YMMV / Grand Theft Auto Online

• Accidental Aesop: Grand Theft Auto V 's critiques of rampant greed and capitalist excess contrast sharply with Online 's encouragement to the players to spend money both in-game and in real life by appealing to materialism. This creates another inadvertent aesop in the meta sense: The products of capitalism are ill-equipped to criticise it.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Long John Teabag/LJT used to potentially become this, if production issues aren't addressed by the online player. He'll make a call every time the player enters free roam. This was addressed when the Los Santos Summer Update made his calls into texts.
• Best Level Ever:
  • Online has the Top Fun^note A play on Top Gun as well as a Mythology Gag from GTA VC. trilogy of versus missions. One team of runners have to run off with some valuable stuff in their hands without the whole team dying on either Sanchez dirt bikes, Voltic and Coquette sports cars, or even Mallard planes. What are they running from? Oh, nothing but some hunters flying freakin' P-996 LAZER fighter jets that can blow the runners' asses off.
  • In the Heists update on Online, there's a setup for the "Humane Raid" heist. What are you stealing? An EMP from a Hydra jump jet. Who are you stealing it from? Oh, only the Navy! After lifting off with the jet, you then get a dogfight with around 12 Lazer jets, and just to top it all off, "Danger Zone" is automatically put on the radio for the last stretch to the Sandy Shores airfield.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Cunning Stunts is arguably this on the scale of an entire update as it adds crazy and colorful set piece racetracks that dwarf even Mount Chilliad in scale.
  • The Doomsday Heist raises the stakes several notches above the Pacific Standard Heist, to a ridiculous degree. Instead of possibly facing life in jail for failing the heist, it's possibly facing nuclear fire at the hands of an eccentric billionaire, his AI creation, and their army of cyber clones.
  • Rockstar made a huge deal out of a casino penthouse decoration, of all things — the "Yellow Dog with Cone" statue, which was initially missing from the list of decorations when the Diamond Casino and Resort update dropped (there were green, blue, and pink versions of "Dog with Cone" instead). The inclusion of the statue was accompanied by a loading screen announcement titled "Worship the Cone" with a related line of clothing and a few websites like Reddit and Kotaku played along with Rockstar's shenanigans.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • For races, nearly every vehicle category has one particular vehicle model that clearly stands out as the best, meaning that almost everybody will choose it. The Sports Car class has the Pariah, the Sedan class has the Schafter V12, the Muscle Car class has the Pißwasser Dominator, the Motorcycle class has the Shotaro, and the Super Car class has the Vagner. On a similar note, most of the races you join will be using either the Super or Sport class. Trying to find a race for the other classes available is a tall order, especially if you're looking for the SUV, Van and Utility classes.
  • Criminal Records and Down The Drain are the two tracks occupying 90% of Quick Job -> Join Race results.
  • Boneyard is the most popular survival map in Online because it can easily be beaten with as little as two people. Just go behind the trailer near the player spawn point, put a player on each side, and mow down wave after wave of enemies who are unable to outflank you because they can only approach your fortified position by crossing large areas of open ground. Processed is another, where you can hole up in the sheds.
  • 90% of the job invites you'll get from other players will likely be for Rooftop Rumble, a ridiculously easy mission given how late in Online it gets unlocked that pays out more RP and money than any other mission in Online. With the rebalancing of the RP from jobs, that percentage is now more like 40%, which, given the number of other jobs available, is still pretty high.
  • The most common Heist you'll be invited to will likely be The Prison Break, since it has a series of easy enough missions and a good payout of four hundred grand.
  • For the Cayo Perico Heist almost everyone will be doing the Kosatka approach with the storm drain entry. This is because it's not only incredibly easy, but also ridiculously fast compared to other entry methods as it practically spawns you right next to the compound at the start of the mission. The drainage tunnel also has the added benefit of providing you with a hand torch that also substitutes for bolt cutters, eliminating the need to scope those out on each run if you want to crack the loot lockups near the docks.
