Video Game / Saints Row

Saints Row. Sinners welcome.

If ya sick of being sick, and ya tired of being broke
Go get yo guns and bring yo ass to Saints Row
(Saints Row!!) Bitch!, (Saints Row!!) Bitch!

— David Banner, "Saints Row"^note the Theme Song of the game, unlocked upon collecting all 60 CDs scattered throughout the game world

Saints Row is a Wide-Open Sandbox game and the first entry in the Saints Row series. It was released in 2006 exclusively for the Xbox 360.

The game follows "Playa", an antiheroic mime, who is walking the streets of the eponymous Saint's Row district, before being thrust into the middle of a three-way gang war by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. When the Third Street Saints rescue him, he joins their gang and has to help them reclaim first their neighborhood, then the city of Stilwater (based on Detroit and other Midwestern cities) from the other three gangs:

• Vice Kings (yellow), African-Americans bankrolled by a former gangster turned record company executive. They specialize in the vice entertainment of prostitution, pornography, and gambling and have the police on their payroll.
• Los Carnales (red), the obligatory Hispanic gang, backed up by the obligatory Colombians. They deal in drugs and small arms.
• Westside Rollerz (blue), Asians and Caucasian car enthusiasts from the suburbs doing illegal car sales and street racing.

However, just as you think the game is over, a short new line of missions reveal themselves, leading to a turn of events that result in "Playa" being caught in a boat explosion — he survives, however, and the resolution is revealed in the second game.

After over a decade without any sort of rerelease, port or remaster, Saints Row was finally made backwards compatible with the Xbox One system in mid-2018, much to the rejoicing of long time fans.

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Provides Examples Of:

• Action Girl: Women appear among the ranks of the various gangs mooks and most gangs have important high ranking female members such as Luz, Tanya, and of course Lin. Though only Lin is much of an actual action girl. Tanya is willing to get her hands dirty and becomes the Vice Kings leader, but when confronted she folds like paper. Luz is basically just a gold digger who hooked up with a high profile member of Los Carnales.
• Attack of the Political Ad: Among the in-game radio are commercials for mayoral candidates Alderman Richard Hughes and current mayor Marshall Winslow. Hughes' ads paint Winslow as incompetent in dealing with the gang violence plaguing the city, whereas Winslow's dismisses Hughes' claims as "quick fixes" and show more of an emphasis on redeveloping the city's current services. Later on, you're tasked with killing Winslow.
• Bad Santa: To celebrate the holidays, a free santa suit was made available to download from Xbox Live.
• Bears Are Bad News: The Big Picture movie theater has a few ads for a movie called "Bears And Bullets" featuring a bear commando wielding an assault rifle AND a revolver!
• Between My Legs: This happens late in the Vice Kings storyline with Tanya Winters right before she shoots Warren Williams dead.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: Beating all the hitman missions will reward the player with 4 special weapons. A golden handgun, platinum SMG, and platinum shotgun for each individual list. For finishing all 3 the player then unlocks a platinum RPG. Of course, since several of the hitman targets in this game easily fall under Guide Dang It! and Fake Difficulty most players are lucky just to get one bling weapon...
  • It's absolutely worth it to be persistent (or use a guide) to unlock at least one of these weapons, simply because each of them easily qualifies as a Disc-One Nuke. They outperform every other weapon in their respective category with larger magazine sizes, larger overall ammo capaity, and - most importantly - sheer damage output. Best of all, however, is that ammo for all these weapons can be refilled for free at the Playa's cribs, meaning no more scavenging ammo from killed enemies, or wasting literally tens of thousands of hard-earned dollars at weapon shops.
  • This game is also the first in the series to feature the mighty pimp cane shotgun.
• Bland-Name Product: Freckle Bitch's is clearly a much less wholesome version of Wendy's.
