Red Dead Redemption 2 / Tropes A to C

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# & A

• 100% Completion: Possible, but very challenging and time-consuming. The game helpfully keeps track of your progress in the compendium as well. Doing so unlocks the "Best in the West" achievement/trophy (and the "Legend of the West" PS4 trophy as well). Those feeling particularly brave can go for all trophies/achievements, which requires all of that, plus even more. The fact only 0.1% of players, according to official PlayStation stats, have done it, should show how time-consuming it is.
• 100% Heroism Rating: Maxing out your Honor carries benefits including major discounts at most merchants (up to a whopping 50%), access to unique outfits, and a higher Random Drop rate for more valuable items like jewelry when looting the dead bodies of hostile enemies (such as rival gang members).
• 20 Bear Asses: A number of challenges involve obtaining a certain number of perfect quality pelts from specific animals, to say nothing about getting the various hides and feathers for the items crafted by Pearson and the Trapper.
• 24-Hour Armor: While not quite armor, everyone sleeps in their normal attire. This can include heavy leather or fur coats, vests, gun belts (with guns), boots, and spurs. Averted in the Patch 1.21 version, in which almost the entire Van der Linde gang walks around or sleeps in their nightclothes all through the night until early morning.
• Absurdly Low Level Cap: It's quite easy to max out your Health, Stamina, and Dead Eye by the second or third chapter as the experience points needed are quite plentiful. In addition to normal play you can gain huge amounts by completing challenges and drinking rare elixirs. However, the ninth and tenth levels of all three meters require you to beat every challenge in the game, which is not an easy feat.
• Abandoned Mine: One can be found northwest of Strawberry. You'll need to activate some dynamite to get inside, where you can find a unique knife and a mining helmet. Many others can be found out in the world as well.
• Absent-Minded Professor: Marko Dragic from the "Bright Bouncing Boy" series of side missions. It ultimately costs him his life as he is killed by one of his inventions.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
  • While lauded for having some of the most realistic and fun horse riding mechanics in gaming, there are still quite a few breaks from reality present. It's very damaging for a horse to run on paved roads, run into a full speed gallop immediately after resting, and in general be kept at full speed for long whiles at a time. It also usually takes months to teach one to come at your whistle. Taming a wild horse also takes much more time and effort than is depicted in the game. Feeding and grooming are also much more complex in reality.
  • Compared to the first game, the developers went out of their way to force players to pay attention to their horse (they can only be whistled within a certain distance, they need to be brushed and fed to perform optimally, they don't respawn after dying, etc.), but the game still cuts players some slack to make them easier to use. Most notably: all of your stabled horses can be always be found in any stable in the game (no matter how far apart they are), you can always saddle up one of your stabled horses (even if you leave your saddle on a horse that got lost or killed), and your horse will eventually reappear at a stable if you get separated from it in the wilderness and can't whistle it.
  • Keeping yourself fed and well-rested offers boosts, but isn't required. Outside of a very select few cases where doing so is required to advance a mission, you never need to eat or sleep.
  • Cleaning your firearms in-game means wiping them down with some Gun Oil. In real life, it involves taking them apart to carefully clean all of the pieces and mechanisms while using different oils on the metal parts and the wooden parts, which would be incredibly tedious.
  • While the game does have some inventory limits, you are still able to carry around far more than would be feasible in real life. Two long guns, two handguns, hundreds of rounds of ammo for each, a knife, a lasso, throwing knives, tomahawks, sticks of dynamite, fire bottles, a fishing rod, a machete, two dozen bottles of booze and medicine, horse supplies, cartons of cigarettes and multiple cigars, a week's worth of groceries... (And that's before upgrading to the best satchel which allows you to carry 99 of everything. It's incredible you can still shoot straight when you're carrying around hundreds of pounds of booze, canned goods and meat in your little bag.)
  • You can also hogtie as many people as you want without ever running out of rope.
  • Drinking too much and passing out on dangerous areas, such as rivers, snow or desert only results in you waking up nearby like usual, instead of death.
  • Most likely due to technical limitations, but animals never climb nor perch on trees; this is especially odd with normally-arboreal creatures, like squirrels, who are always found scurrying on the ground.
  • Health items can be consumed even if you're wearing a mask.
• Ace Custom: If you know where to look, you can get versions of certain guns with unique appearances: two unique Cattleman Revolvers, two unique Double-Action Revolvers, two unique Schofield Revolvers, one unique Mauser Pistol, one unique Double-Barrel Shotgun, and one unique Rolling Block Rifle. The only drawback is they can't be modified in any way.
• Acoustic License: It's quite easy to have a conversation with someone while you are both on different horses thundering down a hard dirt road, sometimes even in the midst of gunfire.
• Adaptation Origin Connection: Although with a sequel instead of an adaptation:
  • The 1899 Blackwater massacre was a mere background detail and had no ties to Heidi McCourt or Dutch's gang, and existed mostly to give a reason why Landon Ricketts was in Mexico. This game establishes that the Van der Linde’s were behind it and Heidi’s murder is what triggered it.
  • An inversion also happens: The heist during which John got shot and left to die was not a ferry job like it was implied in I, but it does happen and Marston gets shot during it. Instead the robbery he got shot and left behind on was an army train.
• Adventure-Friendly World: Just as one would expect from a Rockstar Wide-Open Sandbox game. The world is massive and you can explore almost all of it once it opens up. The game is dotted with random encounters, rival gang camps and ambushes, Stranger side missions, animals to hunt, and points of interest to explore.
• Aerith and Bob: There is a noticeable mix of common names (Arthur, John, Charles, Sean, Karen, Susan, etc.) as well as some rather old-fashioned ones that will seem unusual to modern players (Hosea, Micah, Josiah, Kieran,^note which is still fairly popular in the British Isles etc.). However, given the game's time period, this is rather appropriate.
• An Aesop:
  • The main aesop in this game is that people shouldn't be blindly loyal to someone. Several of the Van der Linde gang, especially Arthur, pays dearly for this because their devotion to Dutch causes them to continue to follow his lead despite everyone noticing his Sanity Slippage, how Dutch does not return the same loyalty to them and how his schemes continues to lead them into dangerous situations that get members and other civilians needlessly into danger and/or killed when it could have been avoided. Sadie and Charles are the only active members of the gang at this point who survive the first game and Mary-Beth, Tilly, Rev. Swanson, Trelawny, Pearson, and Jack are the only non-active ones who do.
  • Revenge is a fool’s game. Dutch used to live by this code but by the time of the game, he’s been consumed by his need to get back at those he feels have wronged him and destroys his gang in the process. Arthur tells him this pretty much word for word towards the end.
  • The game does not at all gloss over just how badly the Native Americans were treated. The Arc Villain of Chapter 6 is a corrupt military official who denies the Wapiti tribe medicine they desperately need, and tries to provoke them into war so the government can wipe them out and seize their land. The man in question is a complete jerk who denies their human rights and considers their real names to be "silly", showing no respect for their traditional culture. Agent Milton talks at length about how as far as he's concerned, the Native Americans are no better than Dutch's motley gang, and like Dutch's gang they should be eradicated for the good of "civilisation".
  • This game makes a point not to glamorize or (overly-)romanticize life in the Wild West for most in a modern Western audience. There is no social safety net, and a lack of formal education so very intelligent people like Arthur often get forced into violent crime because there are little-to-no other legitimate opportunities for them. Women have no other option for work other than, to paraphrase Karen, teach, be a prostitute or clean someone else’s house. They also can’t vote. Racism is rampant, even after the Civil War made some of the worst vitriol slightly less acceptable. Modern medicine doesn’t exist and therefore things that would be easily treatable today (like an infected wound) will kill you in an agonizing fashion. Literacy rates are low and childhood mortality rates are high. Even if you live in a poor or middle income country today, your quality of life is probably better than it would be for most of the characters in this game.
• A.I. Breaker: Cougars and panthers are ambush predators who can deliver a One-Hit Kill to the player when they pounce. However, if you are first thrown from horseback (which is likely even on a fully bonded horse when a cougar/panther is close), they seem to get confused and do not pounce right away. Instead, they'll circle around you, giving you time to get to your feet, draw a weapon, and potentially kill them. Notably, this does not happen with other predators like wolves and grizzly bears, who can and will attack you immediately after being thrown from your horse.
• A.K.A.-47: The game uses a mix of real life gun names and Bland-Name Product names for guns closely modeled on real-life guns. Like Grand Theft Auto V, the compedium uses fictional companies as stand-ins for real-life firearm manufacters, like "Buck" for Colt and "Lancaster" for Winchester. Consequently, the first game's Winchester and Henry repeaters were renamed "Lancaster" and "Lichfield" for the second installment; it's possible those companies raised trademark issues. (Springfield Armory was a government-run manufacturer^note That has no relation to the modern-day Springfield Armory Inc., and the Volcanic company is long defunct).
• The Alcatraz: Sisika Penitentiary. It's a heavily fortified prison on an island off the coast of Lemoyne. Should someone attempt escape, they would need a means of transportation back to the mainland where they'd be defenseless in swamps infested by alligators and Night Folk. Naturally, you need to break John out after he's captured during the failed bank robbery in Saint Denis.
• The Alcoholic: The Van der Linde gang sure has some notable alcoholics. Uncle is rarely found without a drink in his hand, Karen is described in the Rockstar Promotionals as being 'able to drink anyone from under the table' before her drinking spirals out of control in the last chapter, and is presumed by the Epilogue to have drunk herself to death. Bill Williamson is almost always seen with a drink in his hand and is quite prone to Alcohol-Induced Idiocy. Perhaps the biggest example of an alcoholic is Reverend Swanson who's, almost literally, never seen sober around camp. He does get better in chapter 6 and quits drinking altogether.
  • Played For Laughs in one of the most invokedmemetic missions in the game, where Arthur takes Lenny to a bar to calm him down. Hilarity Ensues.
• Alignment-Based Endings: Downplayed example as Arthur's death warrant is already signed with his tuberculosis but your honor slightly changes the final cutscene; a high honor results in Arthur being left to die somewhat peacefully watching the sunrise, while a low honor results in Micah finishing him off.
• All for Nothing:
  • Chapter 3 has the crew getting involved with a feud between two families and believe there is gold involved. For the next few weeks, they play with both sides in order to intensify the feud and hoping to steal the gold. Unfortunately, both families eventually find out about this and had Sean killed and Jack kidnapped. What's worse is that the gang fail to find any gold in this, meaning Sean died for nothing. Possibly averted in "The Course of True Love V" in Chapter 6, when it turns out that the sapphire bracelet that Penelope Braithwaite is handing over to Arthur is actually her family heirloom, and the family "gold" that the gang had wanted all along.
  • The gang's bank robbery in Saint Denis at the end of Chapter 4 was meant to be the last job before leaving the U.S. But as soon as the robbery kicks off, the plan quickly goes downhill once it's revealed the Pinkertons were one step ahead of them, capturing Hosea and completely surrounding the bank. The ensuing firefight results in the deaths of Hosea and Lenny as well as the capture of John. Even worse is that during the Guarma arc, Dutch reveals to Arthur that all but one gold bar (which Dutch uses to pay the cave navigator) was lost at sea, subsequently rendering the heist completely pointless.
  • The last part of the game involves Arthur doing everything he can with what little time he has left to give John and his family a future. Unfortunately, Edgar Ross will eventually come and utterly destroy that future. Although Arthur does give John, Abigail and Jack several peaceful years that they would not have otherwise gotten.
  • If the newspapers in 1907 are to be believed, the Wapiti Indian reserve had no oil under it after all, meaning that all the suffering the natives there went through was entirely pointless.
  • Charles and Arthur’s daring rescue of Eagle Flies is almost immediately negated after he gets himself killed after launching an attack on Cornwall Kerosene and Tar.
  • Eagle Flies’ crusade, meant to drive away the Army, does nothing but get himself and several other Indians killed.
  • The final mission of Chapter 6 allows the player to choose between covering John's escape or going back to the camp to retrieve the money. If you choose the latter, then Micah will be waiting for Arthur back at the camp, resulting in a fight that ends with either Micah stabbing Arthur to death (if your Honor is low) or leaving him to die after his illness catches up with him (if your Honor is high). Either way, Micah gets away with the money.
  • Even if Arthur was to somehow find, and then donate, say, one hundred thousand dollars, which is a very nice amount of money, especially in 1899, Dutch would still need more money, despite the fact that the gang had more than enough to leave the country. This is Justified as Dutch actually has the money available from the Blackwater Heist but doesn't want to retire.
• All-Natural Snake Oil: Present as a consumable item which actually does something, refill your Dead Eye meter.
• Alternate History:
  • It’s mentioned in some newspapers that the President during the main story is named Alfred McAlister, when in real life, it would have been William McKinley — although he seems like a close enough match to his real life equivalent, based on the articles. Like McKinley, he presides over the Spanish-American War, fudging the States' casualties for propaganda purposes; he also institutes a deeply unpopular protectionist tariff that inflates duty prices on imported goods, something his counterpart did earlier as a Ohio Representative. It’s mentioned in the epilogue that he, too, was assassinated, and succeeded by...
  • McAlister's vice president, Thaddeus Waxman, is a stand-in for Theodore Roosevelt. Like TR, Waxman is noted to be a crusading reformer and expander of industry, a strong proponent of national defense, and a celebrated Navy veteran (having been a Colonel in the Rough Riders), who almost immediately eclipses his predecessor in public approval; the only difference is that he served as a Senator, not a Governor as Roosevelt had. This is also a Retcon, as Roosevelt had already been fleetingly mentioned as the President at the time of Red Dead Redemption ^note Unless he was elected in the 1908 election.
