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Welcome to the family.
In 2006, EA released a video game adaptation of The Godfather. It was a basic sandbox crime game starring an original enforcer character, Aldo Trapani (default name, confirmed by the sequel). Originally the son of a mere Corleone-aligned baker, his life changed the day Barzini mobsters gunned down his father. Fast forward to the film's timeframe, where Don Vito does a favor for his mother by accepting him into the Corleones proper. The game thus goes through the events of the film, with Aldo carrying out the dirty deeds ordered by the main characters while making his own way up the Mafia hierarchy and towards the eventual confrontation with the man who ordered his father killed.

A sequel was released in 2009, loosely adapting The Godfather Part II. It is now 1959 and the Corleones are meeting Hyman Roth and new families over plans to "do business" in Cuba. Disaster strikes, however, leaving you as Aldo's Underboss Dominic to pick up the pieces, fighting both splinter ex-Corleones and the newcomers for control of New York and Florida. At the same time, Roth is not ready to give up on Cuba just yet... Major additions to the mechanics include the Don's View - a semi-strategic overview of the cities and their fronts present - enemies that will actively attempt to undo your takeovers, crime rings that give bonuses so you Gotta Catch 'Em All, as well as the ability to build your own Badass Crew to either fight alongside you and provide support or go capture and defend businesses in your stead. The game was released to negative to mixed reviews, mainly due to its compete shuffling of the game's mechanics, a nonexistent story, and very little relation to The Godfather compared to the first game.

Due to conflicts with the copyright owners of The Godfather series, EA, and the Puzo family (the estate of Mario Puzo, author of the novel that the movie is based on), the game has been declared to be non-canon to The Godfather universe, mainly to distance itself due to the poor sales of the first game and the lackluster reviews that the sequel received, as well as public controversy with the exclusion of Francis Ford Coppola in the development of the game.


The games provide examples of

  • A-Team Firing: Your accuracy will go to hell fast if you fire sustained bursts.
  • Abandoned Hospital: The first game has an abandoned hospital...because of bribery. The only people left inside are Don Corleone, a wounded mafia soldier and your love interest. And the window in the next room has just shattered...
  • Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
    • The game would get quite boring if every time Aldo wanted to kill a member of another family he had to get permission, as hits have to get formal approval. Especially before he becomes a made man and kills even a lowly soldier, a big no-no in the Mafia.
    • Once the game reaches a certain point, you start to receive hit contracts from senior members of the family, meaning that anyone other than a basic mook has been sanctioned by the family.
  • Action Girl: If you've progressed far enough in "The Godfather: Blackhand Edition," you'll find five women in five safe-houses you've purchased, one per each. They're dressed like the dancing girls seen in many of the safe-houses. But it turns out they're actually hit women for hire—if not the best assassins, they're the priciest, from $20,000 to $60,000.
  • Adaptational Badass: In the original story the Tattaglia family gets little respect and is mostly reliant on Sollozzo and Barzini. Here they're more of a direct threat and a number of their men take part in the hit on Don Vito.
  • Adaptation Expansion:
    • Some parts the first movie skimmed over are playable, like Bruno Tattaglia's whacking.
    • The sequel pushes all events to after the Cuban Revolution, creating new plotlines of the Corleone's squeezing out rival families in Florida and Hyman Roth dragging the new protagonist Dominic into a CIA plot to kill Castro.
  • Affably Evil: Don Stracci and Don Mangano.
  • AKA47:
    • Guns in the first game generally have generic names. For example, the Colt Detective Special is called the "Snubnose", while the Winchester Model 1912 is referred to as the "Long-Barreled Shotgun". The "Street Sweeper" looks like an aversion, but it's not: while there is a real gun with that name, it looks more like a heavily modified Winchester Model 1912, essentially making it a fictional gun that happens to share a name and some functionalities (namely a drum magazine and rapid fire rate) with a real-world weapon.
    • The second game has pretty odd naming conventions. The Browning Auto-5 shotgun is called the "Schofield Semi-auto", an interesting choice of name given that Schofield is a famous line of revolvers. The Level 3 pistol looks like a Beretta M1951 and is called the "Delta M1911", which is kind of funny given that the Level 2 version is a suppressed Colt M1911A1 going under the name "Silenced Pistol". A Smith and Wesson Model 629 appears as the ".44 Magnum Force". The AK-47 goes under its actual name, though it has a drum magazine modeled after the RPD light machine gun.
  • Almighty Janitor:
    • In the first game the majority of your skills come not from plotline promotions up the Family's ladder but Respect levels gained through free-roaming. This means that your rank can still be "Outsider" while you're already far more powerful than any number of enemy Underbosses.
    • Implicit in the second. Seemingly random civilians know an awful lot about mob affairs, including the kill conditions for Made Men.
