- Broken Base: Devil's Cartel in regards to the twist of Salem being El Diablo, the main antagonist. While some say it makes sense and it made him more interesting as a character, others say it's completely out of character for him to turn his back on TWO and become a mass-murdering psychopath.
- Critical Dissonance: Reviews of the series tend to be a bit lukewarm, yet the game has sold well enough to generate two sequels and has a comic book tie-in.
- Ho Yay: Salem and Rios spend a lot of time together. To make it even more obvious, they only airdrop via tandem parachute. Sure, it may be so that one guy can shoot the Mooks on the ground, but there's got to be more to it, right? Zero Punctuation had a lot of fun with thisnote . And let's not forget the minor details like body language, the way they talk to each other, and how there is absolutely no typical action-hero flirting with Mission Control. They bicker Like an Old Married Couple. On the other hand, some of their taunts do involve invoking the ladies back home to "lift their shirts" in appreciation. Plus, in the backstory comic Rios has a on again/off again relationship to a woman named Samantha, and has a daughter named Nala. Salem just targets anything with breasts in Miami.
- Penny Arcade pointed this out as well
.- On a more serious note, in the Penny Arcade podcast, they said that they would actually have enjoyed the game a great deal more if Salem and Rios' reason for leaving the army after the tutorial level was a DADT violation. If nothing else was changed, it would paradoxically change everything just by altering one small detail.
- A developer in this video more or less says it wasn't intentional, but has no problem with the interpretation.
- In The 40th Day, despite Salem and Rios being generally more subdued, the Penny Arcade comic above becomes an understatement. The 'hug that is a little too long' takes the form of one wrapping their arms around the other and lifting him up, particularly amusing when Salem does it to Rios. Another positive emote is a blatant ass slap, and the game actually keeps track of your bromance with a label visible on the pause screen.
- Also worth noting that the max level of positive Camaraderie is called "Ambiguous". Seems like the dev team was having as much fun with the idea as the audience.
- Penny Arcade pointed this out as well
- Manly Gay: If you believe that the games's Ho Yay elements are more than a coincidence then Elliot Salem and Tyson Rios are major examples of this trope.
- Moral Event Horizon: Even if you don't think mercenary companies are bad in general you'll cerainly think SSC is evil after its executives conspire to leak US troop movements and assassinate an American Senator in the pursuit of future profits.
- Nightmare Fuel: Watching Shanghai go from vibrant city to a pile of rubble in The 40th Day, especially when watching the way the 40th Day Initiative treats civilians.
- Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: In Devil's Cartel, for one Salem became a traitorous psychopath and all the named characters are unceremoniously killed off throughout the course of the game with the exception of Alpha, Bravo, Rios, and Salem himself, who is taken by the authorities.
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