History YMMV / GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas

** Some players found the requirement to feed CJ periodically (or risk losing strength and health) to be rather annoying. It can be especially annoying if you lose track and find yourself starving in the middle of a mission, especially longer ones like the ambulance and taxi minigames which did not allow you to get out of car unless you will broke the streak required to unlock unique bonus. This has been less likely to appear in the PC version (in fact it doesn't appear at all in regular missions), especially if you fed before starting ambulance and taxi minigames.
** Many missions need you to leave your car, which is annoying especially if you brought your PimpedOutCar to mission like "Photo Opportunity" (where you drive far to nowhere only to switch car).
** Having to defend your turf from Ballas or Vagos can be this. The "turf is under attack" warning can pop up randomly as long as you are in Los Santos and when you least expect too (including dates with a girlfriend) and cannot be ignored unless you don't mind losing influence in the city. The turf that is attacked is always random, so tough luck if you are in one corner of the city and the rival gangs decided to attack the other one. Fortunately, entering any side-mission (Taxi driver, for example) [[GoodBadBugs automatically cancels the enemy attack on your turf]] and prevents you from having to go and defend it.

** For whatever reason, Rockstar Games decided to encrypt every cheat code into hashes; your previous 29 keyboard inputs are kept in memory, and if a hash from those inputs match a cheat code, that cheat activates. While this was likely done to keep each code a secret, the disadvantage of this method is that it allows many alternative codes to activate cheats. Most notoriously, there exist a few combinations of WASD-key inputs that can activate cheats, and as many players will be tapping those keys a lot in quick succession, there are many reported cases of players losing their 100% progress or their speedrun's legality because they unintentially entered a WASD cheat.
** The rhythm minigames have earned scorn from some parts of the fanbase for it feeling like it was tacked on only because [[FollowTheLeader it was popular with other games at the time]]. As mentioned below in this game's ThatOneLevel's entry, early adapters to HD televisions couldn't complete this mission. And that's not taking account in the [=PS3=] and XBOX 360 Remasters, where the delay in the rhythm is more noticeable. It's telling that Rockstar listened to the feedback and never brought these mechanics back in future GTA games.

** San Andreas' citizens' reaction to a dead body in the middle of the street? Approach it, look at it for three seconds or so, and then continue on with their daily lives. Some of the pedestrians even have quotes in which they [[KickTheDog mock the victim]], especially criminals and thieves, who ''love'' the sight of a dead body.

* WhatMeasureIsANonBadass: CJ. He does a lot of badass things, but he has a lot of negative traits to balance them out. showing compassion for those he wronged and considering the ramifications of his actions are good traits, and add to his character. His feats are comparable to those of Tommy Vercetti and Niko Bellic. However, some of his cutscenes involve [[CutsceneIncompetence some lack of competence]], as he gets pushed around by two cops, scolded by his brother or being raped by a psychotic woman make him look bad. His lack of spine in some cutscenes can get really annoying to watch, as they sometimes lead to annoying missions that bear no importance to the plot. The problem is mostly due to ludonarrative dissonance, since one mission he may be badass, on another he might be complaining about something constantly, and in others he turns into a psychopath (Slaughtering a building crew and burying their foreman alive because one of them called his sister a hooker.) making him look like a massive hypocrite at times.

** Thanks to the most popular recreation of the DummiedOut mission "The Truth Is Out There", from the GameMod ''Things To Do in San Andreas'', many assume Rockstar intended to have part of the mission take place in Bayside. This was just an arbitrary decision by the mod maker [=DeeZire=], there is no actual proof in the game's code that the mission involved Bayside.

** "End Of The Line" cranks up what makes all the aforementioned level memorable up to eleven and divides them into a sequential stages until the end of the game. You start off by driving up with Sweet to Big Smoke's crack palace, steal a SWAT water tank and slam the darn thing off the palace's wall, make your way through each floor, fighting numerous gang members and drug manufacturers all the way to the top where Big Smoke awaits, in which you will be fighting him and his fellow bodyguards. Upon [[AlasPoorVillain defeating him and lamented on Smoke's own last words]], Tenpenny came over and aiming his gun at you, knowing that he had no other choice but to bail off the country before they caught up with him. You chase him all the way down outside, jumping off the explosion behind, and ends in a chase sequence where you got to keep your brother Sweet alive and catch him up, where he will take the wheel and you protecting him by shooting every enemy gang and police that come for you which might as well be almost the entire town. [[spoiler:The entire thing is wrapped up with a nice BookEnds by landing in Grove Street.]]

* BestBossEver: The run-and-gun chase through the streets of Los Santos against Samuel L. Jackson's DirtyCop, Officer Tenpenny.

