History Headscratchers / GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas

* After the mission ''Madd Dogg's Rhymes'', CJ gets a phone call from Tenpenny telling him to meet him at a specific donut shop. However, when CJ gets there and starts the mission (''Burning Desire''), the cutscene that plays apparently shows CJ already being inside the donut shop and being headed for the exit (considering he's facing the door, with his back towards Tenpenny and his goons, and reaching for the door handle) before Tenpenny tells him to come over and take a seat, to which CJ reacts with apparent surprise and irritation, as if he was visiting the donut shop on other business and just happened to randomly bump into Tenpenny, rather than CJ deliberately being there because Tenpenny had told him to.

** Ryder is a villain and doesn't really make the foreshadowing of said villainy too subtle when he's cosplaying as one of the good guys. Most of his insults come during gameplay. The creative team are trying to seed a rivalry between Ryder and CJ (or more specifically CJ as the avatar for you, the player). Presumably most players fall into one of two major categories here. Either they practice safe and skilled driving (in which case Ryder is a bullshitter and these false insults lead to antagonism towards him) or they aren't very good at driving but are presumably ''trying'' to improve (aided by the various vehicle skills mechanic, and I'd hazard to say even people who deliberately drive recklessly try a bit harder during missions because the vehicle's well being is often critical to the mission, you and allied characters). In the latter case then Ryder is making honest but harsh and aggravating comments, thus also insults, which likewise sets him at odds with CJ and the player.

* After the mission ''The Green Sabre'', Tenpenny tells CJ that Sweet is recovering inside a prison hospital, somehow getting Sweet out of prison serves as a major overarching plot point for most of the rest of the game, and when Sweet calls CJ after the mission ''Saint Mark's Bistro'', Sweet mentions that he's apparently recieved a life sentence ("I'm in for life!"), all of which begs the question: what crime did Sweet get charged with ''and'' sentenced for, that he apparently recieved a ''life sentence''?

* After the mission ''Madd Dogg's Rhymes'', CJ gets a phone call from Tenpenny telling him to meet him at a specific donut shop. However, when CJ gets there and starts the mission (''Burning Desire''), the cutscene that plays apparently shows CJ already being inside the donut shop and being headed for the exit (considering he's facing the door, with his back towards Tenpenny and his goons, and reaching for the door handle) before Tenpenny tells him to come over and take a seat, to which CJ reacts with apparent surprise and irritation, as if he was visiting the donut shop on other business and just happened to randomly bump into Tenpenny, rather than CJ deliberately being there because Tenpenny had told him to.

** Ryder is a villain and doesn't really make the foreshadowing of said villainy too subtle when he's cosplaying as one of the good guys. Most of his insults come during gameplay. The creative team are trying to seed a rivalry between Ryder and CJ (or more specifically CJ as the avatar for you, the player). Presumably most players fall into one of two major categories here. Either they practice safe and skilled driving (in which case Ryder is a bullshitter and these false insults lead to antagonism towards him) or they aren't very good at driving but are presumably ''trying'' to improve (aided by the various vehicle skills mechanic, and I'd hazard to say even people who deliberately drive recklessly try a bit harder during missions because the vehicle's well being is often critical to the mission, you and allied characters). In the latter case then Ryder is making honest but harsh and aggravating comments, thus also insults, which likewise sets him at odds with CJ and the player.

** Also, let's be honest: Sweet ''is'' an abrasive asshole, especially near the beginning of the game. It's entirely possible that he ''did'' know Caesar's name, and was just pretending like he didn't in order to antagonize Kendl (see the "Sweet is a racist" note above).

** Or, going better than copping out to a trope like that, even pre-9/11 in this whacky and often-not-too-realistic universe Tenpenny can still lean on that air traffic controller. Maybe he has a cop stationed directly inside the LSX ATC tower as a lookout who can immediately alert the controller to CJ's theft, but note that the jets only scramble once he leaves the boundaries of Los Santos' surrounding rural townships (or if he should somehow be able to take off with a serious wanted level). There's probably a transponder which triggers as soon as that happens, which in conjunction with the cop and the controller sends airborne heat after him accordingly.