  • Always Chaotic Evil: The Straccis. They're described by Clemenza as "pure, fucking evil". Curiously, when you meet Don Stracci, he appears to be a reasonable, peace-seeking individual compared with the crooked and brutal Tattaglia and Barzini.
  • Always Check Behind the Chair: Missions in the first game have money bags hidden with varying degrees of visibility. If you don't get them while you can, they're lost for good.
  • Anachronism Stew:
    • Not really that bad, but a lot of the events in II would make much more sense if it were set in 1961 instead of 1959, and the NPC chatter is all over the era, making it sort of a "Mister Sandman" Sequence for The '60s.
    • The first game follows the story of the first film across the years, however New York City is stuck The '40s even as The '50s roll around in the endgame. Meanwhile the drivable cars are all over the place from multiple decades throughout the entire game's run.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: You start off controlling Johnny Trapani, but he's gunned down within minutes. The real main character is his son (That Other Wiki dubs him Aldo, your character's default name, which the sequel confirms) after a Time Skip.
  • And Your Reward Is Clothes: So, what do you do with all your money once you've bought out all the businesses and weapons? Go shopping! Especially in the first game, as you get more money, you get more expensive (and stylish) duds, going from a rough-and-tumble youth to a Badass in a Nice Suit.
  • Apathetic Citizens: As long as you're not outright firing away, the civilians don't pay much attention when you open carry.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: In most editions of the first game, it's just you and (at most) one other person in a car, no matter how big it is.
  • Armed Blag: You can attack racket trucks.
  • Artificial Stupidity: During any car chase, expect civilians to jump directly into the path of your car while supposedly attempting to leap out of the way.
  • Artistic License – Geography: New Jersey, which is a state bigger than all of New York City and its boroughs by a considerable margin, here becomes just another NYC suburb, and the smallest one at that.
  • Ascended Extra: Al Neri, Willie Cicci, and Rocco Lampone were Corleone underlings who barely got any lines in the movie. Al Neri's name wasn't even mentioned. Though since Neri gets a much bigger role in the two sequels, it makes sense that he would be more important in a game made after them.
    • Luca Brasi's role is greatly expanded, as he acts as The Mentor to your character in the first game.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: The upgraded Tommy gun in the first game may be this. Some Execution Styles, like Traffic Accident, also call for more setup than the extra Respect you gain will pay off.
  • BFG: The Dillinger and the Street Sweeper. Really all of the level 3 upgrades, except for the Saturday Night Special.
  • Back for the Dead: Aldo, protagonist of the first game, dies in the opening Cuba escape of the second to make way for the new protagonist Dominic to take over his position.
  • Back from the Brink: In both games, despite whatever renown the Corleone might have had in backstory, by the start they have been reduced to almost no Fronts at all.
  • Back Stab: You can garrote people, but the main point is the stealth and the extra Respect, since it takes a while to strangle your victims. However, you can also use the garrote to snap their necks, which is accomplished much quicker.
  • Back-Alley Doctor: You respawn at these in the first game.
  • Badass Crew: In the PS3 version of the first game, four Corleone mobsters (an associate, a soldier, a capo and an underboss), all of whom wear jet-black suits and red ties, serve as optional crew members for when you want some assistance in extortion or warehouse/hub/compound-takedowns. The second game expands on this, giving you four soldiers, two capos and one underboss, nearly all of whom can be chosen exclusively by you.
  • Badass in a Nice Suit: Everyone! in the first game. Encouraged with And Your Reward Is Clothes, earning money to buy better duds to reflect your upward mobility in the Family.
  • Badass Longcoat: Stronger, high-ranking gangsters in the first game wear long coats.
  • Bang, Bang, BANG:!Used and averted; The Magnum series is definitely loud, but the other guns are more subdued.
  • Bank Robbery: Guarded by small handfuls of green (white in the sequel) security guards, non-affiliated.
  • Batter Up!: Both games give you a baseball bat as an alternative to using your fists.
  • Beef Gate: If you have problems with a warehouse, you need to grind more.
  • Been There, Shaped History: Both Aldo and Dominic play key roles in making the events of canon happen, such as planting the gun Michael used to kill Sollozzo or carrying out the baptism executions.
  • Big Damn Fire Exit: There are also at least two sequences where you have to find your way through a burning building - and yep, everything is burning, except that one path that leads straight to your goal. (In fact, this game is somewhat of a serial perpetrator of this - all of the Warehouse and Transport Hub missions use the same two-or-three warehouse-maps, but lock and block different doors and stairwells while placing the Racket Boss in different places to ensure that you always have just ONE route to take, but it's a different one each time.)
  • Big Good:
    • The first game has Vito for the first half and Michael for the second, with Sonny taking it up in-between.
    • Part II has Michael at the start, then Hyman Roth takes the role once the game progresses to Florida up until the point when he turns on Dominic, and then Michael resumes the position.
  • Big "NO!": Monk shouts one after Frankie's death at the hands of Tattaglia goons.