  • When it comes to actual heist setups, the EMP setup in the Humane Labs heist is by far the most popular, since it involves stealing a Cool Plane and getting into an epic dogfight. Invites to this setup can be as frequent as Prison Break invites. One could argue that this setup is the only reason why this heist even gets any play time.
• Complete Monster: The Doomsday Heist: Avon Hertz is a genius billionaire tech mogul, inventor and "father" of the insane A.I. Cliffford, and the true main antagonist of the Doomsday Heist scenarios. Petty and egotistical to the extreme, Avon had his own vision for a perfect world. He sought to create a dystopia where all of mankind was replaced with sapient machines who worshiped him as God. He tricks the Online protagonists into feeding data to Cliffford under the guise of rooting out the Russian terrorist Bogdan, when he was actually using them to gain access to the United States defense grid. After trying to blow of the submarine the players and Bogdan are on, he reveals that he will use Cliffford to hack into missile systems throughout the world and unleash nuclear armageddon to completely wipe away humanity. Hiding out in an abandoned missile silo, Avon tried to use a nuclear warhead to wipe away San Andreas and buy time to allow Cliffford to hack into weapons systems around the world to unleash doomsday. While Avon and Cliffford are ultimately killed, his genocidal ambitions lifted him above all other villains in the franchise in terms of evil grandeur.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Players in a Rhino are also a pain in the ass if you happen to run into one. They take at least five rockets to destroy, and considering a player can only carry thirty at once^note Twenty for the RPG, plus ten for the homing launcher, and considering that the player driving it will will put you in his sights, it can sometimes be damn near impossible to get rid of them.
  • The Gunrunning and Doomsday updates added far more annoying versions of the Rhino, the APC and the TM-02 Khanjali. Each are faster than the Rhino and can eat much more rockets. It's with the unlockable weapons when things get really fun. The Khanjali can be equipped with a rail cannon that can destroy even the toughest vehicles in a few shots, and the APC can use a missile battery that's effective against everything.
  • You thought a troll in a Rhino was bad? A troll in a P-996 Lazer fighter jet will make you cry. They have a rapid-firing explosive cannon that can take out anything, even a Rhino (thanks to a nerf to the Rhino's armor), in milliseconds. Furthermore, while a Rhino's slow speed makes the problem only confined to one area, a Lazer can easily swoop around the entire map. It is not unheard of for a skilled jet pilot to dominate a lobby to the point that everyone else has no choice but to cower in the shelter of a building. Oh, and don't bother trying to take it down with a homing launcher. It is too damn inaccurate, and the pilot can dodge it with ease.
  • The Heist Update brings us the Armored Kuruma and the Insurgent, two powerful cars that start with bulletproof tires and 100% armor. The Kuruma is a fast sports car with bulletproof windows and the durability of the single player car the Duke o' Death. The Insurgent is an outright LAPV with enough armor to survive multiple rockets and sustained minigun fire, and enough mass to smash through anything smaller than the Rhino or Dump, even causing smaller cars to explode on impact with a wall. The Insurgent is so powerful that it even has its own minimap blip, and there's an armed version deliverable by Pegasus that carries a .50 caliber heavy machine gun.
    • Speaking of the Duke O' Death, it got unbanned during the Gunrunning update. This speaks for itself.
  • Hell, just about any enemy with a shotgun or an assault rifle can be this, since they can potentially kill you in seconds (if not instantly) if you're not careful.
  • Thermal Juggernauts, introduced in the Doomsday Heists Update. As their name implies, they're mooks in heavily padded bomb suits armed with miniguns, which can easily rip any player apart in seconds. Furthermore, they can only be detected and shot at with Thermal vision, and even then they'll take a hell of a beating before going down. The only good news is that they're relatively slow.