* [[Awesome/VideoGameLevels Best Level Ever]]:
** Anytime a mission includes a rail shooter sequence is pretty much this. "Just Business" starts off with a shootout against the Russian Mafia that ended up in one of the most memorable moments early on in the game as well as a homage to [[Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay the truck chase from Judgement Day]]. "Reuniting The Families" cranks up the elements of what makes "Just Business" great in the first place by replacing the Russian Mafia with the SWAT Team and the entire LSPD detachment going for Sweet's head and ends up in an equally awesome rail shooter where you can easily level your [=AK-47=] skill and get the funniest dynamic and banter the four friends would ever had before the inevitable happens. And that's not counting the final level... The only downside would be that these missions tend to give a weapon with infinite ammo, replacing any weapon in that slot, only to later strip you of it after the mission is completed, without giving the previous weapon back, which can be ''very'' annoying if the player had spent money buying ammo for that weapon slot.
** "Breaking The Bank at Caligula's" may become one contender of the best level for the game, if not for the one below. After setting up the heist by getting the building plan, having all the necessary equipment and vehicles, setting explosives on the river dam, trying to woo on one of the croupier for the access keycard, and most importantly, getting the trust you need from one of the shareholders of the casino, you start off by blending in with other staff members where you had to access the backrooms without suspicion, then lob a tear gas grenade off the ventilation to knock down all the personnel on the basement, before Zero would set-off the explosive in the dam that temporarily disables the electricity in the city. You bring in Woozie and the heist crew, take all the money they can from the vault, then make an escape, if not the fact that Zero bragged on Berkley about the heist sometime before they set up for it. To lower any further damage, Carl went on as a decoy and fight his way off to the rooftop, where you would jump off and chute your way to the building across the casino and steal the SWAT team's chopper and got away safely. Doubles as a CatharsisFactor for both [[TheScrappy Zero]] as Carl went off to [[TakeThatScrappy hit Zero in the face]] for leaking the heist plan and being a pain in the ass for the player.
** "End Of The Line" cranks up what makes all the aforementioned level memorable up to eleven and divides them into a sequential stages until the end of the game. You start off by driving up with Sweet to Big Smoke's crack palace, steal a SWAT water tank and slam the darn thing off the palace's wall, make your way through each floor, fighting numerous gang members and drug manufacturers all the way to the top where Big Smoke awaits, in which you will be fighting him and his fellow bodyguards. Upon [[AlasPoorVillain defeating him and lamented on Smoke's own last words]], Tenpenny came over and aiming his gun at you, knowing that he had no other choice but to bail off the country before they caught up with him. You chase him all the way down outside, jumping off the explosion behind, and ends in a chase sequence where you got to keep your brother Sweet alive and catch him up, where he will take the wheel and you protecting him by shooting every enemy gang and police that come for you which might as well be almost the entire town. [[spoiler:The entire thing is wrapped up with a nice BookEnds by landing in Grove Street.]]

* NeverLiveItDown: The mission "[[DisproportionateRetribution Deconstruction]]" has become infamous for showing CJ being much crueler than how the rest of the game tries to portray him as. You can bet that any discussion on CJ's morality will have someone saying any variation of "Well, except for the construction mission".[[note]]For those who are not familiar with the mission; CJ massacres several construction workers and buries one alive because a few of them insulted his sister.[[/note]]

* CommonKnowledge: The main conception of the Grove Street Families is that they're against drugs. Correction: They're only against the hard drugs such as crack cocaine. They have nothing against marijuana since most of the members of the gang are occasionally seen smoking weed.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGajN6mUoZQ Ryder, nigga!]][[labelnote:explanation]]During "Sweet & Kendl", after you reach the checkpoint at Grove Street, Ryder can be seen riding his bike around the cul-de-sac and doing wheelies while Big Smoke and Sweet talk to Carl during the cutscene. One of his lines during said cutscene is "I got them motherfuckers though, showed them niggas who's gangsta! Ryder, nigga! G'yeah!" The "Ryder, nigga!" part became a popular meme in San Andreas WebAnimation/YoutubePoop videos.[[/labelnote]]

** In one mission, you have to follow Caesar to meet up with everyone else for some illegal street racing. CJ's sister, Kendl, is seen riding with Caesar in the cut scene. During the actual game play, Kendl's model is replaced with a female NPC. This is actually her beta model, which was slightly modified and turned into a pedestrian NPC model after she was redesigned. Only her fully rigged cutscene model was ever built for the final product, so she's swapped for her modified beta model for the one time she appears in gameplay.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Sweet is written to be a strong leader with heart who is expected to share the sympathy with CJ once their families fall apart (and the climax of the game even tries to make it appear that Sweet was right). However, it's very difficult to feel sorry for Sweet when not only does he constantly give CJ a lot of shit for his past mistakes, he doesn't even show the least bit of gratitude after CJ went through all the trouble to bail him out of jail, and yet somehow, Sweet gains the temerity to claim CJ was doing everything for himself and even goes as far to call him a perpetrator. Not to mention that he puts all the blame on CJ for the gang falling apart even though Sweet himself is the leader yet did nothing to get them back on its feet between the five years CJ was at Liberty City and, at one point, was even willing to give into crack, which makes him a bonafide hypocrite. To say nothing of the fact that Sweet had even gone as far to unfairly compare CJ's ambition to get out of the hood to [[spoiler:Big Smoke betraying his gang to get into the crack game]]. This last comparison is made more frustrating by the fact that CJ, once he is forced away from Sweet and dumped into a trailer park in the middle of nowhere, manages to become renowned as both a career criminal and a legitimate businessman at a scale that is far beyond what he ever could have previously imagined, yet once he returns to Los Santos it's back to street gang loyalties and Sweet framing CJ's successes elsewhere as a betrayal of that. As evident in the video shown above, [[TheScrappy it really isn't a wonder why he's one of the more unpopular characters of the game]].

*** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6g0mPo-uJM His hilariously long order at Cluckin' Bell]].

* ItWasHisSled: It's pretty much impossible these days to have even some vague knowledge of the game without knowing that [[spoiler:Big Smoke and Ryder are traitors]], though it was initially a big plot twist.

* AcceptableProfessionalTargets:
** Kill a drug dealer - get $2000. The Grove Street Families and CJ himself are vehemently against the use of hard drugs (though marijuana is okay). Compared to the other gangs in the city (besides the Varrios Los Aztecas), the Grove Street families are NeighbourhoodFriendlyGangsters.
** The legal system, and the people who work in it, gets a bad rap too. Mid-game Tenpenny calls Carl and instructs him to frame a guy for weed possession. CJ is opposed to the idea until Tenpenny mentions that he is a District Attorney, after which CJ immediately accepts the mission.

** "Breaking The Bank at Caligula's" may become one contender of the best level for the game, if not for the one below. After setting up the heist by getting the building plan, having all the necessary equipment and vehicles, setting explosives on the river dam, trying to woo on one of the croupier for the access keycard, and most importantly, getting the trust you need from one of the shareholders of the casino, you start off by blending in with other staff members where you had to access the backrooms without suspicion, then lob a tear gas grenade off the ventilation to knock down all the personnel on the basement, before Zero would set-off the explosive in the dam that temporarily disables the electricity in the city. You bring in Woozie and the heist crew, take all the money they can from the vault, then make an escape, if not the fact that [[WhatAnIdiot Zero bragged on Berkley about the heist sometime before they set up for it]]. To lower any further damage, Carl went on as a decoy and fight his way off to the rooftop, where you would jump off and chute your way to the building across the casino and steal the SWAT team's chopper and got away safely. Doubles as a CatharsisFactor for both [[TheScrappy Zero]] as Carl went off to [[TakeThatScrappy hit Zero in the face]] for leaking the heist plan and being a pain in the ass for the player.

** Vehicle customization. It's only function is to aesthetically modify your vehicle and it serves no purpose other than to look good (all but one modification only affects your car aesthetically), which is rather surprising because of the good amount of modification you can get to each selective car, and certain cars (like Lowriders and Tuners) can only be customized in certain locations in Los Santos and San Fierro respectively. You can't even bring your own modified car to any race (apart from the first racing mission by Cesar) as the street racing game puts you in a chosen or randomized car. Besides, unlike in ''VideoGames/GrandTheftAutoV'' where personal vehicles store any modification done and retain it when they respawn, in ''San Andreas'' the player must be very careful with any modified vehicle because, if the vehicle despawns or it's destroyed, the modifications are lost forever.

** In Fort Carson, a Beagle plane can rarely spawn parked near one of the houses, where it makes no sense to spawn, and its spawning position is so glitched that entering it causes it to explode due to the plane taking damage from collision with the house. An investigation [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95PAecJd7k4 showed]] (unfortunately the video is only in Spanish) that the Beagle was originally intended to be a BMX bicycle, but after the BMX was coded to spawn in that spot, a reordering of the internal files accidentally transformed the spawning point into a Beagle.

* EvenBetterSequel: ''GTA III'' was a revolutionary game unto itself, and ''Vice City'' only improved it further. ''San Andreas'' on the other hand is often considered to be the greatest ''Grand Theft Auto'' game ''period'', with its a plot that jumps back and forth between serious and silly, memorable characters, enhanced mission variety, massive map (with ''three'' entire cities to explore instead of just one) and various takes of genre (from gritty gangland ghetto, to vigilante action, to science fiction, to mob drama) being high selling points.

** SPRUNK'D [[labelnote:explanation]]While streaming ''The Definitive Edition'' on his channel and listening to 80s music, [[WebVideo/Vinesauce Joel]] managed to accidentally trigger a bug in the game's code by overloading its memory and ''permanently brick his save file forever'' [[MakesJustAsMuchSenseInContext after he spent close to an hour drinking hundreds of cans of Sprunk.]]] He proceeded to declare that he "Sprunk'd" the game, and the ridiculousness of the situation combined with the game's reputation as a PortingDisaster resulted in "Sprunk'd" catching on as a term for crashing a game so badly that it won't ever open again.[[/labelnote]]