Video Game / Sleeping Dogs (2012)

aka: Sleeping Dogs

"Let Sleeping Dogs Lie."

— Proverb

Sleeping Dogs^note  Chinese title: 无间龙头 (Wu Jian Long Tou), Undercover Dragon is a 2012 action-adventure open world video game developed by United Front Games and published by Square Enix. It was released in all territories in August 2012 except for Japan and most of Southeast Asia, which had a September 2012 release.

Taking place in Hong Kong, players take the role of Wei Shen, an undercover cop from the San Francisco Police Department sent to Hong Kong to assist the Hong Kong Police Force. He infiltrates a triad gang called the Sun On Yee to bring it down from within. Its gameplay takes elements from many other series such as Grand Theft Auto ^note with the ability to ram cars off the road easily taken from Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, Just Cause (vehicular combat), Max Payne (Bullet Time Third-Person Shooter), Batman: Arkham Asylum (melee combat, especially its freeform fighting system), and Assassin's Creed (free-running segments), mixing them all in one big package.

The game had originally begun development as an original game called Black Lotus but was re-branded as the third game in the True Crime series as True Crime: Hong Kong. Due to the poor reception and performance of the second game, however, as well as delays and budget overruns, Activision, the game's original publisher, canned it in 2010. Shortly after that, it was picked back up by Square Enix and renamed. It did very well critically when released, with the open world of Hong Kong being praised to high heaven.

The game was previously given away for free to PlayStation Plus subscribers in May 2013 and Xbox Live Gold members via the Games for Gold program from January 1—15, 2014. A Free-to-Play Spin-Off, entitled Triad Wars, was planned, and a public beta was released on PC, but was ultimately cancelled in December 2015. A sequel to the original game was also in development, but now it seems unlikely after United Front Games suddenly shut down in October 2016.

An Updated Re-release, Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition was released on October 10, 2014 for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows. This edition included enhanced graphics and performance, as well as all of the previously released DLC content. The Xbox One version of the Definitive Edition was given away via Games with Gold during the month of December 2016, nearly three years after the 360 version was given away through the same program.

A live-action movie adaptation was announced in 2017, with Donnie Yen attached as one of the main cast members. As of 2020, Yen said (via Weibo) that production is still going despite COVID-19 restrictions.

Not to be confused with a 2024 Russell Crowe’s film, which is not an film adaptation, instead, it’s based from the book The Book of Mirrors.

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Sleeping Dogs provides examples of the following tropes:

• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: As a GTA-style game, the drives from the mission starts to their locations generally act as this, with the characters taking the opportunity for a heart-to-heart conversation.
  • Notably unlike most GTA-style games, however, some missions are primarily this. Most will still have an action sequence, but typically a short one at the end, and often disconnected from the rest of the scene.
• Actor Allusion: This isn't the first time that James Hong voice acted a character in media with someone named Po. Not the first time he's played a Triad boss or a character named David, either.
• Adapted Out: Real-life-to-fiction example. This version of Hong Kong has been modified so some places like Disneyland have been cut.^note Due to licensing permissions between Disney and Square Enix, Disneyland was not included.
• Affectionate Parody: The game itself is more of a love letter to Hong Kong action movies than a parody of them, but some of the DLCs are firmly entrenched in parody territory.
  • Nightmare in North Point is this to Mandarin horror movies, featuring jiang shi, wooden swords, and magical tea. One DLC-specific attack even has Wei stick the iconic paper strip to a jiang shi's forehead.
  • The Zodiac Tournament is a parody of classic 1970s martial arts movies. It has its own credits sequence, a film grain effect, and Bruce Lee-style punch and kick noises. The acting is also much cheesier.
• Agent Peacock: The leader of the Zodiac Tournament, who speaks in a posh, almost flamboyant accent and is the master of the Drunken Fist Style, easily the most absurd looking and overly theatrical of the styles used by anyone in the game.
• All Just a Dream: The Nightmare in North Point DLC is not strongly connected to the rest of the plot, and is implied to have been a weird nightmare that Wei had. But then where did the hat come from?
• All There in the Manual: Throughout the game, police reports can be unlocked, which give more information on characters' personalities and past events.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: This is one to Sega's Yakuza series. Both are open-world crime drama games that feature a mix of hand-to-hand combat and gunplay (the former more than the latter) and focus on different East Asian criminal organizations (the Yakuza and Triads).
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Several missions will unlock different sets of clothing throughout the game, and some of the lockboxes will also feature complete outfits or items of clothing.
• Angrish: Cutting off a driver or generally driving like an idiot will invite insults, usually in two languages and in the same breath.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Probably because of how easy it is to lose points for your Cop score you start off with a motorcycle so you don't need to resort to hijacking vehicles during Story Missions. Additionally the plentiful drug bust missions have the added bonus of quickly providing plenty of Cop points to make up for all the ones easily lost during Story Missions. It's actually easier to maximize your Cop rank than your Triad rank.
• Anyone Can Die: Winston, Peggy, Jackie, Dogeyes, Ming, Johnny Ratface, Ace, Vincent, Ponytail, Mr. Tong, Uncle Po and Big Smile Lee just to name a few.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In the mission "Bad Luck", breaking "Two Chin" Tsao's vases will get you 80 Triad Experience for vandalism, and taking the jade statue in his manor will earn you another 80 for theft. Moving his piano to throw off his feng shui earns you yet another 80 for "mischief".
• Armor Is Useless: Averted. Armored enemies are noticeably harder to take out, and player armor can reduce any damage taken by bullets (Or, for one armor, any damage taken by anything. At all.) by up to 50%
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The cops will circle around you when you take someone hostage. But if you fire the gun or moving close to a cop, they usually Shoot the Hostage and eventually kills them.
    • Trial by Friendly Fire
  • Sometimes the civilians will attack you when you cause trouble, but you can easily defeat them without breaking a sweat. Also, they will keep attacking you even when they are near death...until you pull a gun.
  • Unlike the Grand Theft Auto games, the civilians will not go back to their own car when you hijack-then-exit the vehicle. Yet, they will beat the crap outta you instead of going back to their car, after they pulled you out of their car.
  • If a car door you left open gets in the way, any NPC that comes across it will still attempt to walk through instead of walking around it.
• As Long as It Sounds Foreign: One that's easy to miss. There's a storm drain outlet called "Chiang Mai Sewage Outlet". Chiang Mai is a Thai name (the name of a city in fact). May be a reference to Cheung Fai, a road that was the location of a hideout in Infernal Affairs.
• Artistic License – Geography:
  • Due to limitations of consoles at the time, Hong Kong Island is smaller in-game when compared to real life.
  • North Point is located at east of the island but in real life, it is located at the north east.
  • The MTR subway system is completely absent from the game.
  • The game features "under construction" signs from Singapore of all places. These signs write "Danger - keep out" in English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, the latter two not the official languages of Hong Kong nor commonly used there.
• Artistic License – Law: The HKPD differ a bit from the real life version called HKPF.
  • The HKPF prefer on foot approach while in-game prefer vehicle usage.
  • HKPF don't use badges but have a ID card.
  • The HKPD use USP 9mm pistol while in real life they use outdated Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolvers.
• Artistic License – Ships: The "Central Ferry Terminal" depicted in the game is clearly modeled on the Shun Tak ferry terminal, which serves high-speed international ferries to Macau and China, yet the ferry moored there◊ is a cross-harbour Star Ferry, which in real life departs from the separate Star Ferry pier.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Victims don't get much more scummy than Yung Lee On, the target of Wei and Jackie's initiation. A former Sun On Yee drug dealer, Yung made a living selling his product to middle-school students, something that he gloats about openly. In the same gloating, it's also heavily implied that he's also a pedophile. Oh, and he's former Sun On Yee because when Uncle Po got wind of his activities and ordered him to stop, he blew him off and defected to the 18K Triad instead. Deconstructed, as even though he definitely deserves it, Jackie still feels bad about killing him.
  • Despite their brutal and gory deaths, it's pretty hard to feel sorry for Dogeyes and Johnny Ratface.
  • And oh, ooohhh, does it ever feel good to send Big Smile Lee headfirst into an ice chipper.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Dim Mak. The final combat move you learn at the end of a long Gotta Catch Them All quest, it's quite handy at dispatching regular mooks (who are easily dispatched by any means). But tough mooks will usually avoid it, while bosses will generally use the chance to counter your counter. The Boring, but Practical regular counter is much less likely to get you killed.