  • The "Prominent Americans" Cigarette Card set features two additional presidents, Fisher and Hardin. No information is given about their terms or time in office, but they seem to be physically modeled on Martin Van Buren (combined with the widow's peak and spectacles of an elderly Andrew Jackson) and Rutherford B. Hayes, respectively.
  • The KKK is active throughout the game but had been dismantled by the Grant Administration in the early 1870s in real life and wouldn’t be active in large numbers until about fifteen years later when the film The Birth of a Nation was released.
• Always Check Behind the Chair: Stashes of items can be found all over the game world. Chimneys are an oddly popular place for storing valuables. Lockboxes can be found tucked under/between all manner of furniture. Stashes of money and items can also be found out in nature, such as in tree stumps and crevasses.
• Amazing Freaking Grace: Aboard a dilapidated houseboat in Bluewater Marsh is a phonograph that plays the harmonica rendition of the song.
• Ambiguous Situation: A bunch of these...
  • It’s not clear what exactly happened in Blackwater. The gist of it seems to be it was going well until they got into a shootout with the Pinkertons and Dutch killing an innocent civilian named Heidi McCourt. Dutch was goaded into murdering Heidi by Micah and things quickly went south from there. Javier says it was chaos but tries to downplay Dutch murdering the girl. He could very well just be trying to protect Dutch or Dutch could have needed to do it. It's possible that Dutch murdering Heidi is what caused the Pinkertons to swarm the gang, but it’s also just as likely that the whole thing could have been a set up by the Pinkertons. Dutch’s speech that can be found in Horseshoe Overlook makes it sound like he knew it was going to be a bloodbath all along but the question is why he would have thought that.
  • As related to above, there’s never a definitive answer as to how long Micah has been selling out the gang. Milton says he’s been helping since after Guarma but there’s other implications he’s been doing it for longer than that. You can find Dutch’s wanted poster at his camp at Strawberry, suggesting he’s been planning to sell Dutch down the river the whole time. If Blackwater was a setup, he’d be the prime suspect and it would mean he’s been working with them for months. The campsite he suggests for Chapter 3 is also a prime location for an ambush. He also wears a white hat which is usually saved for the good guys in Westerns; however, this could also be a hint that he’s working with the “good guy” Pinkertons who are trying to get Dutch.
  • A lot of Dutch’s Sanity Slippage is left open to interpretation but it seems like a recent thing. Whether or not he was Evil All Along but managed to hide it or genuinely changed once the pressure started mounting is debatable but Hosea and Arthur who know him best say he’s changed pretty early on. His behavior also gets notably more erratic after he hits his head in Chapter 4. Micah’s influence on him is also ambiguous, he could be taking advantage of Dutch’s deteriorating state or he could be the one causing it.
  • The specifics of Arthur’s love life are also left very vague. It seems like he and Mary were together for quite some time, he tells Mary-Beth that she put a lot of years into him even though she knew they’d probably never be able to get married. The picture of them when they were younger doesn’t have a date on it so it’s not clear just how long they were together nor how long ago she got married. It’s also not clear if she truly was in love with her husband or if it was a Marriage of Convenience ordered by her dad. Arthur’s other confirmed relationship, with his son’s mom Eliza, is similarly left ambiguous. It seems like a fling but he never explicitly says that.
    • The life and death of his son Isaac and lover Eliza is also left vague. All Arthur says is that he was a good kid and that he once taught him to fish. Considering Arthur compares Jack to Isaac, he was likely around Jack's age when he died. He mentions Eliza was nineteen, but it's unknown if he means that that was her age when he met her or that was her age when she died. Arthur also calls her "a good kid" which only adds to the ambiguity. It could be that he was significantly older than her or it could mean they were around the same age and it did really happen that long ago. If it was the latter, Issac would have been roughly the same age as Jack was in the first game, adding to the similarities between the two of them. It’s also not clear how long ago Isaac died, as Arthur tells Jack and Rains Falls that it happened a long time ago.
  • The Strange Man is back and even more ambiguous this time. He seems to have made some sort of Deal with the Devil with Herbert Moon to survive the cholera outbreak. He knows stuff about Arthur too and you can talk to a guy in New Austin who’s met him. Said guy thinks he’s the Grim Reaper (which is another one of the main theories). He’s left so ambiguous that the Blind Seer, who otherwise gets everything right, says he doesn’t know if he’s “of this world” nor does he know what the man wants with John.
  • Why Dutch is there at Micah’s hideout in the epilogue is also not explicitly explained. He says he’s there for “The same reason as you” to John but that could mean he thinks John is there for the money or that he wants to kill Micah. Word of St. Paul says it's the latter.
• Anachronism Stew: The game, set in 1899, has a mix of culture, technology, and society ranging from all over the latter half of the 19th century through the first few decades of the 20th century. To note specific examples:
  • Texas Hold'em being the go-to version of poker. While it's possible that Texas Hold'em was invented by 1899 (the history of the game is rather obscure), it didn't become popular until at least 1925. Five/Seven Card Stud or straight draw poker would have been the go-to card games of the era.
  • The available firearms are an odd mix of guns which would have been obsolete for decades and guns not even invented yet in real life. For example, the Volcanic pistol was an obscure museum piece outdated even before the Civil War while the Carbine Repeater (modeled after the real life Spencer Carbine◊) is about 30 years past its prime by 1899. Meanwhile, the Semi-Auto Shotgun (modeled on the real life Browning Auto-5) was patented in 1898 but wouldn't be produced until 1902, with the in-game being a post-1950 example based on the reload animation^note Examples of the Auto-5 produced prior to 1950 required the bolt release button to be held in order to insert rounds into the magazine. An update during the period introduced a two-piece shell lifter, allowing the magazine to be topped up without requiring the bolt release to be held.. The Maxim machine guns are Model 1908s, here appearing nine years too early.
  • The Carcano Rifle is based on the Carcano 91/38. The "91" stands for 1891, but the "38" stands for 1938. The actual Carcano 91 was a much longer rifle than the in-game model, which is copied directly from the infamous "Lee Harvey Oswald" version. The Oswald connection explains why the Carcano is only available as a sniper rifle, despite the actual Carcano 91 being relatively inaccurate for its type. It is also an Italian weapon, and finding even a period-appropriate Italian rifle (such as the Modello) in the American west would have been extremely unlikely.
  • Shotgun ammunition appears in metallic cartridges, which were more expensive, heavier, and fell out of favor following the introduction of paper shotgun cartridges in 1877.
  • While pre-rolled cigarettes were available in 1899, hand-rolling cigarettes was by far the more popular method of the era. It wouldn't be until World War I (where the easier-to-ship pre-rolled cigarettes were included in solder's rations) and the subsequent advertising boom of the 1920s that pre-rolled cigarettes took over.
  • The "Open Range" era quickly came to an end with the invention of barbed wire in the 1870s and was all but completely dead by 1890. Barbed wire is extremely rare in the game and farmers leading herds of sheep through open land is a common random encounter.
  • Telegraph (and even some telephone) poles and lines were much more common in real-life 1899 than what is depicted in the game. They would have run along pretty much every railroad track and most major roads.
  • Milton and Ross introduce themselves as Pinkerton agents acting as lawmen on behalf of the U.S. government. This arrangement was common in the 1870s and 80s, but had been made illegal by 1899.
  • By 1899, bison were reduced to a tiny population while wolves were intentionally hunted to extinction in the real life analogues of the in-game locations where they spawn. Both, especially the wolves, are plentiful in-game. (Conservation and re-introduction efforts have brought both species back in modern times.)
  • While wood-burning 1870s-style locomotives could still be found in the West, especially on short and narrow-gauge lines, most locomotives by 1899 were coal-burners of more modern design. Oddly, the locomotives in RDR2 are still more modern than those in the first game, which is set in 1911.
  • In Chapter 5, it is possible to overhear Dutch talking to himself at camp where he seems to be running through a game of chess in his mind. He mutters "ah, yes, White to d4", which is the Algebraic Notation of for describing chess moves. However, that system of notation didn't become popular until the 1980s. During the era of the game, Descriptive Notation would have been used instead (Ex. "White Queen's Knight 4"). As a Genius Bonus, the move Dutch describes is the first in a strategy known as the "Dutch Defense".
  • The KKK can be encountered, but the original incarnation of the Klan was forcibly disbanded by the Grant administration in the early 1870s, long before the game starts in 1899, and wouldn't be revived until the release of The Birth of a Nation (1915).
  • During the "Oh Brother" stranger quest, one of the brothers calls the other a gerbil as an insult. Gerbils were largely unknown outside their natural habitats before the 1950s.
  • The Dutch Warmblood horse breed wouldn't be bred into existence until the 1960s, yet it is available to purchase in a variety of coats across various stables dotted across the world of RDR 2, with even a special cremello variant available to find later on.
  • The word "moron" is used as an insult several times. Not only was the term first coined by Henry H. Goddard in 1910, but the word's derogatory connotations are even more recent^note To note, "moron" was originally a psychological term used to refer to the mentally disabled, but as time went on it became more commonly used as a stupidity-related insult. The words "idiot" and "imbecile" are in the same boat..
• An Arm and a Leg: Powerful weapons, such as shotguns, can tear limbs and even heads apart.
• And I Must Scream: You can find an outhouse in back of the Braithwaites' estate with their daughter Gertrude locked inside. She is clearly unhinged (implied to be from inbreeding) and has been shut up for what may be months, if not years. And shooting the chains holding the door shut doesn't break the links as usual. You can't save her.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Like with the original game, after the protagonist dies at the end of the main story, it goes through a Time Skip to a few years later where the player takes control of a new character - this time the second playable character being none other than John himself.
• And the Adventure Continues: The main story ends after the second Epilogue. At that point, you are free to explore the entirety of the game world as well as complete any side missions and challenges which remain.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes:
  • Your rewards for completing the Legendary Animal hunts are a trinket/talisman made out of part of the animal which grants a passive bonus and an outfit (or piece of an outfit) made from the animal's pelt/skin.
  • Getting your Honor rank to either +4 or -4 gives you unique revolver grips: the Cattleman Revolver gets a special pearl grip, while the Double-Action Revolver gets a special ebony grip. High Honor also unlocks certain pre-made outfits in the catalogue.
• And Your Reward Is Edible: Rewards for minor missions are sometimes food items or tonics. Notably, fulfilling camp requests from your fellow gang members are usually rewarded with items you can consume, such as Jack giving your chocolate or Tilly giving you health tonics.
• Animals Lack Attributes: Averted with horse testicles that react to changes in temperature.
• Animal Motifs: Arthur has one in the form of either a stag or a coyote (often mistaken for a wolf) depending on his honor level. It first appears among the cluster of its fellow animals while he is recuperating and dreaming toward the end of "Blessed are the Peacemakers", appears again as he is dreaming while on Guarma at the end of "Welcome to the New World", and reappears when he is diagnosed by the doctor and during important cut scenes as an omen of his own mortality for the rest of the game.
• Animation Bump: While the PS4 Pro isn't powerful enough to run the entire game in full 4K, Photo Mode seems to bump the resolution to the max when activated.
  • The PC release plays it completely straight, though.
• Annoying Arrows: Generally averted. The Bow can be a devastating weapon in the hands of a skilled player. Standard arrows will silently kill a human enemy with a single headshot. Improved arrows, intended for use on large game such as cougars and elk, will silently kill human enemies with a vital shot.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • While Arthur is responsible for feeding the gang, the player is in no way forced to do so. They will never die from the lack of food, although they will complain to Arthur if he returns to the camp. You can freely forget about them and do something entirely different without having to worry about them. However, it's worth mentioning that failing to keep the camp fed will result in poor interpersonal relationships with them, which in turn may lead to Arthur missing out on side missions with other characters.
  • As with its predecessor (and GTA V), if you fail a sequence enough times, the game will helpfully allow you to skip it.
  • In the GTA V mission "The Long Stretch", one mandatory objective is to purchase a pump-action shotgun from Ammu-Nation with Franklin's own money. It is possible to trigger a Mission Failure if Franklin doesn't have enough money for it. During a mission in Chapter 2 involving a bit of livestock rustling, Arthur needs to purchase a Remington Rolling Block rifle from the Valentine gun store, again with his own funds. However, should he not have the funds to pay for the cost of the rifle himself, John will pay for it instead.
  • If you lose a legendary animal pelt, it'll be automatically given to the trapper, you just won't get money for it.
  • The hunting system is very in-depth - if you want to get a perfect pelt, you have to scout the animal, make sure it's a "perfect" version of the animal and kill it (in one shot) with the appropriate weapon. Use a high-powered rifle to kill a rabbit, for example, and you'll ruin the pelt. Not so with the legendary animals. You can use your most powerful gun, and even if you have to shoot the animal multiple times the pelt will still be impeccable.
  • In the final mission you're supposed to use dynamite to flush Micah out so Sadie can get the drop on him, but nothing in game tells you to do this, and trying to shoot it out with him gets you killed. However, if you don't think to do that, then Micah will eventually move into position on his own and the cutscene will trigger without you having to do anything.
  • Unlike in Rockstar's previous attempt at the system, ignoring Arthur's basic needs isn't fatal. Instead of draining his health, once the cores are empty you'll only suffer from small penalties^note An empty health core lowers your health and health regen, an empty stamina core lowers your accuracy and stamina regen, and an empty dead eye core stops Dead Eye from regenerating by itself and slightly affects accuracyIn addition, while in San Andreas you pretty much had to stop whatever you were doing and head to a restaurant when CJ got hungry, Arthur's needs can be satisfied by just purchasing or hunting various consumables and using them from the ever-present inventory.
  • While animal corpses left on the ground or on your horse will eventually rot, everything in your satchel is safe, meaning you don't have to worry about that perfect squirrel carcass or that food you cooked but put away, as neither will go bad if you leave them sitting in your inventory.