• Bloodstained Glass Windows: The main HQ for the Saints is a run down church that enemy gang members and cops have no problem following Playa into if he decides to run inside during a fight. One late game Los Carnales mission also involves the gang attacking the church directly. While most of the firefighting during this mission takes place outside the combat begins when some Carnales open fire on the Saints from the inside of the church.
• Brick Joke: A few depending on what order the player fights the rival gangs in. For example, when the player is forced to drive around Tanya Winters she'll comment on Luz wearing outdated shoes. Then in the final Carnales mission Playa himself tells her pretty much the same thing. A little later Tanya will wonder aloud if Friendly Fire does giftwrapping when she stops there to buy a gun. Cue a Los Carnales mission where the shopkeeper at Friendly Fire asks the Saints if they want the McManus rifle they just bought to kill Hector giftwrapped.
  • A particularly long Brick Joke is started when Gat has his knee shot by Anthony Green. In Saints Row IV, having Gat and Benjamin King together will prompt King to ask Gat about his leg.
• Briefcase Full of Money: The woman hiring Playa during the cutscene for the Los Carnales hitman missions offers him one of these as a reward.
  Debra: "You're probably thinking one of two things... "How can I kill someone who hasn't done anything to me?" Or, "How am I ever gonna spend all that money?" Let me tell you something sweetie, the second choice will take you further in this life."
• Burger Fool: Chicken Ned is a special homie who shows up wearing his Lik-A-Chik mascot outfit.
• Car Cushion: Happens to Tanya Winters during the Vice King arc.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Most missions are short and easy enough that this isn't much of a problem for most of the game, but the last couple of missions in each gangs arc will probably try the patience of at least a few players. There is also a series of a few fairly difficult missions after all the gangs are beaten were checkpoints would have been nice. Thankfully, all later games in the series include checkpoints.
• Clean Up the Town: The whole plot of the game starts with the Playa being caught in the crossfire between Stilwater's various gangs while walking down the street and joining the 3rd Street Saints in an effort to curb the gang violence tearing the city apart. Not along after accomplishing this, Playa is then caught in a massive boat explosion and put into a coma for five years. By the time Playa wakes up years later, all of that effort ends up being All for Nothing as new gangs sprung up while the Saints fell apart in the meanwhile.
• Cool Car: In addition to all the awesome cars players can make at Rim Jobs beating a certain activity will unlock a fully customized and pimped out Baron with spinning rims and zebra skin seats. The game also has a few special DLC vehicles that can only be bought off of Xbox Live.
• Department of Redundancy Department: Stefan, a snooty businessman who owns the Impressions clothing store is fond of doing this in his radio ads.
  "This is Stefan, owner of Impressions. The clothing shop where you shop for clothing you see."
• Description Porn: The store clerk working at Friendly Fire gives a very detailed description of the McManus sniper rifle that the Saints buy during a Carnales storyline cutscene.
• Deus ex Machina: Of a sort. At the very end of the game, it looks like Hughes is going to succeed in his plan to destroy the Row after killing the Playa... when a bomb suddenly goes off with no more warning than two beeps, destroying the boat and killing Hughes. It's not without its price, though — before the announcement of the sequel, it appeared the main character had also been killed rendering the whole game pointless. And even when the sequel revealed otherwise, that Playa actually survived and that it was Julius himself who set the bomb, it still established Playa being put in a coma for five years.
• Disney Villain Death: The end of the Vice Kings storyline, where Tanya Winters is knocked out of King's penthouse, falling forty stories before landing on King's car.
• Downer Beginning: The game opens with a cutscene of the player walking down a street minding their own business when a massive firefight breaks out between Stilwater's 3 gangs and nearly gets them killed in the crossfire. Only about three minutes in and the body count is already pushing into the double digits.
• Downer Ending: The game ends with Playa being blown up on a yacht, spending five years in a coma, and undergoing major reconstructive surgery prior to the second game. On the plus side, this justifies any and all appearance changes between the two games... except for, perhaps, the possible different gender and/or ethnicity. But just pretend it was always like that. That's how Word of God put it, at least.
