History Videogame / JustCause

''Just Cause 4'' has been [[https://www.pcgamer.com/just-cause-4-confirmed-thanks-to-early-steam-advertisement/ accidentally announced]] through a UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} ad. It was later confirmed during E3 2018.

''Just Cause'' is a series of [[WideOpenSandbox open world]] action-adventure video games developed by Creator/AvalancheStudios. The series centers on the exploits of Rico Rodriguez, an operative working for the Agency (which is totally not the CIA), as he helps local guerrillas overthrow the [[BananaRepublic tyrannical regime]] governing [[FictionalCountry fictional island nations]].

A ''Just Cause 4'' has been [[https://www.pcgamer.com/just-cause-4-confirmed-thanks-to-early-steam-advertisement/ accidentally announced]] through a UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} ad. It was later confirmed during E3 2018.

* ContinueYourMissionDammit: Elegantly defied, since screwing around wreaking havoc IS your mission, nobody minds if you take a while to show up to story missions.

A ''Just Cause 4'' has been [[https://www.pcgamer.com/just-cause-4-confirmed-thanks-to-early-steam-advertisement/ accidentally announced]] through a UsefulNotes/{{Steam}} ad.

** If you block a random pedestrian, you may get to hear [[MidnightCowboy "I'm walkin' here! I'm walkin' here!"]]

** "Papa" Panay and Pandak "Baby" Panay, much like RealLife Haitan dictators [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Duvalier François "Papa Doc" Duvalier]] and his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

** Before the Casino Bust mission, Jade Tan says that Blaine's living is gambling and drinking, to which Rico replies [[TheOutlawJoseyWales "Dying ain't much of a living"]].

* LostForever: The infamous "MV Command" vehicle is only guaranteed to spawn in a single, required mission[[note]]Agent Mission 4 if it matters[[/note]]. There is an faction missing it can show up in, and it can spawn at certain heat levels, but don't count on it.
** The Bering I-86DP plane, however, can ''only'' spawn on two specific airports, and is completely lost upon their destruction.

Rumor has it that a movie adaptation, entitled ''Just Cause: Scorpion Rising'' is in production. The second game's UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 version was available for free to [=PlayStation=] Plus subscribers, and later the UsefulNotes/{{Xbox 360}} version became free for XboxLive Gold members for the first half of June 2015. On PC, a multiplayer mod was released on Steam.

''VideoGame/JustCause3'' was released for UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, UsefulNotes/XboxOne, and UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows on December 1st, 2015. It involves Rico returning to his homeland of the ([[RuleOfThree again fictional]]) Mediterranean island of Medici to liberate it from yet another dictator, General di Ravello.

We have a [[DrinkingGame/JustCause2 Drinking Game]] for ''Just Cause 2''.

!! Elements which apply to all games]]

* WideOpenSandbox: Both games take place in over a thousand square kilometers of game world. You can access all of it from the start. Sure, there are story missions, but who needs those when there are untold hundreds of villages to liberate, vehicles to steal, soldiers to kill, and tons of government property to be destroyed?
[[/folder]]

''Just Cause'' is a series of [[WideOpenSandbox open world]] action-adventure video games developed by Creator/AvalancheStudios. The series centers on the exploits of Rico Rodriguez, an operative working for the Agency (which is totally not the CIA), as he helps local guerrillas overthrow the [[BananaRepublic tyrannical regime]] governing [[FictionalCountry fictional island nations]], the first game of which takes place on the (fictional) Caribbean island of San Esperito. The player can drive nearly every vehicle under the sun, as well as climb about on them while moving at high speeds and jumping onto other nearby cars, trucks, tanks, helicopters, etc. Notable for the inclusion of a grappling hook, which allows Rico to rappel onto moving vehicles from a distance, and a parachute, which allows for all manner of aerial stunts.

In the first sequel, ''Just Cause 2'', Rico is a few years older and has been assigned to track down his mentor and superior from the first game, who has disappeared on the Southeast Asian island of Panau, which has recently been taken over by a ruthless dictator. Various improvements have been made to the gameplay, allowing for even more over-the-top shenanigans. Rico can now use his grapple to attach to any object, pull enemies off their feet, tether them to various objects, and essentially use it for all manner of physics-based stunts and proving that [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential it's a bad day to be a henchman]].

[[foldercontrol]]

[[folder: Elements which apply to all games]]

[[/folder]]