  • The worst of all, however, is anybody piloting an Oppressor Mk II. Not only is it a flying motorcycle, it is also armed to the teeth with homing missiles, meaning that a single missile fired from this bike can end your player and your personal vehicle. Expect to see many players flying with one of these while delivering the cargo. Oh, and try hitting it with your homing launcher, because it's a small target that's hard to hit. In short, it's all the advantages of the P-996 Lazer and few of the drawbacks. They were thankfully nerfed with the release of the Diamond Casino Heist, which added a five-minute respawn cooldown after they are destroyed. Thankfully this was averted in the Criminal Enterprises update, where the missiles were nerfed and now less accurate, as well as the countermeasures in which you can't spam.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: As of The Cayo Perico Heist update, Pavel is hugely beloved by fans due to his friendly personality and witty comments, and takes a much smaller cut when completing the Cayo Perico heist compared to Lester who takes a chunk in other heists.
• Epileptic Trees: The Cayo Perico Heist ends with the info El Rubio was blackmailing Madrazo with being a picture of Trevor and Patricia Madrazo nude in bed. Some people took this to believe that Miguel Madrazo is Trevor's son and not Martin's. This is despite the fact that Miguel is in his mid-20's at least, and the relationship between Trevor and Patricia happened in 2013, so even if Trevor got Patricia pregnant in that time, Miguel would only be 7 or 8 years old.
• Game-Breaker: Being a Rockstar game, it should be no surprise the multiplayer has...questionable balance.
  • The Rhino. Any player able to afford or successfully steal one can quickly find themselves become the scourge of the multiplayer session.
  • Both the Armored Kuruma and the Insurgent are basically more durable than the Rhino, and are virtually invincible against entire groups of NPCs. In Online, you can get the Kuruma fairly early after the introductory heist if you save up enough cash, and is fantastic for certain jobs where you need to wipe out a large group of NPCs, as the armored windows makes it extremely difficult for enemies to hit players, meaning an entire group in a Kuruma can come out entirely unscathed from a fight that can normally give groups of players a lot of trouble. The Insurgent doesn't offer quite as much protection due to the more exposed windows (in fact, you are considerably more vulnerable to gunfire than in the armored Kuruma, which by comparison makes you virtually invincible against NPC gunfire unless you're unlucky (other players are another story, but the small windows still makes proper aiming much harder)), but it is still extremely durable, and the variant with the gun turret can easily destroy most unarmored vehicles extremely quickly, which offsets the vulnerability.
  • The Homing Launcher is a massive one in online, and was an even bigger one before its Nerf. It was probably added to the game to address player concerns that Lazer jets could essentially only be stopped with another plane of the same type. To fulfill this role the homing launcher;s titular homing projectile is the fastest and most agile missile in the game. It can lock onto any vehicle in the game. period. And since its a DLC weapon any player at any level can buy it. The Homing launcher essentially made helicopters obsolete overnight, as it can destroy all but one in one hit and there is almost no way to dodge them. To make matters worse it didn't really solve the aforementioned Lazer problem it was created to address.
  • With the Further Adventure in Finance and Feleony some weapons now get drum magazines. The machine Pistol and Special Carbine Rifle both benefit greatly from this, the Rifle being an assult rifle that holds 100 bullets with the new magazine and still having a fast reload speed compred to the LMGs, and the machine pistol being usable in cars, fully automatic, and only slightly worse than the AP pistol.
  • The Gunrunning DLC introduced MK II weapons with the ability to equip different ammo for different situations. The Heavy sniper got a new ammo type that explodes. It can one shot a max hp max body armor player on bullshark testosterone and kill any unarmored vehicle on one shot, with one exception we will discuss in a second. Since its a bullet and not a projectile, it can enter the cabins of vehicles through unarmored windows and kill the occupant it hits, which will not damage the vehicle. Its amazingly efficient at dispatching even the most game breaking vehicles in the game or at least killing the drivers. Its greifing potential is so high that some players think even using it should count as bad sport points. This was partially nerfed in the Doomsday Heist update. It no longer one-hit kills players and NPC's, now requiring 2 shots to kill as if using regular ammo and an unarmored player/NPC.