  • Bilingual Bonus: In 2 there's a lot of flavour dialogue in untranslated Spanish. Dominic doesn't speak the language and sometimes has to remind people of that.
  • Bling-Bling-BANG!: The level 3 snubnose has gold and ivory on it, as does the level 3 Magnum.
  • Bloodier and Gorier: Executions are much more graphic in the sequel, especially the melee ones.
  • Boom, Headshot!: Almost everyone can be killed with a headshot even from the weakest weapon.
  • Boring, but Practical: When you raise the Vendetta of any enemy family to the max and start a Mob War, you can bomb a business which could result in a loss of income if you die and can make difficult. Usually a more practical way is simply bribing an FBI Agent or G-Man which automatically gives your family the win and reduces any Vendetta to 0.
  • Boss Battle: A main, recurring feature of the first game. Mostly averted in the second.
  • Bottomless Magazines: The Bragging Rights Reward for becoming Don of NYC. You still have to reload, unfortunately.
  • Bragging Rights Reward: In some versions, becoming Don of NYC gives you Bottomless Magazines. Unfortunately, by then there's not much use for it.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: Both games on the PS3 and Xbox 360 had as DLC access to Level 4 weapons, exclusive henchmen who are better than any in the base game, and you could also buy in-game money by microtransaction.
  • Broken Bridge: Averted in the first, played straight in the second.
  • Bulletproof Vest: The sequel has bulletproof vests as a reward for completing the diamond smuggling crime ring. They only reduce damage and don't guard the head or limbs; fortunately, this also applies to mooks wearing them. As a result, you can kill armoured mooks much faster by going for Boom, Headshot!.
  • Canon Foreigner: You have the great good fortune to have been just off-camera during all the important events of films.
  • Car Fu: You can easily run over lots of people with your car. . . indeed, sometimes the challenge is to avoid committing rampant vehicular manslaughter. Some special kills involve you deliberately making someone get hit by a car that you aren't driving.
  • Chase Scene: When Sonny gets whacked, you chase down the car to one of the conspirators.
  • Cherry Tapping: You can take down the Barzini Compounds with only a level 3 character and level 1 snubnose. Behold.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each family has their own color:
    • First game:
      • Corleone = Black
      • Tattaglia = Tan
      • Stracci = Blue
      • Cuneo = Red
      • Barzini = Apple Green
    • Second game:
      • Corleone = Red
      • Almeida = Lime Green
      • Carmine Rosato = Brown
      • Tony Rosato = Grey
      • Granado = Yellow
      • Mangano = Cyan
  • Combat Pragmatist: Dominic can use a variety of vicious moves including but not limited to neck punches and arm breaks.
  • Comes Great Responsibility: Tom Hagen tells you as much after your promotion to Capo in the first game.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The enemies can be this in the original Play Station 2, Xbox and even the PC versions of the first game. Half of the time, you have no cover whatsoever.
  • Continuity Nod: In the second game, your Made Man told to crack a safe might comment that he thought he would have to blow the lock. In the previous game, you had to blow safes open with explosives.
  • Contractual Boss Immunity: Averted; though stronger than the mooks, the Dons in either game aren't especially hard to take down. There's no taking multiple headshots or full magazines of tommygun fire the way many other games' supposedly-human bosses do.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: One of the Execution Styles requires you to toss an enemy into an oven and cook him alive. You can stand right next to one of these and not take damage.
  • Convenient Weakness Placement: Many Made Men hangouts have the element needed to achieve their Kill Condition.
  • Cool Old Guy: Many Capos and Underbosses in the first game, have heads full of grey hair, but can still kick Aldo's ass if you get careless.
  • Coup de Grâce: Several Execution Styles has you get in close to a weakened enemy and take him out this way.
  • Crate Expectations: Crates can be smashed to reveal things like ammo, money, or health pickups.
  • Dirty Cop: Virtually every cop in the games has his price.
  • Disc-One Final Boss:
    • During the first game, Virgil Sollozzo's narcotics business earns the partnership of the Tattaglia family, who employs dozens of Tattaglia mobsters as his private army of sorts. The first act deals with protecting Vito Corleone from Sollozzo's hitmen, taking down Sollozzo's main drug rackets (PS3 version) and assisting in Sollozzo's eventual assassination, but the war against the Tattaglias continues after that point.
    • This falls onto the Rosatos and Granados in the second game, with the Manganos and Almeidas taking up the rest of the spotlight.
  • Disc-One Nuke: The lack of Broken Bridge means you can get a lot done before doing any more plot missions. The sequel has Broken Bridge preventing you from getting the best henchmen and weapons early on, but you can still earn the cash needed to fully upgrade yourself not far from the start.
  • Do Not Run with a Gun: Accuracy will go down if you move and fire and you can't run in Free Aim mode, but otherwise you still can run with a gun out if you like.