  • Patch 1.15 added in the ability to fast travel from player-made camps like in the previous game. This allows the player to quickly travel to remote locations that no fast travel stations go to (such as Colter). The gang's camp is also listed on this fast travel list, greatly simplifying gathering crafting material for Pearson.
  • Prior to update 1.21, cooked meat - which includes some of the best core-restoring items in the game - could only be used through your satchel, unlike all other consumables that could be used much faster through the inventory wheel. The aforementioned patch made all types of cooked meat accessible through the inventory wheel, making them much faster and easier to use.
  • When fishing, your bait isn't affected by the stream and will always stay perfectly still. Fishing from a boat also glues the boat in place when normally it would move with the water.
  • The "Zoologist" achievement requires you to study every animal in the game, while "Skin Deep" requires you to kill and skin every animal. Mercifully, neither of these achievements require you to study/kill any animals that can only be found on Guarma, and the latter does not require you to kill and skin any domestic animals.
  • While your main horse can only be summoned via whistling if it's within a certain distance, you can still saddle up one of your other saved horses if you make it to a stable on foot—even though your saddle should technically still be on the horse that got separated from you. And if you return to the stable, you'll find the other horse safely stabled there.
  • Cougars and panthers are among the most dangerous animals in the game, being both incredibly quick and incredibly deadly. As a small consolation, however, nearly all of them are perfect three-star specimens that will yield a perfect pelt if killed cleanly. It's effectively the game's way of acknowledging that if you successfully kill one of the damn things, you deserve a perfect pelt.
• Anti-Hero: Played with in different ways regarding Arthur, depending on his Honor level. A high Honor Arthur downplays it, still being an outlaw but one who avoids needless criminal activities and frequently helps those in trouble. A neutral Honor Arthur plays it straight, still caring about the gang above all. A low Honor Arthur plays it up to the point of being a Nominal Hero, with the only thing separating him from outright evil characters like Colm O'Driscoll and Micah is his being honor-bound to Dutch and his gang.
  Arthur: Maybe when your mother's finished mourning your father, I'll keep her in black, on your behalf.
• Anyone Can Die: Many of your fellow gang members die suddenly and messily. Most of the gang, including Arthur, will be dead or have run away by the conclusion, and even more are Doomed by Canon. By the conclusion of Red Dead I, the only gang members left alive are Jack, Sadie, Charles, Tilly, Mary-Beth, Pearson, Trelawny and Swanson (Karen's fate is unknown).
• Appetite Equals Health: Subverted. When Arthur gets really sick with TB, his health and stamina cores actually empty faster than when he's healthy. This is most likely to imply he gets tired quicker, not that he's hungry, but the cores are replenished when you eat.
• Appropriated Title: Downplayed example. While this game is technically the third Red Dead game (after Red Dead Revolver and Red Dead Redemption), since Redemption was much, much more popular than Revolver, the game drops the RDR naming convention of the first game and just goes straight with calling itself Red Dead Redemption II. However, it does end up making sense, as by the end Arthur spends what little time he has left trying to help Marston live a peaceful life, thereby redeeming himself.
• Arbitrary Gun Power: Just like its predecessor, two guns which fire the exact same ammunition can deal wildly different amounts of damage, logic be damned. Guns with a higher rate of fire, in most cases, deal less damage than slower-to-fire guns which use the same ammunition as well. To note a few specific examples:
  • The Scholfield Revolver (based on the Smith & Wesson Model 1875) would have lower damage than the Cattleman Revolver (based on the Colt Model 1873) and a faster reload speed. They fired a lower velocity and hence lower powered .45 round than the Cattleman. The top break design is a lot faster to reload than a fixed cylinder design.
  • The Carbine Repeater (based on the Spencer Repeater) should be the most powerful of the repeaters, firing by far the largest caliber round. However, it is the weakest.
  • The C93 Borchardt semi-auto pistol is depicted as more powerful than the C96 Mauser pistol, even though it should be the other way around. The 7.65×25mm Borchardt and 7.63mm Mauser rounds are both identical dimension-wise, but the Mauser round is an evolution of the earlier Borchardt round and thus carries a more potent powder charge in its case.
  • The Volcanic Pistol (based on the pistols of the same name developed by Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson) is the single most powerful sidearm in the game, providing the stopping power of a repeater in a small package. In real life the pistol used a novel Rocket Ball bullet design - while the caseless ammunition was advanced for the time, the bullet's minuscule charge meant it was woefully underpowered.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Easy to miss, but it's definitely in play, likely due to AI limitations. Most missions have Arthur being assisted by a group of NPCs, but if it moves beyond 2-4 it's almost guaranteed that the group will only be that big for a riding sequence, and when the action kicks off the number will be whittled down for some reason or other, or the period of assistance will be very brief. The mission "My Last Boy" exemplifies it best, since it is enforced twice. In the beginning, seven members of the gang go to the oil field, but upon arrival Dutch takes John, Bill and Javier to distract the military from another location so that Arthur, Sadie and Charles can save Eagle Flies. The trio are then joined by six braves... most of whom die by the time the group reaches the bottom of the hill and starts fighting; any survivors will likely also perish or disappear in all the chaos. Along the way, the group picks up Eagle Flies and Paytah, and they do regroup with Dutch and the rest, for about a minute while they take out what's left of the soldiers, after which Arthur is aided only by Dutch. The most egregious example occurs in "Horsemen, Apocalypses," where, despite the gang's hideout being attacked, several members (Micah, Bill, Javier, Lenny) are inexplicably missing, and their absence is never addressed afterwards, which is made all the more jarring by the fact that they have camp dialogue concerning the attack.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: The Pirate Sword, Volcanic Pistol, various Hatchets, and even the Bow are surprisingly effective weapons, even against other armed enemies. With self-crafted arrows, the Bow becomes the most versatile and efficient weapon for hunting.
• Arc Words:
  • "What choice do I have?" is a recurring quote throughout the game which reflects the fatalist views of the main characters.
  • "That's the way it is." in the similar vein.
  • "Revenge is a fool's game", a rule the gang goes by to discourage their members from taking things too personally. The more the gang unravels, the more they break this rule. This culminates in the final mission in the game, an act of revenge by the surviving members of the gang against Micah for his betrayal and his (possible) murder of Arthur.
  • To the first game, "Don't look back."
• Arrows on Fire: A craftable item which naturally set targets on fire. Dynamite arrows take this to another level.
• The Artful Dodger: Saint-Denis has a whole gang of them. During his initial time in the city, Arthur gets robbed by the children and they even lure him into a back alley and surround him with weapons.
• The Artifact:
  • One of the campfire songs present in the game is the real-life song "Ring Dang Doo", except the mention of "New Orleans" is replaced with "Ol' Bordeaux". "New Bordeaux" was the beta name for Saint Denis, the game's New Orleans stand-in, before being changed in development.^note This may have something to do with Uncle having 2 voice actors, one of whom died but his singing was kept in. If he died before the change was made, it makes sense why this oddity was kept
  • In the epilogue, most pictures of John in the pause menu depict him with his normal hair, but in gameplay his hair is a Palette Swap of Arthur's that naturally parts to the opposite direction. The pictures were thus either made before they finished designing 1907 John, or the change was made late in production.
  • The info card for Wallace Station claims it's in Ambarino, but it's actually in West Elizabeth. A leftover signpost under the map confirms it was originally further to the north, but the card was not updated.
  • The Guarma segment is an odd case. The 2016 map shows it was not a late addition, but appears to have been heavily truncated from what was originally planned. Unused coding suggests it was meant to act as a small second hub — coding suggests you could return to it in the epilogue and turning off the snipers reveals the area is much larger than it seems, with an entire unseen second bay down an inaccessible path. The mansion seems to also have been plot-relevant. Rewrites turned the location into a linear, limiting, and temporary experience.
  • Tempest Rim is a leftover area from before large amounts of Ambarino were redesigned so the story would flow better; glitching there and comparing the area to the 2016 leaked map shows there are several roads and even an opening where Colter used to be before the redesign.
  • Jeremy Gill noticeably mentions Frontera Bridge — a railroad bridge from I which connects New Austin to Nuevo Paraiso in Hennigan's Stead — but the bridge doesn't actually exist in this game. This line is seen as one of the many hints that suggests Mexico was planned but cut.
• Artifact Title: Present on two levels:
  • The "Red" still draws from Red Harlow, the main character of Red Dead Revolver, who does not appear.
  • Arthur appears to not be interested in changing his ways, even if he is starting to doubt Dutch. It's initially assumed that the name "Redemption" is because of the game's ties to the previous game, and to make the game more recognizable to general audiences. This is ultimately subverted come the climax of the game, as Arthur fights doggedly (and gives up any hope of recovery from his tuberculosis) in order to give John and his family a future, which one could argue is his redemption.
• Artificial Atmospheric Actions:
  • Fish are prone to beaching themselves if you stand near bodies of water for long enough.
  • Certain encounters can be broken for silly reasons. For example, during the recurring encounter where you can shoot the leg irons off of an escaped prisoner or the one where you rescue a woman tied to the back of the horse, you are necessarily holding your drawn weapon. When the "encounter" script ends, the person you just rescued may panic and flee from you due to your drawn weapon despite you having just helped them.
• Artificial Brilliance: What Rockstar is wishing to accomplish. They realized that the next step in open-world games is interacting with the game world and seeing how it reacts to the player in turn, and rebuilt parts of their game engine to support this. A few examples; note that these happened in free-roam, and were not part of any mission.
  • Rob a camp while its owner is fishing nearby. A dog left to guard said camp starts barking and alerts the fisherman. You are then presented with several options, such as apologizing, threatening, or insulting the fisherman, and your actions determine what will happen next. You may attack the man, the man may attack you, the fisher may flee to alert law enforcement and put a bounty on you, or you can apologize and give his loot back, for a few examples. Additionally, how the fisherman reacts to those options depends on your Honor rating as well as your personal appearance. He'll be much more likely to accept an apology from a well-dressed and bathed character than an unkempt one in blood-stained and bullet-hole-riddled clothing.
  • Ride close to a farm. The owner picks up a shotgun and starts yelling threats to you. Again, the dialogue system allows this situation to be defused peacefully or violently, depending on your actions.
  • Animals have realistic dynamic behaviors and interactions with their environment, and frequently interact with one another. In just one example, docile herbivores will bolt if they see another animal near them running away from something, even if they don't sense what caused that other animal to flee. This makes stealth during hunts especially important, as it isn't just your quarry you have to worry about seeing you.
    • In some cases, this is taken even further. You may occasionally happen upon a buck with its antlers entangled with another, with the latter having died some time before (likely from exhaustion), or a wolf pack fighting with a bear over a kill. Both instances are known to happen in real life.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The whole level of interactivity with NPCs won't stop enemies from standing right in the open during gunfights. Even if they are in cover, remaining in cover yourself for long enough will cause them to run straight at you where they can be mowed down with ease. Unfortunately, this is also true of your allies during firefights. Many players have failed missions thanks to their allies (who usually must survive) charging headfirst into the crossfire of several in-cover enemies...
  • Enemy NPCs outside of plot-relevant scenarios can become complete idiots and even shoot their own partner(s)-in-crime. They may even blame you for their own idiocy.
  • Horses in real life are very careful with where they run. Even if just a small person or obstacle is on their path, they will veer off to the side rather than run into anything and will (usually) avoid trees and other creatures. Horses in the game, however, will run face-first into trees, rocks, and other horses as soon as you don't pay attention, sending themselves and Arthur tumbling.
  • Cougars and Panthers are dangerous creatures who can kill you instantly with a pounce. However, they seem bewildered if you are thrown off by your horse in their presence. They'll actually start to run away from you while you get to your feet before eventually circling back. This gives you plenty of time to shoot them.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • Tuberculosis doesn't quite work in real life the way it works in this game, presumably for the sake of time compression. First of all, only about 10% of people who get infected ever develop the disease and generally speaking if you make it two years without showing symptoms, you're in the clear. Although people who smoke like Arthur do have a higher probability of it becoming active. Even today about 80% of people who live in the developing world carry the disease even though it can now be treated with a course of antibiotics. Second of all, even pre-antibiotics you had about 1/3 chance of being able to survive it so it wasn't an automatic death sentence. It varies how long it takes to start showing symptoms but presuming the game takes place over the course of a few months, the time it takes for Arthur to start getting sick is accurate. What's not accurate is how quickly it takes him to die. It usually takes several years for this to happen,^note  The average at the time was about five years not several months. Had it taken that long for Arthur to die, it likely would have dragged the story out, especially given that they were already working with pre-existing timeline. Of course, he does die after receiving a hard beating and sharp blow to the head, so the TB may have simply left him too weak to survive that.
  • Dutch's horse, The Count, is said to be an Albino Arabian Stallion. In real life, horses cannot carry true albinism due to Lethal White Syndrome. Albino horses are born with non-functioning colons and die within a few days of birth.
  • Horses in game have color variants, and some of these have better stats (black arabian has slightly better stats than the white one for example). In reality, horses of the same breed can be more healthy or have more stamina than other members, but it's not determined by coat color, but by different genes that aren't expressed in coat color.
  • All Bald eagles have juvenile textures
  • Owls in the game have non-zygodactyl feet and have a wing flapping sound when flying.
  • Cervidae species seen in the game (deer, elk, moose, etc.) begin to grow antlers each spring which reach full size during mating season in the fall, then fall off in the winter in real life. In the game, which explicitly begins in May 1899 and the first six chapters end after no more than 2-3 months, these species have their full, mating season-sized antlers right away when they should still be small and velvety.