[[folder: Just Cause]]
* AdaptationDisplacement: Sadly, the victim of this. No one really cared about the game until ''Just Cause 2.''
* BananaRepublic: The dictatorship of San Esperito in the first game.
* BigBad: General Mendoza is this for the game.
* CarFu: The bulk of the possible stunts fall into this category. [[EveryCarIsAPinto explode on contact with just about anything]]).
* TheCartel: The Rioja and Montano factions in the first game.
* ColorCodedArmies: In the first game, LaResistance is Green, the allied drug cartel is Yellow, and the enemy drug cartel use violet. In the second game, the Reapers are red, the Ular Boys are yellow, and the Roaches are blue.
* ConspiracyPlacement: In the first game, the vehicles provided to Rico by the [[InformedAttribute allegedly]] [[NoSuchAgency top-secret]] Agency all bear a black paintjob adorned with a large Agency seal.
* ExcusePlot: You're there to overthrow an evil dictator. Politics? What politics?
* FlatCharacter: The writer, Christofer Sundberg, has said he felt Rico was this and the game is an OldShame.
* FollowTheLeader: The first game was designed to capitalize on suckers that couldn't wait for ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'' and ''{{Mercenaries}} 2''. With the death of Pandemic and development of the next ''GTA'' title years in coming, there was less pressure for the dev team to make a "[game]-killer" within a certain time frame, and it shows in the sequel.
* TheGeneralissimo: Salvador Mendoza in the first game; he did not get much character development, but he definitely [[BlingOfWar looked the part]].
* WrongGenreSavvy: When Rico confronts Salvador Mendoza on his plane, Mendoza claims, "I must warn you, I have seen ''Film/AirForceOne'' six times, and I assure you, the President ''always'' wins." Rico quips that ThisIsReality; in reality TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin, and he's the good guy.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Just Cause 2]]
* AccentUponTheWrongSyllable: Bolo Santosi (or bo-LO san-TOH-ZEEE if you will) is especially prone to this.
-->''"I am da le-DAIR of da rev-ohl-oo-shun-ary ah-MEE known as da re-PAAHS."''
** ...'''COHM-RAYDE.''' (or '''COMB-RAID''', if you prefer.)
** There's also the joys of jumping on top of someone's car to hear: "HAY! WHAT YOU DOING!? GET OFFAR MAH CAR!"
** Actually, EVERYONE in Just Cause 2 lightly suffers from this.
* AcceptableBreaksFromReality: Everything involving the grappling hook. The first game tried to avoid this by making it relatively realistic (it connects to vehicles because it's a rare-earth magnet, and it's mounted on a gun body for better stability), but it was also quite hampered by this (it can ''only'' connect to vehicles, cannot be used at any time, and equipping it prevents you from using a two-handed weapon). In ''Just Cause 2'', any semblance of realism was dropped, and the versatility of the grapple immediately spiked.
* AirborneAircraftCarrier: [[IncrediblyLamePun The Mile High Club]], which is essentially a luxury cruise ship with wings and engines suspended from a [[FreudWasRight pair of massive zeppelins,]] possesses a small helipad, and a rear hangar for a single jet aircraft. Planes don't so much ''take'' off... it's more ''fall'' off, and pull up before you hit the ground. Fortunately, as the name implies, it is ''very'' high up. Don't bother trying to land on it with any kind of plane, of course.
* ApocalypticLogistics: Hantu Island is a forsaken military base manned by (supposedly) 100-year old Japanese soldiers who still think WWII is going on. They have access to modern vehicles and weapons and seem to have all the fuel, food, and electricity they need despite being isolated for decades on an island with little natural resources.
* ArtificialStupidity: Panauan soldiers see nothing wrong with attempting to bring down a strafing helicopter with a sawed-off shotgun. They are known to bounce thrown grenades off of the roof immediately above their heads and accidentally frag themselves and their squad. And if they are at the top of a cliff, and you at the bottom, they have no compunctions about closing the distance between you and them, in their jeep, at 9.8m/s[[superscript:2]].
** Due to liberal use of grenades and high speed chases, the Panauan military will sometimes do your job for you. Particularly impressive when you get a message saying a Propaganda Trailer's been destroyed while you're on the other side of the village. And regardless of that fact, it's still ''your'' fault.
** The AI in the sequel enjoys beaching their own boats (often with [[MadeOfExplodium explosive results]]) and crashing them into each other. Additionally, soldiers wielding rocket launchers are willing to shoot you even if you're close enough to hug them even though they kill themselves in the process.
** The AI will sometimes try to beach their boats just as you hijack them, presumably as a last resort.
** It's not uncommon to see AI airplanes crashing into skyscrapers. The pilots make no attempts to avoid the crash whatsoever.
** One example is notable in that it also crosses over with ArtificialBrilliance: toss some C4 at a propaganda trailer and every soldier guarding it will immediately be aware of it and start shooting. Plant it on the ground right ''next'' to the trailer, however, and they won't give a damn until you detonate it.
** In ''Just Cause 2'', there are a number of missions that require escorting an engineer through an enemy base so he can hack their systems. The engineer ''never'' takes cover, runs straight into groups of enemies, and stands around waiting to be shot. VERY frustrating on Hardcore difficulty.
** Civilian AI planes fly at a fixed altitude. A fixed altitude above sea level, that is, which means that they'll merrily fly right into the sides of high mountains without even attempting to avoid them.
* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking
** The [[ColonelBadass colonels]], all of whom can take more punishment than elite mooks.
** The [[spoiler:foreign agents, all of whom can take and dish out more punishment than the colonels. The Japanese one has a KillSat!]]
** [[spoiler:Baby Panay himself, who survives a grenade explosion up close and carries a rocket launcher.]]
* AwesomeButImpractical: The fixed-wing military aircraft in the second game. Great for getting from one side of Panau to the other in a couple of minutes, but don't expect to do any fighting in them: actually using them to attack anything is so difficult as to render it almost pointless due to the speed such aircraft travel at, and the distance you have to actually fire them at to hit something without crashing into it is about 1 km out - not to mention they're not missiles, but just unguided rockets, of which it's been said that, were it not for gravity, they couldn't even hit the ground. Your best bet is to just spam rockets in the general direction of the target and hope at least one of them hits what you're trying to destroy. And even that is after all the trouble you go to hijack one, present in only rare and heavily guarded locations, and take them off while still under fire.
** Yet those jet fighters pale in comparison to sport cars. Those cars are [[CoolCar very fast, look extremely pretty]]... and have steering so ridiculously sensitive they become almost impossible to drive at high speeds in the PC version.
** The AH-33 Topachula helicopter: the one attack helicopter you can find at military bases which is guaranteed to mount rocket pods, but takes forever and a day to actually take off and has the maneuverability of a brick. (On the other hand, its slow movement rate and ability to hover makes the rockets actually ''useful'', which is more than can be said of the same weapons mounted to the game's fixed-wing aircraft.)
* BadassGrandpa: [[spoiler: The soldiers of Hantu Island.]]
* BattleshipRaid: The [[spoiler:atomic submarine]] near the end of Just Cause 2.
* BilingualBonus: One location in the second game - Awan Cendawan Nuclear Plant - translates to "Mushroom Cloud Nuclear Plant". How apt.
** In fact, pretty much ''every single location'' in the second game has a name that means something in Indonesian/Malay, and most of them are named like real locations would be (like "Bamboo Forest Village", "Town of the Rising Sun" and "Polluted Sky Factory", to name a few). There are over 300 locations, all of them with a proper name. How many developers would put effort into ''that''?
** The citizens of Panau speak a variety of Southeast Asian langauges (i.e. Thai, Filipino, Chinese) that are, for the most part, correct.
** Pandak "Baby" Panay's given name means "a person of short stature" in Filipino. Meanwhile, Panay is the name of an island in the Philippines.
* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Literally the first person we see killed in Just Cause 2 is the black guy in the helicopter Rico is in.
* BondOneLiner: Plenty in the sequel, when you blow up something big enough, like statues and pipe-lines.
--> "Don't take it personally... It was a design problem, that's all."
** But then again...
---> [[{{Narm}} "Try to transport fuel NOW, you pipeline jerks!"]]
---> (Referenced in Just Cause 3 with the name of an achievement.)
* BoomHeadshot: The second game keeps track of the number of headshots you make, rewarding you with an achievement at 50. This with a sniper rifle is also an easy way to take care of the otherwise-MadeOfIron Colonels; for that matter, headshots are the only way to even injure them ''at all'' with normal weapons.
* BossBonanza: The Agency Mission 'Three Kings' has you taking on representatives of the Russian, Chinese, and Japanese armies, each with a small army of flunkies.
** The Chinese one throws explosives at you.
** The Russian airlifts an APC into the battlefield and attacks you with a minigun mounted on it.
** The Japanese one has access to a KillSat.
* CarFu: The game ups the ante by allowing you to actually use a car as a weapon--A wrecking ball (tied to a helicopter) or a mobile bomb (leap out a car going at high speed and it ''will''
* ColonelBadass: The Colonels, obviously. They pack assault rifles or machine guns, have a ton of health and wear body armor, so the only ways to kill them are with headshots or explosives.
* ColorCodedArmies: The white star logo on buildings, which only really serves as a giant "please destroy me" sign.
* CoolestClubEver: The Mile High Club, which is a giant airship decked out with bar lounges, stripper stages and loud blaring music. You'd obviously have to be pretty rich to just spend one night at it, but Rico can drop in and crash the party at any time by parachuting out of an airplane or helicopter.
* CoolPlane: The Panauan Military Air Force has some obviously Sukhoi-inspired, rather impressive-looking, and clearly "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_fighter_aircraft fifth generation]]" fighter aircraft at it's disposal, present in at least one of their major airbases - and there are about seven military airfields total - though one of those is merely the national airport after being locked down by the military. Most airbases, however, tend to field late third/early fourth generation aircraft... namely VTOL-less Harriers.
* CriticalExistenceFailure: Applies to settlements in Just Cause 2: You can blow up 97% of a base, and as long as that little generator you missed is still intact the base will be still inhabited by the army - but when you come back and destroy it, the base will become abandoned.
* DevelopersForesight: Those billboards you see of Baby Panay aren't just for show; in between blowing up fuel tanks, hijacking planes, and destroying all enemies that get in his way, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Rico can also]] [[MustacheVandalism draw a silly mustache on Panay]]!
* DoubleEntendre - Bolo Santosi. Ranging from her plan to either use the nerve gas that paralyzes and makes victims compliant to either rape soldiers or get information out of them, or either talking about explosions or orgasms. Rapist or just a crazy so-called revolution leader? You be the judge.
* DudeWheresMyRespect: Notably averted with the 3 factions Rico sides with in the game. The Roaches, Reapers, and Ular Boys all respect and revere Rico as the incredible soldier he is.
* DullSurprise: Baby Panay, particularly in action sequences.
* EqualOpportunityEvil: If the names are any indication, the {{Colonel Badass}}es include Chinese, Indians, Malays and Koreans. There's also a few Occidentals and Arabs among them.
* EvilVersusEvil: In Just Cause 2, there are no good guys. The Panauan government is a brutal military dictatorship, the three resistance groups are all essentially gangster groups with inflated senses of self importance, and [[spoiler:the Americans, along with the Russians, Chinese, and Japanese, all just want Panau's oil]].
* EveryBulletIsATracer In Just Cause 2, almost every bullet has a bright yellow tracer trail.
* FragileSpeedster: Motorcycles in the second game explode if you so much as graze another vehicle at top speed.
* GameBreakingBug: In 2, the optional mission "Black Gold" has you destroying a gas rig. If you die during the mission with the rig partially destroyed, the destruction doesn't count, but the structures remain destroyed, making the both the mission and completion of the rig {{Unwinnable}}. Quitting and restarting restores the rig enough that you can complete the mission, but now the rig itself cannot be 100% completed. The only solution around this is to get 100% on the rig BEFORE you start the mission.