* Why does CJ consider the Truth a friend, going so far as to tell him that "[his] credit's good" when he asks for yet another favor? Sure he introduced Carl to Jethro, Dwaine and Zero, which was nice of him. In every other interaction he only seeks to further his own agenda. He dumps Carl outside a military base without giving him any sort of plan or intel. When Carl succeeds he simply drives off without giving him a lift. He refuses to tell Carl the secret of the green goo when he delivers it. Hell, in his very first cutscene he asks Carl to kill his neighbors for him. He's a selfish prick, yet Carl always treats him as a close ally and lets him hang around all the time.
** Just like most of Carl's other friends. The Truth is one of the few people Carl knows, especially at this point in the story, who is [[BecauseYouWereNiceToMe legitimately nice to him]]. This makes him leagues better than the 'friends' Carl is used to at this point ([[UngratefulBastard Sweet]], [[TheLoad Big Smoke]], [[JerkAss Ryder]], [[ItsAllAboutMe OG Loc]], and [[AxCrazy Catalina]]). The only better friend CJ has at this point is Cesar. It's also easy for CJ to write off The Truth's selfish behaviors as quirkiness and forgetfulness coming from his age and lifetime of recreational drug use, which has as much a chance of being true as not.

** Sweet is being unfair to CJ, who only now just shows up after five years in Liberty City, but I suspect it's at least partly because the grave is a visual in-your-face reminder of how far the Families have fallen with Sweet having to see the whole thing with his own eyes (as opposed to CJ, who had thousands of miles of distance between him and the situation). To Sweet, the Families is everything (compare that to Kendl, who is just happy to see her brother again and doesn't care much for Sweet's grudge with the Azteca to the point where she's dating Cesar) and CJ's singular act of running away five years ago meant he ran from two funerals that illustrate the bad state of the GSF: Brian's and their mother's.
** Sweet may not have meant 'run away from' in an entirely literal sense. He may have meant it as "This is another funeral that happened because you only look out for yourself". Also, Sweet, Kendl, and Ryder appear to be just visiting their moms gravesite, the funeral may be over already anyway.

** Probably [[RevengeBeforeReason his desire for revenge]] at Jizzy B being the source of the crack that got his friends Big Smoke and Ryder to turn on him and Sweet overrode the plan. Getting that close would be point blank, and CJ likely reveled in the smell of impending victory a little too long.
* Early on Officer Hernandez calls CJ and tells him that Tenpenny said not to leave time. Of course if CJ tries anyway [[BorderPatrol he gets a 4 star wanted level]], probably from Tenpenny pinning the death of Officer Pendelbury on him and calling in backup for a known cop killer. That makes sense. What doesn't is if CJ gets his hands on a plane and flies over the forbidden areas, ''fighter jets'' are sent to shoot him down. How does Tenpenny, a street cop, have enough power to scramble fighter jets?
** He'd need to lean on exactly one air traffic controller. Scrambling fighters to intercept stolen, hijacked, or unauthorized aircraft that won't communicate with or are ignoring air traffic control is standard procedure post-9/11, especially near major population centers. Up until you get access to the whole map, and the Airstrip, the only way CJ has to acquire a plane is to steal one, so all that Tenpenny would have to do is get an air traffic controller to point that out and fighters would get scrambled.
*** Except the game is set in the early 90s, about a decade before 9/11. This one is simply a case of GameplayAndStorySegregation.

* During the early Grove Street missions, Ryder keeps constantly insulting CJ about how bad of a driver the latter supposedly is, making it sound like CJ DrivesLikeCrazy. Where does this come from, considering that whenever we see CJ drive in cutscenes, he seems to be a perfectly adequate driver ''at worst''? It would make sense if Ryder wanted to give CJ a hard time for being a "buster" who left Los Santos for five years, but why focus specifically on his driving?