• Dragon Ascendant / Dragon with an Agenda: There's actually no storyline where the enemy gang's boss is killed last - Hector Lopez is assassinated early and succeeded by Angelo, Benjamin King is betrayed by Warren, who's later betrayed by Tanya, and William Sharp is killed before Price.
• Dude, She's Like in a Coma: One of the movies advertised at the "Peep This" theater is called "Comatose Whores 4"
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Compare this to the silliness of later games and it's actually quite jarring to see how seriously this series started out.
  • Playa is a Heroic Mime, only speaking a total of four times throughout the game, and can only be male. Starting in 2, The Boss is given the choice to be either male or female. Word of God states that if the player chooses female, then The Boss would have been female during the events of this game.
  • This game was also exclusive to Xbox 360. PC and PS3 ports were planned, but Volition instead chose to focus on developing Saints Row 2, which went multiplatform.
  • There’s a talk radio station that’s similar to that of GTA radio, especially with Lazlow. Future games did away with this and only had radio stations playing music.
  • Stores close during the night time. They can be broken into to steal the safe, which can then be sold to a fence. This was done away with in later games, where stores are always open.
  • Unlike later games, you are unable to unlock the main lieutenants as homies (not even Johnny Gat, who gets to be a unlockable homie in later games), as unlockable homies come from side activities, with the exception of the Wheel Woman after "Canonized". Though you can unlock Zombie Lin, it's still somewhat downplayed anyway as Troy, Johnny, Dex and Julius can't be unlocked.
  • Besides Johnny Gat, who is present since the beginning, Pierce and Shaundi, mainstays and two of the most recognizable characters in the series cast, do not appear in this game. They make their debut in the sequel.
  • If you want to change your hair style, Image as Designed isn't the place to go, as you instead have to go to hair salons. Every other game would have hair options added into Image as Designed locations, leaving hair salons obsolete and thus absent.
  • Activities had a bit more detail to them, with full cutscenes and having three locations for each activity, being part of the enemy gang territories. Saints Row 2 would limit to activities to only two locations (therefore no longer applying to any enemy gang territory) and the cutscenes less detailed, and Saints Row: The Third did away with activity cutscenes entirely.
  • The Insurance Fraud activity doesn't have a adrenaline meter, instead providing bonuses such as air time and being hit by civic vehicles (i.e. cop cars and ambulances).
  • There are neither motorcycles nor useable aircraft present in this game, only being added in the second game and being present since.
  • There is no true Playable Epilogue, as finishing "Saints and Martyrs" kicks the player back to the title screen after the credits, and reloading your save file still has the mission marker on the map as if nothing happened. Thankfully however, "Saints and Martyrs" is not required for 100% Completion, making the lack of an actual post game a non-issue.
  • The Faction FM is closer to later games' 89.0 Gen X playlists than 89.0 Gen X itself.
  • The Krunch 106.66 plays classic hard rock, as opposed to the more modern direction of SR2's Krunch and its replacement in The Third, The Blood 106.66.
  • Kish is not the DJ of KRhyme.
• Enemy Civil War: Ben King getting betrayed by his lieutenants causes this for the Vice Kings, split between those still loyal to King vs those who sided with Tanya. You only have to deal with the latter faction, however.
• Everyone Is a Suspect: Implied at the end. Just before the yacht the Playa and Alderman Hughes are on explodes, the game cuts to almost every major character who is still alive, several of whom have a grudge against the Playa, alone and looking serious or contemplative.
• Expy: Joseph Price, the leader of the Westside Rollerz, looks just like Dominic Toretto from The Fast and the Furious.
