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  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Brian in on Billy's betrayal and simply lied about Johnny ratting them out? Or was he completely out of the loop and had a just cause to believe Johnny betrayed him? Given how he seemed on board with Johnny's plan it's probable that the former is more than likely true given Brian's hatred for Johnny, but coming back from the botched deal he seems unaware that it was a setup and come the TBOGT mission "Chinese Takeout" Brian is not with Billy when he is arranging the deal. However his Face-Heel Turn in "End of Chapter" shows he is more than willing to let other members die based on something he only had little evidence to follow through on meaning either way he's still a deplorable bastard.
  • Annoying Video Game Helper: Did you know that you can call Terry and Clay for backup? Don't worry, because Jim will be sure to remind you at every opportunity. Terry and Clay themselves are plenty useful, though.
  • Base-Breaking Character: Johnny is perhaps the most contested of the three GTA IV protagonists, Many people do like the fact that he is a total badass, his relationship with most of his fellow members is well-liked, and that his background makes it easier to justify going around murdering people compared to Niko or Luis. On the other hand, he is nowhere near as sympathetic as Niko or Luis thanks to doing a lot of hypocritical things after he becomes chapter president. One thing universally agreed upon however is that his death in Grand Theft Auto V was considered to be in very poor taste to the character even considering the situation.
  • Best Known for the Fanservice: Back when the game came out everyone was talking about a certain scene. Let's put it this way, reports of gratuitous male nudity in TLAD have been greatly exaggerated.
  • Demonic Spiders: Grenade using enemies are easily the number one cause of death for players in gang wars. They are difficult to spot in a heavy firefight and if you are within their effective range they will almost always instantly kill you regardless of your body armor and at best they either kill your whole gang or leave you with almost no health and no armor or both. They also throw with perfect accuracy, their grenades have a much larger blast radius than yours and explode faster. And because later gang war enemies are Made of Iron your grenades won't do the same thing to them, in fact they will just spread them out making the war harder to win and your own grenade mooks are more of a danger to you and themselves then your enemies.
  • Game-Breaker: The Assault Shotgun is one of the most powerful shotguns in the game. You could easily decimate an army of mooks just for having this thing out, and start shooting. You can even take out an army of cops during chase sequences, and still make it out alive.
  • Genius Bonus: The Grenade Launcher introduced in this episode is modeled after the Heckler & Koch HK69. Could be a coincidence, but it's less likely than not, considering Rockstar's interest in the number 69.
  • Guilt-Based Gaming: The memorial wall in the Lost's clubhouse might leave certain players inclined to reload countless times to ensure the survival of the minor character allies that will join you in gang wars and certain missions.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Billy Grey gets arrested by the police after a heroin deal gone wrong with the Triads. He blames Johnny for this, which ultimately leads him to go State's Evidence against the Lost and set up the final showdown. However, Ballad reveals that Billy actually meant for the setup to kill Johnny. Also, Billy's first action back from prison is to commit a murder on the doorstep of the Lost's clubhouse. You learn not two missions later that said murder causes the LCPD to keep an eye on said clubhouse.
    • While hanging out with Terry and Clay post-story, this discussion might trigger:
    Johnny: We are free Brothers. We aren't dead and we aren't in jail. How long will it last?
    • Thomas Stubbs's record as a wasteful Congressman is justified by his calls for a hurricane protection system for Liberty City. Following Hurricane Sandy a few years later, that proposal seems somewhat less ludicrous.
  • Jerkass Woobie: The Lost themselves, or rather, what remains of them the end of the game can qualify. Sure, they're murderous, backstabbing criminals, but they didn't deserve many of the tragedies they suffered, because most of these were direct or indirect results of their involvement with the diamonds and heroin, which they just had the rotten luck of being roped into.
  • Moral Event Horizon: See here.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The triumphant guitar riff that plays during the autosave after completing most missions.
  • Narm: There's the cutscene if the player fails the mission "Shifting Weight." Malc comments that he knew DeSean "since diapers." It ruins the tragic factor of the cutscene and turns it into something unintentionally humorous.