  • The freaking Orbital Cannon. While one could argue that its intended purpose was to be Purposefully Overpowered, costing upwards of $3.5 million in-game and then $500,000-$750,000 per shot, it can hit you anywhere on the map and will one-shot nearly any vehicle you're in, meaning the only way to defend yourself is to never leave your safehouse. Given that the weapon was supposed to be prohibitively expensive to use, all it has done has exacerbated the fact that Good Bad Bugs to get easy money and whales buying shark cards have now made the game all but unplayable, as they were just given a griefer's wet dream. Needless to say... players were furious.
  • The Slasher game mode is supposed to be stacked in favor of the guy with the shotgun, forcing players to hide and run until they get shotguns themselves. In practice, however, a well-placed ambush can lead to the hunter's demise, as the game's questionable melee mechanics allow even one of the hiders to start beating the hunter to death with a flashlight, with the hunter unable to retreat far enough to even be able to shoot at point-blank range, as the default point-blank attack with the shotgun is hitting the other player with the stock, which does less damage than the flashlight. If the hiders group up and surprise the hunter, they can swarm and overwhelm him/her easily. This became especially prominent after youtubers started realizing this could be done, and now the "meta" for Slasher is basically more about the hunter killing the hiders before they can take him/her down, rather than waiting for the timer to run down. Again, with flashlights.^note This could be easily fixed with an Obvious Rule Patch reducing the damage of the flashlights and making the stock hit a One-Hit Kill.
  • As of the After Hours update, the Oppressor MK2 takes its precursor and cranks nearly every aspect of it up to eleven. Not only is it mind-numbingly difficult to hit, but it is often loaded with missiles that are difficult to evade without assistance without countermeasures, countermeasures to deter missiles or lock-on, is able to be called in from anywhere thanks to the convenience of a motorcycle club, and possesses very high evasive capabilities. Thankfully, it's only destroyed in one hit from any explosive, and as of The Diamond Casino Heist update, has a 5 minute cooldown before it can be respawned. On that note, the introduction of the missile lock-on jammer from The Contract update's Imani tech (which basically makes the cars from the DLC entirely immune to missile lock-on when equipped) has started to make the Oppressor Mk. II fall into Awesome, but Impractical territory as it's extremely difficult to hit any vehicle equipped with the said jammer as they can evade the missiles and make the Mk. II run dry before getting the chance to hit them up to nine homing missiles before exploding, which can generate frustration among its users including Griefers.
  • With the release of Los Santos Tuners update, the Karin Calico GTF (Toyota Celica GT-Four) is an absolute killer in street races due to its excellent grip and acceleration which can demolish the competition in hands of a skilled player even in bone stock condition. According to YouTube user Broughy1322, it reaches the top-speed of 121 MPH (195 KMH) where it can catch up with most of the cars including the Scramjet! While the Ocelot Pariah (Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato) can keep up with the former due to having higher top-speed of 136 MPH (218 KMH) in straightaways, the Calico would decimate it in more technical courses while leaving the Pariah behind like if nothing happened.
  • The TM-02 Khanjali. The Rhino has not been at the top for a long time but the Khanjali puts a tank up high once more, with its ability to be given armor and engine upgrades like a car, bring up to three friends riding/gunning with you, and drop mines.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • In early versions of Online, buying a bicycle in Online and getting it trashed when you have a medium sized garage. The main game engine considers the bike trashed and you can't recover it and ride it ever again, but the garage management engine for some reason still lists it on the bike rack albeit as <destroyed>. In early releases, buying a third bike to replace the destroyed bike won't put it in the destroyed bike's place, but instead erases the car in the first slot in the garage- simply put, the rack space occupied by the destroyed bike is lost. Thankfully, this was fixed in a patch.