* ''Up, Up, And Away!'': as pointed out by Woozie, they could just steal any armored truck anywhere in the state - it wouldn't even have to be the one from Caligula's, as they were going to repaint it anyway - but Carl shoots down the idea due to it attracting too much attention... then goes in to break into a ''freaking military compound'' to steal a massive, loud cargo helicopter, use it to lift the truck from a bank, then carry it above the entire city to an abandoned airport on the other side. And all of that after stealing four police bikes in the broad daylight with help of a packer truck, in what was rather clearly an organised action. How is ''that'' not raising suspicions? For that matter, how is ''that'' easier and quieter than just breaking into the parking and stealing the truck outright?

** Regarding who was the Vago, Tempenny never gives details about him, but he seems to be using CJ (either directly or through Big Smoke) to get rid of any member of the Ballas and the Vagos that choose to operate independently of Tempenny and Big Smoke's organization, so that all crime in Los Santos is under their control. So we can guess why Tempenny wanted that Vago dead. Regarding what happened to him, immediately after bombing the last window, there's a cutscene where a Vago is seen running out of the house while on fire, only to die shortly after, ''then'' the cutscene with Denise is played.

*** Actually, it was Standard Operating Procedure to scramble fighter jets to intercept planes that had deviated from their course, ignored Air Traffic Control, or turned off their transponders. However, ''for reasons "unknown"'', the Bush Administration abolished this practice in the months leading up to 9/11.

* Catalina didn't make a good impression on CJ when he first met her, so why does he go to her house afterwards knocking on the door and literally ''begging'' her to give him another chance? Did he fall in love with her based on her looks alone and LoveMakesYouStupid? I had read her Character page entry after playing through ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII'' and thinking I'd seen all of her appearances, so I got spoiled for her appearance in this game and was dreading what I knew was coming. I was also thinking "Good lord CJ, STOP and ''run''. Run ''far away''!" What's more, why does he tolerate her constant barrage of verbal abuse (along with the physical/sexual abuse that happens inside her cabin) without either getting the hell away from her or doing something about it (as Claude would do years later)? It isn't as though CJ was shown to be a weak man up to that point, either physically or emotionally; before getting dropped out in the boonies by Tenpenny and Pulaski, he was shown to be a huge badass in the two missions before that by fighting off hordes of cops and Ballas in order to save a surrounded Sweet, even when people were telling him to forget it and save himself. But in his interactions with Catalina, serious BadassDecay sets in for no apparent reason. He says he needs money, but he's been established as a guy who does not need Catalina's help to make money. As Sweet said at the start of "The Green Sabre", CJ had been kicking all kinds of ass pretty much single-handed.

** To be more specific, CJ needed the money to pay The Truth for the weed Tenpenny ordered him to plant on the DA (555-WeTip). At the start of Are You Going to San Fierro, we actually see CJ handing over the money (in fact in beta versions of the game, the player actually needed $10K to start the mission). CJ needed money fast. Los Santos was dangerous at that point, so he figured the quickest way to make money was to rob the towns Catalina mentioned. Since Catalina had already done the groundwork i.e. casing the joints and planning, plus she was local and knew the area, CJ probably thought it was best to hang with her.

* In the mission Burning Desire, CJ sets fire to a house by throwing molotovs through the windows. Once it catches fire, a woman (Denise) on the upper floor starts screaming and CJ goes in to rescue her. She is very appreciative for saving her life when you get her out of there... why doesn't she ever acknowledge that '''you''' were the one who started the fire that almost killed her?

* In the beginning of "Cesar Vialpando", we see Sweet arguing with Kendl about who her boyfriend (Cesar) is, even wrongly guessing what his name is. Did he forget that Kendl literally said she was going to see Cesar in "Sweet and Kendl"?

* In "Burning Desire", Tenpenny sends CJ to kill a Vago and burn down his house. Who exactly was the Vago that you had to kill, and what happened to him? He seems to have been completely forgotten about when you have to rescue Denise.