** It is actually impossible to get 100% completion in ''2'' without modding the game, because the game's completion list checks for items that were never fully implemented: One Agency mission is supposed to reward 6 resource items upon completion, but because of a bug does not, and one of the water towers that the game tracks is located in a village that was completely removed from the final game, water tower and all. Because of this, 99.67% is the closest a player can get to completing everything.
* GameplayAndStorySegregation: No matter how much "Chaos" you cause (Essentially the game's experience system), Panau's citizens will ''never'' show signs of rebellion. You will never find citizens battling or ousting soldiers in towns you have liberated, the populace will never offer you support and the factions you help will have their pathetic goons torn to shreds the very instant they attempt to "fight" government troops, which will almost always be by accident.
** The Stronghold missions involve taking over bases or installations for your rebel allies. However even after you've conquered a facility, you still need to blow up all fuel tanks, chimneys, generators etc. The new owners will never object to this, even if the facility includes SAM sites which ''switch sides'' if you own the facility but still must be destroyed for 100% completion.
* GatlingGood: Military bases in the second game often have a Gatling turret emplacement [[BuffySpeak thing]]. Rico can [[RemovableTurretGun rip the gun from its stand]], of course, but it has several drawbacks: his movement speed is decreased, he can't sprint or jump, he can't use the grappling hook, and he can't move while firing it. However, it's still good for tearing up enemy bases for two reasons: it has [[BottomlessMagazines infinite ammo]] and, unlike other examples of this trope, it actually has a Gatling rate of fire - point it at ''anything'', pull the trigger, and the target will be dead in about a second.
** It also does some pretty hefty damage per hit and boasts decent armour penetration (unlike your standard pistol, for example) so it can quite effectively chew up any vehicles, troops or structures you might come across -- including structures that you can't damage with other small arms, such as SAM sites or statues. Certain vehicles (heavy [=APCs=]) may take more than a second to kill, though.
** The gun basically has two uses: 1. Walking around a freshly-acquired base, blowing things up to complete it. (Woe betide you if you miss something and have to go back.) 2. Defending the engineer at the end of almost every stronghold takeover.
* GottaCatchThemAll: Horrible, horrible, offender. In the 400 square miles of Panau to explore, there are about 300 locations. To 'complete' a location, you have to destroy every structure marked with a red star in that location, and find every upgrade box nearby. You have a radar telling you the distance to the nearest box, but no such thing for the buildings. Including all 4 types, there are 2,700(!) boxes to find. Add on top of this 300 faction items to collect (also helpfully pointed out on the map once they're available) and 100+ different vehicles to catalog (woe betide the completionist who forgets to fly the cargo plane before they take over the only two airports they spawn from, because they aren't coming back after that), and you're going to be in it for the long haul. There's a reason the strictest achievement only requires you to get 75% of it.
* GrapplingHookPistol: Though in the second game it's more like a grappling hook gauntlet.
* GratuitousNinja: Baby Panay has a whole battallion of ninjas in his army. They are all able to teleport in a puff of smoke, can't be caught by the grappling hook and harass you with submachine guns.
-->'''Panay''': Prepare to meet your demise at the hands of... ''my ninja''!
-->'''Rico''': I ''hate'' ninjas...
* GunsAkimbo: Possible in the second game with smaller weapons. This somehow, awesomely, includes revolver-mechanism grenade launchers.
** Also possible in the first game, but only with the standard revolvers.
* GunshipRescue: What the Panau military keeps hoping for when they call in helicopters to attack you. Too bad you can easily hijack most of them within seconds of their arrival, meaning those soldiers now have to deal [[NiceJobFixingItVillain with an enemy in a combat chopper]].
* HitTheGroundHarder: No matter how far Rico falls he can prevent any damage by pulling himself to the ground with a grappling hook. That's right, the best way to survive crashing into the ground is to crash into it slightly faster. [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Must be a homeopathic thing.]]
* HollywoodDarkness: It never really gets dark at night in Panau. Probably because it wouldn't be fun if you couldn't see where you were going at night.
* LargeHam: Tom Sheldon and Bolo Santosi. Rico has his moments as well.
** The three foreign agents, who seem to be in a race to out-ham each other.
* LeftTheBackgroundMusicOn: No examples in the game itself, but it's got to be worth something when the soundtrack for ''Just Cause 2'' is called "Music To Blow S**t Up By".
** Sort-of example; the music that plays whilst you're on the MileHighClub is obviously supposed to be what would actually be playing at the club... except it takes a sudden turn for the dramatic (complete with RecordNeedleScratch), the tempo increasing suddenly when you discover [[spoiler:that a bomb has been loaded into the lower cargo area!]]
* LighthousePoint: Lighthouses are a fairly common sight along the many sandy beaches and tropical islands of Just Cause 2's massive map and will often have an item box near the top. There is even an area in the northern part of the world near an airport where two identical lighthouses can be seen facing each other on separate nearby islands.
* LumberMillMayhem: The Seasbreeze Sawmill, which the Ular Boys task Rico with assaulting in one of their faction missions.
* MacrossMissileMassacre: [[spoiler:Baby Panay's rocket launcher]] in Just Cause 2. You can also do a little bit of this yourself with the Quad Rocket Launcher DLC.
** And the [[CoolPlane G9 Eclipse]] with its quad rocket pods with BottomlessMagazines. Spamming rockets towards the general area of your target from a mile away is also your only hope of hitting something without crashing into it, since there's no lock-on mechanism.
** Several helicopters come with missiles as well. Holding down the "fire missile" button is a great way to blow up everything in a base. Thankfully, [[ArtificialStupidity the army only rarely fires missiles at you.]]
* MadeOfIron: Baby Panay. [[spoiler:He takes a grenade point blank in the face, gets shot an ungodly number of times, but only dies via ''nuclear explosion''.]]
* MarathonLevel: The Raya Race. Dear God. It takes you about a quarter of the way around the largest island in Panau, and can easily take twenty minutes to complete, while most races in the game take only three or four minutes, tops. To make matters worse, even though they give you a sports car at the beginning, you'll be driving the wrong way down a highway. You'll also ''need'' that sports car if you hope to make it through, so if you crash or get the car off road (which can easily happen thanks to the loose driving physics at high speeds), you practically have to start over.
** The game partially makes up for this by increasing the spawn rates of the sports car you're driving, so if you happen to wreck your vehicle, it's much easier to find a replacement one. You're likely going to burn through multiple vehicles before reaching the finish line.
** Or just [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney buy]]/[[HighSpeedHijack steal]] a motorcycle, which can go almost as fast, is much more manouverable and a is lot easier to drive through traffic.
* MemeticBadass: In-universe for Rico in the second game. If you idle long enough by your allies, you can hear them talking about how you "killed ten soldiers. With his bare hands!" and then [[UpToEleven it becomes "ten tigers."]]
* MileHighClub: It's not a plane, but the second game has an airborne "gentleman's club" ''called'' the Mile High Club.
* MisaimedRealism: Aircraft have realistic takeoff runs and turning, but ''don't'' have yaw control. This tends to result in large amounts of driving off runways because the player tried to correct their angle during the run up the runway and didn't get up to speed, and / or hopelessly hanging planes up on the scenery while trying to make simple taxiing turns.
* MoodWhiplash: In one mission, you need to help Bolo Santosi broadcast a message to Panau. [[AccentUponTheWrongSyllable Knowing]] [[SoBadItsGood her]], [[TemptingFate it should be pretty funny, right?]] Actually, it shows an innocent man [[ColdBloodedTorture being tortured]] [[ArmiesAreEvil by the Panauan Army]], before being executed, and literally FedToPigs. And what's worse, [[FridgeHorror it implied this was the fate of any person on Panau that has gone missing as well.]] Suddenly, you see why a HeroicComedicSociopath, a bunch of [[DirtyCommies Dirty Communists]], ultra-nationalist jungle-dwelling jingos, and [[TheMafia even the Mob]] are considered the 'good guys' here: [[StateSec the enemy]] [[PoliceState is]] [[PresidentEvil much]], [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny MUCH]] [[{{Dystopia}} WORSE!!!]]
** Thankfully, Santossi managed to turn this around by giving a RousingSpeech at the end, [[DareToBeBadass crying out for the people]] [[LaResistance to take arms against the oppressors]], which is even more awesome in the fact [[HeReallyCanAct in that her voice didn't seem to comically trip on itself like the rest of the game]].
* MustacheVandalism: In the sequel, you can do this to billboards of Baby Panay.
* TheNapoleon: President "Baby" Panay.
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: In the “An Officer and a Hitman” mission in ''Just Cause 2'', you’re tasked by Razak with taking out a colonel. [[spoiler:After you take out the defences around his mansion, the colonel himself runs outside with a rocket launcher, and reveals himself to be slightly off. Once you’ve killed him, Razak comments on the fact that the colonel was a madman and commends you on a job well done, then continues reflectively:]]
--> '''Razak:''' [[spoiler:Although, I fear we may just have rid the military of a problem…]]
--> [[spoiler:They’re probably breaking out the champagne as we speak.]]
--> [[spoiler:[[OhCrap Damn]].]]
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Alexander Mirkov in ''Just Cause 2'' is a dead ringer for [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Valuev Nikolai Valuev]].
** Also, Rico seems to be based (both appearance and voice) on Creator/AlPacino.
* NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: Panau is a mishmash of various Southeast Asian countries - further taken with the Filipino, Malaysian, Indonesian, Tamil, Thai, and Singaporean accents and words.
* NoEndorHolocaust: [[spoiler: Rico's nuking of Panau's central oil field should more or less guarantee that everyone in the country would die of radiation poisoning within a few weeks, along with everyone who should've died in the initial blast. Everyone seems content to sample Tom's [[RunningGag succulent pig]] while the mushroom cloud glitters in the night sky, and not bring this up at all.]]
* NotSoAboveItAll: The leaders of the Reapers and the Ular Boys.
** Bolo Santosi is a well-educated child of luxury who has given up none of her former lifestyle in her struggle for the people, and is more concerned with gaining power for herself and her cohorts than bettering the people's lot - when she's not more interested in exploding things senselessly.
** Sri Irawan is also well-educated and very charismatic to boot. He exhorts the superiority of the Ular ethnicity, while pretty clearly just using it as an excuse to be a brutal warlord and win himself glory, while the Ular Boys themselves are described as (and act like) a massive street gang.
* NotInThisForYourRevolution: Rico makes it clear to the revolutionaries that he aids in the story that all he wants is information about Tom Sheldon's whereabouts. Regardless of this they still test his loyalty and ask Rico about his political stance on their actions. Rico doesn't actually talk to them very much during these conversations.
* NotQuiteFlight: The grappling hook and parachute combo lets Rico glide effortlessly over Panau.
* NotWorthKilling: A rare economic variant from Rico, after paying off an informant.
--> '''Rico''': "Considering the value of the Panauan buck, shooting you would have been more expensive."
* OnlySaneMan: Panay wants to exploit Panau's massive oil fields to build a superpower military. The Russians, Chinese, and Japanese want the oil for economic strength. The US wants the oil for continued global domination. Realizing the madness of it all, Rico simply [[spoiler: blows the oil fields to holy hell]].
* PaperThinDisguise: It should take you roughly thirty seconds to figure out that [[spoiler: Tom Sheldon is the Sloth Demon]], and that's if you spend twenty-nine of those seconds grappling a soldier to his own vehicle and driving off with it.
* PatchworkMap: ''Just Cause 2'' suffers from this somewhat. One of the elements improved from the original is more varied terrain, with deserts, snowy mountains, and lush jungles...all contained on an island group slightly smaller than Oahu. The southern main island is mostly desert, despite directly bordering open ocean in some places, and the northern main island is mostly snowy and mountainous, with a snowline of about a thousand feet. In the summer. Less than a thousand miles from the equator.
** A few rivers also seem to have estuaries or deltas at both ends.
*** Here is a [[http://i.imgur.com/MRLIhoc.jpg map]], so you can see for yourself.
* PixelHunt: Often getting 100% on a military base involves an extended period of hovering around with a helicopter looking for that last explodable thing (it's usually a single Generator) among the wreckage.
