Is the Boss a Well-Intentioned Extremist out to clean up Saints Row, a Heroic Comedic Sociopath who makes no distinction between enemies and civilians, or a combination of both? The ending of 2 shows that The Boss just wants power and money, and all the benefits of those. The multiple endings and add-ons blur it further. The choice endings in The Third either show them delving into cartoonish supervillainy, or saving their friends and Steelport from a False Flag Operation. And in Gangsters in Space and The Trouble With Clones, they are practically heroic. The fourth game seems to settle on a more even-handed interpretation of the character as a "puckish rogue" — not truly good nor truly evil, but an amoral and capricious Anti-Hero who lives for chaos and mayhem and will rain hell on anyone who crosses them or their friends.
Also, were they always like that, or did the explosion at the end of Saints Row give them brain damage?
Is the main character more affected by the death of his friends than they let on? Pierce once snatched a newspaper clipping of Lin and hid it, and the boss apparently forgot to tell their new crew about Maero, who had Carlos tortured and killed.
Julius. Good or evil? Julius's motivations never change. He's always trying to clean up Saints Row. However, his methods of doing so actually don't stand up to close scrutiny. After using the Saints to wipe out the other gangs, Julius crippled them and turned them over to the police. Even if you think this gross act of betrayal was warranted, he just made a power vacuum for other gangs to fill.
It gets worse. Julius actually didn't intend for there to be a power vacuum. He'd made deals with the Columbian drug cartels and did things the Vice Kings never would have done under King's leadership. He only betrayed the Saints once the police took him into custody.
Were Cyrus Temple and Kia just evil psychopaths with license to kill, or did the deaths of hundreds of STAG soldiers send them both off the deep end?
Base-Breaking Character: Johnny Gat and Kinzie. While undeniably these characters have a lot going for them, a significant portion of fanbase object to the kind of hype the last two games have been throwing at them.
One of the objections to Gat is that the last two games portray him as Memetic Badass eclipsing the Player Character themself. He is a badass, sure, but whether he's really better than the Boss, or more interesting than them, is questioned. Even the games are divided about this as while Zinyak fears Johnny Gat more, The Devil believes the Boss is stronger.
Kinzie's abrasive attitude towards the Boss (at one point punching them) is a point of criticism, even though the Boss tolerates it. Others appreciate her barbed Deadpan Snarker personality. Some fans are fine with her being chosen as the female playable character in Gat Out of Hell, while others feel that Shaundi (who's known both Gat and the Boss longer than Kinzie has and is more experienced in combat) or Asha (who is an MI-6 agent and like Shaundi, a better warrior) would have been a better choice.
Broken Base: The soft-reboot and change of tone of the third and fourth games versus the more grounded and darker storyline from the second is the biggest sticking point of the fandom. And then camethe 2022 reboot... The latter of which is so divisive that its YMMV page (and even the Trivia page, for that matter) where locked on This Very Wiki for nearly a year after it's release.
Continuity Lockout: Stated to be the reason that Volition didn't follow up on the Ultor story arc and Dex after the "Ultor Exposed" DLC trilogy; they didn't want to confuse potential new players or alienate the ones who weren't able to play it. Which is somewhat baffling, as Saints Row IV is pure, undiluted Continuity Porn and references characters and events from the series all the way back to the first game (which was exclusive to the Xbox 360 until it was given backwards compatibility), but beyond a single throwaway line early in the game, neither Dex nor his betrayal are ever addressed again. However, Dexfinally returns in the add-on Gat Out of Hell, meaning someone at Volition must have noticed the massive Fridge Logic wrench that SRIV dropped into their original explanation about alienating new players.
Critical Dissonance: Saints Row: The Third and Saints Row IV fall victim to this. Critical reception was generally positive, and they're very well-liked among more casual audiences. Reception among the fanbase is very mixed, due to the Reverse Cerebus Syndrome and not tying up loose ends from Saints Row 2.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Maero (to a lesser extent), Matt Miller (enough that he was brought back in IV), Kinzie and Shaundi.
Evil Is Cool: The back of the original Saints Row case says "Saints Row - Sinners Welcome". That should tell you all you need to know about this series, even though Saints Row 2 has a couple "You Bastard!" scenes, culminating when the player kills Julius, who calls out the player on their new evil murdering ways.
Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans of the first two games disregard the third and fourth as canon, for a degree of Reverse Cerebus Syndrome, and feel that they (the fourth game especially) take the Saints away from their gang roots.
In the second game Shaundi was voiced by Eliza Dushku, and in the third game it's mentioned several times that she really hates the actor who plays Nyteblayde. Given one of the influence of the character this is amusing.
Saints Row and Saints Row 2 had the 44 Shepherd, a .44 Magnum revolver that took the form of a Colt Anaconda. In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Lt. General Shepherd would use the Colt Anaconda (generically referred to as the .44 Magnum) as his signature weapon. In other words, Shepherd is using a 44 Shepherd.
After years of being seen as a GTA Clone, seeing the direction that GTA Online itself in recent years has taken makes one wonder who the clone really is here. Let's see now: increasingly over-the-top stakes, a futuristic hoverbike, laser weapons... yeah, Saints Row's already been there, done that.
Jerkass Woobie: Given the nature of the game Shaundi fits as well as someone in a more serious work. After a bad spring break where it's implied she worked for a pimp she was on the path to drug hazed oblivion until Gat and Boss recruited her, who she looked up to. She then becomes really torn up at Gat's death, it turns out she has nightmares over being kidnapped and blames herself for not being better, for Boss and Gat feeling they have to protect her rather than her protect them.
