History VideoGame / GrandTheftAutoViceCity

* DoingItForTheArt: In-universe. Steve Scott, a porn director. This is a source of much frustration for Tommy.

* GratuitousSpanish: Pepe, the DJ from Espantoso, speaks almost exclusively in Spanish. The Cuban gang members and all of the Hispanic pedestrians also use random Spanish words. Additionally, many of these pedestrians use the word "mamífero" as an insult, which makes no sense as it literally translates to "mammal", which is far from being an insult.

* GratuitousSpanish: Pepe, the DJ from Espantoso, speaks almost exclusively in Spanish. The Cuban gang members also use random Spanish words.

!!''Grand Theft Auto: Vice City'' contains examples of the following tropes:

** Later copies of the game remove dialogue that refers to the Haitian and Cuban gangs by their nationalities, after some Haitian groups believed that the game induced "ethnic violence" among them.
** The Japanese versions (edited by Rockstar themselves) heavily tones down the violence involving decapitation and bodies don't bleed out when you use a rocket launcher.
** Several scenes in the Japanese version removes Ken's drug use, so when you see any scenes where he would use it, it would cut that scene to Tommy entering the room.
** Also in the Japanese version, every nudity scene is completely cut. This also changes the photos in the mansion to kittens and flowers.
** The [[{{Remaster}} Definitive Edition]] replaces the Confederate flag in Phil Cassidy's tank top with a generic skull.

** The mission called "Sir, Yes Sir" makes it ''very'' easy to acquire a [[TankGoodness Rhino]] before they can even start appearing on the WantedMeter. Just take the tank over to a garage and fail the mission.

** A risky but decent way to make money early on is robbing stores in the North Point Mall. The player needs to have the property northeast of the mall, which only costs $3,000. Then they have to knock off four stores in the mall: an unnamed jewelry store, Vinyl Countdown, Tooled Up and Gash. Successfully robbing a store nets $1,000. They can make up to $4,000 in total, at the cost of a 3-star wanted level. Save, reload the file and the player can do this as many times as they wish. There's even a body armor not far from the safehouse, so if they take a lot of damage, they can pick it up.
** El Swanko Casa. It's available as soon as you take control of Tommy for a relatively modest sum of $8,000 ($4,000 in the iOS version), which is easily earnable early on if you're diligent with side missions. For your investment, you get easy access to a free Ruger pickup on the roof of the building and a free armor pickup in your southern neighbor's yard, filling all your firepower needs in the early game. You also have a hospital to the north and a police station to the southeast, granting easy access to the paramedic and vigilante side missions for more early cash and permanent upgrades to Tommy's stats.

* GatlingGood: The most powerful weapon in the game is the minigun. It can blow up anything short of a tank in seconds, and mows down crowds like dominoes.

** Most of the commercial properties you can buy have some sort of mission attached to them which unlocks their revenue generation. Not the strip club. There, you just have to fork out cash to the strippers for ten minutes to reach the maximum amount of revenue. There is not a hint about this.

** A [[DressingAsTheEnemy Police Uniform]] that allows you to walk into the Police HQ, [[spoiler:allowing you to collect one of the [[GottaCatchEmAll Hidden Packages]] inside]] as well as to be permitted entry into the National Guard base to steal the [[DeathFromAbove Hunter]] and [[TankGoodness Rhino]] parked there.

* SnipingTheCockpit: This is the first game in the series that lets you shoot people while they're in a car, passenger or driver. You need a sufficiently powerful weapon to do it, and you can still destroy the car if miss too many times. If you want to relieve someone of their vehicle and they aren't liable to let you drag them out, this is the best method. It even works on tanks, though the tanks have a smaller window to make this difficult.

** Although Tommy didn't explicitly sell or use drugs barring the "Adrenaline" powerup (which works more like a CaffeineBulletTime), the "Checkpoint Charlie" mission, where Tommy has to quickly collect white packages through a series of checkpoints, is implied to be drug running via boat. There is also the "Ice Cream" dealing, where the lady owner outright states that "we distribute other, non-dairy products," and any time "Ice Cream" was sold, gangs and the police will be hostile to you.

** Love Fist is this to Music/TheRollingStones right down to [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert hiring a biker gang to provide security for their concert.]]

** El Swanko Casa. It's available as soon as you take control of Tommy for a relatively modest sum of $8,000 ($4,000 in the iOS version), which is easily earnable early on if you're diligent with side missions. For your investment, you get easy access to a free Ruger pickup on the roof of the building and a free armor pickup in your southern neighbor's yard. You also have a hospital to the north and a police station to the southeast, granting easy access to the paramedic and vigilante side missions for more early cash and permanent upgrades to Tommy's stats.

* TheMainCharactersDoEverything: Even though Tommy becomes the leader of his own criminal syndicate halfway through the game, with enough mooks under his command to serve as his own personal army, he's still the one who does every mission needed to expand his business. A couple of missions imply that there ''are'' other operations being done by Lance and his subordinates offscreen, but even these end up getting done by Tommy since the point behind those missions is to address an operation that got botched. You don't even get order any of your mooks around or make them accompany you until you get OneHundredPercentCompletion.

** In ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIII'', Lazlow, host of Chatterbox, mentions he got kicked off the rock station. Guess what he's doing in this game.

* HelpfulMook: In ''Cop Land'' the Police Officer wielding an M4 actually aid both Tommy and Lance's escape by gunning down any Police mooks in the vicinity.

** In the game's backstory, Tommy killed 11 people, landing him 15 years in prison and earning him a reputation that has the Forellis fearing his presence in Liberty City would be bad for business. In gameplay, Tommy can regularly kill people by the ''dozens'' for kicks and won't suffer more than a small fine and confiscation of his weapons.

* GameplayAndStoryIntegration: One mission involves a stubborn store owner who needs to be persuaded to pay his protection money, and Tommy then boasts that it'll only take him 5 minutes. The mission has a 5-minute time limit. However...

* ReReleaseSoundtrack: Licensing issues resulted in several tracks getting removed from the soundtrack for the 10th Anniversary edition and all versions since, though weirdly enough the Steam version averted this, keeping the original soundtrack despite the fact that it was supposed to remove them. One song that was only on the original "PS2" version and removed from all future releases(including the "PS2" Greatest Hits re-release) was Lionel Ritchie's "Running in the Night", at least until the Definitive Edition where it was added back in.

* Intoxication Mechanic: In the mission "Boomshine Saigon", Tommy has to take Phil to the veteran's hospital after Phil blows his arm off while making moonshine. While Tommy doesn't drink the moonshine, the [[GargleBlaster fumes from it are strong enough to get him drunk]], as the screen blurs and sways around while he drives Phil to the hospital.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: At one point, Kent Paul calls Tommy to inform him that he has a bounty on his head, likely a contributing factor to [[spoiler:[[FaceHeelTurn Lance Vance's betrayal]]]].

* AttentiveShadeLowering: Sonny Forelli lowers his glasses on the cover.