YMMV / Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: After joining your team, the annoying Hilary King is gunned down by the VCPD on his first big job just seconds after he arrives.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Sonny Forelli — a mob boss who is trying to crush Tommy's fledgling empire, or somebody who is justifiably concerned with the fact that a made man in his organization has built a criminal empire for himself in South Florida and is now openly defying his authority?
  • Tommy Vercetti — is he a Visionary Villain who managed to live out the American Dream, or a jerkass thug who bought out the city and betrayed the men that he had sworn an oath to in the name of personal gain?
    • Examination of the motives of Sonny Forelli and Tommy Vercetti can easily turn them into, respectively, an Anti-Villain and a Villain Protagonist. Sonny sent Tommy down to Vice City to make a drug deal, and when it goes wrong, Tommy tells him that he will recover the money and the coke for him. However, Tommy then stabs him in the back by creating his own criminal empire in South Florida and keeping everything for himself. Sonny had every right to do what he did to Tommy and his business.
    • It is heavily implied in the dialogue between the two in the final mission that Sonny set up the drug deal to go wrong deliberately and did not intend for him to survive. It is also implied that Sonny had also set up the incident that landed Tommy in jail several years prior. This is supported by the cutscene straight after the drug deal goes wrong: Sonny phones Tommy and on the table he's sitting at are both the coke and the money, indicating he sold Tommy out from the start and simply used him to build an empire he thought he could take over after having Lance bump off Tommy. Fortunately for the player, it doesn't go down that way...
    • Some view Tommy Vercetti as a needlessly callous, cold-blooded maniac. He absolutely feels no remorse for killing Sonny Forelli, who is portrayed almost like a family figure for Tommy. He has a Kick the Dog moment when he smugly accepts Mitch Baker's challenge to go on a rampage across downtown, meaning the shoot-outs the player embarks on outside of missions are completely in-character for the guy. Tommy's ruthlessness makes later protagonists like CJ and even Niko Bellic seem Lighter and Softer by comparison. That is, until Trevor Philips was introduced, who is every bit as psychotic as Tommy is, if not more so. The crucial difference between the two, however, is that Trevor is genuinely mentally ill. Does it excuse the things he does? No, but Tommy does all that without that slight Alas, Poor Villain air that Trevor's broken mind does.
  • Lance Vance — a jerkass who betrayed Vercetti simply because he was a greedy bastard? Or, perhaps, his tragic life and drug use made him feel compelled to betray his comrade, with Tommy dressing him down publicly before "Bar Brawl" and giving a Backhanded Apology afterwards not helping matters? Given the kind of person he was in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, it's most likely a case of both, since while he did deal with a lot of problems in the aforementioned game, a lot of them were kickstarted by him because of his stupidity.
  • Ricardo Diaz — a backstabber who ambushed the drug deal, killing the man who had helped him two years before, or just an useful scapegoat who had actually nothing to do with it? This video makes an analysis of the subject. It's pointed out that nobody ever gives concrete evidence against Diaz: Lance and Cortez merely say they think Diaz did it without explaining why, and they may not be as reliable as they seem. The best argument for Diaz being the culprit would be Vice City Stories showing Diaz blackmailing Gonzalez, which is not a definite evidence since it happened two years earlier. Meanwhile, an early cutscene showed Sonny with drugs and money, hinting he was the true culprit (and possibly even the one who led Lance towards Diaz, if they were already in contact by that point).
• Awesome Video Game Levels:
  • "Publicity Tour", if not for the actual mission, then for the dialogue. The actual mission arguably counts as well. Basically, you're escorting the band Love Fist to their concert, but their crazed stalker rigged the limo to blow up if you drive below a certain Speed. So you're driving through town like a maniac, avoiding traffic and sliding in the rain (it's always dark and raining during this mission to conceal the game's graphical limitations: everyone in the car is technically sitting still) until the band figures out how to disarm the bomb. Definitely one of the more different GTA missions.