** Bonus frustration points are gained if the target was actually a pipeline terminal or communication tower a quarter of a mile away from the actual base. Helped slightly by the fact that the location icons are usually placed on the map in the center of the area of pickups and destructible buildings that constitute the completion percentage of that location, so if the icon for a military base isn't sitting on top of the area of the map that the base physically occupies, there's likely to be something in that general direction you have to hunt down to complete the area.
* PresidentEvil: Pandak "Baby" Panay in the second game.
* PressXToNotDie: The dreaded QTE is present in the second game, but they are relatively simple (press 1, 2, 3 or 4 in the correct order, or when they are displayed during hijacking) and do not require ridiculously fast reflexes, nor are you (usually) heavily penalized for failing. There are two types;
** Press all of the buttons in the right order before the timer bar runs out. Used for [[StuffBlowingUp causing gratuitous explosions]] or [[HollywoodHacking hacking things]]. One annoying thing is that being shot is an instafail. Being shot is also nearly unavoidable if it's not the first thing you take care of.
** Wait for the prompt. Press button. Watch gratuitous violence animation. Wait for next prompt. Press button. Rinse and repeat. Used for hijacking vehicles - assuming you don't opt to [[WhyDontYaJustShootHim just shoot the driver.]]
* QuicksandBox: Panau in ''Just Cause 2'' is so huge that even the developers agree it may be too big for some players to handle. Hence, the strictest collection achievement only requires you get 75% of the map. Pity the person who needs to hundred-percent driving all the vehicles, though!
* RefugeInAudacity: Rico can surf cars moving at sixty mph, rappel onto ''helicopters'' as they fire rockets at him, tether soldiers to each other with high-tensile wire so they snap together in midair, attach himself to a punctured gas can and use it as a makeshift ''rocket'' to gain a massive height advantage over his enemies, pull the head off a statue with a vehicle and use it as a wrecking ball, and a plethora of other insane stunts. This game doesn't really hold back. Ever.
** Even better, several vehicles have multiple stunt jump positions during hijacking, so you can move around to get the best angle on the occupants, or any enemies chasing you. Want to take out the guys in the passenger seats whilst hijacking a Hummer? Hang onto the back of the vehicle. Want to shoot chasing enemies? Just stand on the roof. Want to take out the driver easily? Jump onto the front bumper/grill and shoot him through the windscreen!
** There's a neat relatively hidden feature of Stunt Jumping too; if Rico was the last driver of a particular vehicle, it's even possible to adjust the facing/direction of the vehicle (but not the speed) you're standing on top of whilst it's moving! It's very slow though, so don't expect any hand-brake turns.
* RegeneratingHealth: The second title combines this with the ol' medkit system; Rico can regenerate a fixed amount of his health, but any damage taken over that needs a medkit. It's like a less rigid version of the segmented health bar some other games use.
* TheRemnant: In one mission in ''Just Cause 2'', you're tasked with traveling to a supposedly cursed island to find a plane that the Ular Boys had recently lost contact with. You fly to the island only to [[spoiler: have your plane shot down by a giant EnergyWeapon. It turns out the island is filled with really, ''really'' old Japanese soldiers who are still fighting WWII, and had built the giant EMP tower to win the war... [[BadAss You make short]] [[StuffBlowingUp work of it]].]]
* RevolversAreJustBetter: The second game has one, as seen [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rya5camqUOo here]]. It possesses immense firepower when fully upgraded, and can shoot down a light helicopter with relative ease.
** It also makes hijacking said helicopters a lot easier, now that you can [[SnipingTheCockpit just shoot the pilot through the glass!]]
** Rico's standard guns in the first game were a pair of revolvers with [[BottomlessMagazines infinite reserve ammo]] - weak, but useful for saving ammo for your other guns. DLC for the second game brings them back as "Rico's Signature Gun", though it's not quite as good this time around - in addition to still being weaker than the normal revolver, it now has limited ammo and the only way to get more is buying it from the black market.
* [[BatmanCanBreatheInSpace Rico Can Breathe At High Altitudes]]: No, seriously. The stunt jump ability allows you to stand or hang off any airborne vehicle, including ''plane surfing''.
** WordOfGod says that the highest attainable altitude is 6.8 km or ~22300 feet, and can be reached using a hot air balloon. A typical jet plane cruising altitude is around 33000 feet.
* RidingTheBomb: [[spoiler: The ending of the second game involves doing this. Repeatedly.]]
* SigilSpam: ''Just Cause 2'' has the government of Panau's symbol, a white star on a red background, everywhere. Items include electrical generators, oil tanks, water towers, propaganda trailers, gas stations and vehicles.
* SignificantAnagram: [[spoiler:Tom Sheldon]] goes by the alias "Sloth Demon" in the beginning of ''Just Cause 2.''
* SmugSnake: President Pandak "Baby" Panay. Need proof? Listen to the messages he makes through the Propaganda Trailers for more than 30 seconds.
-->'''Panay:''' Listen most carefully, people of Panau. President Panay, your glorious and humble leader, must speak. Free photographs of the president and his staff are now available in all government buildings. REJOICE.\\
'''Rico:''' ''(after blowing the trailer up)'' I can't stand that damn voice!
* TheSyndicate: The Roaches are this.
* SoftWater: Played straight in the first game. Averted in the sequel; a 10,000 foot fall into water will kill you just as dead as a fall into concrete - unless you dive in head-first. If you remember to do so it's possible to high dive from the altitude ceiling and only sink three feet.
** Hilariously, however, if you grapple into the ground just before impact, all fall damage is negated. You can't grapple onto water, so falling onto water is fatal while pulling yourself into concrete at twice the velocity won't even cause Mr. Rodriguez to break a sweat.
** If you open up your parachute at any time before hitting the ground, all fall damage will ALSO be negated. Even if you do a 3 Kilometer freefall and open the parachute the instant before you hit the ground, the [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou worst that will happen]] is that you go [[RagdollPhysics flailing across the ground]] before you can get up.
* SpritePolygonMix: The grass on trees in ''Just Cause 2'' are flat sprites when viewed from afar; it's usually not too obvious unless you're flying in a helicopter over a forest, in which case the trees will visibly rotate as you pass them.
* StuffBlowingUp: The easiest way to cause chaos in the sequel.
** Not to mention that causing chaos helps to unlock the next story mission. That's right: StuffBlowingUp advances the plot. [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Does this remind you of]] [[RedFaction any other games?]]
** Also, if you jump out of a vehicle as it's about to hit something, that vehicle will almost ALWAYS explode upon impact. This is ridiculous because 1) The vehicle can explode upon impact [[MadeofExplodium even if it was only going pretty fast instead of REALLY fast]], and 2) These same vehicles can survive the same punishment (and much worse), as long as you're actually driving them.
* StupidJetpackHitler: Okay, not Nazi Germany, but... [[spoiler:the northwest island in the 2nd game which if you try to fly a plane there, will cause a bright flash following by your plane exploding,]] contains Imperial Japan's EM tower weapon, something way too advanced to be constructed in WWII. [[AluminumChristmasTrees They never got past the testing stages.]]
** Those guys also have modern weapons, which would be alright if they didn't also have HELICOPTERS.
* SuicidalOverconfidence: The little grunts will happily fire at your armored attack helicopter with just a revolver.
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: After certain missions in the sequel, the government-run radio news station will broadcast increasingly ridiculous cover-ups for Rico's antics. After taking over an oil refinery ("where most of Panau's gasoline is refined from Bruneian sludge") for an organized crime syndicate, the station will [[HandWave dismiss claims of gunfire as "hearsay"]] and assure listeners that [[BlatantLies "no organized crime takeover has taken place"]].
** Or attempting to dismiss explosions at a nearby military base during a takeover was simply "[[AssPull a previously unknown volcano]] that was verified by government scientists" and that it [[HandWave "has since disappeared".]]
** Or Panay stating that everything is fine and the country is peaceful, but also reminding the citizens that "martial law is still in effect and groups of three or more people will be shot on sight."
** Or pretending that the large gunfight that happened when you capture a nuclear power plant for the Ular Boys is "just engines backfiring".
** Or the reason there was no body for one mission was that you were [[ImprobableAimingSkills "vaporized by the many accurate shots of Panau military".]]
** [[OverlyLongGag Or that]] "White Tiger" does not exist, [[NoExceptYes and that he will be painfully executed once he is finally captured.]]
* TankGoodness: Surprisingly, there are no tanks in the second game, but it makes up for this by having armored cars mounted with tank turrets. They're both relatively speedy ''and'' can take loads of punishment.
* TheAllSeeingAI: Doing anything that causes heat in the second game instantly alerts the guards to your current location, regardless of where the thing that alerted them actually happened. This goes even if you just detonated a remote charge from the top of a building on the opposite side of town.
** Depends, sometimes; hop in a military vehicle outside of town after blowing anything up and the most they'll do is go into suspicion - though if they do see you while you're in that vehicle, all bets are off.
** They'll even come after you for stuff you didn't do, say if something is accidentally destroyed by someone else crashing into it.
* UnnecessaryCombatRoll: Made even more unnecessary by the grappling hook.
* VideogameCrueltyPotential: Thanks to the improved grappling hook, ''Just Cause 2'' has almost limitless options for being completely sadistic towards your enemies.
** It's possible to tether people to gas canisters, then shoot the canisters so they spiral into the air as the pressure is released, dragging the poor bastard around behind it until it explodes, sending them flying.
** One of the simplest is to tether someone to the back of a vehicle, then get in and drag them along the road at high speeds. They'll die, eventually.
*** Or [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3rSSd0opis a plane]]!
*** Or [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation through a cactus patch.]]
*** You can also slingshot them from a helicopter, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw6AmO-0kbk as seen here]].
** You can tether enemies together so they smack into each other, tether them to planes which you crash into a cliffside, tether them to the tops of palm trees so they swing about in the breeze, tether them to the ground whilst they're in a fast moving vehicle (or tether the vehicle to the ground!), etc. There are more options than it would be decent to list.
** You can also tether enemies to buildings, there's two different achievements if you kill the person with a melee attack while they are dangling or just shoot them.
** For added hilarity, don't forget to tether enemies or passing vehicles to the spinning blades of a wind turbine.
** As a reminder... Everything you can do above? [[YouBastard You can also do those things to civilians.]]
* WeaponizedCar: The second game has several you can buy from the black market. DLC adds the Tuk Tuk Boom Boom, a tuk tuk with a {{BFG}} on its back.
* WhatADrag: With any type of vehicle, including helicopters and fighter jets. Whee!
* WhatMeasureIsAMook: Rico's speech at the end of the second game that the oil isn't worth dying over is a bit weird, considering the handy in-game counter will likely show that by this point he's killed well over 1000 enemy soldiers (plus a few hundred civilians, probably) while all along he had no real idea why he was even fighting.
* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: The grappling hook can be used to solve almost ''any'' situation, from quickly traversing the world to killing soldiers to climbing buildings to flipping cars on to their wheels.
* WritersCannotDoMath: The percentages of completion work in odd ways. For instance, in a settlement where five boxes must be collected you would expect each box to be worth 20%. But the first box may actually only worth 19%, the three subsequent boxes are 20% each, and the last box will make up for the discrepancy with 21%. The code to display the completion percentage probably just used floating-point numbers and rounded them carelessly.
* YouBastard: Killing thousands of police and perhaps civilians all in the name of winding up the local militia? Soldiers will even use this against you word for word in combat.
* YouNoTakeCandle: [[InvertedTrope Inverted.]] The Panauan characters speak way better English than the average South-East Asian.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Just Cause 3]]
[[VideoGame/JustCause3 See Just Cause 3 page]]
[[/folder]]