  • Another one comes in the form of accidentally hitting a NPC while playing golf in Story Mode, as documented by Cracked. If you hit a NPC, not only will the police come, but your character will suddenly freeze up and be unable to move, allowing the police an easy target to pick off your character. It gets annoying because the NPC has the tendency to wander in front of you when you're just going to hit the ball, and the game penalizes you for dying by deducting $500 off your character.
  • While this bug can be seen by some as inconsequential at best, considering it has to do with the optional Criminal Mastermind challenge for the Doomsday Heist (keyword being "optional"), that doesn't excuse the misery that it will cause for the people that want to complete it, most notably including the Achievement Hunters. As seen in part 3 of their series where they attempt to complete it, they run into an issue where Gavin notices that the "Challenges Active" section in the lobby didn't acknowledge the CM challenge for him, even though it was there for everyone else. When he quits, thinking it just needs to be fixed with a restart of his game, the game retaliates by resetting the progress of the challenge for everyone, forcing them to start over from the beginning. Even though they didn't fail any requirement like sticking with the same squad or not dying in a mission, they were still punished as if they just did, before they even got the chance to do the mission proper. To make matters worse, this happened a total of three times, with it affecting a different member and happening at a different point in the heist each time.^note In fact, it wasn't even apparent to them on the third occurence since the CM challenge was marked as Active for all four of them, and yet they load into the mission being told their progress was reset anyway. It happened with such inconsistency and crushed their spirits enough that they admitted defeat and gave up on the challenge, despite it being through no fault of their own.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In the initial PS3/Xbox 360 versions of the game, The gate glitch, which is the successor to the "Swingset of Doom" glitch of IV. Like the swingset glitch, ramming a vehicle up against the house gates at Rockford Hills can cause it to be swung very high into the air, much higher and faster than the old glitch in IV ever could. The sliding gates are hard to do the glitch at but are the only ones that can be done in single player. The swinging gates are much easier to ram up against and can even fling people that walk into them as well.
  • During version 1.07 of the game, players could actually fly to and roam around North Yankton in Grand Theft Auto Online via a glitch. Rockstar supposedly patched this out in version 1.08, but several YouTubers have managed to get back into North Yankton on that version regardless.
  • There's usually at least one way for every platform to split off from a public session and sell illegal products in peace that Rockstar can't prevent because of either third-party software quirks or messing with network devices physically. On Xbox One, testing the console's NAT type is usually enough. On PlayStation 4, lowering the console's MTU settings does the trick. Lastly, on PC, briefly suspending the game through Task Manager (or some equivalent) has the same effect. All of these trick the game into thinking that the client is lagging and separates the offending player into their own session so as not to interfere with other players. Of course, there's also briefly unplugging the device's ethernet cable for the less technologically-inclined.
  • If the Orbital Cannon's tracking shot is fired without killing anyone, the fee is refunded and you can fire again. If a cheater is using a mod menu to grant himself God Mode, you can just spam the Orbital Cannon at them for free, destroying any vehicles they might be in and making them victims of Ragdoll Physics until they leave.
  • Demon Drag, which is an extreme result of what can happen when two players' clients report that their position is opposite to where they actually are on each person's screen. As seen in the video example, each player's client thinks that the other car is to the left of the player. When one player moves to the right to create some distance from the car on left, their car on the other player's screen starts pushing the other player right from the left, which then causes the other player's car to push the first player's car right from the left, resulting in an endless cycle of pushing that's only broken apart by terrain or another obstacle.
  • In the Cayo Perico Heist update, the guards were actually bugged from the getco and were unable to detect dead bodies that they walked near. This made doing the entire heist a sinch to the point players were able to complete the entire heist without even being detected and made millions off of it. Unfortunately, as of the Los Santos Drug Wars update, this bug was fixed and not only were more guards added in locations players didn't usually encounter them in, a single body being detected resulted in the alarms being triggered and droves of guards trying to kill you after unlike in the Diamond Casino Heist where the guards would just be on higher alert.