• Fake Difficulty: The Player Character can't figure out how to stick his RPG launcher over a ledge when he's aiming downward, so you end up blowing yourself up. The frequency of missions where you're expected to drive competently at high speeds and do damage to an enemy car with a weapon instead of your car near the endgame goes way up. Strangely, this is helped in the sequel by two changes - cruise control and remapping of the driving controls (allowing you to steer/shoot with your left hand and accelerate/aim with your right hand, rather than having accelerate/aim/shoot all done with the right hand as in this game).
• False Flag Operation: The mission "The 3rd Street Vice Kings" has both Johnny Gat and Playa dress up as members of one of their rival gangs so that the police will have to come down harder on them. It works, surprisingly enough.
• Fame Gate: Every story mission costs a respect point to unlock. So you need to acquire respect from side missions and various actions (stunts, taking out rival gangs, cool driving, etc.).
• Fictional Document: The manual for the game is framed as a clipboard notebook containing the notes made by an undercover cop, later revealed to be Troy, for Da Chief Monroe, complete with authentic (and identity-revealing) errors.
• Foreshadowing:
  • There's quite a few hints towards Troy being an undercover cop.
    • The manual (seen here) is written from the point of view of an undercover officer, who includes a newspaper interview he conducted that he's afraid will blow his cover. He lights a cigarette several times during the interview. Troy's never seen without a cigarette within reach.
    • Said article's title is "The Trojan Horse". No guesses as to what city Troy is named after.
    • There's another dead giveaway in the gang description section of the manual. "The Los Carnales" is written, and "The" is scratched out. Troy always refers to the gang as "The Los Carnales" and is consistently corrected by Dex.
    • In the Vice Kings' section, the undercover cop suggests that neither Chief Monroe or the undercover officer would want to go down on the gang. Troy expresses displeasure at being assigned to investigate the Vice Kings by Julius, and the Vice Kings are later discovered to be on Monroe's payroll.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The Vice Kings
  • Benjamin King: Melancholic
  • Warren Williams: Choleric
  • Anthony Green: Sanguine
  • Tanya Winters: Phlegmatic
• Freudian Trio: The Westside Rollerz
  • Id: Joseph Price
  • Superego: William Sharp
  • Ego: Donnie
• Friendly Local Chinatown: Lin, a high ranking member of the Saints comes from Stilwater's local Chinatown. The player can even pay this district a visit personally to do some activities, such as hitman missions for Mr. Wong.
• Gangbangers: Almost all of the characters are members of different street gangs trying to gain full control of the city. The player character themself is a member of the only gang with (somewhat) noble goals in mind.
• Gang Initiation Fight: You have to fight a whole mob of Saints before you're allowed to join.
• Gangsta Style: Played straight, but averted in the sequel.
• Goofy Print Underwear: The underwear options include heart and polka-dot boxers.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: An Easter Egg found by calling 'Eye For An Eye' Zombie Lin appears as a homie, using her dismembered arm as a melee weapon.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The Hitman missions can be a real chore to do. Most of the targets are actually random pedestrian variations, rather than unique characters, and as such can tend to spawn more in other areas than where the game lists them. ^note Most of the Airport targets, such as Gabriel, Bill and Thomas actually spawn around the Docks and Warehouses district. Some of the targets are also classed to only drive specific vehicles, or only spawn at certain times of the day.^note The jogger and rollerskate targets, Juan and Tina, only spawn during the day, whereas the prostitute target, Theresa, spawns more commonly in the poorer districts at night. In addition, two of the suspects are only found by getting a high wanted level, although the game gives no hint of this other than stating that their location is "Unknown".
  • You can take a taxi via Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay - just look for another taxi somewhere on the streets, and call the phone number advertised on the taxi with your phone. Nothing tells you to do this, and some other phone numbers can be called for an effect of varying usefulness, like calling 911 to get an ambulance to come over which restores your health. Ironically, taking a taxi is highly unrealistic in its own way because it will always take absolutely no in-game time.