  • Of the four snakes found on Guarma, only one, the Fer-de-Lance (a type of pit viper), is venomous. The other three are non-venomous boas, yet Arthur can still be poisoned if bit by them.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: While Oleander Sage is poisonous in real life, its lethality is greatly exaggerated in game. In reality, it would take a fairly large quantity to kill an adult human. Here, its residue on an arrowhead can kill a grizzly bear.
• Artistic License – Geography: The unaccessible landmass southeast of Lemoyne causes all kinds of issues. It actually wasn't present on some early map concepts, so no-one's quite sure why it was added. ^note The theory that makes the most sense is that it's used to hide Guarma, but even that rises more questions than it answers
  • Either the Gulf of Mexico doesn't exist, or the New Orleans stand-in is nowhere near it. In fact, it's been replaced by the Mississippi River, and it's practically impossible to tell where exactly the border is - it can be anywhere from southwest of Flat Iron lake to northeast of Annesburg. Either way, in this universe Mexico and America connect to each other east of New Orleans, which is a bit excessive even when you take Space Compression into account.
  • Nobody is sure just what route the big ships anchored at Saint Denis take to reach Cuba. They can't go east since there's a waterfall on the way, so the only other option is north, up the Lannahassee river.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety: In what has become a tradition for Rockstar, some liberties were taken with how the firearms operate:
  • The Carcano 91/38 is ALWAYS loaded with a full en-bloc clip, regardless of whether or not the existing en-bloc clip is still in the rifle itself, as there's no animation for the removal of the current clip when reloading with rounds still in it, nor an animation for the ejection of it out the bottom of the magazine when it's emptied after chambering the last round.
  • The Evans Repeater's reload animation sees the wielder cycling the action every time a round is loaded into the magazine. This is correct as the weapon's helical magazine does not have a spring follower, and feeding/advancing of rounds is done by cycling the action. However, this fails to take into account scenarios where some, but not all, of the rounds in the magazine are fired. Trying to top up the magazine in this instance would result in a live round being ejected from the weapon every time the action is cycled to advance the magazine after loading a round, and would repeat until all of the existing rounds in the magazine ahead of the rounds being added in were emptied out. A visual breakdown of this is available courtesy of Forgotten Weapons' video covering the Evans.
  • Arthur has a tendency to keep his finger on the trigger, even when he's not aiming at anything. Especially when you inspect any of his handguns, his finger is on the trigger. However, his second visit with a side character, Charlotte, has him trying to aim her husband's rifle downwards to the ground while she's holding it.^note You have to do this if you're not aiming at anything. Rifles can misfire, hence every gun needs to point to the ground in case of accidental misfire. She actually notices and follows along.
  • While trying to find information about Angelo Bronte in Saint Denis, Dutch puts a gun to Arthur's head after catching him off guard outside of a bar, and tells him "Stick 'em up, cowboy." Of course he's just joking and the situation is a comedic one... except he actually pulled the hammer back and had his finger on the trigger. One of the most important rules in firearm safety is that you never put your finger on the trigger unless you're going to shoot.
  • The Navy Revolver reuses the reload animations from the Single-Action Army, even though it is clearly a cap-n-ball model rather than one that's been converted to load metallic cartridges. As such, the reload animations shows the player character simply replacing the percussion caps without actually loading in new ball and powder. The Grand Theft Auto: Online iteration of this weapon makes this simple, wherein its reloads involve replacing the entire cylinder.
  • The "best weapons" to use for hunting certain species of game can make a real life hunter cringe. In real life, a .22 caliber like the Varmint Rifle can reasonably used for game up to the size of a fox or even a coyote without much fuss. Here, they can shrug off multiple shots while ruining their pelts. Further, it is perhaps the most popular caliber for small game like squirrels, but here, it will ruin their pelts and small game arrows (which would be incredibly difficult to use in reality for game that small) must be used instead. Finally, shotguns are one of the most versatile firearms for hunting in reality with slugs and buckshot for larger game, and birdshot for smaller species. In-game, using slugs will only result in a perfect kill against very large animals like bears and alligators. Against anything else, any type of shotgun ammo will ruin pelts and carcasses.
• Artistic License – History:
  • The KKK was not in operation during 1899. The First Klan was shut down by the U.S. Government in the early 1870s under the Grant administration and wouldn't be recreated until the 1910s (although a number of similarly brutal white supremacist groups remained in operation in the South), and their infamous hood and robes wouldn't be seen until much later. But who doesn't like seeing the KKK make complete fools of themselves? Since Red Dead is set in an alternate version of the United States like the GTA series ^noteTo give an example of how different America in GTA is from real life, their version of Las Vegas is in their version of California instead of Nevada, it's possible that the KKK persisted in some form later. In one of the random encounters, a KKK leader notes that it's become much harder to operate due to the federal government, so they're probably a remnant.
  • When Arthur first meets Agent Milton, Milton claims he's "seconded to the United States Government". This is a legal impossibility in 1899, as the Anti-Pinkerton Act was passed in 1893 which prevented the USA government from hiring agents of the agency.
  • One of the side missions in Saint Denis involves helping a professor in the area construct and test out the first electric chair for a public audience. The electric chair was actually conceived in the 1880s, and was tested out for the first time in 1890 before became a common execution method by the end of the century.
• Artistic License – Ornithology:
  • The bird referred to in-game as a "California Quail" as actually a Northern Bobwhite. A rather inexplicable misidentification, given that actual California Quails have a rather unique and photogenic appearance compared to the relatively plain-looking Bobwhite.
  • Little Egrets can be found in the swamplands of Lemoyne, despite the fact that they are a largely Eurasian species that occasionally wanders into the eastern United States and has only recently established a population in the Caribbean. This was likely an attempt to create a less-fancy counterpart to the Snowy Egret, which in this game is always shown in its fancy breeding plumage (in reality, Snowy Egrets only have this plumage for part of the year, and throughout the rest of the year look almost identical to the Little Egret).
• Artistic License – Military: Colonel Favours and Captain Monroe wear incorrect ranks. Favours has Brigadier General stars (a rank above him) while Monroe has Second Lieutenant bars (two ranks below him).
• Artistic License – Paleontology: One of the game's points of interest is a compressed human skeleton completely fossilized in an exposed rock wall. Problem is, modern humans have only existed in North America for less than 13,000 years, far too recently for any such thing to actually happen by 1899.
• Artistic License – Space:
  • The moon is incorrectly placed — it's on the northern skies, which would be correct if the game took place on the Southern Hemisphere. As the game takes place in North America, it should be on the southern skies. It also goes through phases much faster than the real thing.
  • The constellations, while largely correct, are also incorrectly placed in relation to each other.
• Ascended Glitch: While the "Dead Eye-powered Homing Throwables" glitch from the first game has been addressed (it still happens but only in very short range), you can craft homing varieties of the throwing knife and tomahawk in this game.
• Ascended Meme:
  • You can find the skeleton of the Donkey Lady in New Austin just south of Armadillo. It even wears the same clothes as the glitched character in the original video.
  • A random encounter called "Treehouse Man" (also in New Austin, in Hennigan's Stead) features a man with a very cat-like appearance (he has a cleft lip, broad nose, and cat-like eyes). In the game's files he's called "Cougar Man", which was another glitch recorded by the same person as the above one wherein a cougar spawned with the appearance of man.
• Asshole Victim: There are arguably so many to count:
  • Story mission character villains will actually die but Arthur doesn't kill them.
  • Ambushers have a frequent case where they demand a toll, pretending to ask for help, or attacking on site and you respond with a bullet to their face.
  • Certain NPCs you find will try to get your attention, but beating up some NPCs or killing them increases your honor.
  • Most of the gang's targets both during the main mission and companion side missions are these, reinforcing their Pragmatic Villainy ways. Strauss' debt collection missions are one of the few exceptions.
• As the Good Book Says...: In one camp interaction of the Colter chapter, Rev. Swanson reads a passage from Isaiah 40:20-31 (KJV) to the women; when Karen asks what this means, Swanson says he's not quite sure anymore, but it still comforts him somehow.^note It's an affirmation of God's power over superficial "false idols" borne of human vanity, thus symbolizing how it's foolish to put complete trust in Dutch, who will soon become a "king" and "judge" in his own way, or representing Swanson's own loss of faith, as he traded his religion for the vices of morphine and alcohol.
• Attack Animal: Numerous groups use dogs in this fashion. Bounty hunters who come to apprehend you if you have a bounty may bring dogs, which are good at forcing you out of cover.
• Attack Its Weak Point: The highest level of Deadeye now shows a faint image of the target's vital organs, such as the brain.
• Attack on One Is an Attack on All: The Van der Linde gang believes this strongly. The loyalty that the gang members show each other is what sets them apart from the other outlaw gangs like the O'Driscolls who abandon members left and right. One of the major signs of Dutch's increasing villainy is that he is unconcerned about the possibility of the government executing John Marston.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Played for Laughs when French artist Charles Châtenay flees town Disguised in Drag — very obvious drag. He gets a fair few admiring comments from people before they get close enough to notice. Being who he is, he eggs them on, to Arthur's mingled exasperation and amusement. He even kisses Arthur.
• Automaton Horses: Downplayed compared to most video games, including its predecessor, but still present. Horses can take far more abuse than in real life, bond much quicker with their riders (including freshly tamed wild horses), and the required care they need is significantly simplified from real life.
• Autosave: Present, including during missions where manual saving is disabled.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Dynamite arrows are the equivalent of having a RPG launcher in an old west setting. However, like other flammables and explosive weapons, target NPCs cannot be looted while animals will be "ruined", meaning you can't skin them or get meat from them.
    • Dynamite itself isn't that helpful, either; aside from the unlootable bodies, TNT explosions have a wide area of effect and risk of sudden fire that makes it effective but dangerous to use for crowd control in a close firefight, especially if you're in a building. Its practical open-world application — cracking safes — can also be done more accurately and quickly with a single round of craftable explosive ammo, meaning that buying dynamite is more a drain on your finances than gaining a competitive edge.
  • If you're willing to trek out to the far north of Ambarino and break it, the White Arabian, as mentioned below, is an extremely fast horse with the highest balanced max stats in the game... which also happens to be one of the most ill-tempered horse breeds (predators and highwaymen will cause it to bolt in fear, and even galloping makes it nervous). Agitated horses are harder to bond with, and it has much higher level requirements than average, so chances are you'll be spending a lot of time trying to tame this beast before you can reap any reward from it; likewise, the faster core drain when Agitated and its pristine snow-white coat mean that you'll also be endlessly feeding and brushing the thing. Since it never completely loses its skittish nature even at full bond, most players tend to pass them over for war or racing horses instead.
  • Dual-wielding sawed off shotguns with slug rounds. You'll reduce any man or beast to bloody chunks at close range due to the sheer stopping power of your pair of Hand Cannons, but the rate of fire and reload speed is very low, the recoil is utterly insane and the accuracy beyond very close range is poor compared to less powerful sidearms.
  • Huge fish, while awesome to catch, aren't necessarily the best size to go for as only one can be stored on a horse at a time. Even if you have a second horse and carry one yourself, you'll be able to carry a maximum of three. As such, it's better to go for several medium size fishes as they can be stored in the satchel and still sell for a good price.
  • Robberies tend to be presented as a way to make quick cash in a short amount of time, but in practice you'll usually be identified in the act (even with the bandanna) which means you'll be spending a good chunk of what you've stolen to pay off a bounty. In some cases it'll be more than the value which makes the entire robbery pointless in the first place. It's far easier to make money by looting cash and valuables from random gang members you come across or by hunting, and carries a much lower risk.
• "Awkward Silence" Entrance: You expect anything different from a Troperrific Spaghetti Western homage? When Arthur enters the Saint Denis saloon in Chapter 4, everyone freezes for a few seconds.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • Bill Williamson is very much the same boorish psychopath he was in Red Dead Redemption, only he's on your side this time. He worries that he'll get the same dementia that got his dad and seems to have PTSD from his time in the army.
  • Micah Bell is erratic, explosive, and cannot resist pulling the trigger.
  • Sadie can get kind of Ax-Crazy at times, particularly when looking for revenge.
  • All the members of the O'Driscolls, Murfree Brood, and Skinner Brothers. Especially the Skinner Brothers.

B

• Backstab: Sneaking up on a NPC with a knife drawn will allow you to perform a "Stealth Kill" in this vein.
• Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic: The Buck Antler Trinket, acquired after hunting the Legendary Deer and crafted at a fence, allows some two-star animal pelts to upgrade to three-star "perfect" pelts upon skinning the animal.
• Bad People Abuse Animals:
  • If Arthur, or John, kills an animal, either by just plain shooting it or running it over, and doesn't bother to skin or collect it, he will lose a small amount of honor.
  • Killing domesticated animals, like cattle, oxen, pigs, goats, sheep, chickens, dogs or cats, causes the same amount of honor loss as killing an innocent. If he gets caught doing so, the crime is called Animal Cruelty. Too bad that some of the stuff that Pearson and the Trapper make requires the hides/feathers from some of these domesticated animals. On the plus side, aside from some rabid dogs in "Wisdom of the Elders 2", or if being chased by bounty hunters, or trying to rob a certain angry old woman, there is no need for Arthur or John to kill dogs or cats. Not even to complete Pearson or the Trapper's items.
  • While honor will still be lost for killing a domesticated animal, the criminal aspect can be reduced by killing those that belong to criminals and other normally hostile types.
  • Likewise, when possible, after running them over, or overshooting them, just simply skin or collect and break-down the animal afterwards, to prevent honor loss. Afterwards, just donate the meat and/or carcass, to the camp, for provisions.
  • Arthur can lampshade this in a camp companion speech with Mary-Beth or Karen. He'll talk about how he's been "killing animals for no reason" and how he thinks that makes him a bad person.
  • And then there's Micah, and whatever it was he did to Cain, Jack's first dog....