  • Nightmare Fuel: Jim's torture at the hands of Ray Boccino - mainly involving his face and a blowtorch.
  • Paranoia Fuel: One of Stubbs' "Dirty Laundry" missions involves bugging Deputy Mayor Bryce Dawkins' Infernus to expose his secret homosexual affair with Bernie Crane. That same car is later given to Niko as a reward for helping Bernie. The fact that you're driving a car bugged by one of the other protagonists is paranoia fuel as is, but it gets worse. After the mission Stubbs gives Johnny a phone number that will let him listen to the bug. At first it's just Bernie singing along with the radio or thinking aloud about how Gay Tony's bodyguard is attractive, but eventually you'll start hearing the sound of a different Serbian guy running from the police. Yep, not only is it implied that Johnny could listen to Niko at any time without him knowing, it's actually possible in-game. Yet another reason to park that car somewhere safe and never drive it.
  • Player Punch: Interestingly, Player Punch scenes in GTA IV become missions here and vice versa. And Jim's death could qualify as one, considering how much time you spend with him during the game.
  • Sequel Difficulty Spike: It's technically an Expansion Pack, but anyone who breezed through GTA IV will be stunned at how difficult even the basic set-the-scene missions are in TLAD. Even from the very first mission, Johnny finds himself facing large numbers of enemies, all gunning for him it seems. A classic example occurs in the mission "Bad Cop Drop" where the mission starts with Johnny and a friend picking a fight with two bent cops, but when the actual gun battle begins suddenly he's faced with more than a dozen enemies. note 
    • This is further illustrated in the mission "Buyer's Market" which is the first major occasion in which a mission crosses over with one from GTA IV. In the GTA IV version, Niko has a partner to help with the shootout and gets a rather easy route to the rooftops in order to escape. Johnny, meanwhile, has to fight his way through a room of heavily armed cops, go downstairs, exit in front of a number of cop cars with everyone firing at him, and is expected to somehow mount his bike and escape the scene before he's shot to death.
    • The bike races vary between averting the trope and being pretty easy, to being virtually impossible (due to the bikes in the GTA IV version of Grand Theft Auto being generally awful to steer and control compared to the more dynamic bikes of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
    • The Gang Wars are much harder compared to the main game's comparable Vigilante and Ballad's Drug Wars, because the enemies grow increasingly durable and better armed as you complete wars. In contrast, your backup doesn't get that much better and is easily overwhelmed. Enemies reach peak durability and loadout at 30 Wars, and you need to complete 50 to earn all the possible rewards.
  • Spiritual Licensee: Of Sons of Anarchy. The characters and story are similar, the clothing and bikes are an almost exact match, the tone and setting are if anything even darker, and the game pretty much plays like it's centered on the Liberty charter of SAMCRO rather than Charming's. Watch this fan vid for proof.note 
  • Tear Jerker: By the end of the game, Johnny has lost his closest friend, killed his chapter's former leader and his childhood friend, and burned down the chapter's club house. What does he have left?
  • That One Level: See here.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: Ray Boccino again carrying over from the main game, even with his more negative aspects increased. His torture of Jim is meant to be his Moral Event Horizon but it’s hard not to see it as somewhat justified considering Johnny and Jim betrayed and ripped off millions of dollars from him for rather petty reasons. Protagonists have killed people in the series for far less than that.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: It can be hard to feel too sorry for Johnny and Jim by the end of the game, as most of their misfortune was brought on by them stealing two million dollars from a mobster, half of which both the main game and a conversation between Ray and Johnny note  shows he would've given them anyway. If they hadn't, Jim would still be alive, and his wife would still have a husband, his child a father. That Jim accepted the money at all only makes things worse, since he should've known perfectly well the dire straits his family would've been in if he died.
  • Wheelchair Woobie: Angus lost the use of his legs in a biking accident involving Billy Grey. Despite his injury preventing him from riding a motorcycle ever again, he still stays on as the Lost's chief mechanic and runs a business exporting (stolen) bikes. He could be an example of Inspirationally Disadvantaged if he weren't a criminal.

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