    • Of the basic unarmed combos, the Jumping Roundhouse will likely get the least play; simply because you'll likely have to counter something long before you get the four necessary lights in. The player's better off executing a heavy attack earlier to access one of the shorter combinations (or go the whole way up for five light attacks, just to drive the knife in more).
  • In the DLC mission Death by a Thousand Cuts by the Triad Enforcer pack you are given a golden cleaver that will never wear out, gets a fair amount of Triad points with each hit and takes down enemies in just a few hits each. And since you're facing waves of enemies who are carrying poisoned knives and cleavers, it's much more practical to get rid of your cleaver quickly so you can go back to the unarmed Counter, which deals decent damage itself, stops the opponent from doing a follow-up attack and isn't too bad for earning points itself.
• Back from the Dead: Big Scar Wu, or, as most people know him, Smiley Cat.
  It is said that if the wronged receive anything less than a proper burial, their spirit will almost certainly come back as a Hungry Ghost, damned to starve in the afterlife, feeding only on their hatred. You turn him into cat food and that’s pretty much guaranteed.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Should Wei get his Face Meter up, he can become this. Hell, there are some missions where a nice suit is mandatory for progression.
• Bad Habits: One mission has Wei sneaking into a Shaolin monastery by disguising himself as a monk.
• Barrier Warrior: "Blocker"-type mooks always have their guard up, which makes punching and kicking them problematic. Fortunately, this also makes them susceptible to grabs and throws.
• Batman Gambit: Pendrew's scheme to get at Uncle Po and cover his tracks seems... excessive.
• Bag of Spilling:
  • The post-game Nightmare in North Point DLC provides you with a fixed set of resources, regardless of what you finished the main game with. Specifically, you get $30,000, one class C racecar, the Hog Pen Row outfit, and a few of the unlockable melee attacks. If you finished the main game with three million Hong Kong dollars, every car, every outfit, and the Dim Mak, none of that is coming with you.
  • The Year Of The Snake DLC works more or less the same way while also placing every police vehicle in your garage that'd normally require a separate DLC to use in the main game. Thankfully, this DLC has no features exclusive to it like Nightmare does and you can tase and handcuff people at your leisure in the main game as well as hijacking cars without attracting police attention when wearing any of the police outfits, as well as gaining access to the outfit that turns Wei into a Mad Bomber described below.
  • Wei Shen has an annoying tendency to lose acquired pistols at random intervals. Justified, since firearms laws are incredibly strict in Hong Kong and as an undercover gang member, he'd want to get rid of the weapon as soon as possible to avoid suspicion.
• Beastly Bloodsports: The cockfight mini-game allows you to place bets on roosters.
• Betting Mini-Game: Cockfights and "poker-style" mahjong are available for your gambling pleasure.
• Big Brother Is Watching: One of the side-missions involves Wei finding areas where drug dealers congregate and putting recorders on nearby security cameras to catch them in the act by watching them on his TV at home. Unfortunately for all parties, Wei usually needs to beat the crap out of all the thugs in the area first so they don't see him bugging the camera.
  • There's an achievement for bugging every camera in the city, including several that aren't linked to drug busts or story missions. This allows you to watch everyone in the city from the comfort of your home(s).
• Bilingual Bonus: If you know the language, or just look up the translations online, some of the incidental Cantonese dialogue is... quite colorful. Even if you don't know the language and just read some of the subtitles, you'll eventually start recognizing "asshole" in Cantonese by sound.
  • The word "Bisai," a kind of kata in many American martial arts, is often said to mean "storming the fortress" in various east asian languages. Sleeping Dogs uses the term to refer to a vehicle not unlike the infamously fragile Smart cars.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • With evidence that Pendrew murdered Uncle Po, Wei throws him in jail for life with many other Sun On Yee members (Pendrew knows he won't last long in there). Dogeyes and "Big Smile" Lee are dead, and "Broken Nose" Jiang becomes the Chairwoman of the Sun On Yee. However, Peggy, Winston and Jackie are dead, and Wei has left the triads seemingly for good, forced to leave behind any friends or allies he made there. Some of the documents unlocked in the game suggest that Wei's assignment (as a San Francisco Police officer) in the joint operation to infiltrate Sun On Yee was in fact a move by his SFPD superiors to get him out of the US before he had to face the music for the Roaring Rampage of Revenge sparked by his sister's death. So Hong Kong is full of ghosts for him, and there's an indictment waiting for him if he ever goes back to America.
  • The Zodiac Tournament DLC: Wei defeats Dr. Zhang and shuts down the titular illegal fighting ring for good, but he was forced to murder all the other contestants, including the ones he befriended, in order to save himself, and the experience leaves him visibly shaken and jaded.
• Bland-Name Product: The Sun-On-Yee and 18K are barely changed stand ins for the real life Sun-Yee-On and 14K.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: Get in a fistfight, and Wei will soon be covered in bruises and blood. It doesn't go away unless he washes up in his apartment or changes clothes. This also applies to enemies, after you've left them bloodied and broken.The wedding tuxedo you get after the wedding massacre will always stay bloody, though.
• Book Ends: The game begins and ends with a chase at the Aberdeen docks that ends with Wei being picked up by the police, followed by an interrogation at the police station. In the beginning it's a set-up; Wei gets be arrested so that he can talk to Pendrew about his assignment without breaking cover. At the end, Wei is chasing down Big Smile Lee; after he finishes Lee off, the police pick him up. After that, Aunt Jiang sends Wei proof that Pendrew murdered Uncle Po, enough evidence to send him to prison, which Wei and the HKPD bring him in on. One moment in particular stands out at both ends - someone shutting off the security camera in the interrogation room for added privacy.
  • During the final fight with Big Smile Lee, Wei begins taunting Lee the same way he taunted the goons during the combat tutorial in the prologue.
• Boring, but Practical: In general, the shorter basic combat moves are just as strong and much more effective than flashy ones. Some specific cases are:
  • The basic Counter works against virtually everyone, require no set up and is a single button press. Compare that to the Dim Mak detailed under Awesome, but Impractical above.
  • The Leg break, a Hold move that stuns, flinchs and only three button vs the Arm break which does the same thing but take longer and required 2 more Jade statue to unlock.
  • The Stun followup, a single light strike that's a One-Hit Kill against stunned opponents and also gains you a massive amount of Face and Triad XP.
  • In gunfights, leaping over the counter and shooting in slow motion may be cool as heck but it leaves you vulnerable afterward. Strategically poking your head over the counter to aim is just as effective and much safer for you.
  • Vehicles. If it is not a race, don't bother with the faster cars just to drive around from point A to point B. They are expensive, hard to control and cause massive amount of collateral damage. Better to just take the scooter or one of the slower vehicle on the street. Best yet, just take a taxi legally, it is instant and only cost a paltry amount of cash.
• Bragging Rights Reward: The free Ghost Pig DLC lets you unlock a gold .50cal pistol after you've beaten the game, by which time there's probably nobody left you really need to shoot.
• Breakable Weapons: Melee weapons usually break after a half-dozen hits, which is more than enough to kill at least one full-health enemy. All weapons are rendered unusable if they're thrown and actually connect.
• Break-In Threat: A later mission involves breaking into a gangster's house and gaslight him by messing with his Feng Shui as a way to get him to panic and relapse on his heroin habit.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: The "Top Dog Silver" and "Top Dog Gold" Downloadable Content packs grant players a large amount of all three kinds of experience points, allowing them to unlock more powerful abilities far earlier than they normally would. The "Red Envelopes" DLC gives a huge money bonus.
  • Slightly less directly, some outfits you buy or unlock in DLC are much more powerful/useful than anything you can buy or unlock in the vanilla game. +40% unarmed damage? +50% bullet resistance? +40% Face XP? Unbreakable weapons? It can all be yours, for a price...
• Bullet Time: Which usually only kicks in during certain actions, such as vaulting over cover, leaping from high heights or jumping from one vehicle to another.
• Bullying the Dragon: Available as dialogue option in several missions: Wei can tell to someone who gets too cocky with him that it's not a good idea to piss off a Sun On Yee and it would be wiser to simply tell Wei what he wants. It usually works.
