but he really was shot with his own shotgun during Billy the Kid's escape from prison. Though he actually was killed by Billy the Kid himself.
  • In addition to the Nuggets of Truth, Silas mentions that Grey Wolf became an outlaw after his daughter was killed during the Sunrise ceremony. This is a real Apache ceremony, which is performed by girls upon entering puberty.
  • The setting of the 1910 scenes (Abilene, Kansas) also happens to be the hometown of Dwight Eisenhower, who left for West Point not long after, just as in real life.
• Skill Scores and Perks: The game features three independent (twin revolver cylinder-shaped) perk trees: one for Guns Akimbo, one for long-range sniping, and one for close range shooting. You gain experience points for stylish kills, which are then translated into Character Levels, and you get to spend a skill point at each level. At the end of each "cylinder", you get access to one of the Legendary Weapons as a free bonus.
• Stupid Crooks: During the Coffeyville level^note where the Dalton gang eventually met its demise, Silas lampshades how stupid it was for the Daltons to rob two banks at the same time, in their hometown.
• Tall Tale: The entire point of the game. The over-the-top violence so typical in First-Person Shooters is justified in-story by the manner how said story is presented by Silas, who is a protagonist Character Narrator—namely, as a Tall Tale to entertain random pub patrons.
• To the Pain: How Silas takes revenge on his final nemesis. Eventually he realizes Ben is, in fact, Roscoe "Bob" Bryant, and once he does he basically spends the last third of the game fucking with him. The infamous "Oh Death" scene was instigated when he asks Ben if he's ever thought about death, a heavy bit of foreshadowing players will probably only realize the full implications of in retrospect or on a second play through.
• Tragic Keepsake: Silas holds on to the old Spanish coin he was left by the men who hanged him and his brothers. Promotional artwork even shows him wearing it in a necklace. In the Redemption ending he leaves the coin to Ben/Bob.
• The Unfought:
  • Silas didn't so much fight, let alone kill, John Wesley Hardin, so much as dodge a few drunken potshots before the latter finally surrendered.
  • Grey Wolf is never fought at all, being constantly out of Silas' reach. Which further adds to the ambiguity of whether those events happened or existed only in Silas' imagination.
• Unique Enemy: There are only a handful of shotgunners and only one or two armored shotgunners in the game. They're tougher than regular mooks, but not so tough they could be considered a mini-boss or even a Giant Mook.
• Unreliable Narrator: It's not clear how much of Silas' tales can be considered the truth. The way he gets more and more drunk and inconsistent as the tales go on doesn't instill much confidence, not that they were entirely believable from the beginning anyway. Even at the first cutscene, when questioned on how many of his stories are true, he answers back with "A few..."
• Unreliable Voiceover: Frequently, but most notably in "Dances With Renegades". Grey Wolf, in flashback, gives Silas a warning about seeking vengeance, while present-day Silas narrates that the chief was calling him a Worthy Opponent.
• "Wanted!" Poster: Several of them are shown in the opening screen of the game (the one displayed before you see the main menu), for Billy the Kid and several of the bosses.
• Where It All Began: Played With. Mid-way into the story, Silas recounts how he was in Abilene, Kansas about 30 years earlier, pursuing John Wesley Hardin and Roscoe "Bob" Bryant. As it turns out, Bob was in Abilene after all, and Silas had realized this at some point after spending several more years looking for him.
• World's Best Warrior: John Wesley Hardin is repeatedly referred to as the fastest gun of the Old West, while Jessie James is known as the greatest outlaw who ever lived. Silas manages to defeat them both, but only manages to beating Hardin because the latter was drunk off his ass at the time, and admits that he merely wounded Jesse James, who was so embarrassed by the defeat that he never told anyone about it.
• Worf Had the Flu: It's repeatedly mentioned that John Wesley Hardin was widely considered the fastest gunslinger who had ever lived, alongside Wild Bill Hickok. Silas admits he was only able to defeat Hardin because the latter was drunk off his ass at the time. Indeed, in the duel itself you're not really expected to outdraw Hardin, but are instead given the ability to lean left and right to dodge his bullets.
• You Are What You Hate: If Silas gets his revenge, he ultimately admits to being no better than the outlaws and killers he had been putting down.
• Young Future Famous People: Dwight's last name? Eisenhower.

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