  • The Los Santos Tuners update accidentally left a bug in which the windows of the regular Kuruma were made unbreakable, rendering the car almost entirely bulletproof (except it still can be destroyed when shot directly in the body or with explosives). Zig-zagged in a way while drive-bys become an absolute cakewalk in this vehicle, dealing with enemies driving Kurumas become extremely difficult in the proccess. Months later, this bug got patched out when The Contract update arrived, forcing the players to switch back to the armored variant of the car... until the Criminal Entreprises update, in which that bug was applied to the Stirling GT instead.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • #JusticeForVincent^ExplanationA hashtag that made the rounds on /r/gtaonline before and shortly after the release of the Diamond Casino Heist. Vincent's story in the Diamond Casino contact missions ended with him losing his job as Head of Security after ownership of the Diamond was handed over to the Duggan family, much to the dismay of the remaining staff there. He gets his time in the spotlight again in the Diamond Casino Heist, having found a job as a bog standard security guard at the Rockford Plaza mall and assisting the protagonist in their robbery by leaking security intel pertaining to the casino.
  • Lester's whiteboard^ExplanationIn the cutscene where the protagonist takes a tour of their newly-purchased arcade and casino heist planning room, Lester starts scrawling his ideas on a whiteboard in the basement. A screenshot of him standing in front of it before he starts writing has been making the rounds on GTA-related sites because of its exploitable nature.
  • Yellow Dog With Cone.^Explanation The Casino DLC added a vanity item that could be placed in your Penthouse, which was a mere yellow balloon dog with a cone around its "neck". For some reason, the fanbase loved it so much that Rockstar has made it a running gag within GTA Online, with Madam Nazar mentioning it◊ and, most recently, shirts.
• Memetic Loser:
  • The Diamond Casino valet, who seemingly exists just to get punched, shot, or run over by every player who passes by.
  • The Diamond Casino vault guard, he is never there when the place gets robbed, and when he is, on the Big Con Gruppe Sechs approach only, all he does is get hit by the player every time. it doesn't help when the other guards admit they put a laxative in his coffee
  • El Rubio. Due to how profitable the Cayo Perico heist is, being able to complete it within a short time span, and you can do it solo with ease, people joke that he gets robbed multiple times a day and how they use his treasure for stuff like cars. When Los Santos Tuners was announced, people said that El Rubio is gonna be robbed even more.
• Misblamed: The character striping glitch in the PC version was actually caused by bugs in a specific NVidia driver. This was eventually fixed in a driver update. Unfortunately, said update is not compatible with certain motherboards...
• Obvious Beta: How many players feel the game, since there are several Game Breaking Bugs and exploits that still haven't been patched, several Game-Breaker vehicles and weapons that still haven't been balanced, and the pervasive use of mods that can easily give one God Mode with virtually zero repercussions. Most speculate that this constant rebalancing and bug-fixing is the #1 reason why heists, the most-anticipated feature of Online, were MIA over a year after Online's unveiling.
• The Scrappy:
  • Long John Teabag, a new phone contact introduced in the Bikers Update, has gained a lot of hate due to his annoying phone calls telling you that your Business is running out of supplies and you need to get some more. He says the same call every single time you enter a new session. And it gets annoying very quickly, especially if you're doing Heists as he calls even if you're not registered as a Motorcycle Club President, bringing back some painful memories of "HEY NIKO! IT'S YOUR COUSIN! LET'S GO BOWLING!"
  • KDJ and Sessanta from the Los Santos Tuners update are wildly hated for their obnoxious and annoying personalities, their delusions of being massive gangsters despite the Online protagonist being much bigger than they could ever hope be, from robbing a successful drug lord to saving the world, acting like they own the Auto Shop the player bought and thinking the Online protagonist doesn't have what it takes despite said accomplishments. It especially doesn't help that their dialogue consists entirely of either reminding the players of the task for the third time or flirting and dirty talking incessantly to each other - and you can't hang up on them despite it being a phone conversation, even as they're actively distracting you from the task at hand. People wish they should've gotten Hao and Mimi as the main characters of the update as a result from the former two's very poor reception.