• But Thou Must!:
  • It's possible in several drug bust side missions to hack the camera without needing to fight the thugs around it, but you won't be able to complete the mission without getting in the fight.
  • For the side quests you can't date Not Ping without dating Tiffany first. This is purely so you can access the Face side quest where Tiffany and Not Ping call you out on your one-night stands.
• Butt-Monkey: We never see him, but "Three-Teeth" Chan gets his car stolen every day by the Triads since one of the lines from a specific car salesman, upon purchasing a car, warns you about not going too close to Johnny's studio since "he may have not noticed the robbery yet".
• Call-Back: One song available for karaoke is "I Fought the Law". This doubles as a Shout-Out to the Catchphrase of Nick Kang from True Crime: Streets of LA.
• Car Fu:
  • There's a dedicated "sideswipe" button that makes your vehicle slam into an enemy or police cars during a pursuit. You'll want to be very careful of this during most missions, though, as property damage greatly reduces the Cop Points you get at the end of missions.
  • There's an Action Hijack (think Just Cause 2) where you leap from one vehicle to another. Starting an action hijack in a car has Wei lean out the door. Anyone unfortunate to be caught by the extended car door is smashed in the face.
  • Using a car in any of the drug bust missions where the thugs are unarmed makes them laughably easy.
• Carrying a Cake: You have to do this for Winston's wedding, and there's a little balance scale so you don't spill it, which sets you up for being completely stunned when the Sun On Yee kill everyone at the party. Whoops.
• Character Level: Three of them at once - Cop Points (awarded mostly for doing police missions, with less payout when you are reckless during undercover triad missions) give you firearm-related skills or vehicle-hijacking skills; Triad Points (awarded for being as mean as possible to enemies you beat up during Triad missions) grant you more offensive or defensive melee skills; Face Points (awarded for side missions not directly related to the cops or triads) make you more impressive and well-known to the community, boosting your Face Meter, the duration of your food-based buffs and making you more terrifying to your enemies when you kick their asses.
• Clairvoyant Security Force: Whenever you hijack a Knox security van, police cars instantly appear from nowhere the second your butt hits the driver's seat.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Wearing sets of certain types of clothing grants you various benefits like receiving more experience or dealing more combat damage. Nice suits usually grant more Cop EXP, sporty-looking outfits grant more Triad EXP, tough-guy looking outfits (leather jackets, camo pants, etc.) help you punch harder. There are other sets that allow you to receive a discount on cars and clothes or lower the attention of the cops. If you have a saved game of Just Cause 2, you get Rico Rodriguez's outfit, letting you Action Hijack from greater distances. Additional outfits based on Agent 47 and Adam Jensen provide similar benefits based on those respective characters.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Almost everyone, in English or in Cantonese.
• Collection Sidequest: Tons, with the most item-intensive one being to find and pray at all the little health shrines dotted around the map. If you're lucky, you can also find lockboxes full of money or one of eleven different Zodiac statues you need to give to your martial arts master for new techniques. Hackable security cameras also dot the landscape, but not all of them are directly linked to the Drug Bust side missions. Fortunately, dating the girls you met on some missions will make ALL of those appear on both your minimap and your regular map.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Climbing paths are often marked with a green cloth of some kind.
• Combat Pragmatist: On the lighest note Wei has no qualm in hitting enemies from behind, kicking downed opponents, using weapons whenever possible and going as far as breaking their arm and/or leg.
  • Got a lot of thugs surrounding a camera for a drug bust mission? Back in and back out repeatedly with a car.
  • With a couple DLC packs, or a little preparation time, the player can certainly do this. Go right ahead and bring your armored van and assault rifle/grenade launcher to a fistfight. If you're not doing a story mission, nobody will stop you.
  • Certain Face missions involve Wei getting mugged while distracted, and having to do a free-running segment to catch up to the thief, followed by beating up the guy and some other thugs. Proper planning can let you end the mission quickly by bringing a motorcycle with you (though the free-run course may not be suitable for it) or by shooting the thief when you have a clear shot.
  • Wei can use the environment to his benefit in fairly brutal ways, usually involving slamming enemies into anything he finds nearby such as fans or shutters. Some notable examples include:
    • Slamming a mook into an aquarium. If you feel like it, you can then pick up a fish that fell out of the aquarium and start beating his buddies with it; there's even a trophy for doing this.
    • Shoving someone's face into a table saw.
    • Throwing a guy onto a meat hook. In fact, the same environment allows you to skewer someone on a pallet of swordfish heads.
    • Hurling a guy into a tank full of electric eels.
    • Dropping an engine block on someone.
    • The tried-and-true method of bashing a dude's head in with a car door.
    • The game saves arguably the most brutal for last, when it prompts you to hurl Big Smile Lee into an ice chipper. You can find this location outside of the final mission and shove any other random NPC into it, which also makes Wei act like he does at the end of the said mission after he does it.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The police are almost completely impossible to outrun and outmaneuver, leaving ramming them the only reliable way to lose them. They will always maintain top speed even when turning and make perfect sharp turns with zero issue, and reach their top speeds again almost instantly once slowed down or stopped. Even the fastest car in the game needs considerable time to put some distance between itself and pursing cops, showing that cop cars do not behave like normal vehicles and do not operate as such; Cop cars are as fast as needed for them to keep up with whatever vehicle you're in regardless of its stats.
  • Then there's the race against Hotshot, who functions in a very similar manner. For the first half of the mission, Hotshot is impossible to catch up to no matter how fast your vehicle is. Like the police, he can also operate his car perfectly with sharp turns and top speed. Not only that, he is basically programmed to avoid collisions no matter how certain one may look, to the point where his car abruptly moves itself to the side in physics breaking fashion to avoid hitting other cars.
• Conservation of Ninjutsu: Averted. By mid-game, especially on side missions, you'll be facing swarms of mooks that differentiate themselves for example as "brawlers" and "grapplers", forcing you to mix-and-match Wei's moveset, while even low-level mooks will now also be armed with melee weapons.
• Cool Car: Lots, but unlike Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row, they must be purchased on the black market. Once you buy a car, it will always be available in a parking garage. To avoid stealing cars during your first missions and lose Cop EXP, Wei starts with an entry-level bike. The Wheels Of Fury DLC gives the DZS-90, which is essentially a James Bond car that gets twin ceiling-mounted pop-up miniguns, autopilot and EMP shockwave with all the DLC missions completed.
• Cowboy Cop: At the start of the Year of the Snake DLC Wei's destructive methods have irritated his superiors one time too many, getting him reassigned to regular police work.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The triads seem to specialize in these. Much mention is made of what they do to traitors - burying people alive, carving them up with knives, and so forth. A few in particular stand out:
  • Johnny Ratface and Dog-Eyes Lin, both chopped up and turned into soup by Mrs. Chu.
  • Winston and his wife-to-be Peggy are shot up on their wedding day and left a bloody mess (Peggy is already dead by the time Wei finds them and Winston is on death's doorstep).
  • Mr. Tong has made an art of it. You're "invited" to view some of his work when you find Jackie gutted and strung up from a building. Later on he tortures Wei and mentions that the last cop who sat in that chair managed to hold up for 48 hours before succumbing. "Big Smile" Lee's dossier also says he has an affinity for going above and beyond the typical triad levels of violence.
  • Big Scar Wu, for having been chopped up and turned into low-grade catfood except for one finger, which was kept intact and hidden so that his spirit would never rest.
  • Just about every takedown qualifies, such as slamming a guy into an electrical hazard, or shoving a guys face onto a burning stove. The most gory and satisfying one happens at the end, where you hold Big Smile Lee into an ice chipper. It happens in slow motion.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Even after fighting his way through an army of goons, being blown up in a massive fiery blaze, and later beaten further in a sneak attack from Big Smile Lee, Wei still takes Lee out without any issue by simply countering him to death; In a perfect fight, Lee doesn't get a single hit in.
• Cutscene Incompetence: Throughout the game, Wei has probably taken punches, car crashes, gunshot wounds, been through explosions, and various other injuries, but in the penultimate mission, he gets pistol whipped in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious. Made even worse immediately afterwards, as he's well enough to fight after being brutally tortured.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: One cutscene has an enemy triad unloading on your car with Guns Akimbo. No, duel wielding isn't possible in this game.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • In the 360 version, B is used to grab an enemy, which is similar to several other games like [PROTOTYPE] and Assassin's Creed. Unfortunately, while those games let you throw the enemy by hitting B again, for Dogs it's... RT. Fortunately, in this game hitting B again doesn't do anything else that you might not want to do.