Launcher of a Thousand Ships: The Boss. They have been shipped with Johnny, Shaundi, Pierce, Viola, Matt, and Kinzie. The fourth game allows you to (somewhat) experiment with that.
Rated M for Money: "Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol." It's not really a game meant for kids. Then again, the later games having rather childish humor might say otherwise.
Sacred Cow: The second game is often viewed as this.
The Scrappy: Shaundi became this in Saints Row: The Third, despite being relatively popular in the previous game. She went from a fun-loving party girl who Really Gets Around into an uptight, vengeful bitch complete with a new look and voice actress, resulting in her being so unrecognizable and unlikable that many fans didn't even realize she was the same character until her name is mentioned. Saints Row IVRescues her by using a lot of Character Development to explain her transition from Saints Row 2 to Saints Row: The Third to Saints Row IV by juxtaposing her current persona with her simulated Saints Row 2 persona, eventually having the two reconcile their differences in Shaundi's Loyalty mission, having closure with Johnny Gat after he's rescued, and ultimately ending with Shaundi becoming less of a bitch than her last appearance.
Scrappy Mechanic: In the first two games, the Respect system would halt storyline progression until enough levels of respect are gathered to use like expendable "credits" for unlocking plot-based missions. Earning respect isn't all that difficult, but it's still something of a pain in the ass for players who want to just jump right into the story, and it also means playing in the sandbox is occasionally mandatory, which can dampen the fun factor (i.e. "If you do it and nobody makes you do it, it's fun."). Parts 3 and 4 remove this particular restriction.
The first two games had you replay activities six times with increasing difficulty, causing frustration if you lose and possible boredom if said activity isn't your cup of tea. Thankfully, the next two split the activities into three instances of increasing difficulty.
Those dang Insurance Fraud quests, where you have to gather money by getting hit by cars. The best way to do so it to start a long chain of getting juggled, because a multiplier is added to each hit, but good luck with that, because cars tend to be either rare in the designated areas or they're moving too slow or fast to effectively start the chain and steer into them.
Insurance Fraud activities are significantly less painful as of The Third, with more and faster-moving cars and a larger designated area allowing you to easily seek out heavier traffic (ie highways). IV made this easier with Superspeed and hitting the trigger buttons. In some points, you end up being flung across the map if you get hit by a garbage truck, a bus or a speeding car which can rack enough money while your character is having This Is Gonna Suck comments.
"Heli Assault" and "Guardian Angel" take its place as the major pain-in-the-ass activities, the former for being an escort mission where you fly a chopper (with their notoriously floaty controls), the latter for being an escort mission where you ride in one, but are stuck using only a rocket launcher to fend off enemies, which has a tendency to accidentally kill your homies via splash damage.
Subverted in the case of "Heli Assault" in the PC version, where the controls are a lot easier, and the mouse allows for much more precision aiming. On the other hand, Saints Row 2's version makes up for this by being even more annoying, placing several above-ground railways and other obstructions to keep you from having a clear shot.
Another would be the escort missions, as you can't fight back against the newsvans, only hope to drive faster than they do.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: A lot of players who discovered the series through the first two games dislike the way the series has become exponentiallyDenser and Wackier over time and wish for the hypothetical fifth entry to return to its roots. Other fans, however, enjoy the way the series managed to find its own outlandish identity and differentiate itself from Grand Theft Auto.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: From the second game onward, your Boss can be either male or female, but based on the lack of attention to detail when it comes to female bosses (they are sometimes referred to with masculine pronouns and move like a man in cutscenes), it seems that Volition just assumed everyone would play as a male and only included the option to be a female just for the sake of having it there (though the clothing options and voice clips are great). Having other characters (especially Politically Incorrect Villains) actually react to the leader of the Saints being female might have provided a nice spin on the story and given players more incentive to play the story twice with each gender. In general, the entire cast usually uses generic prompts and responses no matter what voice set is chosen for the Boss, outside a few instances in The Third where the script is unique to each voice set.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Initial promotional material for Saints Row IV implied that the game was going to be about the Boss becoming President of the United States. However, in the actual game, they become president offscreen between games, and that is all moot anyway as Earth gets blown up in the first 20 minutes of the game, with the rest of the game taking place in a simulation of Steelport. It is very likely that the game was supposed to be about the Boss becoming president initially, but the game was developed around the time THQ started having financial issues, and shortly after the game came out the company went under. Also, originally there was planned to be a DLC for 3 called Enter the Dominatrix, which was canceled. Considering the name, it is likely that they took the idea for Enter the Dominatrix (Enter the Matrix. Get it?) and expanded it to be an entire game, saving money on assets by reusing Steelport instead of creating an entirely new city. Still a shame that we didn't get to take over Washington DC with the Saints.
Underused Game Mechanic: Cars — both as a narrative device and as a gameplay element — have been diminishing in importance as the series transitioned from a Grand Theft Auto knock-off to a quasi-Super Hero romp. To boot, the first game had an entire story arc dedicated to a strongly car-themed gang,note granted, though, it was also the shortest of the three gang arcs, and cars had been an essential mechanic as the only means of convenient transportation in Stilwater. The sequel instead featured strongly gang-themed cars, but no particular narrative focus on them, as well as supplementing your means of transportation with motorcycles, boats, and even aircraft. The Third rendered cars obsolete as soon as you steal your first attack helicopter (which can happen quite early in the game) and VTOL, and IV finally dropped all need for any kind of vehicles by just letting you fly whenever you feel like it (and that's after you get Super-Speed and super-jump abilities). Cars are present in each game's world, mind you, but they become more and more of a window dressing as the series goes on.
Judas Priest's "Saints in Hell". 2014: Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell announced.