  • The Dog Bites Back: Luca Brasi warns the player in the tutorial not to antagonize businessmen too much when trying to take over. They will start attacking you; most are harmless but some will pull out Tommy guns.
  • Dragon Ascendant:
    • Played with in the first. Once Sollozzo's taken down, Bruno Tattaglia seems to be the one pulling the Tattaglias' strings during the mid-point of the war against the Corleones, but he's killed fairly quickly. After that, Johnny Tattaglia (Bruno's brother) tries to form up his own army to take down the Corleones from Brooklyn in one of Tessio's contract hits. Key words: Contract Hits, so he's whacked shortly after his existence becomes known.
    • Played straight in the sequel. You as Dominic were Aldo's underboss and become the new Don after Aldo gets killed.
  • Dragon-in-Chief: Aldo and Dominic sit on the line between this and The Dragon-normal to Michael.
  • The Dreaded: The Straccis, considered the most violent family in New York. You are cautioned not to trust them and in the training video, you're told not to enter New Jersey (their home base) without a crew.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Agent Mitchell in the sequel. Your boss fight with him, if you can even call it one, is terribly short. He doesn't even get a "Facing the Bullets" One-Liner or Pre-Mortem One-Liner, never mind a full death scene.
  • Dude, Where's My Respect?: In cutscenes, your former bosses will still call you "kid" and treat you like an underling, though this ends after you become Don. Also, civilians and Corleone mooks will grow to recognize and respect you. Played particularly straight in the second though, where both Michael and others belittle you even when you've proven yourself capable of mowing down whole enemy Families.
  • Easter Egg: On the mission where you help protect Vito in the hospital, if you go up to Vito's room while Michael is talking to him and listen in, the conversation is one of Marlon Brando's last recorded performances. A Marlon Brando soundalike was used for Vito's other scenes, as Brando was too ill to complete his work.
  • Empty Room Psych: Some rooms and locations seem to exist just for filler.
  • Enemy Civil War:
    • Not really a civil war per se, but...if you fight against mobsters nearby other rival mobsters, the two mobster crews will attack one another, depending on how close they are, and how you play your cards.
    • If you piss cops off enough to provoke a city-scale manhunt (i.e. maxed-out Heat), they'll chase after you all over the place, even attacking rival mobsters along the way, including the ones under your payroll. If you leave the Heat-filled city, the fighting will continue off-screen for a while.
    • The second game has members of rival families, mostly Granados, Manganos and Almeidas, assaulting the others' rackets at random.
  • Enemy Mine: Three families' mobsters cooperate to kill Sonny. Also, you can bribe cops to help you fight other mobsters.
  • Escort Mission: Subverted in that the character you're guarding tends to be Immune to Bullets, but still annoying in that they literally will not get out of a burning car and thus die when the vehicle assigned to you for that mission explodes.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: As in the movie, Paulie and Tessio betray the Family. Then there are the original storylines written for the game where betrayal is heavily involved.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Kill as many men as you want and your family won't bat an eye. Kill a woman or a cop you'll hear it from them.
  • Evil Is Petty: You are warned against it, but there's not much really stopping you from attacking civilians.
  • Every Car Is a Pinto: Cars that take enough damage catch fire, which means they're about to go up like a bomb. This can be incredibly annoying... or used to your advantage.
  • Every Man Has His Price: Bribing the Dirty Cops is very useful.
  • Everything Trying to Kill You: It's possible to get the police and all four Families out for your blood, and if you harass shopkeepers too much they'll attack you.
  • Evil Pays Better: Cops certainly think so.
  • Evil Versus Evil: Your character Aldo can be a right bastard at times, but neither the cops nor the other fournote  families have any moral high ground.
  • Extremity Extremist: Both Aldo and Dominic exclusively use their fists in melee combat (unless you've got a baseball bat equipped).
  • Finishing Move: Some of the Execution Styles involve these.
  • Foreshadowing: Monk gets angry when he, Aldo, and Paulie discussed about beating up the guys that beat up Bonasera's daughter. It's later revealed that she has a sister named Frankie, and is very close to her. She got killed later on, and Monk becomes insane and betrays the Corleone not long after.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Aldo was just the son of a Corleone-aligned baker, not even the lowliest of proper mobsters, but events led to him destroying the other four Families and taking over NYC. Averted in the sequel where Dominic is already established as Aldo's underboss before the game starts.
  • Full Set Bonus: In the second game, you get bonuses for taking over all of a type of front, such as incendiary ammo.
  • Game-Breaking Injury: Shooting anyone in the knees twice almost always kills him/her.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: After Sonny's death Don Vito calls a truce with the other four families, saying that unless pushed he will not be the one to break it. Doesn't make a bit of difference, guys.
  • Genre Blindness: When Carmine Rosato calls to propose a truce despite a reputation for not doing so, most people think it Seems Legit. Obviously, it isn't. Michael calls Dominic out on falling for it.