  • When first playing this game, or returning to it after a while, you might find yourself getting into cars and driving on the wrong side, since Hong Kong drives on the left. Even people who live in countries that also drive on the left get tripped up, since they're used to driving on the right in most video games.
• Dating Sim: As a side mission similar to Grand Theft Auto. Girlfriends grant you beneficial abilities like finding all the collectibles in an area, but unlike GTA, where relationships can be continued indefinitely, Wei's romantic encounters are pretty much just a series of one-night stands that two of them eventually call him out on.
• Deconstruction:
  • The dates serve as this in regards to the Dating Sim. Both Tiffany and Not Ping will learn of how you had multiple flings with other women for power ups, and they will not be pleased.
  • In the Year of the Snake DLC, Wei's Destructive Savior tendencies, as well as the player's ability to cause as much mayhem as they're typically able to in a Wide-Open Sandbox game, gets him demoted to being a Beat Cop.
• Deadpan Snarker: The reports Wei unlocks, especially on his dating missions, contain a few very dry gems. Similarly, the Triad leaders tend to make pointed remarks disguised as polite statements, and when you go through your wardrobe, the clothing descriptions will have a few smart-ass remarks.
• Denser and Wackier: The base game is a fairly serious crime drama, though intermittently is sprinkled with humorous side missions. Much of the DLC, however, range from having to build a prototype weaponized car, Wei having to fight openly supernatural creatures, and a martial arts tournament that's a loving sendup to old kung fu movies.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • If you're wearing a mismatched outfit, you'll hear people comment on your attire, saying things like, "It takes guts to wear that." And if you wear something nice they'll say "Cutting edge! I like it!"
  • Averted when you strip Wei down to just his boxers, have him complete missions and cutscenes as such. Nobody raises an eyebrow.
  • While scripted side events exist that involve the player pursuing fleeing thieves, few players are aware that it is also possible to chase down muggers in open environments and return stolen items to their victims for a small sum of cash.
  • Wei will always kickstart his bike after putting on a helmet, except the ones you steal since the engine is already running.
  • If Wei goes out of a car while both doors are stuck, usually when going out in an alley, he'll break the front windshield and get out.
  • Sometimes a mission will require Wei to hack a camera, but if you already did it before being assigned that objective, Wei will just say as such and move on.
  • The contents of the dumpsters you can throw enemies in varies depending on where you find them. Dumpsters in the fish factories contain fish guts while ones near offices contain paper for example.
  • A small touch, but if you stick around after a civilian dies (say, because you ran them over) then an ambulance will show up to take care of the body.
• Didn't See That Coming: Early plot of the game involves a gang war between two Sun On Yee factions, the Water Street Gang and the Jade Gang. It finally culminates in Dogeyes placing a hit on Winston in an attempt to clear out the competition. The hit succeeds but Wei survives, and unbeknownst to Dogeyes he had already secured his position before the hit, almost immediately uniting the Water Street Gang behind him, and personally rescued Uncle Po. So now the Water Street Gang is not only under its most competent leadership ever, the prior undercover's report on Winston and Conroy is not flattering about either of them and the state of the Water Street Gang before Wei came in, but with Uncle Po personally indebted to Wei, and the Sun On Yee triad has a new Red Pole who is also an undercover cop... giving HKPD a direct inside line to all their dealings. Oops. Naturally, it ends up being Dogeyes' downfall.
• Disproportionate Retribution: During an early Face Mission, Wei has to take a picture of the sunset and a drunken man sometimes gets in his way. Naturally, the best way to handle this is to beat him up. (This can be averted by by making sure to take the shot in such a way that he's never in the field of view, thus never triggering the drunken man's action.)
  Mission Objective: Beat up the drunken asshole.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Year of the Snake arc is similar to actual religious cults that conduct terrorist attacks, especially Aum Shinrikyo.
• Dolled-Up Installment: Almost became one when Activision wanted to make it back as the third True Crime game before Square Enix picked it up after Activision dropped it, renaming it Sleeping Dogs.
• Double Standard: There's a Face mission to confront Tiffany, the Bam-Bam Club hostess, over her infidelity. Once confronted, she points out that it's a bullshit that Wei is allowed to cheat, but she's not. Note that the only way to unlock this mission is to date Not-Ping after dating Tiffany; did you think all the girls would just ignore your two-timing?
• Downloadable Content: In addition to extra outfit pieces and vehicles, along with one-off missions and additional XP/money packs, at New York Comic Con it was revealed that there would be post-game story content... in the form of Nightmare in North Point, which takes the post-game plot straight into mythological territory with Wei (now wearing an outfit right out of Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon) taking on everything from possessed 18k thugs to jiang shi and yaoguai.
  • The SWAT Pack DLC, which adds another game-mode to the game. You wear the Special Duties Unit uniform and drive around Hong Kong in an armored police van, resolving randomly generated crimes (chases, shootouts, assaults, and hostage negotiations) for money and Cop experience.
  • The Zodiac Tournament DLC is an extended homage to Enter the Dragon: the plot premise is much the same (police ask you to go investigate an offshore fighting tournament), the intro, outro, music, screen coloration, and sound effects are altered to give the appearance of a 1970's Kung Fu movie, and sometimes the martial arts students on the island (dressed different colors to denote rank) will make Funny Bruce Lee Noises.
  • The Year of The Snake DLC pits Wei Shen against a doomsday cult who believe the world will end at the start of the New Year - and aim to hurry the end along through various acts of terrorism. Includes a variety of police-issue outfits and vehicles, a new moveset for Shen based around a stun gun and handcuffs, the ever-popular tear gas grenade launcher, and trivia about how the Chinese New Year is celebrated.
• Dramatic Irony: Inverted. Throughout the game, we tend to see Wei greeting or recognizing certain triad members we've never heard of. Fortunately, subsequent actions will demonstrate what kind of people they are.
• Drunken Master: Dr. Zhang, the main villain of the Zodiac Tournament is revealed to be one, and you can make Wei into one with the respective DLC outfit: whenever his Face bar fills up, he takes a swig of booze and gains a drunk boxing moveset for around 30 seconds.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Players with good hearing will notice that Mr.Tong is mentioned as early as the third mission, and is whispered about by mooks even earlier.
• Easy Level Trick: Don't feel like a long, drawn out fistfight? Run all your enemies over with a car.
• Elite Mooks:
  • The Special Duties Unit (Hong Kong's SWAT equivalent), who comes for you if you wreak too much havoc. They carry sub-machine guns or assault rifles and wear body armor, making them harder to dispatch than common cops.
  • The Shaolin monks at the North Point temple, though you only need to fight them during one story mission and one DLC side mission. See Kung Fu-Proof Mook.
  • The Nightmare in North Point DLC has its own unique Superpowered Mooks: the Yao Guai, demons who cannot be damaged unless you have a Peach Wood Sword, or your Face meter is charged up. You can't run them down with vehicles, either; if you try, they'll do an Action Hijack on you.
• Enemy Mine: Wei and Big Smile Lee are forced to fight alongside each other during the 18K assault on Uncle Po's funeral.
• Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: Everybody? Yep. Kung-Fu? Specifically, yes.
• Every Car Is a Pinto:
  • While normally cars can take a pretty respectable amount of gunfire on their own before blowing up, shooting out a tire while they're going at high speed will make them violently spin out-sometimes even launching into the air-before blowing up when they hit something. The Cop upgrade that allows Wei to do a Bullet Time jump out of a car while aiming with a gun also allows him to blow up any car with a single bullet.
  • Parodied in the Nightmare in North Point DLC, where parked cars that you're not driving or haven't hijacked yet will randomly blow up on their own for seemingly no reason.
• Evil Is Petty: After burning down the sweatshop he runs, Dogeyes gets back at Winston by sending a thug after his wedding cake.
  • Except not. Hijacking the truck reveals the driver to be, rather that a Triad thug, another bride-to-be who has never even heard of Dogeyes and is just trying to get the cake that she ordered to her wedding, implying that either Winston simply forgot to order the cake until it was too late and used the "Dogeyes stole it" thing as an excuse to convince Wei to steal it for him, or Wei hijacked the wrong truck.