• Sequelitis: Zig-Zagged with Online DLC. Many updates resemble the previous one a bit too much - a few new cars, a few guns, and a new business that becomes almost useless in the next update. That said, there have been a few huge updates that introduce brand new content (Doomsday heist, Casino heist) that break the mold and are better received.
  • Some long-time Rockstar single-player fans feel this about most Online DLC; GTA IV and RDR1 both had single-player DLC that completely changed the feel of the game and introduced new stories and some entirely new gameplay elements, while most Online DLC contents requires large amount of money, can only be enjoyed with friends, or both.
• Take That, Scrappy!: In some Los Santos Tuners contracts, many players take pleasure by blowing up KDJ and Sessanta with throwable explosives like sticky bombs. Though it will lead to "contract failed" message to pop up, so Worth It. It's even funnier when they detonate while a cutscene plays, as generic character models will take place instead (the same thing also happen if you run them over with a little bit of good timing).
• That One Level: Enough to get its own page here.
• That One Side Quest:
  • Some of the more difficult and time-consuming side missions can generate a lot of frustration there are no mid-mission checkpoints in online. Failure will result in having to start the mission completely over.
  • Any prep involving a semi-trailer can be a pain in the ass. Just the drive alone can be tedious since the trailer gets dislodged at the slightest bump and it's impossible to make tight turns. But in true GTA nature, the game loves to send enemies after you who can easily shoot up your truck thanks to your large size, slow speed, and their Rubberband AI.
  • Formation Flying from Online Flight School. Imagine Freefall, but it a jet that loves to fall out of formation thanks to the jetwash from the other three jets. And the final portion. Which requires you to stay in formation, pull a half-loop, and fly upside down. Which basically requires knowing how to reverse the controls in a split second or be sent flying away from the formation and failing.
  • Formation Flying was bad, but Ground Level from Online Flight School is so Nintendo Hard that it can have you yanking your hair out, speaking gibberish and throwing your gamepad/keyboard/mouse out the window. The quest requires you to fly low under bridges and along structures, less than a meter off ground. On a rather fast aircraft. With lots of sharp turns. With controls that don't stabilize themselves. Those without quick reflexes need not apply.^note The level is also buggy as hell- when launched from the flight school, the plane has the tendency to get stuck in mid-air after the introductory video plays, and the only way to get it to proceed is to reset by pressing the abort button and retrying. Also, the averaging height counter doesn't reset between tries, and collision with water is bugged to heck and back that even touching the water for a split second is enough to have the game announce that you've destroyed the aircraft
  • The first setup for Humane Labs in Online is basically "good luck not dying". While the lookouts have good to decent cover and an elevated position, the buyer and the bodyguard are immediately surrounded on all sides with very little cover and only a garage to take cover in, which even then has questionable protection at best. And then you have to grab the briefcase, exposing the group to enemy fire, and get away in whatever crappy vehicles happen to be in the parking lot - oh, yeah, and all the group's personal vehicles will literally disappear when the shootout starts, which means absolutely no improvised cover or blockades, and no armored cars (particularly the Kuruma and Insurgent, which would make this setup far easier) to use as protection.
  • The fifth setup for Humane Labs is delivering an Insurgent containing an EMP to the eponymous location in the middle of the night. This is a stealth-enforced mission in a game where you go in guns blazing 90% of the time. To begin with, there are no checkpoints and being spotted by any of the twenty or so guards (plus a couple of scientists) instantly fails the mission. Upon reaching the Labs, a time limit starts which will fail the mission if it runs out. A good number of guards and/or personnel are within sight of each other, requiring synchronized shooting to avoid raising the alarm. Using guns that are too high caliber to kill the guards will let them hear the murders. And just to round it all off, unlocking the garage where the Insurgent is supposed to go has a harder than usual hacking game locking the door. By this point the time is likely to be running out, which makes calmly doing the hacking even worse. All of this is relying on random people online working together and understanding that silencers are important.