  • "Get Back Here!" Boss: Paulie Gatto and Sal Tessio will run away from you in the respective missions where you have to kill them. In the latter’s case, you must also brave Tessio’s Barzini bodyguards to catch up with him.
  • Good Old Fisticuffs: Your fighting style is straightforward brawling.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Given to Rocco's killing of Woltz's horse.
  • Guide Dang It!: In the sequel, there are several Made Men around the cities who start with two specialties compared to the one of most and better levels of weapons training. The problem is that the places they can be found are usually not obvious.
  • Hand Cannon: The Magnum. The sequel takes it to ridiculous lengths: You start with .357, upgrade to .44, then hit .50 and a real cash-purchased extra gives you .700.
  • 100% Completion: Getting this—completing all the missions, finding all the collectibles, extorting all the businesses, etc.—unlocks the ending where Aldo becomes the Don of NYC.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: Aldo keeps a massive arsenal — a shotgun, 2 handguns, a Tommy gun, garrote wire, 1 stick of dynamite, 4 Molotovs, 1 bomb, and a burning two by four in some versions, along with all the attendant ammo — inside of his shirt. Plus you can upgrade your Street Smarts to increase the carry limit on your throwables, and upgrading your weapons increases the max ammo capacity.
  • If I Wanted You Dead...: The Mangano consigliore in 2 threatens you with this.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: One of the businesses the Stracci family owns is a slaughterhouse, and it is implied that they dispose of their enemies's corpses by bringing them to the slaughterhouse, throwing them in the meat grinder, and then...
  • Informed Equipment: averted. In the second game body armor is worn visibly over clothes, getting the ammo increase upgrade gives Dominic and crew literal ammo belts...
  • Instant-Win Condition: In 2 an enemy Family is defeated once you take over their Compound. There will be no Remnant running around trying to take back territory, unlike the first game; all will be Killed Off for Real even if you did not use the kill conditions. Balanced in that you need to take all their fronts first to unlock the Compounds.
  • Interrogation by Vandalism: One possible tactic for extorting shopkeepers is to smash up their store until they cave.
  • Invincible Minor Minion: These sometimes show up.
  • It's Personal: It already was since the Barzini Don killed Aldo's father, but it goes even further after Frankie's death at the hands of Tattaglia goons.
  • It's Up to You: Played straight in the first game. The sequel tries to avert this by allowing you to send your own Made Men to attack enemy businesses or defend your own. In practice, success is much more likely when you deal with matters personally.
  • Just One Man: You can choose this as a dialogue option early on in the second about the Cuban rebels. Predictably enough, it's not too long before El Presidente abdicates.
  • Kill It with Fire: In addition to the oven execution (named "Over Cooked") listed under Convection, Schmonvection, there's an execution (entitled "Sicilian Candle") that involves lighting your enemy on fire and watching him burn to death.
  • Kneel Before Zod: You can make people do this, usually by Knee-capping them.
  • Knight Templar Big Brother: A possible sidequest in the sequel involves you being told to beat up or kill someone taking advantage of the quest-giver's sibling.
  • Kubrick Stare: Your character gives a hell of a good one upon becoming the Don of the Corleones.
  • Law of Chromatic Superiority:
    • Averted. Your black-clad Corleone comrades start out in the worst position, and it's the green Barzinis, not the red Cuneos, who are considered the strongest.
    • In the sequel, the Corleones now wear red, but still start out the weakest, with the strongest Family (Almeidas) wearing yellow.
  • The Law of Conservation of Detail: Subverted; There are some places that appear different on the map, many a locked door... Quite a few are Red Herrings.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the first game you find FBI files about the Corleone family. It briefly shows the protagonist listed as "—- Trapani, AKA The Player".
  • Leave Him to Me!: In the sequel, marking a Made Man For Death causes your allies to leave him alone so you can have him Killed Off for Real in the necessary matter.
  • Leave No Witnesses: Possible in the second. There may be witnesses to your crimes. You can run away, intimidate them into silence... or just kill them.
  • The Man Behind the Man: Roth in the second game, Barzini in the first. Michael can be seen as this, since while both Aldo and Dominic are the nominal Dons, they're taking their cues from him.
  • Magikarp Power: In the first game, the shotgun becomes drastically better after you upgrade it fully.
  • Make It Look Like an Accident: Happens at least three times in the first game. In one, you throw the target off a high ledge, then plant a used bottle of alcohol, making it seem like he fell off while drunk.
  • Marathon Level: "Baptism By Fire" in the first game, which involves assassinating four bosses and their mooks as well as driving and getting chased by angry mobsters (and eventually police) through four out of five regions in the game. Whew.
  • Mentor Occupational Hazard: Luca Brasi acts as your mentor in the start and doesn't escape his canon fate.