----

** Type 1: Press all of the buttons in the right order before the timer bar runs out. Used for [[StuffBlowingUp causing gratuitous explosions]] or [[HollywoodHacking hacking things]].
*** One annoying thing is that being shot is an instafail. Being shot is also nearly unavoidable if it's not the first thing you take care of.
** Type 2: Wait for the prompt. Press button. Watch gratuitous violence animation. Wait for next prompt. Press button. Rinse and repeat. Used for hijacking vehicles - assuming you don't opt to [[WhyDontYaJustShootHim just shoot the driver.]]

''VideoGame/JustCause3'' has been announced for UsefulNotes/PlayStation4, UsefulNotes/XboxOne, and UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows. It will involve Rico returning to his homeland of the ([[RuleOfThree again fictional]]) Mediterranean island of Medici to liberate it from yet another dictator, General di Ravello.

** this is one reason the PS2 version of the first game was considered the worst of the bunch. Every other version has extremely lush visuals (even the original Xbox port) while the PS2's were dull and limited by comparison. When part of the hype surrounding your game is the graphics, that's not exactly spelling out a recipe for success.

* CarFu: The bulk of the possible stunts in the first game fall into this category. The second game ups the ante by allowing you to actually use a car as a weapon--A wrecking ball (tied to a helicopter) or a mobile bomb (leap out a car going at high speed and it ''will'' [[EveryCarIsAPinto explode on contact with just about anything]]).

* ApocalypticLogistics: Hantu Island is a forsaken military base manned by (supposedly) 100-year old Japanese soldiers who still think WWII is going on. They have access to modern vehicles and weapons and seem to have all the fuel, food, and electricity they need despite being isolated for decades on an island with little natural resources.
* ArtificialStupidity: Panauan soldiers see nothing wrong with attempting to bring down a strafing helicopter with a sawed-off shotgun. They are known to bounce thrown grenades off of the roof immediately above their heads and accidentally frag themselves and their squad. And if they are at the top of a cliff, and you at the bottom, they have no compunctions about closing the distance between you and them, in their jeep, at 9.8m/s[[superscript:2]].
** Due to liberal use of grenades and high speed chases, the Panauan military will sometimes do your job for you. Particularly impressive when you get a message saying a Propaganda Trailer's been destroyed while you're on the other side of the village. And regardless of that fact, it's still ''your'' fault.
** The AI in the sequel enjoys beaching their own boats (often with [[MadeOfExplodium explosive results]]) and crashing them into each other. Additionally, soldiers wielding rocket launchers are willing to shoot you even if you're close enough to hug them even though they kill themselves in the process.
** The AI will sometimes try to beach their boats just as you hijack them, presumably as a last resort.
** It's not uncommon to see AI airplanes crashing into skyscrapers. The pilots make no attempts to avoid the crash whatsoever.
** One example is notable in that it also crosses over with ArtificialBrilliance: toss some C4 at a propaganda trailer and every soldier guarding it will immediately be aware of it and start shooting. Plant it on the ground right ''next'' to the trailer, however, and they won't give a damn until you detonate it.
** In ''Just Cause 2'', there are a number of missions that require escorting an engineer through an enemy base so he can hack their systems. The engineer ''never'' takes cover, runs straight into groups of enemies, and stands around waiting to be shot. VERY frustrating on Hardcore difficulty.
** Civilian AI planes fly at a fixed altitude. A fixed altitude above sea level, that is, which means that they'll merrily fly right into the sides of high mountains without even attempting to avoid them.

* EliteMooks: Literally; Just Cause 2 even keeps track of how many you kill. They take more damage and usually have more powerful weapons than their weaker friends. Get the Heat meter high enough and they'll start parachuting out of the sky around you!

* EvilVersusEvil: In Just Cause 2, there are no good guys. The Panauan government is a brutal military dictatorship, the three resistance groups are all essentially gangster groups with inflated senses of self importance, and [[spoiler:the Americans, along with the Russians, Chinese, and Japanese, all just want Panau's oil]].
* EveryBulletIsATracer In Just Cause 2, almost every bullet has a bright yellow tracer trail.

* {{Expy}}: "Papa" Panay and Pandak "Baby" Panay, much like RealLife Haitan dictators [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Duvalier François "Papa Doc" Duvalier]] and his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

[[VideoGame/Just Cause3 See Just Cause 3 page]]

!! These games provide examples of:
* AccentUponTheWrongSyllable: Bolo Santosi (or bo-LO san-TOH-ZEEE if you will) is especially prone to this.
-->''"I am da le-DAIR of da rev-ohl-oo-shun-ary ah-MEE known as da re-PAAHS."''
** ...'''COHM-RAYDE.''' (or '''COMB-RAID''', if you prefer.)
** There's also the joys of jumping on top of someone's car to hear: "HAY! WHAT YOU DOING!? GET OFFAR MAH CAR!"
** Actually, EVERYONE in Just Cause 2 lightly suffers from this.
* AcceptableBreaksFromReality: Everything involving the grappling hook. The first game tried to avoid this by making it relatively realistic (it connects to vehicles because it's a rare-earth magnet, and it's mounted on a gun body for better stability), but it was also quite hampered by this (it can ''only'' connect to vehicles, cannot be used at any time, and equipping it prevents you from using a two-handed weapon). In ''Just Cause 2'', any semblance of realism was dropped, and the versatility of the grapple immediately spiked.
* AirborneAircraftCarrier: [[IncrediblyLamePun The Mile High Club]], which is essentially a luxury cruise ship with wings and engines suspended from a [[FreudWasRight pair of massive zeppelins,]] possesses a small helipad, and a rear hangar for a single jet aircraft. Planes don't so much ''take'' off... it's more ''fall'' off, and pull up before you hit the ground. Fortunately, as the name implies, it is ''very'' high up. Don't bother trying to land on it with any kind of plane, of course.

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: The game runs on it. A list of examples would be twice the size of the rest of this page.

* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: In ''Just Cause 3'', the language of Medici appears to be a strange hodgepodge of Italian, Spanish and Romanian.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking
** The [[ColonelBadass colonels]], all of whom can take more punishment than elite mooks.
** The [[spoiler:foreign agents, all of whom can take and dish out more punishment than the colonels. The Japanese one has a KillSat!]]
** [[spoiler:Baby Panay himself, who survives a grenade explosion up close and carries a rocket launcher.]]
* AwesomeButImpractical: The fixed-wing military aircraft in the second game. Great for getting from one side of Panau to the other in a couple of minutes, but don't expect to do any fighting in them: actually using them to attack anything is so difficult as to render it almost pointless due to the speed such aircraft travel at, and the distance you have to actually fire them at to hit something without crashing into it is about 1 km out - not to mention they're not missiles, but just unguided rockets, of which it's been said that, were it not for gravity, they couldn't even hit the ground. Your best bet is to just spam rockets in the general direction of the target and hope at least one of them hits what you're trying to destroy. And even that is after all the trouble you go to hijack one, present in only rare and heavily guarded locations, and take them off while still under fire.
** Yet those jet fighters pale in comparison to sport cars. Those cars are [[CoolCar very fast, look extremely pretty]]... and have steering so ridiculously sensitive they become almost impossible to drive at high speeds in the PC version.
** The AH-33 Topachula helicopter: the one attack helicopter you can find at military bases which is guaranteed to mount rocket pods, but takes forever and a day to actually take off and has the maneuverability of a brick. (On the other hand, its slow movement rate and ability to hover makes the rockets actually ''useful'', which is more than can be said of the same weapons mounted to the game's fixed-wing aircraft.)
* BadassGrandpa: In the second game, Tom Sheldon [[spoiler: and the soldiers of Hantu Island.]]
* BananaRepublic: The dictatorship of San Esperito in the first game.
* BattleshipRaid: The [[spoiler:atomic submarine]] near the end of Just Cause 2.
* BilingualBonus: One location in the second game - Awan Cendawan Nuclear Plant - translates to "Mushroom Cloud Nuclear Plant". How apt.
** In fact, pretty much ''every single location'' in the second game has a name that means something in Indonesian/Malay, and most of them are named like real locations would be (like "Bamboo Forest Village", "Town of the Rising Sun" and "Polluted Sky Factory", to name a few). There are over 300 locations, all of them with a proper name. How many developers would put effort into ''that''?
** The citizens of Panau speak a variety of Southeast Asian langauges (i.e. Thai, Filipino, Chinese) that are, for the most part, correct.
** Pandak "Baby" Panay's given name means "a person of short stature" in Filipino. Meanwhile, Panay is the name of an island in the Philippines.
* BlackDudeDiesFirst: Literally the first person we see killed in Just Cause 2 is the black guy in the helicopter Rico is in.

* BondOneLiner: Plenty in the sequel, when you blow up something big enough, like statues and pipe-lines.
--> "Don't take it personally... It was a design problem, that's all."
** But then again...
---> [[{{Narm}} "Try to transport fuel NOW, you pipeline jerks!"]]
---> (Referenced in Just Cause 3 with the name of an achievement.)
* BoomHeadshot: The second game keeps track of the number of headshots you make, rewarding you with an achievement at 50. This with a sniper rifle is also an easy way to take care of the otherwise-MadeOfIron Colonels; for that matter, headshots are the only way to even injure them ''at all'' with normal weapons.
* BossBonanza: The Agency Mission 'Three Kings' has you taking on representatives of the Russian, Chinese, and Japanese armies, each with a small army of flunkies.
** The Chinese one throws explosives at you.
** The Russian airlifts an APC into the battlefield and attacks you with a minigun mounted on it.
** The Japanese one has access to a KillSat.