  • The second setup in Series A. You have to go around collecting garbage bags with drugs stashed in them with a trash truck. First off, you are stuck with flimsy garbage collector outfits which do nothing to protect you, unlike the other setups where you have the option of choosing your own clothes. Secondly, the collectors have to stand on platforms on the rear of the truck, exposing them to gunfire. Finally, the collection points offer little to no cover from the swarms of enemies surrounding you, and one of the locations is a gas station, which carries the risk of an explosion blowing up the truck or killing one of your teammates. Oh yeah, this setup has a time limit, so you can't just hunker down somewhere and kill everyone.
  • The first setup in Pacific Standard is an interesting case. You drive around town taking pictures of vans to find the one with a transponder inside. No combat of any kind involved. How hard can it be? The difficulty comes not from the actual gameplay itself, but getting people to join you. Yes, you still need four people to start even though it is easily doable solo. Unfortunately, much of the playerbase views this setup as one of the most boring and unnecessary setups out there (the driver role does virtually nothing, and it's far easier to just have the navigators do all the work instead of being a Backseat Driver like it's intended). As a result, people will leave the instant they join your lobby and find out it's this setup. Expect to wait quite a while if you don't have friends, possibly longer than any other setup.
  • The Second Setup in Pacific standard. First, the "proper" way to do the mission has you driving Jetskis for several minutes with nothing else to do. Most players opt to drive their personal vehicles past this point to one of the re-spawn points on the map and taking the jet skis from there. Second, for a painless run you have to do the rest of this next part without dying. Otherwise your personal vehicles despawn and things become difficult. Then there's a shootout on the island, after which the players must escort Avi to the drop off located in a boat. The clincher is that there's a time limit, and you have to lose a three-star wanted level near the end in an area choked with cops. In order for the job to go smoothly the players either have to take an alternate route in supper cars and lose the cops, which doesn't always work. The other method involves taking the slow ass police boat all the way to the end of the lake and avoiding the police helicopters. This method still relies on personal vehicles as you must now escort Avi from the edge of the lake to his destination. If you steal a car, you'll go right back to three stars, and good luck losing the cops afterwards. The mission somehow both incredibly difficult and incredibly boring
    • You could also have one character drive around in an armored personal vehicle while the other takes Avi away offroad, as all the police are paying attention to is the character on the road this makes it easier for the character with Avi to avoid detation long enough to lose the wanted level, or but this requires coordination and an expensive car, neither of which the team might have.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some updates make it worse:
  • The Criminal Enterprises update nerfed the missiles and countermeasures from the infamous Oppressor MK II much to the ire of the griefers.
    • In the same update it nerfed the solo Cayo Perico Heist by applying a two and half hour cooldown to complete the heist again to farm money meaning that players would invite some friends to do so.
  • San Andreas Mercenaries its worseness is cranked to eleven. Over 188 vehicles are deleted from in-game websites due to being lesser-used which disappointed many players who want to collect those removed vehicles to their garages if they don't have especially for newer players who are willingly to get. The only ways to get those vehicles are in Lucky Wheel, LS Car Meet (both Prize Ride Challenge and Test Rides and Hao's commission service in Hao's Special Works PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S only), the Luxury Autos and Premium Deluxe Motorsport dealerships and Vinewood Car Club (only in PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S with GTA+ Subscription).
• Unexpected Character:
  • Absolutely nobody expected to see Dr. Isiah Friedlander return in the Drug Wars update, as it was implied that he was killed by a man in the main story after running off with Michael's success story (that is, if Michael didn't do it first).
  • Similarly, Tao Cheng appearing in the Diamond Casino and Resort update was also unexpected, as it was presumed that he had perished when Franklin blew up his car in the Deathwish ending. Not only that, but his characterization has done a huge 180.