• Heel–Face Turn: Julius is a former Vice King, and owes Benjamin King a favor or two. King prefers to avoid killing unless he has to. He ultimately helps you dismantle his own gang when his lieutenants turn against him.
• Hollywood Voodoo: There are a few adds for a place called "Eye For An Eye" voodoo supplies. Calling them after completing the mission where Lin dies will unlock a zombie version of her as a homie.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Food can be eaten to restore health. While it certainly works, it's slightly jarring to see the Playa wolf down a whole burger within two seconds in the middle of a firefight.
• Insistent Terminology: According to Dex, its not "The Los Carnales", it's just "The Carnales". Justified, as "Los" means... aw, fuck it.
• Initiation Quest: The very first mission of the game is a Gang Initiation Fight, where you have to brawl three waves of Third Street Saints in front of their hideout in order to prove your loyalty to the gang. Notably, you cannot fail this mission, since getting knocked out by your peers is just as good in the eyes of the gang leadership as you defeating them. You do get more rewards if you do, though, as well as a reverent comparison with the gang's top enforcer, Johnny Gat.
• Joke Character: Lik-A-Chik mascot Chicken Ned can be called as a homie by dialing a number "for a cluckin' good time".
• Just a Gangster: Warren Williams of the Vice Kings has no time for his boss' plan to go legit and becomes The Starscream after getting fed up with King's refusal to fight the Saints head on.
• Karmic Injury: Tanya Winters and Anthony "Big Tony" Green have taken Johnny Gat and the Player Character captive. Johnny doesn't hesitate to openly insult Tanya and Tony to their faces, despite Tony furiously ordering him to shut up. Tony promptly punishes Johnny by unloading a shotgun into his left knee, whereupon Johnny retaliates by sticking a knife into Tony's foot.
• Klingon Promotion: Warren Williams tries to do this to seize control of the Vice Kings away from Benjamin King. While he briefly gains control of the gang, he fails to kill King, who turns to the Saints to help him get revenge. His girlfriend, Tanya, however, is considerably more successful in killing him to gain control.
• Loan Shark: The Playa can visit the First Born Loans loan office downtown for some quick cash, but if they fail to pay it back on time they'll be targeted by a hit squad. If he's particularly tardy in paying it back, First Born Loans will escalate to sending Oppressors with door gunners.
• Mascot: Several hotdog and drink mascots can be seen walking the streets. The player can even get a secret homie named Chicken Ned by calling a certain phone number.
• Meaningful Name: At the beginning of the game, Aisha is signed to Kingdom Come Records. Guess exactly what happens to the label when she fakes her death.
• Mêlée à Trois: The game opens with a scuffle between the Vice Kings and the Rollerz, which soon turns into a three-way shootout when the Carnales show up, as well. The prologue mission sequence ends with a four-way shootout between VKs, Rollerz, Carnales, and the resurgent Third Street Saints for the last piece of contested turf in the Row. Because of the way the game is structured, all later missions involve taking on individual gangs one at a time, barring an occasional interference by the police.
• New-Age Retro Hippie: Various hippies can be seen around Stilwater, and the clothing store On The Rag is owned by one named Marge.
• No Periods, Period: Averted. One of the clothing stores in the game is titled On The Rag, with radio ads making various double entendres about the name.
• Not My Driver: One late Vice Kings mission. To get inside Big Tony's crib and save a captured Johnny, you must kill Tanya Winters' limo driver, take his place, and pick up Tanya and drive her around in order to get inside the crib.
• N-Word Privileges: Nearly every black character both major and minor uses the word at least once. While later games in the series also make use of this trope its generally restricted to just songs on the radio instead of the actual characters.
• Oh, Crap!: When Angelo runs out of bullets in front of Playa and Dex, his face is priceless.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: One Vice Kings mission has Playa and Johnny dress up as members of the gang to frame them for crimes they commit so that the police department will be forced to crack down on them. How do they go about doing this? By simply putting on yellow jackets, which is especially funny if the player is otherwise wearing purple clothes and has purple hair. Amazingly enough no one notices it's them and and the plan goes off without a hitch.