• Evil Versus Evil: The vast majority of the conflicts are born from interior disputes between triad factions and sub-factions. When it comes to the side of law enforcement, Wei does not have to fight the cops often, and even then, his only objective is to run away from them. Conroy lampshades this at one point during the game:
  Conroy: Just for once I'd like to fight someone outside of my own triad!
• Exploding Fish Tanks:
  • Wei can invoke this by slamming someone into them. He can then pick up one of the fish and use it as a weapon.
  • You can shoot a large fish tank, which briefly distracts enemies caught in the resulting flood.
• Expy: The two rival Triads seen in-game, the Sun On Yee and the 18k, are based off of the Real Life Triad gangs the Sun Yee On and the 14k, respectively.
• Extremely Short Timespan: Both "Nightmare in North Point" and "Year of the Snake" DLC took place over a single night, the former ends the story at dawn (though the whole thing is all but stated to be just a weird nightmare) while the latter ends as the clock hits the New Year. Both's total playtime even clocks around an hour each if rushing through the main story and another one if doing all the side activities.
• Far East Asian Terrorists: The Year of the Snake DLC story centers on the HKPF taking on a cult trying to usher an apocalypse in the SAR through terrorist activities such as bombings and shootings on HKPF officers.
• Flashed-Badge Hijack: Wei can do this with beat cop, detective, SWAT and Tactical outfits: it's noticeably slower than the normal variety and doesn't work in all situations, but it naturally doesn't alert the cops and can even be used to steal their car without them objecting.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the mission where you help Peggy make preparations for the wedding she says that a black orchid guarantees that a couple will stay together for as long as they live. Well, she wasn't wrong.
  • Before the Year of the Snake DLC was announced the developers patched in what just seemed like appropriate Year of the Snake posters for the 2013 Chinese New Year.
• Four Is Death: Much of what Wei and Old Salty Crab do in the mission "Bad Luck" revolves around exploiting Two Chin Tsao's superstitious nature by vandalizing his house in ways that include smashing his collection of giant vases until only four remain and resetting his clock to 4:44 and unplugging it.
  • Crops up again in the "Year of the Snake" DLC, as one of the doomsday cult's bomb cars had "44" in its license plate, prompting dispatch to wonder "who ever heard of a license plate with two fours in it?"
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • For one of the side quests Wei is pissed that a racer deliberately rammed an opponent's car off the road. It is never mentioned when Wei does it, even to cops, though it will get you the achievement 'Rogue Cop'.
  • Conroy might rag on you for not being a killer, but it's very possible that you've already killed a lot of people by that point in the game.
  • By the end missions, Cop EXP should be out the window because Wei just don't give a damn about his role as an officer and only wants to make everyone bleed. Unfortunately you as a player still get docked for driving too recklessly or tripping over things...
  • Both of the DLC storyline doesn't even have Cop EXP, though it's justified for "Nightmare in North Point" that it took place in a nightmare while "Year of the Snake" has the police force urgently thwarting a massive terrorist plot.
  • In one mission, Pendrew notes that "guns are something of a rarity in Hong Kong". Truth in Television, of course, but guess what most of the missions from this point on involve? Massive shootouts.
  • The police outfits that Wei can put on? Nobody will notice. You can show up to Sun on Yee business in a leather jacket that reads "POLICE" in huge font on the back and nobody will bat an eye.
• Gargle Blaster: The special magic tea Wei drinks during the Nightmare in North Point DLC that gives him his flaming fists includes albino chicken eggs, ghost pepper and antifreeze.
• Giant Mook: Downplayed with "Grappler" mooks, which aren't that much bigger than the average person, just a bit more stout. They prefer using grabbing attacks on Wei, and their extra weight makes them able to deflect most or all of Wei's own grab attacks, so just hitting them with regular strike attacks is usually the way to go.
• Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: Most "normal" non-player characters from the main game are replaced with bloodied, corpse-like versions of themselves with these distinctive bluish-purple eyes in Nightmare in North Point. From certain angles, you can actually see than that the glow is placed a minute distance away from their actual faces.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • The camera pans away when Mrs. Chu goes to town on Johnny Ratface, but cuts right to black when she starts on Dogeyes.
  • Zig-zagged with Mr. Tong. He's shown using the scalpel, but drilling what is presumably Wei's knee with an electric drill is shown from a distance and all we see is Mr. Tong's back and Wei's screaming face.
  • Averted with Jackie: his entrails are the first thing you see.
• Got Me Doing It: Big Scar Wu has been called Smiley Cat so much that at one point he even refers to himself as Smiley Cat. He's quick to reprimand himself.
• Gradual Regeneration: Eating food will give you a temporary Healing Factor. Maxing out the Face Meter during combat is another method.
• Gratuitous Cantonese: While the action is set in Hong Kong, the majority of the dialog is in English, with many of the characters occasionally using Cantonese for curse words or for emphasis.
• Guns Akimbo: Surprisingly averted throughout most of the game, given its setting and influence of John Woo. Ponytail briefly uses it in an escape sequence.
• Handbag of Hurt: From the weakest to the strongest: purses, wallets and briefcases can be used as weapons.
• Happy-Ending Massage: While there are several legitimate looking massage parlors dotted across the map several implied brothels can be visited by Wei and are staffed with sexy women who act flirty when the player interacts with them. Also, one of the medium level face perks is a special massage bonus, so if Wei wasn't getting these before he probably is now...
• Happy Ending Override: A somewhat light-hearted example, during the beginning of the Year of the Snake DLC, despite the fact that he single-handedly crippled the Sun On Yee with his methods, begins with Wei getting demoted. It doesn't take long for him to return to his usual methods once an aggressive terrorist attack hits the city.
• Heroic Bloodshed: An outstanding example. All the elements are there - violence, moral ambiguity, more violence, vengeance, extreme violence, much ado about honor and loyalty, and truly horrific violence.
• High-Speed Hijack: Action Hijacking is an oft-used mechanic. Wei Shen can jump from his vehicle to any other 4-wheeled one that's on the driver's side and moving in the same general direction.
• Hollywood Heart Attack: Some generic NPCs can suffer from one if you startle them enough.
• Honor Among Thieves: This philosophy is adhered to by Uncle Po and "Broken Nose" Jiang, which sets them in direct contrast with Big Smile Lee and Dogeyes, who are willing to cross lines that the former two find unbecoming and barbaric.
• Humiliation Conga: Against Wei for the collateral damage in the Year of the Snake DLC.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Mostly averted. Wei can carry one pistol in his pockets (or boxers) and hold a two-handed rifle or SMG in his hands. It also only allows him to carry four spare reloads for each weapon, and a few grenades for the assault rifle with grenade launcher (which is very rare).
• Ice-Cream Koan: Invoked by Wei, who uses them to sneak into a monastery after hours.
• Idiot Ball: In every one of the drug bust missions after identifying the dealer for arrest through the hacked camera via your surveillance system the thugs surrounding the dealer scatter upon the arrival of the police while the dealer simply stands there, looking around completely bewildered over the situation before promptly being tackled and handcuffed.^note This is the reaction any NPC will give to being identified for arrest, regardless of them actually being a criminal
• Illegal Gambling Den: It's possible to find such dens at offshore rigs.
• The Infiltration: Wei Shen is assigned by Pendrew to infiltrate the Sun On Yee to take down the organization.
• Informed Attribute: Despite living in Hong Kong until age 10, later shown perfectly understanding Winston's mother (who doesn't speak English) and according to his SPFD internal report, being recruited to undercover work because of his Cantonese language ability, Wei never speaks Cantonese at all in the game.^note Will Yun Lee is actually Korean-American.
• In-Series Nickname: "Big Smile" Lee, "Two Chin" Tsao, "Broken Nose" Jiang, "Dogeyes" Lin, "Pockmark" Cheuk, "Uncle" Po.... Outside the Sun On Yee, there's the Big Bad of the Nightmare in North Point DLC, known as "Smiley Cat" (much to his chagrin, as he'd much rather be known as "Big Scar" Wu), the aging freelance hitman Old Salty Crab, the two drugs wholesalers "Four Finger" Wu and "Popstar", the street racers Ace and Hotshot and the all-round slimeballs "Ponytail", "Dirty Ming" and "Johnny Ratface".
• Joke Item: The Tourist Outfit really does "adjusts prices accordingly". Not only does it negate any discounts you may have active, it also jacks up the base price of everything by 60%.