  • A Minor Kidroduction: The first game begins with Aldo witnessing his father's murder and the destruction of their family bakery by the Barzinis and Don Corleone's promise that he'll be able to take his revenge. Flash forward nine years...
  • Mook Chivalry: Averted. The members of the other four families don't know or care about fighting one-on-one like gentlemen, though oftentimes if they get close enough they'll put the guns away and fight you with their fists, especially if you're unarmed.
  • Mooks, but no Bosses: Present in both games. Even important enemy characters go down like ordinary mooks when you actually face them.
  • Moon Logic Puzzle: Most plotline missions have money bags lying around. They aren't hidden Mind Screwingly-well enough to be Guide Dang It!, but most will still miss them.
  • More Dakka: The Tommy gun acts like this from the start and weapon upgrades generally increase the rate of fire.
  • Murder by Cremation: One of the possible finishing moves involves throwing the enemy into an open oven.
  • Neck Snap: Appears in some of the Execution Styles.
  • Nintendo Hard:
    • Approaches this, due to the severe damage you can take quite often. In the first game, the enemies often spawn with shotguns, and if you go outside Corleone territory early into the game, you'll get killed in a hurry.
    • Some of the optional challenges in the assassinations qualify. You're besieged on all sides by goons with machine guns, but you're expected to first weaken the main target, then throw a bottle at his head to kill him.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Although the former President of Cuba is never named, for some reason, the anti-Castro rebels have a "B" as their symbol, presumably for Batista.
  • No Communities Were Harmed: The first game takes place in an accurate rendition of New York and New Jersey. The sequel is set in Queens, Miami and Havana, but all the names of the areas were changed to ones such as "Astoria" and "Deco Beach" for no obvious reason.
  • No Name Given: The Trojan. In the second film, a character with this nickname appears on the family chart as "Angelo Granelli".
  • No OSHA Compliance: Various places have conveniently low railings to knock people over for the Watch Your Step Execution Style.
  • Nominal Importance: Thoroughly averted; Every last NPC has a name.
  • Non-Action Big Bad: Hyman Roth in the sequel. Once you get past his plans and mooks, he doesn't even put up a fight and you can kill him with ease however you like.
  • Not Quite Dead: If you don't kill an enemy Made Man in the sequel using the specific "condition" needed, he'll just come back for more later.
  • Nothing Personal: Hyman Roth in the second game tries to offer this at the final confrontation.
  • Oddly Small Organization: All the Families in the second game, including your own, have a very small number of Made Men. Some are justified: With yours at least, it's somewhat clear that you're just a branch of the greater Corleone Family. The Manganos are also apparently an offshoot of an established Sicilian Family. The two Rosato Families are unauthorised splinters from the Corleones. The Granados and Almeidas have no onscreen-stated excuse, though.
  • Offscreen Teleportation: Your crew does this to keep up with you in the second game if you take off in a car without them, yet they have been ordered to follow you.
  • One-Man Army: In the first game, you will run up at least 250 kills just taking over Little Italy, and with four more areas to cover, over 1000 is expected. In the second you have a Badass Crew, but even with or without them you can still regularly take on several times your number and win.
  • Optional Sexual Encounter: You get respect points for "negotiation".
  • Papa Wolf: Averted; contract killing the other Dons' sons doesn't make the eventual encounter with them tougher.
  • Parking Payback: One of the mini side missions/favors has you destroying the vehicle of such a parker.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Many sidequests in the sequel involve you dealing injury to those who have done injustice against the quest-givers.
  • Pistol-Whipping: The Wii version allows you to do this, thanks to the motion controls.
  • Pragmatic Villainy: The game encourages the use of negotiations and bribes before violence... although effective violence (discovering weak spots) is more profitable than negotiation. Front owners will give up to 20% more each and racket/warehouse owners will also give more, with the added advantage of not having to pay them anything to take over.
  • Pretty Little Headshots: Subverted.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: If you happen to talk with enemy mooks before hand, they seem to be more or less normal everyday folks that go about their business.
  • Railing Kill: The Watch Your Step Execution Style is this.
  • Rank Scales with Asskicking: As Don (of NYC), your character is practically Made of Iron. Higher-ranking enemy mobsters are also more powerful.
  • Reformulated Game: The PSP version, The Godfather: Mob Wars has pretty much the same story but instead of being a Wide-Open Sandbox, is a standard linear Third-Person Shooter.
  • Regenerating Health: In the first game, taking damage for the first time results in a part of your health bar turning a lighter color. This will regenerate if you avoid taking further damage, otherwise continuing to be hit will cause the portion of the bar to turn black, necessitating a Healing Potion to restore it. The sequel made it a full regeneration system, but keeps the health potions for when you really need an instant pickup.
  • The Remnant: You'll still have some enemy mobsters to deal with even after the game counts their family as crushed.