• Parking Garage: One stronghold mission tasks the player with wiping out a group of Vice King bookies who are meeting up at the Filmore parking garage to discuss rigging hockey games. It's implied that Julius has lost a lot of his money betting on their rigged games before.
  Julius: "Don't let any of them walk away. No one fucks with my hockey game."
• Pimp Duds: A whole pimp suit can be unlocked by completing Snatch. Its actually pretty damn spiffy.
• Police Brutality: Due to the more serious and realistic ghetto tone of this game compared to later games in the series this gets played for drama just as much as it gets played for laughs. One of Playa's job contacts was even unfortunate enough to be left in a wheelchair after a particularly nasty assault.
• Production Foreshadowing: Some random Saint mooks might express concern that Dex might "pull some Warren Williams bullshit". Dex ends up pulling a Face–Heel Turn in Saints Row 2.
• Punk in the Trunk: This was bound to happen sooner or later in the Rollerz arc since they were all such heavy car enthusiasts. What caught many players off guard was that this trope turns out to be the cause of Lin's death at the hands of William Sharp.
• Sacrificial Lion: Lin during the Rollerz plot.
• Safe Cracking: The player has to complete a short button-pressing minigame to open safes during the theft diversion in this game. You can also simply force the shopkeepers themselves to open it at gunpoint.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: See Downer Ending.
• Shout-Out:
  • The achievement for wiping out the Rollerz is Road Warrior.
  • Ultor didn't make the jump from this to genuine Canon Welding until the next game.
  • One of the achievements is called "Getting Up" and requires the player to find and spray every tag in the city.
• Silent Bob: The main character is silent, save for a few grunts and groans of pain throughout the game, but when he does speak, and he does speak, he often says the funniest things in the game. The four lines he actually gets are spoilered below:
  • Vice Kings: "Hope you don't mind hepatitis." Said in response to Gat saying he "was gonna skullfuck that bitch (Tanya)". Even Gat is stunned that he finally opened his mouth.
  • Los Carnales: "Bullshit! That's last year's fall collection!" Said when calling out Luz on her comments that the shoes she brought with her to the airport were from the current season's spring collection.
  • Westside Rollerz: "I just got run over by a motherfuckin' truck! How do you think I feel?" Said to Julius after he asks how the player is.
  • Endgame: "Can we hurry this shit up? I wanna go to Freckle Bitch's!" Said to, of all people, Alderman Hughes, while the latter is detailing his evil plan to gentrify Saints Row and explaining that since the player can't be bullied or bribed, he's going to be killed right then and there.
  • The main character being mute save for these four lines is occasionally lampshaded by other characters:
    Dex: (while he and the main character are driving to a meeting) When we get to Manuel, just let me do all the talkin', 'aight? I'd hate for us to fuck things up with the Columbians because you said some crazy shit that pisses him off.
  • This changes sharply in the sequel — the main character not only is an Anti-heroic Mime no longer, he's really mouthy. All the time. He was only quiet in the first one because he was being a good henchman. He got tired of it.
    Player Character: That mute shit was getting old.
    
    Player Character: Being in charge is better than being a bitch who keeps his mouth shut and does what he's told.
  • It's even lampshaded all the way to Saints Row IV when you Revisit Stilwater in Ben King's simulation rescue.
    Player Character: This is where I got my start. I was too scared to even talk back then.
    Kinzie: Must have been nice.
• Smug Snake: William Sharp, uncle of Joseph Price, leader of the Westside Rollerz. He is also responsible for killing Lin. Fortunately, you get the chance to pursue him and nail his ass after he does.
• Stalker with a Crush: Aisha has one that attacks you during one mission.
• The Starscream: Warren to King, and Tanya to Warren.