  • There is an NPC who would challenge you to a horse race. He will beat his horse if he loses, and if he loses a second time, will outright kill it.
• Badass Army: Deconstructed with the U.S. Army soldiers present in the game. Drawing their attention and wrath is considered a death sentence by most of the Van der Linde gang, including Arthur. However, when they are fought, they turn out to be little more than green recruits handed rifles and sent off into dangerous situations. They are also led by an incompetent Colonel looking for one last grasp of glory before retirement who even tries to have his actually competent second-in-command court marshaled and hanged for treason when he wants to sue for peace with the Wapiti. Discussed at one point by Arthur after fighting some of them when he finds one's ID card (a precursor to dog tags) and learns that he's just a "kid from New Jersey". Except when in overwhelming numbers, they're little match for hardened career outlaws.
• Badass Bandolier: Buying one doubles the amount of rifle and repeater ammo you can carry. Once bought it, Arthur will always be wearing it and receive its benefits, even if wearing an outfit/disguise that hides it. In a nice graphical touch, as Arthur burns through his ammo stock, the number of rounds visible on the bandolier goes down.
• Badass Crew: The Van der Linde gang, naturally. Even the women acquit themselves rather nicely with a gun in their hands.
• Badass in a Nice Suit:
  • Dutch, though he has his flaws, is indeed a certifiably badass gunfighter and perhaps the sharpest dresser in the game.
  • Arthur and John. There are a number of very nice outfits to put them in, right up to formalwear. Both are full blown One-Man Armies.
• Badass Longcoat:
  • Fitting for the setting, some of the customizable clothing options are coats, ranging from waist length jackets to dusters and tailcoats. One of Arthur's default outfits (the "Gunslinger") features a slightly past-the-waist beige jacket.
  • Just like the last game, the reward for completing all the challenges is the "Legend of the East" outfit which features a red shotgun coat.
• Bag of Holding: Your satchel, even without upgrades, can hold far more than it should be able given its size. The Legend of the East satchel can hold 99 of every item.
• Bag of Spilling:
  • During the Guarma Chapter, Arthur loses access to most of his items. Justified as having washed ashore on an island after a botched robbery forced the gang to stowaway onto a ship that gets caught in a storm.
  • Then, during the Epilogue, John will start with very little, but he eventually gains access to the satchel, which might be the Legend of the East satchel, allowing him to use everything Arthur had. The only issue is a distinct lack of provisions, but given it's been eight years, odds are that the food has either spoiled, or John, Jack, and Abigail ate the food during the times that the Pinkertons were looking for them, and John couldn't hunt, and Abigail couldn't go shopping.
  • The player gets to play as John during the Epilogue, allowing him to earn a lot of money and acquiring every weapon available. Four years later, he start with little money and only a single revolver.
• Bait-and-Switch: The stranger mission "He's British, Of Course" has a circus performer duo (one of them is a "woman animal wrangler" named Margaret, who's a mustached man wearing a dress) missing several animals needed for their tour: a zebra, a tiger, and two lions. Arthur will go out and fetch the animals. The zebra turns out to be a mule painted to look like a zebra. The next animals on the list are the tiger and the lion (one of the performers adding that they sent one of their best lions to hunt down the tiger), and the tiger and lion turn out to be a cougar painted like a tiger and a dog with a wig around its neck to make it look like a lion. Once the cougar and the (dead) dog are locked up, the performers ask you to look for their second lion at Emerald Ranch. Arthur (who's seen the "lion") at first declares that it's just another dog, but the beast goes wild, and it turns out to be an actual lion after all.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: Most of the "Greet-Greet-Antagonize" dialogue chains involve these. For example, Arthur may first compliment an NPC for having a "kind face", before clarifiying it's "the kind I'd like to punch!"
• Banana Republic: Guarma, a Caribbean island belonging to Cuba governed by a brutal slaver. Arthur and the gang spend the first half of Chapter 5 there after the botched bank heist in Saint-Denis.
• Bar Brawl: One of these occurs as a story mission in Chapter 2. You are, of course, free to start them in every saloon you come across if you so wish. Especially if a person or two happens to be a rival gang member.
• The Bartender: Every saloon has one to serve drinks as well as, depending on the establishment, serve food and provide rooms/bath services.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: If you go for Dutch's money, then the knife fight with Micah can become this, as there is a wall of fires in the forest.
• Battle in the Rain: The random weather in the game can turn any battle into one of these. The rain can also be accompanied by thunder and lightning. A couple missions, such as the fistfight with Tommy and Micah’s rescue, has it rain automatically.
• Bavarian Fire Drill:
  • Mary-Beth mentions infiltrating a house by pretending to be a servant.
  • Arthur and Dutch impersonate police officers at Colm’s execution.
• Bawdy Song: Several of the campfire songs sung by the gang, particularly those sung during celebrations such as after the rescues of Sean and Jack.
• Bears Are Bad News: Both black and grizzly bears are present in the game. Black bears will usually run away from you, but grizzlies won't hesitate to charge you and are one of the most dangerous animals present. They are Lightning Bruisers that can shake off multiple non-rifle shots. Fortunately, one rifle shot to the head will put it down for good.
• Beat: In one mission, Arthur and John take a moment to have a smoke, only to both realize the cart they’re sitting on is full of dynamite they plan to use, and quickly put their cigarettes out.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Dutch's ultimate goal throughout most of the game is to get enough money to escape to Tahiti (or a similar tropical location) with the gang. In one part of the story, he, Arthur, Micah, Javier, and Bill do end up on a tropical island—Guarma—which is suffering from many of the same things that Dutch hates about the U.S., namely workers and nature getting exploited by corporations and the military.
• Beef Gate:
  • While you can go there at any point in the game, and at one point are required to rescue Sean in Chapter 2, the endless waves of federal agents swarming all around Blackwater will prevent you from getting much accomplished. Until the Epilogue as John, when you live as a local, unmolested by law enforcement by default.
  • Until you unlock and acquire the firepower needed to deal with them, venturing too far off the main story path (particularly in the northern areas of the map) early in the game will leave you vulnerable to randomly spawning enemy gang ambushes and predatory animals (wolves, grizzly bears, cougars) who will serve as one of these.
• Berserk Button:
  • The half-black, half-Native American gang member Charles takes bison hunting very seriously. The beasts are a big part of his heritage, and he urges Arthur to respectfully shoot only one and claim every part of the animal for use. So when a pair of poachers massacre an entire herd of them and just leaves the carcasses to rot, he confronts them and guns one of them down without batting an eye.
• Bestiality Is Depraved:
  • One mission brings you in contact with a criminal wanted for, among other things, "immoral animal husbandry."
  • There is a barn where you can find a man and a sheep, both dead. The sheep has a ribbon tied around it with a wedding ring lying nearby; the man is positioned behind the sheep with his pants down.
• Betting Mini-Game: Poker, Five-Finger Fillet, Blackjack and Dominoes.
• Beware the Nice Ones: A high honor Arthur is downright friendly, but he can gun down an entire enemy posse in the blink of an eye.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Agent Andrew Milton, and Micah Bell, with Colm O'Driscoll and Leviticus Cornwall as Big Bad Wannabes.
• Big Beautiful Man: Arthur can potentially become this if the player fattens him up by eating a lot of high calorie items such as chocolate bars and Big Game Meat. Unlike C.J's obesity which is Played for Laughs, Arthur is still undeniably a major Hunk. Which makes it worse when he contracts tuberculosis and gradually wastes away, as you'll be unable to eat enough to keep his weight up due to the disease.
• The Big Easy: Saint Denis is a stand-in for New Orleans.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Both the Grays and the Braithwaites, despite being bitter Feuding Families, have this in common. Led by an aging patriarch and matriarch, respectively, both families are well past their antebellum prime. The Braithwaites in particular keep a mentally disturbed daughter locked up in a shed and stoop to kidnapping Jack when they realize the gang is attempting to Play Both Sides.
• Bilingual Bonus: Any time Arthur and John meet foreign people, they will usually speak with a mix between English and their native language. These include Spanish, German, Polish and Norwegian, among others.
  • A lot of Javier's campfire songs border on this if you happen to know any Spanish. For example, his rendition of "El Coyotito" at Sean's rescue party is about how someone's personality is like a little coyote, which seems to personify about how said animal represents Arthur's Low Honor.
• Bittersweet Ending: Arthur is eventually diagnosed with tuberculosis, and Micah's betrayal of the gang results in leading each surviving member to their state in the first game. However, Arthur uses what time he has left to either help John escape with his family or get Dutch's loot, expose Micah for the traitor that he is to Dutch, and ultimately dies content in completing his goal. Years later, John, Sadie, and Charles avenge Arthur by hunting down Micah.
  • If Arthur has high honour, he succumbs to his disease and the wounds that were inflicted on him by Micah during their last fight, but he dies content that he lived a good life and helped the Marstons escape with his last act, using his final moments to relax and watch the sunrise. If Arthur has low honour but opts to help John instead of going for the money, then he dies knowing he was able to retain some dignity and having one last laugh at Micah's expense before he is dispatched via headshot.
• Blamed for Being Railroaded: Arthur catches flak from his fellow gang members several time for botched missions over which the player had no choice but to go along in order to advance the story.
• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: You can disarm enemies by liberating them of their firearms with some good aim. During duels, you can do this for a bonus in Honor. There’s also a sharpshooter challenge that asks you to disarm 3 enemies without reloading. There are also certain instances where you MUST do this to proceed (eg. One particular bounty that you must capture alive, Joshua Brown, will challenge you to a duel in a bid to escape, thus requiring you to disarm him in order to proceed. Similarly, Jamie Gillis will attempt to kill himself when cornered and must be stopped by disarming him in this manner.), and also instances where this won't work (eg. The Legendary Duelists).
• Blah, Blah, Blah: In "Who the Hell Is Leviticus Cornwall?", when Micah and Lenny find bonds during a train robbery, Lenny looks at them for a bit, while Micah is all like, "Return payments, summer tickets, blah blah blah."
• Blind Seer: Old Man Cassidy, the blind beggar random encounter. Giving him money results in him giving cryptic-but-accurate predictions of Arthur's (and John's) futures.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Gun upgrades can be purchased with parts made out of gold, silver, ivory, pearl, and ebony. Combined with intricate inlays and carvings, you can create some very blingy guns.
• Bloodier and Gorier: Animals are skinned onscreen, while Arthur just tears the skin off rabbits and other small animals with his bare hands. Animals feel pain, and your horse can be crippled. Humans can lose whole limbs or their heads if hit by a powerful enough weapon. And terrifyingly enough sometimes the player may find corpses with their intestines outside their bodies. Despite these levels of gore, it sadly doesn't get any more dynamic than you probably hoped. There's no gutting, bone snapping, exposed bones, nudity, realistic blood dynamics, or realistic burning damage to any organisms in the game.
• Blood Is the New Black:
  • Arthur and John can get coated in blood through the various fights (or random cold blooded murders) or hunting you do throughout the game, particularly if you do close range executions/attacks or carry a carcass on your shoulder. Also serves as a gameplay mechanic as if you don’t wash it off and try to interact with people they’ll be creeped out and try to avoid you/be suspicious of you.
  • Sadie also gets herself nice and blood soaked during her side mission where she and Arthur finish wiping out the O’Driscoll’s and she brutally stabs the one It's Personal with to death in Mrs. Sadie Adler, Widow.
• Body Horror:
  • Mangy animals can be encountered, particularly around the Elysian Pool. They cannot be skinned due to the disease.
  • Poor, poor Kieran. He gets his eyeballs gouged out and head cut off, before the corpse is sent back to Dutch carrying its own head. And for the players who aren't used to gore, better grab your trash bins.
• Book Ends:
  • The game begins and ends in the snow-capped mountains in the northern section of the map. At no other point are the mountains required to visit in the story outside of the beginning and end.
  • The first mission introduces the player to Dutch, Arthur and Micah, three characters who'll be there when Arthur succumbs to his tuberculosis. Additionally, the mission ends with the trio rescuing Sadie from the O'Driscolls, while the game ends when Dutch and the player (Now John instead of Arthur) save Sadie from Micah.
  • The first and final robberies the player performs for the Van der Linde gang are train jobs.
  • A portion of "Mountain Hymn" (called "Moonlight") plays when the gang travels to Horseshoe Overlook in the beginning of Chapter 2. The full thing, with lyrics, plays again during the credits.
  • Early in chapter 2, Arthur beats up a sick, dying man so badly he dies not too long after. Arthur himself dies to a combination of tuberculosis and injuries created by Micah at the end of chapter 6.
  • On a meta-level, New Austin the first region visited in the original Red Dead Redemption becomes the last area visited here, being only available in the epilogue.
• Boom, Headshot!: Just like in the first game, headshots leave some nasty-looking wounds on the bodies of your enemies. A handful of characters also go out this way during the story.
  • Sean is killed by a bullet to the head from a sniper in Chapter 3.
  • Andrew Milton is shot in the head by Abigail in Chapter 6.
  • If Arthur has Low Honor and decides to help John's escape in the Chapter 6 finale, the fight between Arthur and Micah will end with Micah shooting Arthur point-blank in the face.
• Booze-Based Buff: Various types of booze are available as consumable items. Each will boost/restore your Health, Stamina, and/or Dead Eye depending on the type in question.
• Border Patrol: As in Grand Theft Auto V, trying to take a boat off the map will result in the boat sinking leaving Arthur at the mercy of the water and whatever predators lurk in it. Some edges of the game world are unclimbable cliffs and hills that are too steep to climb, causing both Arthur and his horse to slide back down.