* CarFu: The bulk of the possible stunts in the first game fall into this category. The second game ups the ante by allowing you to actually use a car as a weapon--A wrecking ball (tied to a helicopter) or a mobile bomb (leap out a car going at high speed and it ''will'' [[EveryCarIsAPinto explode on contact with just about anything]]).
* TheCartel: The Rioja and Montano factions in the first game.
** The Roaches in the second.
* ColonelBadass: The Colonels, obviously. They pack assault rifles or machine guns, have a ton of health and wear body armor, so the only ways to kill them are with headshots or explosives.
* ColorCodedArmies: In the first game, LaResistance is Green, the allied drug cartel is Yellow, and the enemy drug cartel use violet. In the second game, the Reapers are red, the Ular Boys are yellow, and the Roaches are blue.
** Another example would be the red government buildings with a white star logo on them, which only really serves as a giant "please destroy me" sign.
* ConspiracyPlacement: In the first game, the vehicles provided to Rico by the [[InformedAttribute allegedly]] [[NoSuchAgency top-secret]] Agency all bear a black paintjob adorned with a large Agency seal.

* CoolestClubEver: The Mile High Club, which is a giant airship decked out with bar lounges, stripper stages and loud blaring music. You'd obviously have to be pretty rich to just spend one night at it, but Rico can drop in and crash the party at any time by parachuting out of an airplane or helicopter.
* CoolPlane: The Panauan Military Air Force has some obviously Sukhoi-inspired, rather impressive-looking, and clearly "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_fighter_aircraft fifth generation]]" fighter aircraft at it's disposal, present in at least one of their major airbases - and there are about seven military airfields total - though one of those is merely the national airport after being locked down by the military. Most airbases, however, tend to field late third/early fourth generation aircraft... namely VTOL-less Harriers.
* CriticalExistenceFailure: Applies to settlements in Just Cause 2: You can blow up 97% of a base, and as long as that little generator you missed is still intact the base will be still inhabited by the army - but when you come back and destroy it, the base will become abandoned.

* DarkerAndEdgier: Sort of, while the second game itself is as tongue-in-cheek as the first one, Rico has gone from a suave James Bond-esque agent to the Jason Bourne-type who'll threaten to bitchslap someone with their own removed hands.

* DeadpanSnarker: Rico has quite a few of these sorts of lines in Just Cause 2. Running over someone sometimes makes him say "I was aiming for the other guy". Or after hacking into and blowing up a gas pipeline, "Nothing personal... It was a design flaw".

* DevelopersForesight: Those billboards you see of Baby Panay aren't just for show; in between blowing up fuel tanks, hijacking planes, and destroying all enemies that get in his way, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking Rico can also]] [[MustacheVandalism draw a silly mustache on Panay]]!

* DoubleEntendre - Bolo Santosi. Ranging from her plan to either use the nerve gas that paralyzes and makes victims compliant to either rape soldiers or get information out of them, or either talking about explosions or orgasms. Rapist or just a crazy so-called revolution leader? You be the judge.

* DudeWheresMyRespect: Notably averted with the 3 factions Rico sides with in the game. The Roaches, Reapers, and Ular Boys all respect and revere Rico as the incredible soldier he is.
* DullSurprise: Baby Panay, particularly in action sequences.

* EqualOpportunityEvil: If the names are any indication, the {{Colonel Badass}}es include Chinese, Indians, Malays and Koreans. There's also a few Occidentals and Arabs among them.

* FollowTheLeader: The first game was designed to capitalize on suckers that couldn't wait for ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoIV'' and ''{{Mercenaries}} 2''. With the death of Pandemic and development of the next ''GTA'' title years in coming, there was less pressure for the dev team to make a "[game]-killer" within a certain time frame, and it shows in the sequel.

* FragileSpeedster: Motorcycles in the second game explode if you so much as graze another vehicle at top speed.
* GameBreakingBug: In 2, the optional mission "Black Gold" has you destroying a gas rig. If you die during the mission with the rig partially destroyed, the destruction doesn't count, but the structures remain destroyed, making the both the mission and completion of the rig {{Unwinnable}}. Quitting and restarting restores the rig enough that you can complete the mission, but now the rig itself cannot be 100% completed. The only solution around this is to get 100% on the rig BEFORE you start the mission.
** It is actually impossible to get 100% completion in ''2'' without modding the game, because the game's completion list checks for items that were never fully implemented: One Agency mission is supposed to reward 6 resource items upon completion, but because of a bug does not, and one of the water towers that the game tracks is located in a village that was completely removed from the final game, water tower and all. Because of this, 99.67% is the closest a player can get to completing everything.
* GameplayAndStorySegregation: No matter how much "Chaos" you cause (Essentially the game's experience system), Panau's citizens will ''never'' show signs of rebellion. You will never find citizens battling or ousting soldiers in towns you have liberated, the populace will never offer you support and the factions you help will have their pathetic goons torn to shreds the very instant they attempt to "fight" government troops, which will almost always be by accident.
** The Stronghold missions involve taking over bases or installations for your rebel allies. However even after you've conquered a facility, you still need to blow up all fuel tanks, chimneys, generators etc. The new owners will never object to this, even if the facility includes SAM sites which ''switch sides'' if you own the facility but still must be destroyed for 100% completion.
* GatlingGood: Military bases in the second game often have a Gatling turret emplacement [[BuffySpeak thing]]. Rico can [[RemovableTurretGun rip the gun from its stand]], of course, but it has several drawbacks: his movement speed is decreased, he can't sprint or jump, he can't use the grappling hook, and he can't move while firing it. However, it's still good for tearing up enemy bases for two reasons: it has [[BottomlessMagazines infinite ammo]] and, unlike other examples of this trope, it actually has a Gatling rate of fire - point it at ''anything'', pull the trigger, and the target will be dead in about a second.
** It also does some pretty hefty damage per hit and boasts decent armour penetration (unlike your standard pistol, for example) so it can quite effectively chew up any vehicles, troops or structures you might come across -- including structures that you can't damage with other small arms, such as SAM sites or statues. Certain vehicles (heavy [=APCs=]) may take more than a second to kill, though.
** The gun basically has two uses: 1. Walking around a freshly-acquired base, blowing things up to complete it. (Woe betide you if you miss something and have to go back.) 2. Defending the engineer at the end of almost every stronghold takeover.
* TheGeneralissimo: Salvador Mendoza in the first game; he did not get much character development, but he definitely [[BlingOfWar looked the part]].
* GottaCatchThemAll: Horrible, horrible, offender. In the 400 square miles of Panau to explore, there are about 300 locations. To 'complete' a location, you have to destroy every structure marked with a red star in that location, and find every upgrade box nearby. You have a radar telling you the distance to the nearest box, but no such thing for the buildings. Including all 4 types, there are 2,700(!) boxes to find. Add on top of this 300 faction items to collect (also helpfully pointed out on the map once they're available) and 100+ different vehicles to catalog (woe betide the completionist who forgets to fly the cargo plane before they take over the only two airports they spawn from, because they aren't coming back after that), and you're going to be in it for the long haul. There's a reason the strictest achievement only requires you to get 75% of it.

* GrapplingHookPistol: Though in the second game it's more like a grappling hook gauntlet.
* GratuitousNinja: Baby Panay has a whole battallion of ninjas in his army. They are all able to teleport in a puff of smoke, can't be caught by the grappling hook and harass you with submachine guns.
-->'''Panay''': Prepare to meet your demise at the hands of... ''my ninja''!
-->'''Rico''': I ''hate'' ninjas...

* GunsAkimbo: Possible in the second game with smaller weapons. This somehow, awesomely, includes revolver-mechanism grenade launchers.
** Also possible in the first game, but only with the standard revolvers.
* GunshipRescue: What the Panau military keeps hoping for when they call in helicopters to attack you. Too bad you can easily hijack most of them within seconds of their arrival, meaning those soldiers now have to deal [[NiceJobFixingItVillain with an enemy in a combat chopper]].

* HitTheGroundHarder: No matter how far Rico falls he can prevent any damage by pulling himself to the ground with a grappling hook. That's right, the best way to survive crashing into the ground is to crash into it slightly faster. [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Must be a homeopathic thing.]]
* HollywoodDarkness: It never really gets dark at night in Panau. Probably because it wouldn't be fun if you couldn't see where you were going at night.

* LargeHam: Tom Sheldon and Bolo Santosi. Rico has his moments as well.
** The three foreign agents, who seem to be in a race to out-ham each other.
* LeftTheBackgroundMusicOn: No examples in the game itself, but it's got to be worth something when the soundtrack for ''Just Cause 2'' is called "Music To Blow S**t Up By".
** Sort-of example; the music that plays whilst you're on the MileHighClub is obviously supposed to be what would actually be playing at the club... except it takes a sudden turn for the dramatic (complete with RecordNeedleScratch), the tempo increasing suddenly when you discover [[spoiler:that a bomb has been loaded into the lower cargo area!]]
* LighthousePoint: Lighthouses are a fairly common sight along the many sandy beaches and tropical islands of Just Cause 2's massive map and will often have an item box near the top. There is even an area in the northern part of the world near an airport where two identical lighthouses can be seen facing each other on separate nearby islands.

* LumberMillMayhem: The Seasbreeze Sawmill, which the Ular Boys task Rico with assaulting in one of their faction missions.
* MacrossMissileMassacre: [[spoiler:Baby Panay's rocket launcher]] in Just Cause 2. You can also do a little bit of this yourself with the Quad Rocket Launcher DLC.
** And the [[CoolPlane G9 Eclipse]] with its quad rocket pods with BottomlessMagazines. Spamming rockets towards the general area of your target from a mile away is also your only hope of hitting something without crashing into it, since there's no lock-on mechanism.
** Several helicopters come with missiles as well. Holding down the "fire missile" button is a great way to blow up everything in a base. Thankfully, [[ArtificialStupidity the army only rarely fires missiles at you.]]