• Just Train Wrong: The game fails miserably in portraying the Hong Kong Tramways. Firstly, the tramcars in the game◊ all seem to be based not on the iconic Mark V trams◊, which make up the vast majority of trams on the network, but on the Millennium-class tram◊, of which only four were built due to poor public reception. Secondly, the destination of "Tai Po" announced on the headboards of the trams seems rather optimistic when you consider that tram tracks only run along the northern half of Hong Kong Island, not even coming close to the New Territories in which Tai Po is located; in real life, the 307 express to Tai Po is a bus route. Thirdly, the Hong Kong trams are designed to run on 1,067mm narrow-gauge track with overhead electric power; they shouldn't be able to go anywhere on the non-electrified standard-gauge track depicted in the game, never mind Tai Po. The fact that the trams apparently have a serious axle issue offsetting them from the track by almost half a metre wouldn't help matters either.
• Karmic Death:
  • One of the warnings mentioned at the Sun On Yee initiation ceremony is "Betray your brothers and you will die a thousand times over. Slowly. In the dark." What is Big Smile Lee's ultimate fate after he tries to usurp the leadership of the Sun On Yee? Wei Shen feeds him through an ice chipper, hacking his body into hundreds of pieces, in slow-motion.
  • Big Scar Wu, aka Smiley Cat, also suffered a similar punishment, being pulverized in cat food.
• Kick the Dog:
  • When Dogeyes sees Wei for the first time, he makes several lewd comments about Wei's dead older sister, who died of a drug overdose. Guess who got her hooked? When Dogeyes comes back in the "Nightmare in North Point" DLC, he taunts Wei by saying he boned her again last night in Hell.
  • Virtually all of the aggressions of Wei's enemies against Jackie were this, but when Big Smile Lee kills him this trope is definitely in effect.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: An almost literal example with the Shaolin Monks. In addition to having all the standard immunities bosses have (Can't be grappled, vaulted, tackled, jump kicked, charge kicked or Dim Mak'ed), they are also the only enemy in the game that will counter your attacks rather than simply block them. You can still counter them however.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Anyone who screws with Wei's friends gets paid back with interest. It's rare they come out of it alive.
  • Of particular note is Pendrew. After appearing to get away with everything he'd done, Broken Nose Jiang sends Wei a video of Pendrew killing Uncle Po in his hospital room. Now with hard evidence against him, Wei has Pendrew sent to prison... after making sure everyone inside knows what he did.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: "Nightmare at North Point" takes place after the main game, which reveals the deaths of several characters in the game by virtue of them coming back as ghosts, with Dogeyes, Johnny Ratface, and Ponytail fought through the campaign, and Vincent is a major character. The player can also find Winston and Jackie's ghosts in the Golden Koi.
• Le Parkour: More of a factor in alleyways and inner-block shopping mall areas than out on the streets. It's one useful way to evade cop pursuit on foot, and since you get badly docked for harming cops you want to be able to just run away from them.
• Lighter and Softer: "Nightmare in North Point" is way more comedic than the main game and "Year of the Snake" has a more cliched Card-Carrying Villain as the antagonist.
• Mad Bomber: The cult in Year of The Snake DLC is essentially a group of these: beating all the side missions in the DLC unlocks the cult outfit for Wei, which gives him improved counters and allows him to become one as well by planting bombs in the trunk of any car that has one (including police cars, who don't seem to pay any attention to it) and being able to remotely detonate them afterwards.
• Mad Doctor: One of Inspector Teng's investigations involves a Serial Killer who offs his victims with surgical precision. Turns out she's spot on, as the killer is a surgeon who steals organs from the homeless and Sun On Yee members for the black market, working for the 18K.
• Made of Iron:
  • Triad thugs can take multiple broken bones before dropping.
  • No matter how many thugs Wei feeds face-first into high-speed metal fans, none of them actually die until things escalate to the point where Wei is forced to use a firearm.
  • Averted when it comes to firearms-a few well-placed shots will drop any enemy.
  • Ponytail. He takes a dozen shots to the head before dying, in a game where everyone dies with one head shot. Unless you shoot one of the hotplates on the counter he's hiding behind, in which case he goes down (in flames) in seconds.
  • Wei himself, of course during gameplay the player can take bullets, knife wounds, fall stories off buildings and just eat some noodles and just walk it off but it really gets silly in the final mission. In order he gets; knocked out from behind, tied to a chair, cut up, his leg drilled, punched in the face, gets involved in an elongated gun fight, faces off against a group of men including one with a machete, drives clear across town, wades through another long gun battle, gets shot in the shoulder point blank by a shotgun, chases after his target, jumps on board a speeding boat, that explodes, and then after swimming to shore gets involved in another fist fight before finally getting some medical aid (and walking it off).
• Made of Plasticine: Triad members can take a couple of bullets and a fairly nasty beating. Civilians can't even take a short fall over a railing.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Wei can be read as "impressive might", while Shen means "cautious".
  • The title of the game itself is based on the proverb "Let sleeping dogs lie". It can be interpreted as "leave something alone if it might cause trouble" By the end of the game the Sun On Yee has actually grown from a gang falling apart to a powerful force with its weaknesses trimmed thanks to Wei Shen. This all would have been avoided if the undercover operation had never been orchestrated.
• Michael Jackson's Thriller Parody: The opening and ending scenes of the Nightmare in North Point storyline are very obvious homages to the "Thriller" video. Interestingly, it sees Not Ping in the role of Michael's character, while Wei assumes that of Michael's date.
• Mirror Character: The actions of Wei and Pendrew are chillingly comparable, They both did grisly things to maintain their cover, And they are both cops who have collaborated with Gangs,they believe the ends justify the means when it comes to stopping crime, and they both became comparable to the Criminals they fought. They also both try to get rid of the other by setting the Triads against the other.
• Mob Debt: one of Wei's employers is a triad member named Roland whose job is to collect debts from people who owe them money. One of these people is a repeat offender whose last encounter with Wei and Roland ends with him committing suicide. When Roland tells him their next assignment is to shake down the man's widow, Wei refuses and quits on the spot.
• Mob War: Two: The Sun On Yee have an ongoing turf war with the 18K, and various factions within the Sun On Yee vie for supremacy throughout the game.
• Mook Chivalry: Downplayed: if you're attacking a mook, another will come up from behind hoping to take a swing at you. However, mooks don't swarm you, either.
• Moral Myopia: In the Zodiac Tournament DLC, Wei tells the tournament master that "good men died in that temple because of you". The fact that Wei himself has killed and/or beaten senseless dozens of other tournament fighters doesn't seem to come into it.
• Mugging the Monster: A good chunk of the sidequests involve Wei chasing down and beating the ever-loving shit out of petty pickpockets who thought stealing from the muscular guy with the tattoos was a good idea.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The cops will completely ignore bad behavior by other drivers (such as running over pedestrians), actions which they would have immediately gone after you for. They do at least get into gunfights with any openly armed Triads they see, but seem to prioritize you as a target if you're also in their line of sight.
• Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters: Absolutely not, but Peggy, Winston's fiance, seems to be under this impression, at least concerning the Water Street Gang.
• Night of the Living Mooks: Nightmare in North Point. All enemies and almost every non-player character takes on some semblance of undeath. They also have distorted voices and killing them causes them to be Dragged Off to Hell. Most of them go on about their business as normal, and Wei can still buy pork buns and other comestibles from zombie street vendors without a hint of surprise.
• Non-Indicative Name: The majority of the early missions occur in a neighborhood known as North Point, which is on the northern shore of Hong Kong. Except the game's map has been rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
• Notice This: Collectibles like health shrines, security cameras and jade statues shine very brightly, but you still have to be within their line of sight for this to kick in. Fallen guns and other weapons glow blue.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: While almost every character in the game has supposedly spent their whole lives in Hong Kong, many of them speak English with their voice actors' original American accents.
  • The biggest aversion is Uncle Po, who is voiced by the American James Hong using a thick Chinese accent.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Uncle Po uses this when Pendrew murders him in his hospital bed.
    ''"The only difference between you and me is...I know what I am."'
• No OSHA Compliance: Many environmental kills are only possible solely because of this trope. For example - why is there an open furnace in a storage warehouse?
• Obviously Evil: Dogeyes, Pendrew and Big Smile Lee.