  • Venturing into New Austin before the epilogue will result in an unseen invincible sniper killing you. Same with Guarma - venture too far into the red zone and if the hordes of guards won't kill you, the sniper will.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Hunting:
    • The game features an absolutely massive array of animals to hunt, incredibly detailed and diverse in their size, appearance, and behavior, but most players looking to either make money hunting or provide meat for the camp will probably largely stick to Whitetail Deer. They're plentiful across most of the map, very easy to hunt once the player has a rifle, graze in groups so the player can usually find a pristine specimen, and fetch a fairly good price at the butcher. Truth in Television, as this is one of the most commonly hunted species of animal in the world for a reason.
    • The same applies to Alligators. They are extremely common, spawn on the coast just a bit north from Saint Denis, and barely move. If you have a heavy rifle, you can just look for a perfect specimen, shoot them in the head and bring their skin to Saint Denis for quick cash. Their only downside when compared to the aforementioned deer is that you can only store one alligator skin on your horse while deer skins are stackable (up to 10).
  • The game offers a wide variety of old west firearms, but the basic ones handed to you during Chapter 1 (the Cattleman Revolver, Sawed-Off Shotgun, and Carbine Repeater) are more than enough to carry you deep into the game. Ammo is extremely plentiful, upgrades are relatively cheap, and if you're a judicious user of Dead Eye, they'll drop nearly any humanoid enemy in the game with a single headshot.
  • You also get an assortment of various types of ammo for your guns to shoot with. For the most part, the regular ammo will do just fine, especially if you're aiming for headshots, and it is the only type of ammo carried by enemies.
    • In the same vein, split point ammo. It has the same damage boost as express ammo, you begin the game knowing how to craft it, and require nothing beyond the basic ammunition being converted and the time needed to craft it.
  • Did Arthur or John just engage in a bunch of crimes that now have cost him his honor, possibly while doing the Bandit Challenges or trying to get the Bountiful Achievement? To bring it back up, just engage in a whole lot of catch-and-release fishing, specifically for small kinds of fish - like bluegill and pickerel. Nothing to brag about, but releasing a small fish generates the same honor as releasing a big one, and is easier to catch in the first place. Alternatively, if their bounty in the area is clear, they can go into town, and just greet people, pet dogs and cats, and their honor will gradually increase.
  • Speaking of fishing, both small and large fish have their own problems, so focusing on the medium sized ones may be the best option. Small fish are almost worthless, and you can only transport one large fish unless you want to slowly carry a second one on your arms to the closest butcher/trapper. In contrast, medium sized fish are stored in the satchel and sell for a decent amount of money.
  • Draft horses are generally slower than most other breeds and have the worst handling, but they have a lot of upsides that the other horses don’t have. For one, they are extremely durable, making it much less likely for them to be critically injured or killed. Secondly, they are powerful enough to take out other enemy riders without falling over. Thirdly, they can be often be found towing carriages and wagons and can be easily stolen. And lastly, they are not all that skittish, making them easy to control.
• Borrowing from the Sister Series: Rockstar added an Anti-Frustration Feature in Grand Theft Auto V that allows the player to skip to the end of a mission once they've failed it several times. This same feature appears here, used in the exact same way.
• Bottomless Bladder/Nobody Poops:
  • Averted in Chapter 2: while getting drunk with Lenny, Arthur has to go outside to take a whiz in private. After getting back to the bar, he finds that everyone's faces look like Lenny's, and Hilarity Ensues.
  • Also averted, as your horse can occasionally seen emptying itself. Of course, being an animal it doesn't care where.
  • The guys in camp will also regularly go off to somewhere a bit more private and pee on trees.
• Bottomless Magazines: Everyone but you-they do have to reload, but they never run out of bullets. When you loot their corpses, however, you will only get a handful of standard rounds of ammunition. On the plus side, if you have a few of those cool bandoliers and gunbelts, you'll be able to carry hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and that's just the regular stuff. Buy or craft the improved stuff, the expression "Load on Sunday, shoot all week" becomes "When is he going to stop shooting all those flaming bullets? I preferred it when he used regular ones! My buddies didn't burn to death after getting shot then!"
• Bounty Hunter:
  • You can serve as one by taking bounties from law enforcement. Some targets must specifically be brought in alive in order to receive the bounty.
  • NPC bounty hunters may come after you if you linger in regions where you have a high bounty.
  • And sometimes, you'll just come across bounty hunters delivering their quarry. You can ignore them, even with a bounty on you they wont do anything, or kill them and let the bounty go. Or steal it for yourself.
  • Sadie becomes a bounty hunter after the Van Der Linde gang falls apart. You even get to accompany her on a mission in the epilogue.
• Breakable Weapons: Downplayed. Firearms have a "Condition" value that causes the weapon to be less effective the worse the condition gets. Frequent use and water damage are the main ways that condition goes down. You can restore it by visiting a Gunsmith or by using some Gun Oil. However, they will never break entirely, and it mostly affects the gun's firing & reload speed.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: A few in-game currency examples.
  • Every crafting recipe and Satchel can be bought from any fence once you reach the epilogue. However, If you wish to obtain them as Arthur, you have to craft and find them yourself.
  • You can obtain cigarette cards by either finding them around the world or just buying/looting premium cigarettes. Any duplicate cards can fortunately be sold to any fence.
  • For a real-life example, the Special and Ultimate editions of the game give three guns for free at Gunsmiths (the Varmint Rifle, Pump-Action Shotgun and Volcanic Pistol) as well as 20% slower core reduction and other bonuses/discounts for the camp. All of these make most of the game much easier, but they're optional and the latter can be disabled in the settings if you're inclined.
• Broken Aesop: Despite one of the game's themes being that revenge will get you nowhere and is a just a circle of violence and misery, Sadie and Charles never really got any consequences for getting revenge on Micah while John did.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: The bayou around Saint Denis. It's full of stagnant water, deep mud, gators, moonshiners, and more.
• Bullet Catch: Benjamin Lazarus, a magician performing at the theater in Saint Denis, can be seen doing this in one of his acts. At first he has his assistant shoot a bottle off his head with a revolver to show the bullets are real, then proceeds to catch a second bullet fired from the weapon with his teeth. When a skeptic in the crowd decries the act as a fakery, Lazarus invites anyone from the crowd to participate with their personal firearm to prove otherwise; Arthur himself can accept the invitation, otherwise the skeptic steps up and produces his own gun. In either case, the participant shoots Lazarus square in the face and he catches the bullet once again. As Arthur is carrying live ammunition and is very much not an audience plant, his participation in the act (assuming he aims for the right place, of course) confirms the magician's abilities to be the real deal.
• Bullet Dancing:
  • If the player chooses to shoot one of the two kidnappers in lieu of beating them up at the campsite during the mission 'Magicians for Sport', a cutscene will play of Arthur coming up to the remaining kidnapper with gun drawn, demanding to know where they took Trelawny, and when the terrified man has trouble finding his words, Arthur decides to help him find his tongue by shooting repeatedly at the man's feet, making him dance around until he finally shouts out where Trelawny was taken.
  • Early in the epilogue, the leader of the Laramie Gang threatens Abe, one of the Pronghorn ranch hands, in this manner.
• Bullet Time: Dead Eye returns from the last two games, crossing over with Super-Reflexes. There's also a kill-cam system that shows certain kills in slow-motion, similarly to Rockstar's Max Payne 3. The focus of the camera changes depending on Arthur's honor level; high honor will have the camera focus more on Arthur, while low honor focuses more on the victim.
• Bullying a Dragon: You're an armed-to-the-teeth One-Man Army who can literally be wearing the skin of a grizzly bear you killed with a knife, and those random encounter horse thieves and rival gang members will still try to rob/attack you. A Curb-Stomp Battle usually ensues.
• Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie: In an easily missable conversation Arthur states that he wants to be buried facing west, "so [he] can watch the setting sun and remember all the fine times [they] had that way." While he dies facing, and watching, the rising sun (High Honor), Charles finds his body and buries him facing west, towards the setting sun.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: If Arthur kills enough Non-Player Characters, widows will start spawning in various towns to berate him for killing their husbands and leaving them and her children with nothing. Arthur will say he doesn't remember since he's killed a lot of people that meant nothing to him. The player can either ignore the widow, give them money, or kill them as well.
• But Thou Must!:
  • Frequently; while the player has a fair degree of control on how Arthur behaves outside of missions, as well as to a limited degree within them, throughout the story Arthur is required to do many reprehensible things. This reaches Meta levels with the Thomas Downes debt collection mission; it's the ONLY one of the debtor missions that's mandatory, compared to the all the others being optional, because Arthur MUST beat Mr. Downes to death and contract TB in the process for the back half of the game's story to play out the way it does.
  • During the final mission of the game, a sniper shoots Charles in the shoulder. You can pretty easily see him and, if you're quick, take a shot with a sniper rifle of your own - only it wont hurt him, even though the reticle will be red. You have to take him out the way the game tells you to, by playing redlight-greenlight between reloads until you get close enough that he becomes vulnerable.
  • In the ending route where Arthur helps John and stays behind to fend off their pursuers, there’s a brief moment where the player can turn around and shoot Micah before he can manage to tackle Arthur. Do this and the mission will end in failure, citing that “you attacked Micah.”
• Byronic Hero:
  • Arthur himself. Based on his interactions and the writings in his journal, he is clearly intelligent, introspective, cynical, and is haunted by many things in his past (with more added over the course of the story). Even a high Honor Arthur still participates in the gang's outlaw activities and believes in the philosophy instilled by Dutch.
    Mary (to Arthur): There's a good man within you... but he is wrestling with a giant.
  • Likewise, John, taking Arthur's example more than Dutch's, struggles with his out of place philosophy on life while balancing his earnest desire to do right by others even if he has to suppress that philosophy, which - ultimately - he is unable to do completely.
  • Dutch qualifies. He's intelligent relative to the setting, highly charismatic, is extremely passionate about the gang, and has an intense drive and determination to live out his philosophy. He is, however, extremely self-centered and, while he claims the contrary and even acts on it when it benefits him, won't hesitate to sacrifice anyone or anything (gang members included) to get what he wants. His Sanity Slippage over the course of the main story puts these more negative traits into the spotlight.

C

• Call-Back: Some of the epilogue missions are a callback to previous missions. In "Trying Again", for example, Jack tells his father John about how Arthur used to take him fishing before the Pinkertons showed up ("A Fisher of Men"). Also, several aspects of "A New Future Imagined" have similarities with Arthur's experiences: John and Abigail going to the theater (the same way Arthur and Mary decided to do in Saint Denis), John telling her "It would make me very happy" (the same line Arthur used when urging him to go and find his family), and him watching the sunrise at the end of the mission (which is the very last thing Arthur saw if he died with high honor).
• Call-Forward:
  • At one point, John makes the exact same pose with a sawed-off shotgun as he does in the cover art of the original game. He's even missing his hat.
  • When John thanks Javier for following him and rescuing him from the wolves, he shrugs and says John would do the same for him, which John will eventually do while pursuing Javier in I.
  • Edgar Ross is first introduced when he and his partner approach Arthur and Jack while their fishing by the side of a river. When Jack kills him at the end of the first game, the situation is reversed, with Jack approaching Ross while he's fishing.
  • When John is holding Javier at gunpoint in Redemption 1, he says the following: "Now, I ain't the judge, but as it turns out, it's you or me. The way I see it, it might as well be you". In II, Dutch says nearly the same thing ("It was either us, or him! I figured it might as well be him.") after a shocked John admonishes him for drowning Angelo Bronte, changing the context of the original line to John deliberately quoting Dutch.
  • John's signature outfit is a gift to him from Abigail.
  • Much of the epilogue is spent on building and acquiring funding for the Marston ranch in Beecher's Hope.
  • Arthur's grave has an inscription of either Matthew 5:4 (low honor) or 5:6 (high honor). Years later, John's will have an inscription of Matthew 5:9.
  • Much of the things the blind beggar tells Arthur are cryptic, but often end up becoming true. This also applies to John, to whom the old man tells about the first game's ending - not that John understands it.
  • One of the random conversations around camp is a 4 year old Jack wanting to be a gunslinger when he grows up, something both Hosea and Abigail themselves object to. He becomes this in the epilogue of the first game by his own volition.
  • In response to the above Abigail scolds Jack that he'll be a gunslinger 'over [her] dead body' Jack starts his quest for revenge shortly after her death in 1914.
  • In the mission "Favored Sons", Dutch informs the army men that have him and Arthur cornered that they can't fight nature, change, or gravity, before both of them turn around and plunge into the river below. In Red Dead Redemption, Dutch quotes this almost word for word to John in "Dutch's Last Stand", minutes before he willingly commits suicide by falling off a cliff.
    Dutch (Red Dead Redemption II): You can't fight nature, captain. You can't fight change. You can't fight...gravity.
    Dutch (Red Dead Redemption I): We can't always fight nature, John. We can't fight change. We can't fight...gravity. We can't fight nothing.
  • In one random camp event, Dutch tells Susan "There are two ways to argue with a woman. And neither of them works", to which Susan responds that he has a habit of saying that. John says the exact same thing to Bonnie in one of the early missions of the previous game.
  • The gang is established to use fake names to stay hidden, and John in particular picks up the name "Jim Milton" as his go-to alias near the end of the game (even if he can't decide whether or not to use it half the time). In the very first mission of I, we have this discussion:
    Jake the Guide: You must be John Marston.
    John: Sometimes.
  • The ending plays out roughly the same way the first game's ending did. The hero sacrifices himself to prevent the Marston family from being killed by law enforcement and dies in a Last Stand. The epilogue takes place several years after the main story, has you assume control of a new character, and ends with you taking revenge on the villain who killed the main story's protagonist.
  • The music which plays during John's first cutscene contains several elements from the first cutscene of the first game.