* MadeOfIron: Baby Panay. [[spoiler:He takes a grenade point blank in the face, gets shot an ungodly number of times, but only dies via ''nuclear explosion''.]]
* MarathonLevel: The Raya Race. Dear God. It takes you about a quarter of the way around the largest island in Panau, and can easily take twenty minutes to complete, while most races in the game take only three or four minutes, tops. To make matters worse, even though they give you a sports car at the beginning, you'll be driving the wrong way down a highway. You'll also ''need'' that sports car if you hope to make it through, so if you crash or get the car off road (which can easily happen thanks to the loose driving physics at high speeds), you practically have to start over.
** The game partially makes up for this by increasing the spawn rates of the sports car you're driving, so if you happen to wreck your vehicle, it's much easier to find a replacement one. You're likely going to burn through multiple vehicles before reaching the finish line.
** Or just [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney buy]]/[[HighSpeedHijack steal]] a motorcycle, which can go almost as fast, is much more manouverable and a is lot easier to drive through traffic.
* MemeticBadass: In-universe for Rico in the second game. If you idle long enough by your allies, you can hear them talking about how you "killed ten soldiers. With his bare hands!" and then [[UpToEleven it becomes "ten tigers."]]
* MileHighClub: It's not a plane, but the second game has an airborne "gentleman's club" ''called'' the Mile High Club.
* MisaimedRealism: Aircraft have realistic takeoff runs and turning, but ''don't'' have yaw control. This tends to result in large amounts of driving off runways because the player tried to correct their angle during the run up the runway and didn't get up to speed, and / or hopelessly hanging planes up on the scenery while trying to make simple taxiing turns.
* MoodWhiplash: In one mission, you need to help Bolo Santosi broadcast a message to Panau. [[AccentUponTheWrongSyllable Knowing]] [[SoBadItsGood her]], [[TemptingFate it should be pretty funny, right?]] Actually, it shows an innocent man [[ColdBloodedTorture being tortured]] [[ArmiesAreEvil by the Panauan Army]], before being executed, and literally FedToPigs. And what's worse, [[FridgeHorror it implied this was the fate of any person on Panau that has gone missing as well.]] Suddenly, you see why a HeroicComedicSociopath, a bunch of [[DirtyCommies Dirty Communists]], ultra-nationalist jungle-dwelling jingos, and [[TheMafia even the Mob]] are considered the 'good guys' here: [[StateSec the enemy]] [[PoliceState is]] [[PresidentEvil much]], [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny MUCH]] [[{{Dystopia}} WORSE!!!]]
** Thankfully, Santossi managed to turn this around by giving a RousingSpeech at the end, [[DareToBeBadass crying out for the people]] [[LaResistance to take arms against the oppressors]], which is even more awesome in the fact [[HeReallyCanAct in that her voice didn't seem to comically trip on itself like the rest of the game]].
* MustacheVandalism: In the sequel, you can do this to billboards of Baby Panay.
* TheNapoleon: President "Baby" Panay.
* NiceJobFixingItVillain: In the “An Officer and a Hitman” mission in ''Just Cause 2'', you’re tasked by Razak with taking out a colonel. [[spoiler:After you take out the defences around his mansion, the colonel himself runs outside with a rocket launcher, and reveals himself to be slightly off. Once you’ve killed him, Razak comments on the fact that the colonel was a madman and commends you on a job well done, then continues reflectively:]]
--> '''Razak:''' [[spoiler:Although, I fear we may just have rid the military of a problem…]]
--> [[spoiler:They’re probably breaking out the champagne as we speak.]]
--> [[spoiler:[[OhCrap Damn]].]]
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Alexander Mirkov in ''Just Cause 2'' is a dead ringer for [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Valuev Nikolai Valuev]].
** Also, Rico seems to be based (both appearance and voice) on Creator/AlPacino.
* NoCommunitiesWereHarmed: Panau is a mishmash of various Southeast Asian countries - further taken with the Filipino, Malaysian, Indonesian, Tamil, Thai, and Singaporean accents and words.
* NoEndorHolocaust: [[spoiler: Rico's nuking of Panau's central oil field should more or less guarantee that everyone in the country would die of radiation poisoning within a few weeks, along with everyone who should've died in the initial blast. Everyone seems content to sample Tom's [[RunningGag succulent pig]] while the mushroom cloud glitters in the night sky, and not bring this up at all.]]

* NotSoAboveItAll: The leaders of the Reapers and the Ular Boys.
** Bolo Santosi is a well-educated child of luxury who has given up none of her former lifestyle in her struggle for the people, and is more concerned with gaining power for herself and her cohorts than bettering the people's lot - when she's not more interested in exploding things senselessly.
** Sri Irawan is also well-educated and very charismatic to boot. He exhorts the superiority of the Ular ethnicity, while pretty clearly just using it as an excuse to be a brutal warlord and win himself glory, while the Ular Boys themselves are described as (and act like) a massive street gang.
* NotInThisForYourRevolution: Rico makes it clear to the revolutionaries that he aids in the story that all he wants is information about Tom Sheldon's whereabouts. Regardless of this they still test his loyalty and ask Rico about his political stance on their actions. Rico doesn't actually talk to them very much during these conversations.
* NotQuiteFlight: The grappling hook and parachute combo lets Rico glide effortlessly over Panau.
* NotWorthKilling: A rare economic variant from Rico, after paying off an informant.
--> '''Rico''': "Considering the value of the Panauan buck, shooting you would have been more expensive."

* OnlySaneMan: Panay wants to exploit Panau's massive oil fields to build a superpower military. The Russians, Chinese, and Japanese want the oil for economic strength. The US wants the oil for continued global domination. Realizing the madness of it all, Rico simply [[spoiler: blows the oil fields to holy hell]].
* OutsideRide: Rico can surf or hang from any vehicle in the game. Including sports cars and jumbo jets. He is even the page image!
* PaperThinDisguise: It should take you roughly thirty seconds to figure out that [[spoiler: Tom Sheldon is the Sloth Demon]], and that's if you spend twenty-nine of those seconds grappling a soldier to his own vehicle and driving off with it.
* PatchworkMap: ''Just Cause 2'' suffers from this somewhat. One of the elements improved from the original is more varied terrain, with deserts, snowy mountains, and lush jungles...all contained on an island group slightly smaller than Oahu. The southern main island is mostly desert, despite directly bordering open ocean in some places, and the northern main island is mostly snowy and mountainous, with a snowline of about a thousand feet. In the summer. Less than a thousand miles from the equator.
** A few rivers also seem to have estuaries or deltas at both ends.
*** Here is a [[http://i.imgur.com/MRLIhoc.jpg map]], so you can see for yourself.
* PixelHunt: Often getting 100% on a military base involves an extended period of hovering around with a helicopter looking for that last explodable thing (it's usually a single Generator) among the wreckage.
** Bonus frustration points are gained if the target was actually a pipeline terminal or communication tower a quarter of a mile away from the actual base. Helped slightly by the fact that the location icons are usually placed on the map in the center of the area of pickups and destructible buildings that constitute the completion percentage of that location, so if the icon for a military base isn't sitting on top of the area of the map that the base physically occupies, there's likely to be something in that general direction you have to hunt down to complete the area.
* PresidentEvil: Pandak "Baby" Panay in the second game.
* PressXToNotDie: The dreaded QTE is present in the second game, but they are relatively simple (press 1, 2, 3 or 4 in the correct order, or when they are displayed during hijacking) and do not require ridiculously fast reflexes, nor are you (usually) heavily penalized for failing. There are two types;
** Type 1: Press all of the buttons in the right order before the timer bar runs out. Used for [[StuffBlowingUp causing gratuitous explosions]] or [[HollywoodHacking hacking things]].
*** One annoying thing is that being shot is an instafail. Being shot is also nearly unavoidable if it's not the first thing you take care of.
** Type 2: Wait for the prompt. Press button. Watch gratuitous violence animation. Wait for next prompt. Press button. Rinse and repeat. Used for hijacking vehicles - assuming you don't opt to [[WhyDontYaJustShootHim just shoot the driver.]]
* QuicksandBox: Panau in ''Just Cause 2'' is so huge that even the developers agree it may be too big for some players to handle. Hence, the strictest collection achievement only requires you get 75% of the map. Pity the person who needs to hundred-percent driving all the vehicles, though!