  • Revolvers Are for Amateurs: Invoked in the first game, where your first gun is a snubnose.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: Subverted in the first game. The starting .38 snubnose is appropriately weak; even with the level 3 upgrade it isn't much good if you can't reliably score headshots. The pistol is the more versatile of the handguns. It doesn't do as much damage as the magnum but it reloads faster and carries more rounds. Its upgrade has an incredibly fast rate of fire. Also, the magnum is the strongest, on par with the shotgun, but it has slower reload and once both are fully upgraded the shotgun has much more ammo.
    In the second, the snubnose is no longer available. The pistol is still faster and carries more ammo, but the shotgun has been considerably nerfed with a large ammo capacity reduction, making the magnum the king again.
  • Rewarding Vandalism: It helps when extorting shopkeepers. You get a token sum from cash registers and some crates in missions have moneybags hidden. Plus you can deny enemies their cover.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The whole of the first game is one. As Aldo is battling the Barzini's to avenge his father.
  • Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Aldo can't take much punishment even with health upgrades, but even the "bosses" or strong Elite Mooks die pretty fast to headshots or long bursts of machine gun fire.
  • Rubber-Band A.I.: When you are being pursued, your pursuers are always faster than you, regardless of how fast your car is. And they're always driving the slowest, most basic car.
  • Sacrificial Lamb: Every death scenes from a character who originates from the game are this:
    • Frankie, Aldo's love interest dies just after he got made into an official soldier. Yet, her death serves to caused the rift between her brother, Monk and the Corleones. Aside from that she just vanish from the plot and she was tragically never mentioned again, even by Aldo himself. Though it is implied that Aldo's "everybody loses something" is a minor mention of her.
    • Monk's death is not that different, he goes insane later on, rats the Corleones, joins the Cuneos, and got killed by Aldo. Much like his sister, he was never mentioned again, and the story just goes on.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: In the sequel you can do favours for corrupt officials, who you can call on to pay you back later.
  • Sewer Level: The Wii version has one hitlist mission taking place in a sewer.
  • Shame If Something Happened: Aldo often says this when extorting a business.
  • Short-Range Shotgun: Averted to the extent that you do wish it was not. Of course, once you get the level 3 on your side...
  • Shout-Out:
    • Jaws (NPC named Mike Brody), Bon Jovi (banker in New Jersey, the singer's home state, named Jean Bongiovi, Bongiovi being the real person's actual surname), Seinfeld (NPC named Dolores Mulva in the party mission and one of the businesses you can extort is Poppy's Restaurant)
    • Level 3 upgrade to the Thompson SMG in the first game is named Dillinger, likely as a nod to the famous depression-era bank robber John Dillinger.
    • One of the assassinations involves a former rival capo who wishes to die in an old-fashioned duel. The ensuing scene involves Aldo walking through a phalanx of goons (who do not attack) while Spaghetti Western-ish music plays in the background. If you defeat him in the duel by following the rules (not drawing until he does), the goons will not bother you on your way out. Could qualify as a shout-out to either Sergio Leone westerns or the Samurai films that inspired them.
  • Shovel Strike: Shovels can be picked up in graveyards.
  • The Siege: In the PS3 and 360 versions of the first game, a slew of Cuneos assault the Corleone compound, and your job is to hold the fort with your fellow mobsters. These become more common in the sequel since enemies can now randomly raid your fronts.
  • Simple, yet Awesome: You can get through the whole games just using Boom, Headshot!.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: The recommended order is Tattaglia, Stracci, Cuneo then Barzini. You don't have to follow, though.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: While you can get the full selection of weaponry quite early, upgrades to the better weapons are available later and cost more.
  • Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Aldo is killed by a sniper in Cuba at the beginning of the second game.
  • Take That!: During a chat with the corrupt lieutenant governor in the sequel, the player character asks if he needs ballot boxes stuffed. The governor responds that "there won't be any election day shenanigans in Florida."
  • Talking the Monster to Death: Early in the game you can overhear two Corleone enforcers talking about Tom Hagen's Offscreen Moment of Awesome: He was kidnapped by a rival family, and he managed to convince them to release him, purely by talking.
  • Teleporting Keycard Squad: Picking up the cash left by racket truck guards triggers the spawning of pursuers if the part of NYC you're in isn't Corleone ground yet. Same goes for robbing mob couriers. The only way to prevent them from chasing you is if you don't kill the courier, but instead take his briefcase full of five Gs (by shooting his shoulder, as suggested), & he runs away w/o you collecting any vendetta.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: After choking someone to death, both Aldo and Dominic use a Neck Snap on the victim. Can never be too sure.
  • Too Dumb to Live:
    • The civilians and shopkeepers or racket bosses. If you're too close to them during combat with other mobsters, they'll rush you and try to kill you, despite you often being there to help them make a profit and mowing down active combatants in plain sight.