  • When playing poker in camp, John can sometimes remark that one day he'd like to play Liar's Dice, which is playable in the first game, but not in this one.
• The Cameo:
  • There's a strange painting inside a strange hut in Bayall Edge, Lemoyne. If you visit the place every few days, the painting will eventually be finished; once this happens, you can briefly see the Strange Man in the mirror. This doesn't work until the epilogue, however.
  • Herbert Moon, still as anti-Semitic as ever, reappears as the Armadillo general store owner.
  • Bonnie MacFarlane is briefly mentioned in a love letter that can be retrieved off a corpse on a beach.
  • Harold MacDougal is mentioned a few times in a newspaper article and a side mission.
  • Nigel West Dickens is name dropped in an article praising his wares in the final newspaper.
  • Both the sheriff of Valentine and Arthur name drop Landon Rickets.
  • The player can stumble on a crashed flying machine in New Austin. Close inspection shows that "Charles Kinnear," the guy who John helped build another flying machine in the first game as part of a side quest, is written on the side of it.
  • Archer Fordham makes an appearance during the credits montage, having tracked the Marstons to Beecher's Hope with Edgar Ross.
• Camera Lock-On: Can be used to talk to NPCs this time, much like the Trope Codifier. Using it gives you the option to press different buttons to chose different dialog options.
• Camera Perspective Switch: You can freely switch between third-person and first-person POV, just like the eighth-generation port of Grand Theft Auto V.
• Camp Cook: Pearson for the Van der Linde gang. He was a former U.S. Navy cook before joining the gang. Based on in-game comments, his culinary skills leave a lot to be desired.
• Camping a Crapper: Combined with Nature Tinkling: during "Paying a Social Call" mission. One of the O'Driscolls goes off on his own to take a whiz, giving you the opportunity for a stealth kill. (Or not.)
• Cap: One is present for Honor. Once you've reached maximum Honor, any further honorable deeds will not be counted toward it. Unfortunately, this means that a single dishonorable deed, even if unintentional such as accidentally shooting a horse during a shootout, will cause your Honor to drop one level. Somewhat mitigated thanks to the Easily Forgiven nature of the game, as you can make it back up quickly by greeting some NPCs or by doing some catch-and-release fishing.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Colm O'Driscoll. Unlike Dutch, or even the other gang leaders who have clear goals behind their unethical actions, Colm murders, steals, and rapes because he enjoys it. He makes the fact that he's a villain abundantly clear and makes no claims to the contrary.
• Career-Ending Injury: Uncle would have you believe that his lumbago is this. Ultimately subverted in that there are implications of him being something of a lazy drunk even in his youth.
• Cash Gate: One occurs in Chapter 2 when a main story mission to rescue Micah from the Strawberry jail results in a $300 bounty in West Elizabeth. Paying it off right away can be financially crippling so early in the game, but not doing so leaves you at the mercy of respawning groups of bounty hunters when in West Elizabeth. Ultimately Downplayed, as you can continue with the main mission without much trouble if you don't pay it, but hunting and completing Stranger missions set in West Elizabeth become more challenging if you do not. Thankfully, a recent update has reduced the bounty to $80, which is much easier to manage.
• Cassandra Truth: Arthur can run into a crazed man in St. Denis that is distributing pamphlets describing the industrial revolution's potential effects on the environment. While he is raving mad, he's not entirely wrong.
  • In the 'Wisdom of the Elders' questline even after Arthur finds proof that the 'darkness' the town is experiencing is from lead and arsenic poisoning caused by runoff from a nearby mine and the Magical Native American who's been 'helping' them is a conman sent by the mining company to get the townsfolk to waive their right to sue, the people of Butchers Creek still believe their problems are supernatural in nature.
• Catchphrase: Dutch has two - "I have a plan" and variations of "have faith". It's a crock of shit.
• Cave Behind the Falls: Several waterfalls have them. A couple have hidden treasures as long as you've found the appropriate Treasure Maps.
• Central Theme:
  • Underestimation. Just about every major character decides something is less of a threat than it actually is, and pays dearly for it every time. Examples include Catherine Braitwaithe underestimating how violent and skilled Dutch and his men could be, Angelo Bronte underestimating how smart and vengeful they could be, Arthur underestimating how insane Dutch really is, and so on. On a larger thematic level, this applies to the entirety of the playable area, as just about everyone underestimates how much civilization will really change things, and in particular how things like outlaws will be wiped out.
  • Loyalty. The game is especially concerned with duties that stem from loyalty and how it can be a destructive, paralyzing force. Arthur aggravates his sickness because of the love and responsibility he feels over his gang, particularly the Marstons and the women; John mans up to retire from gunslinging out of loyalty to his wife and son. The various antagonist's underlings have no real attachment to their bosses, but they still follow them to their dooms. Finally, the gang ultimately falls apart because of the members' loyalty to Dutch. Bill and Javier refuse to entertain the idea that Dutch can be wrong, which feeds his obsessions; Arthur, Hosea and John don't stand up to him out of loyalty until it's too late.
  • Redemption: Arthur has made some very bad choices in his life that inevitably come crashing down on him. He's been an outlaw for as long as he can remember, he's ruined his relationships with the only people he cares about outside the gang (Mary and his son, mostly), and he's got a nasty temper. However, underneath it all he's a guy who's stuck in a life he has no real love for that he can't get out of and wants better for himself. He truly loves people and is loyal to a fault. It's not until Dutch goes off the deep end and he gets sick that he truly realizes he can be better. He does everything in his power to get John, Abigail, and Jack out even though he's knocking on death's door. He ultimately has to pay for his life with it but he gets there. His actions here also are an echo to I where John similarly finds it in his own death for Abigail and Jack's sakes. It's implied that Jack was able to live a normal life eventually, which is the crux of what both Arthur and John wanted for him.
• Character Customization: The player can combine various pieces of clothing, and you can change the saddle of your horse. Arthur's hair and beard grow in gameplay, and you cut both to specific styles, and even apply pomade. Depending on how much you eat, Arthur will also either lose or gain weight that affects your stamina.
• Chekhov's Gun: The plantation house Arthur and Lenny raid in Chapter 3 is used as their next hideout.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • One of the earlier, routine missions ends up having some bigger implications to the story. Specifically, the mission where Arthur beats Thomas Downes for a loan received from Mr. Strauss results in him contracting tuberculosis, which he doesn't receive an official diagnosis for until late Chapter 5. Mixed with a bit of Interface Spoiler as unlike the other missions that Mr. Strauss gives you, the one involving Thomas Downes is a mandatory story mission as opposed to a sidequest.
  • The German family Arthur helps while searching for Rhodes camp returns in Chapter 6 and saves Arthur when he collapses for the second time.
• Cherry Tapping: You can intentionally use weak weapons like the Varmint Rifle to torture and humiliate enemies.
• Child by Rape: Discussed in one campfire event, when Lenny says that his mother's birth in a cotton field was the result of his grandmother being raped by an overseer who would become his grandfather.
• Chunky Salsa Rule: As a part of the game being Bloodier and Gorier, headshots with powerful weapons can result in kills that fall under this rule. Walking up to someone and firing a Sawed-Off Shotgun in their face, for example, works wonders.
• Circle of Standing Stones: Cotarra Springs has a variant with a circle of stacked stones. They are involved with one of the Treasure Map missions.
• City Guards: The Saint Denis police. They factor into several missions (typically needing to be avoided), are decently well-equipped (even having police wagons), and seem to be infinite in number.
• City Slicker:
  • Albert Mason is a photographer out to capture the beauty of the Old West's wilderness before it is spoiled. As seen in the recurring encounters, he is utterly clueless about the dangers posed...
  • Josiah Trelawny is a pseudo member of the Van der Linde gang and is much more at home scamming other city slickers than gunslinging in the untamed west.
• Clairvoyant Security Force: No matter how far out into the wilderness you are, witnesses to a crime can report it to the law within a minute. Patrols will then swarm the roads during the search phase seemingly from thin air.
• Classic Cheat Code: Like in the previous game, most cheats are hidden somewhere in the game world — the rest are hidden in newspapers. The cheats are unlocked by going to the cheats menu in settings, and inputting them there. Unlike in the last game cheats found in newspapers cannot be used until said newspaper is purchased, and the cheat list is no longer universal and they need to be entered again in each playthrough.
• Climax Boss: Micah serves as the final enemy Arthur will have to fight before, depending on his honor, he either succumbs to tuberculosis or gets murdered by him.
• Clothing Damage: A decidedly not-for-Fanservice version is present. Your clothing can become stained with mud or blood. Bullet holes and knife slashes can appear after taking those types of damage. If you survive an attack from a cougar or grizzly bear, claw marks may appear on your back. Switching outfits and then switching back will return your clothes to proper condition.
• Coins for the Dead: At the very beginning, Davey Callender dies from his injures sustained in the Blackwater Massacre after the Van der Linde gang has reached Colter, and they have to put two coins on his eyes as an assurance that the dead have to pay The Ferryman before they can move onto the afterlife.
• Collection Sidequest: Numerous examples, including dinosaur bone locations, certain perfect animal specimens, certain bird feathers, and more. Many of the Challenges also play out similar to this trope, such as collecting one of every kind of herb/plant in the game and breaking one of every wild horse breed. Finally, those going for 100% Completion will need to collect hundreds of examples of animal skins, bird feathers, and carcasses to complete every outfit and craft every item.
• Combat Pragmatist:
  • Excepting cases where it is required by a mission, you are perfectly free to draw a knife or gun during a fist fight and use it. You'll likely lose some Honor depending on the situation and may attract the attention of the law, but it's better than getting overwhelmed. That is, if you don't get it knocked out of your hand.
  • The context-sensitive nature of close quarters combat can lead to this. If an enemy closes in on you, you may find your character striking them with a gun stock or Pistol Whipping them. Other situations may involve you forcing the barrel of a rifle or shotgun into their torso and pulling the trigger. If you are taken down by a grizzly bear, you'll have a brief window where you can draw your knife and stab the beast while it mauls you, potentially getting it to back off or killing it outright.
  • During horseback chases, you can choose to shoot and kill your pursuers’ horses, at the cost of honor. By the time they get up (assuming they weren’t killed by the fall), you and your companions will be long gone.
• Common Law Marriage: John and Abigail. In the epilogue, they finally tie the knot and become the married couple we see in the first game.
• Commonplace Rare:
  • Aside from Moonshine, which can be bought from a fence, nearly every other crafting ingredient needs to be harvested in the wild. This includes things like Animal Fat and the hides of domestic animals that logically should be for sale at a butcher.
  • Every single companion request item needs to to be found during gameplay. None of them are items that should be rare or unusual, but you can't even buy a book from the bookstore in Saint Denis.
• Companion-Specific Sidequest: These will pop up around camp for your fellow gang members. Examples including going hunting or fishing with a specific companion, playing games like poker, dominoes, or five-finger fillet, or going on unofficial missions to rob stage coaches, homesteads, or livestock. The better the morale is around camp, the more likely these are to appear. They are also only available temporarily, and if you don't complete them soon enough, they can disappear. Naturally, another factor that can cause them to become unavailable is if the quest giving companion is killed as part of the story. While the robbery-based examples can earn you some money, they exist mostly to flesh out many of your fellow gang members who otherwise don't get much direct interaction with Arthur (and thus the player).
• Company Cross References: One of Dutch's aliases is Aiden O'Malley, a name shared by an Irish criminal who gets broken out of a prisoner convoy by Niko Bellic in Grand Theft Auto IV.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: In several cases, descriptions of items in your inventory differ from the onscreen "tips" and sometimes both differ from what is stated in the compendium. Fishing bait/lures are a notable example, with the types of fish its good at catching and even where to use it (crossing over with Non-Indicative Name in the case of the lures) changing depending on where you are reading.
• Context-Sensitive Button: Almost all buttons have differing functionality depending on where you are and what you are doing. For example, the same button is used for mounting your horse as for skinning an animal carcass. If your horse is too close while you're trying to skin an animal, a slight change in your positioning can lead to accidentally mounting your horse instead. Similarly, the same button is used for drawing/holstering your weapon as for drawing an additional weapon off of your horse. This can lead to you looking more threatening than intended when approaching a neutral stranger if you go to holster after hopping off of your horse but instead draw another gun. The button to mount your horse is also the melee button so if you're not facing the right way when trying to get on your horse, you can very easily choke someone and get the law on you. This happens in the towns a lot, especially Saint Denis.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!:
  • During missions, if you linger too long by, say, looting bodies, your fellow gang members will tell you to hurry up and repeat what you are supposed to do next.
  • In between certain missions, this will happen to you at camp. One of your fellow gang members, often Dutch, will try to get your attention to start the next mission and sometimes resorts to outright yelling "Arthur, get over here!"
  • After at least one mission, if you take too long before reporting to Dutch Charles will track you down and ask you when you're coming back to camp.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In the original Red Dead Redemption, there are mentions of a massacre that took place in 1899 in Blackwater city, which killed many, lawmen and criminal alike. This event was the reason Landon Ricketts decided to flee to Mexico, and may have killed one of Bonnie MacFarlane's brothers (who died in 1899 from a head shot). The fact that Dutch's gang is on the run after a botched robbery in Blackwater implies they caused it, accidentally or not.
  • Several pre-order and Special Edition bonuses are themed after Nuevo Paraiso, a playable Mexican region from the previous game.
  • In the first game, if you have John Marston fight wolves with only a knife, one thing he might shout is, "How do you think I got these scars!?" This game features an early mission where Arthur and Javier go searching for John who it turns out got attacked by wolves, and thus got his scars.
  • Similarly to the above, a few lines from the previous game (and the eyepatch on one of his optional outfits) implied John was blind in an eye. After Arthur rescues him, he has a bandage over an eye while recovering, seemingly confirming said blindness.