* RefugeInAudacity: Rico can surf cars moving at sixty mph, rappel onto ''helicopters'' as they fire rockets at him, tether soldiers to each other with high-tensile wire so they snap together in midair, attach himself to a punctured gas can and use it as a makeshift ''rocket'' to gain a massive height advantage over his enemies, pull the head off a statue with a vehicle and use it as a wrecking ball, and a plethora of other insane stunts. This game doesn't really hold back. Ever.
** Even better, several vehicles have multiple stunt jump positions during hijacking, so you can move around to get the best angle on the occupants, or any enemies chasing you. Want to take out the guys in the passenger seats whilst hijacking a Hummer? Hang onto the back of the vehicle. Want to shoot chasing enemies? Just stand on the roof. Want to take out the driver easily? Jump onto the front bumper/grill and shoot him through the windscreen!
** There's a neat relatively hidden feature of Stunt Jumping too; if Rico was the last driver of a particular vehicle, it's even possible to adjust the facing/direction of the vehicle (but not the speed) you're standing on top of whilst it's moving! It's very slow though, so don't expect any hand-brake turns.
* RegeneratingHealth: The second title combines this with the ol' medkit system; Rico can regenerate a fixed amount of his health, but any damage taken over that needs a medkit. It's like a less rigid version of the segmented health bar some other games use.
* TheRemnant: In one mission in ''Just Cause 2'', you're tasked with traveling to a supposedly cursed island to find a plane that the Ular Boys had recently lost contact with. You fly to the island only to [[spoiler: have your plane shot down by a giant EnergyWeapon. It turns out the island is filled with really, ''really'' old Japanese soldiers who are still fighting WWII, and had built the giant EMP tower to win the war... [[BadAss You make short]] [[StuffBlowingUp work of it]].]]
* RevolversAreJustBetter: The second game has one, as seen [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rya5camqUOo here]]. It possesses immense firepower when fully upgraded, and can shoot down a light helicopter with relative ease.
** It also makes hijacking said helicopters a lot easier, now that you can [[SnipingTheCockpit just shoot the pilot through the glass!]]
** Rico's standard guns in the first game were a pair of revolvers with [[BottomlessMagazines infinite reserve ammo]] - weak, but useful for saving ammo for your other guns. DLC for the second game brings them back as "Rico's Signature Gun", though it's not quite as good this time around - in addition to still being weaker than the normal revolver, it now has limited ammo and the only way to get more is buying it from the black market.
* [[BatmanCanBreatheInSpace Rico Can Breathe At High Altitudes]]: No, seriously. The stunt jump ability allows you to stand or hang off any airborne vehicle, including ''plane surfing''.
** WordOfGod says that the highest attainable altitude is 6.8 km or ~22300 feet, and can be reached using a hot air balloon. A typical jet plane cruising altitude is around 33000 feet.
* RidingTheBomb: [[spoiler: The ending of the second game involves doing this. Repeatedly.]]

* SigilSpam: ''Just Cause 2'' has the government of Panau's symbol, a white star on a red background, everywhere. Items include electrical generators, oil tanks, water towers, propaganda trailers, gas stations and vehicles.
* SignificantAnagram: [[spoiler:Tom Sheldon]] goes by the alias "Sloth Demon" in the beginning of ''Just Cause 2.''
* SmugSnake: President Pandak "Baby" Panay. Need proof? Listen to the messages he makes through the Propaganda Trailers for more than 30 seconds.
-->'''Panay:''' Listen most carefully, people of Panau. President Panay, your glorious and humble leader, must speak. Free photographs of the president and his staff are now available in all government buildings. REJOICE.\\
'''Rico:''' ''(after blowing the trailer up)'' I can't stand that damn voice!
* SoftWater: Played straight in the first game. Averted in the sequel; a 10,000 foot fall into water will kill you just as dead as a fall into concrete - unless you dive in head-first. If you remember to do so it's possible to high dive from the altitude ceiling and only sink three feet.
** Hilariously, however, if you grapple into the ground just before impact, all fall damage is negated. You can't grapple onto water, so falling onto water is fatal while pulling yourself into concrete at twice the velocity won't even cause Mr. Rodriguez to break a sweat.
** If you open up your parachute at any time before hitting the ground, all fall damage will ALSO be negated. Even if you do a 3 Kilometer freefall and open the parachute the instant before you hit the ground, the [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou worst that will happen]] is that you go [[RagdollPhysics flailing across the ground]] before you can get up.
* SpritePolygonMix: The grass on trees in ''Just Cause 2'' are flat sprites when viewed from afar; it's usually not too obvious unless you're flying in a helicopter over a forest, in which case the trees will visibly rotate as you pass them.
* StuffBlowingUp: The easiest way to cause chaos in the sequel.
** Not to mention that causing chaos helps to unlock the next story mission. That's right: StuffBlowingUp advances the plot. [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything Does this remind you of]] [[RedFaction any other games?]]
** Also, if you jump out of a vehicle as it's about to hit something, that vehicle will almost ALWAYS explode upon impact. This is ridiculous because 1) The vehicle can explode upon impact [[MadeofExplodium even if it was only going pretty fast instead of REALLY fast]], and 2) These same vehicles can survive the same punishment (and much worse), as long as you're actually driving them.
* StupidJetpackHitler: Okay, not Nazi Germany, but... [[spoiler:the northwest island in the 2nd game which if you try to fly a plane there, will cause a bright flash following by your plane exploding,]] contains Imperial Japan's EM tower weapon, something way too advanced to be constructed in WWII. [[AluminumChristmasTrees They never got past the testing stages.]]
** Those guys also have modern weapons, which would be alright if they didn't also have HELICOPTERS.
* SuicidalOverconfidence: The little grunts will happily fire at your armored attack helicopter with just a revolver.
* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: After certain missions in the sequel, the government-run radio news station will broadcast increasingly ridiculous cover-ups for Rico's antics. After taking over an oil refinery ("where most of Panau's gasoline is refined from Bruneian sludge") for an organized crime syndicate, the station will [[HandWave dismiss claims of gunfire as "hearsay"]] and assure listeners that [[BlatantLies "no organized crime takeover has taken place"]].
** Or attempting to dismiss explosions at a nearby military base during a takeover was simply "[[AssPull a previously unknown volcano]] that was verified by government scientists" and that it [[HandWave "has since disappeared".]]
** Or Panay stating that everything is fine and the country is peaceful, but also reminding the citizens that "martial law is still in effect and groups of three or more people will be shot on sight."
** Or pretending that the large gunfight that happened when you capture a nuclear power plant for the Ular Boys is "just engines backfiring".
** Or the reason there was no body for one mission was that you were [[ImprobableAimingSkills "vaporized by the many accurate shots of Panau military".]]
** [[OverlyLongGag Or that]] "White Tiger" does not exist, [[NoExceptYes and that he will be painfully executed once he is finally captured.]]
* TankGoodness: Surprisingly, there are no tanks in the second game, but it makes up for this by having armored cars mounted with tank turrets. They're both relatively speedy ''and'' can take loads of punishment.
* TheAllSeeingAI: Doing anything that causes heat in the second game instantly alerts the guards to your current location, regardless of where the thing that alerted them actually happened. This goes even if you just detonated a remote charge from the top of a building on the opposite side of town.
** Depends, sometimes; hop in a military vehicle outside of town after blowing anything up and the most they'll do is go into suspicion - though if they do see you while you're in that vehicle, all bets are off.
** They'll even come after you for stuff you didn't do, say if something is accidentally destroyed by someone else crashing into it.

* UnnecessaryCombatRoll: Made even more unnecessary by the grappling hook.

* VideogameCrueltyPotential: Thanks to the improved grappling hook, ''Just Cause 2'' has almost limitless options for being completely sadistic towards your enemies.
** It's possible to tether people to gas canisters, then shoot the canisters so they spiral into the air as the pressure is released, dragging the poor bastard around behind it until it explodes, sending them flying.
** One of the simplest is to tether someone to the back of a vehicle, then get in and drag them along the road at high speeds. They'll die, eventually.
*** Or [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3rSSd0opis a plane]]!
*** Or [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation through a cactus patch.]]
*** You can also slingshot them from a helicopter, [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tw6AmO-0kbk as seen here]].
** You can tether enemies together so they smack into each other, tether them to planes which you crash into a cliffside, tether them to the tops of palm trees so they swing about in the breeze, tether them to the ground whilst they're in a fast moving vehicle (or tether the vehicle to the ground!), etc. There are more options than it would be decent to list.
** You can also tether enemies to buildings, there's two different achievements if you kill the person with a melee attack while they are dangling or just shoot them.
** For added hilarity, don't forget to tether enemies or passing vehicles to the spinning blades of a wind turbine.
** As a reminder... Everything you can do above? [[YouBastard You can also do those things to civilians.]]
* WeaponizedCar: The second game has several you can buy from the black market. DLC adds the Tuk Tuk Boom Boom, a tuk tuk with a {{BFG}} on its back.
* WhatADrag: With any type of vehicle, including helicopters and fighter jets. Whee!
* WhatMeasureIsAMook: Rico's speech at the end of the second game that the oil isn't worth dying over is a bit weird, considering the handy in-game counter will likely show that by this point he's killed well over 1000 enemy soldiers (plus a few hundred civilians, probably) while all along he had no real idea why he was even fighting.
* WhenAllYouHaveIsAHammer: The grappling hook can be used to solve almost ''any'' situation, from quickly traversing the world to killing soldiers to climbing buildings to flipping cars on to their wheels.

* WritersCannotDoMath: The percentages of completion work in odd ways. For instance, in a settlement where five boxes must be collected you would expect each box to be worth 20%. But the first box may actually only worth 19%, the three subsequent boxes are 20% each, and the last box will make up for the discrepancy with 21%. The code to display the completion percentage probably just used floating-point numbers and rounded them carelessly.

* DevelopersForesight: Those billboards you see of Baby Panay aren't just for show; in between blowing up fuel tanks, hijacking planes, and destroying all enemies that get in his way, Rico can also [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking draw a silly]] [[MustacheVandalism mustache on Panay]]!

** [[OverlyLongGag Or that]] "White Tiger" does not exist, and that he will be painfully executed once he is finally captured.

'''''Just Cause''''' is a series of [[WideOpenSandbox open world]] action-adventure video games developed by Creator/AvalancheStudios. The series centers on the exploits of Rico Rodriguez, an operative working for the Agency (which is totally not the CIA), as he helps local guerrillas overthrow the [[BananaRepublic tyrannical regime]] governing [[FictionalCountry fictional island nations]], the first game of which takes place on the (fictional) Caribbean island of San Esperito. The player can drive nearly every vehicle under the sun, as well as climb about on them while moving at high speeds and jumping onto other nearby cars, trucks, tanks, helicopters, etc. Notable for the inclusion of a grappling hook, which allows Rico to rappel onto moving vehicles from a distance, and a parachute, which allows for all manner of aerial stunts.

** As one of the developers put it, [[ThisIsYourPremiseOnDrugs "This is the laws of physics on drugs."]] Yahtzee of ZeroPunctuation is perhaps not too far off when he calls Rico an 'immortal physics-defying wizard.'