    • Can happen when you're hijacking a truck and hit a nearby mobster's car. Sometimes a soldier from one of the other families jumps out of the car, in the middle of a big gun battle with you, the family whose truck you're hijacking, possibly a 3rd family if you are near another family's business. All because you accidentally hit his car.
  • Turn Your Head and Cough: One of the lines spoken by nurses.
  • Trashcan Bonfire: Present and somehow usable as Exploding Barrels.
  • The Unreveal: The Trojan's name.
  • Underestimating Badassery: Every one of the enemy mob bosses you meet talks smack to you (save for Don Stracci in the original and Don Mangano in the sequel, though the latter's Consigliere doesn't share the sentiment), with Michael himself joining in at times. Regrettably, there's no Enemy Chatter for you to get the satisfaction of hearing them take their words back as you kill them off.
  • Unexplained Recovery: In the second game, all enemy Made Men must die in a specific manner-kill them with any other method and they'll just show up again later.
  • Unskippable Cut Scene: Far too many, unfortunately.
  • Updated Re-release: The first game got this on the seventh-generation consoles.
  • Use Your Head: Usable on grabbed enemies in the sequel.
  • Vanity License Plate: "GDF-250" for the cars parked by your safehouses or compounds in the second game.
  • Videogame Caring Potential: The game attempts to invoke this trope in several ways, such as civilians begging you not to kill them or genuinely being nice to you.
  • Videogame Cruelty Potential: With the exception of your girlfriend and fellow Corleones, you can hurt or kill everyone in the whole city in a wide variety of ways, such as throwing them off a roof or even into an oven. Then there's the extortions. While killing the shopkeeper is highly discouraged (as you'll have to wait a while before trying to extort the business again), and you have to be careful not to push them too far so they don't try to fight back, you still have access to quite a few methods to "convince" them to sell out to you. Each shopkeeper even has a specific thing that particularly irks them, such as damaging their store, killing customers in front of them or threatening/shooting them with your gun.
    • You can actually kill Corleones by randomly firing your gun, they will come running to you and continue to shoot and they'll follow you. Do this until they're near a fire barrel then blow it up. Also a good way to kill people without your heat and vendetta levels going up.(even policeman)
    • The original three-platform release has 22 "execution styles", which is increased in the Wii version to 52; you get bonus points for carrying out all of them. Some hit contracts give you extra money and Respect for killing the target a certain way, but it sometimes gets ridiculous. For an example, trying to take out the Tattaglia second-in-command by throwing glass bottles.
  • Videogame Cruelty Punishment: Getting your Heat too high will negate the temporary immunity from police pursuit you can get from bribing cops. A certain level of Vendetta will make enemy mobsters open fire when they see you/your vehicle and maxing it out will start a Mob War. Abusing a shopkeeper or racket boss too much will make them fight back, while killing them leads to either losing the opportunity to convert them, if they're currently on an enemy family's side, or losing the income from them if they're in the Corleone camp.
  • Villain Protagonist: You work for the Mafia, though your opponents aren't any better than you.
  • Violence is the Only Option: Averted. Sort of. The game manual actually recommends bribing cops instead of shooting at them:
    • Getting sufficent respect (accomplished by many varied ways) means shopkeepers capitulate with little to no violence, often paying more than if you'd threatened them...but less than if you discover their weak spot while threatening them.
    • Bribing G-men is the easier and more practical of the two ways to win a Mob War. Bombing a business risks your own death (and the bombing of your own businesses) and will deprive you of a potential source of money for an in-game week.
  • Wall of Weapons: Found in purchased safehouses and compounds.
  • Wanted Meter: There's a "Heat" meter for cops and "Vendetta" for rival families.
  • We Cannot Go On Without You: Double subversion in the sequel. If you die and there are Medic-trained allies nearby, they can revive you... but if there aren't, you will die even if there are other allies around.
  • We Were Your Team: Discussed in the sequel. Michael Corleone says that Aldo Trapani was the only one holding the New York mob together. Sure enough, with his death, breakaway splinter groups have started to form.
  • With This Herring: You start off with poor equipment in both games and weak allies in the second. In the first it's at least justifiable that Don Vito might not think Aldo important enough to issue top-end gear, but in the second Dominic is the Corleones' Dragon-in-Chief and thus Michael has no real reason to skimp.
  • Would Hit a Girl: While there are no female mobsters onscreen, female storeowners do exist and you can use the same "negotiation" techniques that you do on the males.
  • Yandere: One sidequest from the sequel involves the questgiver asking Dominic to help snap his Yandere girlfriend out of it by force.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In 2 there are only so many slots on your Badass Crew. Want to recruit someone better? You can mark an existing member for death, allowing you to dispose of him.
  • You Killed My Father:
    • The Barzini's Don ordered the hit on Aldo's father. When you get yours back as part of the baptism executions, he even recognises that it would have been you.
    • Lampshaded in the sequel, where the default mob car is called the Montoya.

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