  • You can occasionally hear bits of the leitmotif from the first game when John is around.
  • In the first game Dutch gives a speech to John during Ross' raid on his fort about how you can't fight your nature, yet he has dedicated his entire life to fighting against his circumstances; both external and internal. One other thing he mentions is how you can't fight gravity foreshadowing that he's gonna jump to his death, rather than be shot by John. Here in the prequel Dutch makes a similar speech, while he and Arthur are at gun point by a host of lawmen and makes a similar allusion to gravity; except this time there is water below him, and his submission to gravity actually saves his life rather than ending it.
  • Red Harlow gets mentioned by name again by an ex-bounty hunter you can find in the wilderness.
• Continuity Snarl:
  • In the first game, John at several points describes himself as being only "semi-literate", and he and Abigail rely on their better-educated son to read complicated documents. In the epilogue, his entries in Arthur's journal are, while not as eloquent as Arthur's, well-written and perfectly legible. Although it can be taken as a combination of John still depending on lines to write on (most of his journal entries have self-drawn writing lines), making more mistakes than Arthur, and not being one for leisurely reading.
  • Also in the first game, John implies that no one in his gang cared about him and left him for dead first chance they got — in this game Arthur Morgan uses the last days of his life to ensure the Marston family can have a chance to escape and live a better life.
  • The Strange Man implied that the robbery where John was shot and left for dead was the same ferry job where Dutch shot Heidi McCourt. In II, said ferry job happens just before the game even starts, and while it's mentioned that John did take a bullet during it, he still manages to escape with the gang.
  • John's dead daughter is never seen nor referenced. It's unlikely she was born before Jack since John has issues believing Jack is his kid, and she cannot have been born after the gang breaks up since Javier knows about her^note In I, he taunts John by yelling something along the lines of "I hope your wife and children rot in hell!". It is possible that Javier just assumed that John would have more kids and that she lived and died during the Time Skip from 1899 to 1907 or died sometime between 1907 to 1911, but it's not explained in-game. However, using the "sleep" function in Beecher's hope may trigger a cutscene of John and Abigail making small talk on the bed, and once the game returns they both are in their underwear regardless of what you were wearing beforehand implying they had sex. Considering that contraceptives weren't really a thing in the Wild West, it's not too farfetched to think of it as a nod to her.
  • Venturing out to New Austin in the epilogue (which, it should be noted, is completely optional, save for a single story mission that takes place near the state's outskirts in Hennigan's Stead and one side quest in Rio Bravo) makes no real sense, as John implied in Redemption 1 that he's never been in the area, seemed unfamiliar with the MacFarlane Ranch and Armadillo, and needed an escort to Fort Mercer. It's been speculated that the existence of New Austin in II at all is mainly for the multiplayer portion.
  • Speaking of New Austin, when it becomes available, the barn in MacFarlane's farm is absent. It's an error because Bonnie mentions in I that Drew built it while she was just a little girl. The epilogue takes place in 1907, meaning that she was at least 26 when it was built.
  • Some of the character's heights are wildly inconsistent. In the first game, Ross was much shorter than every other male character, but in the second, he's average height. Similarly, Uncle was about half a head shorter than John in the first, but appears to be the same height or perhaps even taller in two. John and Abigail's height difference has also changed from John towering over her to only being a few inches taller.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Dutch's gang numbers at nearly two-dozen people, of which only about half are dedicated fighters, including Dutch and Arthur. They're often pitted against overwhelming numbers of government agents and rival gangs like the O'Driscolls. In addition, the gang very rarely sends all of their fighters out at the same time, usually going out in pairs or in groups of four. Dutch attributes their success against such disparity in numbers to their familial bonds, which give them greater motivation to fight over the thugs who are only in it for the money.
• Continuing is Painful: Steps are taken to heavily downplay this trope. If you die during a mission or otherwise fail, you get the option of returning to the last "checkpoint" so that you don't have to start from the beginning. If you die during free roam, you'll respawn with a small monetary penalty. In both cases, any corpses in the immediate area despawn, so you won't be able to loot them (if human) or skin them (if animals). If you die during an "encounter", it will no longer be present and you'll have to wait for it to reoccur. Perhaps the most painful thing about continuing is that you lose any pelts and animal carcasses stored on your horse. This includes Legendary animals, however, their pelts will automatically go to the trapper for crafting, you just lose out on the money you would have gotten for selling them.
• Controllable Helplessness: At several points in the story, you'll find yourself bound in some way. In each case, you can look around and struggle against your restraints before getting the opportunity to escape.
• Convenient Questing:
  • Played straight for most main story missions. They typically take place relatively close to the gang's camp or the nearest town.
  • Side missions frequently avert it. For example, one of Strauss' Chapter 2 debt collection missions sends you into the mountains north of Strawberry. Another Chapter 2 side mission, "The Noblest of Men, and a Woman", has you track down four retired duelists who all live far from Valentine.
• Cool Helmet: The Viking Helmet, which you can loot from an old Viking tomb.
• Cool Horse: You'll become attached to your horses and start to feel this way about all of them as you bond with them, but a few truly qualify:
  • The White Arabian can be found and tamed as early as Chapter 2 west of Lake Isabella. She's better than any horse you can buy for several chapters, and comparable horses cost over $1000.
  • "The Count" is Dutch's Albino Arabian Stallion. He has elite stats across the board and bucks off anyone who tries to ride him besides Dutch. Fun fact, horses are unable to carry true albinism, making The Count (literally) impossibly cool.
• Cool Mask: Several can be acquired or purchased ranging from an executioner's hood to gnarly metal skull looking masks. They obscure your identity while committing crimes.
• Cool Old Guy: Hosea Matthews. He's in his late fifties, but has plenty of cunning and experience as an outlaw during the golden years of The Old West.
• Cool Sword: One of the weapons you can acquire is the Pirate Sword. It's an old fashioned cutlass that can slice and dice enemies with ease.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Leviticus Cornwall is a railroad, oil, and sugar baron who didn't get that way by being nice. He thinks nothing of siccing his Private Military Contractors and Pinkerton Detectives on anyone who gets in his way. Oil is discovered under the reservation? Bribe the government to move the natives again so you can stake claim.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Dutch has a pathological compulsion to continue committing crimes when they're already wanted for the Blackwater Heist. This despite the fact that they could probably send someone back for the money and retrieve it after they have established themselves. Especially egregious in Chapter 3 where they only had to do nothing and they could have escaped the law permanently.
• Cowardly Mooks: Some enemies will attempt to flee once you've either wounded them or have killed enough of their comrades.
• Cowboy: Naturally. You can encounter them all over and even impersonate one on a few occasions.
• Crafted from Animals: Camp upgrades, trapper outfits, satchels, saddles, trinkets, and more are all crafted from various animal parts. Hides are the most common ingredient, but teeth, claws, feathers, antlers, horns, fat, and glands are also used for some items.
• Creepy Souvenir:
  • Letters looted off dead NPCs can be this.
  • The guns of legendary gunslingers Emmet Granger, Flaco Hernández, Billy Midnight and Jim "Boy" Calloway can be stolen after killing them.
• Critical Existence Failure:
  • Very slightly downplayed for NPCs in combat. Those hit by a non-fatal shot may limp, slowing their ability to move, but are otherwise still lethal. Fully averted with non-hostile NPCs and most non-large animals, who tend to collapse and bleed out very shortly after just one, maybe two center-of-mass shots.
  • Also downplayed for the player character. Other than some mild Interface Screw when you get low on health, you are otherwise every bit as capable with a sliver of health remaining as at full health.
• Crossover: With GTA Online of all things.
  • As long as you are connected to Social Club, you'll receive an in-game email from "[e-mail]" with a picture of a location inside. Find this place, and three more locations will be added to your map. Find them all, and one final location is added to your map. From there, you'll find a Golden Double-action Revolver from a chest, and performing 50 headshots unlocks it in RDR II. Fortunately, the quest is entirely free and the headshots can be performed on NPC characters so it can be done solo. (And awards you 250,000 GTA$ as a nice bonus.)
  • Pre-ordering the digital version from either Playstation or Xbox Store gives you extra GTA$ in GTA Online on your system. The regular one is worth 500,000$, the Special Edition is worth 1,000,000$ and the Ultimate Edition is worth 2,000,000$.
  • August 2018 saw another treasure hunt - this time the treasure was a stone hatchet.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite being The Alcoholic, suffering from lumbago, and coming across as rather simple, Uncle shows on a few occasions that he can still handle himself in a gunfight.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: Most of Strauss' debt collection missions are optional. However, the Thomas Downes mission – the one in which Arthur contracts tuberculosis after intimidating, if not beating up, a dying man whose family is utterly broke – is a main quest mission and is thus required to continue.
• Cruel Mercy: You are free to shoot (or do worse to) Jeremiah Compson after finding out that he is a former slave-catcher (and actually gain positive karma for doing so), or you can simply walk away and let the weeping old man live out the remainder of his years as a miserable and destitute drunk before he dies as a nobody, unmourned and rightfully seen as a wretch.
• Cue the Sun: At the end of the final mission before Arthur dies, if you have high honor then regardless of whether you help John escape or go for the gang's loot, Arthur will die peacefully while looking at the rising sun.
• Cult:
  • The Chelonians are a religious cult with a particular reverence for turtles. They recruit young, able-bodied men who are then required to give up everything they own to the cult. One side mission has Arthur rescuing the brother of his Old Flame from the cult.
  • By a lot of measures, the Van der Linde gang can be considered a cult, with Dutch as their cult leader. Cults are zealous in their beliefs and want to project it to the world. This would be the gang's commitment to "freedom" and their reputation about believing in this above everything. The group will also claim lofty goals but upon closer look, don't follow up with them which definitely applies to Dutch at the very least (especially if you believe he was Evil All Along). Even if the gang (mostly) isn't religious,they use a lot of religious rhetoric like about "faith" and how Dutch "saved" them all from their bad situations. Tilly straight-up says Dutch is the closest thing to a perfect person she's ever met. The best way they fit the academic definition of a cult ^note  Although the word "cult" is outdated in an academic sense. "New religious movement" is now the accepted word. is how Dutch cultivates himself as the authoritarian leader who's the most important person to everyone else in the group. The only member of the gang who has a life outside of it is part-timer Trelawny. He has a wife and two sons who live in Saint Denis. None of the rest of them are married or seemingly have any other family or friends to speak of. Arthur, who previously did have people he cared about outside the gang, doesn't have anyone by the time of the game. As far as he knows, Mary's husband Barry is thought to be alive and his son, Isaac, is long dead. He tells Sister Calderon that he threw his relationship with Mary away because he couldn't get away from Dutch. It's not until Chapter 4 when Dutch starts losing it that he tells her to give him some time to save up some money, tie up some loose ends, and then he'll leave for her. He also wouldn't leave the gang to be a father to Isaac. Dutch doesn't start really having a problem with John until about the mid-point in the story once he and Abigail start getting closer. He tells John at one point that she's "poisoning" him against him. The rest of the gang pay dearly for their blind devotion to Dutch.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • The assault on the O'Driscoll camp at the end of Chapter 1. The Van der Linde gang kills three or four times as many O'Driscolls without a single casualty.
  • The assault on Braithwaite Manor at the end of Chapter 3. As part of the gang's Roaring Rampage of Rescue of Jack, they wipe the floor with every person present and then burn the place to the ground, again without a single casualty.
• Cutesy Name Town: Valentine, Emerald Ranch and Strawberry. The first two are subversions: Valentine is a livestock-auctioning town with a single main thoroughfare drenched in mud, and its only attractions are two saloons (one with a brothel) where cowboys blow off steam and spend their pay; Emerald Ranch, meanwhile, is a large farm owned by a "ruthless capitalist" who's built up a monopoly foreclosing on smaller ranches and imprisoned his daughter after killing her lover, and its only functioning businesses are a post office/train station and a fence. The mountain town of Strawberry, on the other hand, is a very beautiful and scenic tourist spot, if a little over-preoccupied with being "nice" and "peaceful". This is because the mayor is a repressed and closeted gay man who had to leave his teaching position in disgrace, and wants to live in as tolerant a place as he can.
• Cutscene Incompetence:
  • Arthur can gun down armies of men, shrug off bullets, and take down three other men in a fist fight...as long as you're controlling him. You can't help but to you roll your eyes during the numerous occasions where Arthur is knocked out, strangled, snuck-up on, escaped-from, etc. right before regaining control in a much worse situation than you would have allowed it to reach. The mission "Blessed are the Peacemakers" is the worst example. Arthur has up to this point killed dozens of O'Driscolls and survived injuries right up to gunshots. However, a trio of O'Driscolls is able to sneak up on him, knock him out with a single gun-butt strike, and then take him down again when he wakes up with a single non-lethal gunshot.
  • It's not even limited to cutscenes, as the game has a few moments where the player can be in complete control of Arthur but the threat is marked as "friendly" (as in, aiming is allowed but reticle is greyed out and you can't shoot) before they complete whatever they were doing. For example, a hunter up in Ambarino gets mauled to death by a bear as your bullets go right through the beast, and Lenny's killers are on-screen for a brief moment before they shoot him yet the player can shoot at anything but them.
  • One random mugging encounter in Saint Denis has tricked players into trying to complete it, as on the surface, it appears like just another robbery you can fight your way out of — Arthur gets enticed into walking down a dark alley by a guy like he's being given a robbery tip, then he's knocked on the back of the head, rolled, and dumped in the cemetery, now missing his cash.
• Cutting the Knot: An option for opening locked containers, generally performed with the stock of a gun. It's noisy, so it is likely to draw attention in stealthy situations. You can purchase a Lock Breaker from a fence, which allows this to be done relatively silently.

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