• Old Save Bonus: Players with an old Just Cause 2 save file will gain access to Rico Rodriguez's suit from said game, improving the ability to hijack moving vehicles.
• Out-of-Genre Experience:
  • Done deliberately in Nightmare in North Point, according to Dan Sochan. The dev team wanted to make an experience that was substantially different from the Heroic Bloodshed crime drama that defined the rest of the game, so they made a rather silly horror story in which supernatural forces have overrun North Point and Wei must use ancient Chinese magic and antifreeze to defeat them.
  • Done again with the Zodiac Tournament DLC. Where the rest of the game pulls from the Heroic Bloodshed movies of the 90's and 00's, this section of the game resembles nothing so much as a 1970's Chop Sockey film.
• Paper Talisman: Wei's finishing move against a Jiang Shi once his Face meter is charged starts by slapping a Fu talisman on its forehead and ends by punching it back into hell. The talismans translate to read 'chocolate bacon'.
• Pistol-Whipping: Melee attack while wielding a firearm. Oddly, it seems to do more damage than a gunshot wound in the chest.
• Punk in the Trunk: This has been used in various missions and is also a freeroam mechanic. Drag someone to a car trunk of your choosing, press the action button, and you've got yourself a unwilling passenger.
  • Additionally, after completing "Loose Ends", four instances of the "Junk In The Trunk" random event will become available to Wei. Two of the "punks" are a nurse and a doctor, the third is an 18K thug, and the last is a lingerie-clad woman with a specific kink and a partner named "Frank".
• Real Stitches for Fake Snitches: The scene in which undercover cop Wei Shin successfully reverses an accusation that he is a snitch, resulting in the accuser (actually a loyal gang member) getting murdered on the spot by a crime boss.
• Reality Has No Subtitles: It has a bunch of "peppering Cantonese cuss words into English" and background NPCs who speak basically accurate but unsubtitled Cantonese, though Mrs. Chu is the only plot-relevant character to only speak Cantonese. Averted if you have subtitles turned on, in which case her dialogue is shown in English just like everyone else.
• Refuge in Audacity: While trying to sneak into a building to steal a cutting tool, Wei has to persuade a worker to let him by. He explains to the worker exactly what he's doing (sneaking in and needs to get past him to get inside) and tells the guy to pipe down or be made to shut up. It works.
• Retraux: The Zodiac Tournament DLC imitates 70s Chop Sockey movies with cutscene film grain and an over-the-top, funky soundtrack.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Wei after Jackie is tortured and murdered.
  • This seems to be Winston's primary M.O. in dealing with just about everyone to a degree, but with Dogeyes in particular. It is one of the reasons he was considered an ineffective leader.
  • The game implies that this is the reason why Wei is in Hong Kong: his Rampage in San Francisco to revenge his sister went a bit too far, so they send him away.
• Roundhouse Kick: The standard Heavy Attack, used by most kinds of fighters in the game. Interestingly, Wei himself tends to use a half-circle kick, while enemy mooks do a telegraphed, slow full circle that is easily countered.
• Running Gag:
  • Calvin, a Water Street Gang member, will occasionally need a driver because he either forgot the "Get the hell away" part of his plans or committed a "slight mishap" against the 18K in the middle of their territory.
    Wei: You pull this shit, you gotta learn how to drive!
  • Despite his protests, absolutely nobody will refer to Big Scar Wu as anything but "Smiley Cat." Not even his own possessed 18K minions. Even he does it at one point.
• Shamu Fu: Doing this earns you an achievement. You can find fish if you break an aquarium or are fighting at the fish market.
• Shown Their Work:
  • How Hong Kong is depicted. United Front took a lot of trips around the city to take pictures to serve as reference to make Hong Kong in the game realistic (though they did take a few liberties with the actual layout to facilitate certain gameplay elements, like most Open-World games based on a real city).
  • The martial arts system used in the game.
  • How some of the vehicles like Hong Kong Police Force and taxi vehicles are depicted; this also includes vehicle license plates. Also, all vehicles are driven on a right-hand format as Hong Kong's (to a lesser extent, including Macau's) standard method of bi-directional traffic. Note that license plates in the game are a bit more elaborate than in Real Life (normally the standard format is just AB 1234).
  • The use of Cantonese and English in conversations: they are Hong Kong's official languages.
  • United Front also spoke to former/actual triad gangsters and police officers who had participated in/led undercover operations.
  • Another instance is the design of the Chinese grave during the funeral of Uncle Po. Among other things, it tells us his Chinese name as well as date and place of birth and death, and also has the proper title of respect for deceased people.
  • This comes up even in the Nightmare in North Point DLC using jiang shi (properly pronounced as the Cantonese "Guang Si") instead of "just" zombies, and the choice of peach wood swords as a new melee weapon in the game (cited by devs as coming from Daoist exorcism).
    • The "yaoguay", though, isn't a real demon from Chinese folklore (though its name does, literally, mean "demon"), and visually is based far more heavily on "Western" demons (complete with goat horns).
• Shout-Out:
  • Outfits:
    • Some of the outfits that Wei unlocks reference movies: Kung Fu Hustle, Game of Death, Rumble in the Bronx, Fist of Fury, Fulltime Killer, Ong-Bak, and Reservoir Dogs.
    • Outfits from the DLC packs add in suits to make you look like a thug from Big Trouble in Little China, Ip Man, Bruce Lee's version of Cato, the nameless ''Hero'', a bronze monk from God of Cookery, and the Monkey King.
    • Other outfits refer to other video games: you can dress up Wei like Agent 47, Adam Jensen, and Rico Rodriguez.
  • The DZS-90 is a Lamborghini lookalike with black paintjob and hidden weaponry originally made for a wealthy Industrialist.
  • During one mission to sneak into an apartment, there is a construction site Wei must go through to access it which contains three fighting roosters. These are the only roosters you can fight in the game, however they have an absurd amount of health and ''will chase you'' from the area.
  • The achievement for defeating Smiley Cat is titled "I can haz banishment". The ending you get for this achievement is itself an homage to the extended video for Thriller.
  • The Zodiac Tournament is an homage to Enter the Dragon.
  • There is an apartment upgrade in Central that allows you to purchase a coffee table and a rug that really ties the room together.
  • One of the radio stations plays an advertisement for the beautiful tropical island of Panau.
  • Wei can buy or unlock many different kinds of Awareness Bands to wear, including a red one that the description says is for wrist injury.
  • The Steam version of the game comes with a free set of T-Shirts for Wei based off of several Valve games.
  • When wearing a police uniform, the counter for using the taser on multiple enemies in a row is called the Guilty Spark Streak.
• Sickbed Slaying: How Uncle Po dies, courtesy of Pendrew.
• Sickening "Crunch!": Wei can learn attacks that can break the arm or leg of an enemy, with an appropriately gruesome cracking sound accompanying it. Enemies in close proximity will flinch and back away when they hear.
• Silliness Switch: Can be invoked by the player at their leisure. Go into your wardrobe and equip the silliest outfit you can make; or unequip all your clothing so you're in your boxers, and then equip the Ghost Pig head. Proceed with any story mission, and see how long you can keep a straight face. For example.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: The standard Water Street Gang uniform seems to be a tank top and either worn-out jeans or track pants. While Wei, Winston and Conroy have the physiques to carry it off, Jackie... not so much.
• Small Reference Pools: The classical music radio channel has most of the ones on the "SmallReferencePools.Music" page, and that's it. Not a single less well known piece in the lot.
• Stealth Pun: Wei Shen is voiced by actor Will Yun Lee. Where there's a Will, there's a Wei.
• Straight Gay: In a few instances, a male character you're buying something from (such as the rug seller at K-Bar) will hit on Wei during the conversation.
• Stupid Evil: Calvin falls into this more than once. Possibly his worst case is blowing up a police station, sticking around to watch it blow up and the moment it does he promptly runs for the car so you can drive him out of there. It's really not that surprising that the police immediately figure out who did it. This happening after he punched an officer and later shot up a store in a nicer part of Hong Kong... though he at least recognizes that he needs a getaway driver on hand before indulging in such mayhem.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: No mission enemies will ever flee from Wei, even if they've already witnessed him hack up five of their buddies with a machete, and unarmed enemies have a hilarious tendency to charge headlong towards you while you're pointing a gun in their face. This applies to some driving missions too, in which Wei can explode all the pursuing cars and motorcycles he wants - more will keep coming. The only exceptions are in Drug Bust side missions, where you need to defeat a certain number of respawning mooks to proceed. When you've hit the limit, any survivors will run away.