• Strawman Political: Played for Laughs in the NPR-like KBOOM
  "Are you saying the immigrants sank your battleship?"
• Stripperiffic:
  • Beating one of the Escorts in this game unlocks a homie named Samantha. She works as an actual stripper and joins the player in battle while wearing nothing but a thong and pasties. Note that since she, by default, carries a rather powerful K6 Krukov, she's actually one of the more useful unique Homies around.
  • Tanya also wears a skimpy bra and miniskirt as her getup. Ironically, her backstory indicates she was once a Vice Kings prostitute herself that shot up the ranks by sleeping with all the right people. Her costume is significant in the sense that out of all characters associated with Vice Kings, she is the only one not wearing VK colors.
  • And of course, the only things the Playa has to wear are boxers and shoes. Otherwise you can dress him in as much or little as you want.
• Stumbled Into the Plot: The Playa from the original Saints Row is just a Stilwater nobody at the outset, accidentally caught up in a three-way gang shootout and almost executed as an unwanted witness. He is rescued by the Vigilante Man Julius Little and joins his 3rd Street Saints out of gratitude, as well as to Clean Up the Town.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Tanya Didn't Think This Through when the Playa, Johnny Gat and Benjamin King all walk into her penthouse at the end of the final Vice Kings mission. She thinks she can threaten them with an assault rifle when all three are already aiming with her dead to rights. No Final Boss ensues, nor any sort of dramatic standoff — they immediately open fire and send her hanging from the shattered window before she can even get a shot off.
• Sword Cane: Even back in the day Saints Row was still pretty crazy as shown by them one-upping this trope with a pimp cane SHOTGUN as an unlockable reward.
• Third-Person Person: Stefan. This pisses off Ben King so bad that he threatens to drop him from a fast-moving car "by principle".
• Trojan Horse: Dex uses this tactic to break into a Carnales stronghold with a large truck the player helped steal in an earlier mission. After the back is loaded with Saints they drive right through the front gates and tear Los Carnales a new one.
• Vigilante Militia: A group of the eponymous district's denizens grows frustrated with their homes being used as a battleground by outside gangs and form a vigilante posse to clean up their 'hood, calling themselves "the Third Street Saints". The Player Character joins the Saints on the eve of their first major offensive.Unfortunately for everyone, once they get a taste for success, the Saints themselves become the biggest gang in the city. In the later installments, they abandon any pretence of vigilantism under the player character's leadership.
• Villains Out Shopping: An entire Vice King mission focuses on transporting Tanya around town in her limo as she runs a few errands. The dialog the player is treated to while driving her to the various stores is pretty funny.
  Tanya: "Sometimes I just wanna say "Fuck it all!" and go to Hollywood, you know?"
• Visual Pun: When you resuscitate a recruited NPCs who's been knocked out, Playa pulls out a 40 and pours it out on their head — so he is literally "pouring one out for the (fallen) homies".
• Wham Episode: "Saints and Martyrs" (usually and erroneously referred to by the cutscene name, "Salting the Earth"), the final story in the game has several shocking moments in rapid succession: Alderman Hughes reveals his plan to steamroll Saints Row, Troy Bradshaw is a cop, Julius isn't in jail at all, and the yacht Hughes and the Playa are on blows up.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The buyers that the Westside Rollerz sell their stolen car parts to are mentioned briefly by Julius at the end of "Semi-Charmed Life", where he worries that there is stuff going on that he's unaware about. However, they're never brought up again afterwards.
• White Gangbangers: Troy, Tanya, the leadership of the Rollerz, and Playa by default. Additionally, every gang has white members within the rank-and-file.
• Woman Scorned: One of the mayhem activities begins with a woman telling Playa about how her husband left her for her sister and refuses to pay her the money he owes. So she asks Playa to raise hell and destroy all of his property to get him to cough up the cash.

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Alternative Title(s): Saints Row 1, Saints Row (2006)