  • See Artificial Stupidity above.
• Super Drowning Skills: NPCs die instantly upon contact with the ocean. Wei, however, is free to swim as he pleases.
• Super Mode: The "Face" meter fills up during combat, and faster if you are really brutal or impressive during the fight. Once it maxes out, Wei starts regenerating health, weaker enemies jump back in fear, and Wei can blow through enemy defenses more efficiently. Effectively, he's being so awesome that he's broken his enemies mentally, which makes it easier to break their bodies physically.
• Tattooed Crook: Most Triads, and some non-triads including Wei.
  • Exaggerated if you have the Gangland Style DLC pack, with your choice of Russian, Tribal, or Yakuza-flavored tats.
• Tournament Arc: The Zodiac Tournament DLC. It ends badly for everyone involved.
• Toyota Tripwire: Possible when you open the other door on your car while driving, which can cause you to smack any unfortunate pedestrian or motorcyclist in the way.
• The End... Or Is It?: At the end of the Nightmare in North Point DLC, Wei walks away with Not Ping... who turns to the camera and laughs like Smiley Cat.
• The Triads and the Tongs: Mostly Triads, with Tongs mentioned in background material about Wei's past.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: The firearm melee attack button doubles as a "throw" button if you're holding a melee weapon. The trope is played dead straight if you've got the Screen Legends DLC and the accompanying Lightning Sword, or a cleaver/kitchen knife, and little crooked if you've got a Peach Wood Sword. Funnily enough, if you throw a tire iron, sometimes it'll ricochet and hit more than one person.
• Trailers Always Spoil: One of the videos put up to promote the game showed the mission Mrs. Chu's Revenge, making it pretty easy to figure out what would happen to Winston.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Especially noticeable with DLC clothing. Wei can turn up at a Sun On Yee meeting in an HKPD uniform and no one bats an eye at this. Bystanders outside of the clothing stores in Central and Kennedy Town avert this, as they'll clown on outfits that don't have a set bonus.
  Takes guts ta wear that!
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • In addition to the brutal, bone-breaking (literally!) moves and finishers available in melee combat, you'll also have many opportunities to introduce parts of your enemies' bodies (usually their heads) to convenient environmental objects, such as car doors, hot stove tops and spinning ventilation fans. Other methods include dropping them from fatal heights, throwing them over railings into passing cars, smashing their faces through billboards, bludgeoning or hacking them to death with knives, tire irons or fish you disarm from their hands.
  • To really see Ragdoll Physics at its best, find a fast and/or heavy vehicle, such as an SUV/truck/luxury sedan. Step on the gas and drive full speed towards a motorcyclist and press the "ram" button. Watch the poor sap fly dozens, if not, hundreds of feet away. For extra lulz, watch him/her bump over another fast-traveling vehicle.
  • If you have one of the police-themed outfits, you can also tase people while grappling them: the first 2 seconds of doing so increases your Face bar, but you can keep doing it for up to 10 seconds at a time, despite not doing any additional damage and leaving you open to be attacked by other enemies.
  • Drug Bust side-missions involve using police surveillance cameras to send cops to stop crimes in progress, but the cameras can also be used in your spare time to get random pedestrians arrested for your amusement. Rarely, this can actually lead to an actual criminal getting arrested, the police congratulating you for figuring out they were a criminal with no possible way to do so and getting rewarded for it.
  • The environmental attacks can be done to anyone. The game is horribly unaware of your indiscretion when you're not on a mission, so if you want to grab some random bystander and slam their head in a car door, it's not going to derail your career (just make sure there aren't any cops around).
  • When Tiffany breaks up with you for fooling around with "Not Ping", she casually walks off after her final words to Wei. Now, at this point you can simply live and let live and allow her to leave but...there's nothing stopping you from turning Wei into a crazed and vindictive ex, throw her in the trunk, and drive into the water. The fact the conversation happens within the engine and not in a cutscene (where she could simply vanish after the scene) seems to occur entirely so you can take this route if your heart desires.
  • As you hijack more Knox Vans ones you haven't hijacked will get increasingly nervous as you drive around them. For fun you can deliberately follow it to send it on a spree just to watch it drive off the road and into other people and cars.
  • The Year of the Snake features a side mission similar to a Face mission, where a guy will ask Wei to deliver a payment to an obnoxious pork bun vendor. When the payment is made, the pork bun vendor will actually mock Wei/the player for being a "delivery boy" and running errands. Not only is it possible to wreak some form of petty vengeance against the guy, he continually re-spawns due to him being a food vendor. So it is possible to repeatedly harm the guy and destroy his stand multiple times, and all it takes to drive around the block after each time.
  • The lobby of the ingame hospital is filled with sofas, which count as immovable railings as far as game mechanics are concerned, meaning Wei will slam whoever he's grappling with back-first onto them: combine this with the large number of civilians present, and you can except Hong Kong to have a sudden spike in back injury-related fatalities.
  • The game tracks a variety of actions and takes a running tally of what you've done. This includes how many people you've jump kicked in a row, how many innocent or guilty people you've tased consecutively, or how many people you've managed to run down with a car before being stopped. And to make things more fun, if you have friends who play the game as well, it compares your score to theirs too.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: During Police and Triad missions, hurting civilians or causing property damage (eg. accidentally hit a bystander's car, knock over guard rails/lampposts/etc, or just being plain clumsy via mistiming button presses for Park Our) reduces the amount of Cop EXP you receive at the end of the mission. When you're not on a mission, however, you're free to be as big a jerk as you like, as long as the beat cops don't catch you.
• Wall Jump: A minor one: tapping the run button when near any wall too high for Wei to climb causes him to jump against it, pressing attack causes him to do a spinning kick off the wall and pressing run again causes him to leap off it, which he can follow up with the kick. The leap off the wall doesn't really serve any gameplay purpose since he can't keep jumping off multiple walls and any walls that'd be close enough to allow him to do that are extremely rare.
• Wham Episode:
  • Winston's wedding is a blood bath, leaving the groom and bride dead.
  • Pendrew being the true Big Bad, although him putting two more bullets into an already-dead driver and getting beat cops on Wei's trail was a big sign that Wei noticed.
  • Jackie's death, just when it looked like he might make it out alive.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • Amanda Cartwright, along with the rest of your girlfriends, only show up for a few missions. Only two of them actually take the time to break up with you^note One of the reports will hint at what happens, though, and Wei kind of points it out early on: he's undercover, pretending to be someone he's not, and that doesn't lend itself to a long-term relationship. All of his one-night stands are just that, and he doesn't want or expect anything long term. Judging by Amanda's report, neither does she, or any of the other girls.
  • The ending never tells us what happened to the Water Street Gang that Wei led after Winston dies, which is especially annoying since he's back with the police now. This includes the fate of the other Sun On Yee members like Ricky and Two Chin Tsao, though it's implied the latter was removed from the triad for his heroin addiction (and outright incompetence) and Ricky ran away with Vivienne.
  • After poisoning Wei during the Zodiac Tournament, the fate of Little Fu is left unknown.
• Wooden Katanas Are Even Better: Non-Japanese variation - the Peach Wood Sword from the Nightmare in North Point DLC is more durable than the garden-variety bladed weapons and is just as effective both against undead and possessed-but-living targets.
• World of Badass: Every mook knows enough kung fu to be a credible threat if you're not cautious. Everyone with a gun is a decent shot, particularly the cops. Really, Wei isn't unique in that he knows how to fight - he's just much, much better at it than most people.
• Xanatos Speed Chess:
  • How Wei manages to save himself after Ming accuses him of being a snitch after Popstar's arrest. Wei turns it around by claiming that Ming is still working for Dogeyes, and that he got rid of Popstar so that Ming and Dogeyes could corner North Point's drug market; Winston falls for it and kills Ming instead.
  • "Broken Nose" Jiang pulls this when she nominates "Two-Chin" Tsao as temporary Chairman after Uncle Po is hospitalized, which prevents "Big Smile" Lee from nominating himself. She then proceeds to discredit Two-Chin, so as to force a proper election, after making efforts to make Lee look incompetent... which ends with her as chairman.