  • The fast-paced "Phnom Penh '86". In a sequence reminiscent of Vietnam-era aerial raids, you team up with Lance and fly in a helicopter to a drug gang's stronghold of three mansions, and while Lance drives the helicopter you fire an M60 machine gun at gangsters which continue to appear from the mansions corridors, terraces and backyards, you eradicate them.^note Diaz' request in the mission introductory cutscene. Also note that the mission's name is actually the capital of Cambodia, rounding off the "jungle war" theme. Bonus if played while playing Radio Espantoso's tropical music. Also it's the mission that reward you with full access to the city.
  • "Rub Out", a Breather Level after "Death Row", where Lance and Tommy raid and take over Diaz mansion with M4s. You are rewarded with Diaz's ultracool Scarface-esque mansion, located in the middle of the map with easy Infernus and helicopter spawns.
  • "Bombs Away!" arguably fills, you remote-control a RC toy plane carrying homemade bombs to sink escaping Cuban boats all while Cubans shoot at your plane. This is the GTA series' introduction to an aeronaval styled combat.
  • Hell, any RC mission can qualify (note that curiously they always feature carrying bombs...)
  • In "All Hands On Deck!" you again engage in aeronaval combat, you must protect Colonel Cortez in his way out of Vice City, which results in fighting in his yacht against a group of armed French agents which come aboard attacking from boats, helicopters and forming a boat's barricade to block Colonel Cortez's way out. Eventually a Hunter helicopter comes firing all over the yacht, and you must take it out.
  • Probably the most cool and badass mission in the entire game, "The Job", where you, Phil Cassidy, Cam Jones and Hilary King rob the Vice City's El Banco Corrupto Grante. The SWAT storming into the bank later makes it even more epic. This is the kind of mission that paved the way for Grand Theft Auto V's heist missions.
  • "Keep Your Friends Close..." The final mission and a thrilling conclusion to an excellent game that also doubles as a Shout-Out to Scarface.
• Badass Decay: Lance Vance gradually becomes less chill and more Wangsty the more he appears in the game.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Apartment 3C, which is an eerie shout out to Scarface (1983), and not only it's unmarked, it has no significance to the plot or everything whatsoever.
  • Midway through the game, Tommy will receive a call from Kent Paul warning him that someone has put a price on his head. However, nothing ever comes about it and we never hear about it ever again. It can easily be assumed that the person who wanted Tommy dead was Ricardo Diaz, as Tommy receives the warning shortly after rescuing Lance from his failed attempt to overthrow Diaz in "Road Kill". Tommy kills Diaz and takes over his empire shortly thereafter, eliminating the threat. However, depending on the order in which the player completes the game's missions, it's possible to receive the call after Tommy kills Diaz, putting it firmly within this trope.
    • It could also be whoever owned the Vice City Cabs company, as the final Kaufmann Cabs mission involves Tommy being set up to be killed under the guise of meeting with Mercedes, suggesting that the later-disposed-by-Tommy VC Cabs owner knew Tommy more than Sonny ever had.
  • The cutscenes of the Auntie Poulet missions shows the aforementioned Haitian gang leader mind controlling Tommy by making him drink some mysterious tea every time. While supernatural elements appear in other games in the series, its usually just in Easter Egg form or they receive the Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane treatment (i.e. The Truth's conspiracy theories in San Andreas), which only makes this more weird. Needless to say, Tommy being temporarily turned into a brainwashed agent of the Haitians is never mentioned again once the Auntie Poulet missions are completed.
• Catharsis Factor: Because Lance was a parasite who refused to own up to his own mistakes and betrayed Tommy all because he felt he deserved more for doing very little work after he and Tommy take over Diaz's mansion, very many fans enjoyed killing him, especially after playing the game's prequel to see how much of a parasitic moron he was in that game as well.
• Common Knowledge: Tommy himself gets a great reputation of not only being the most villainous protagonist of the franchise, but for also most notably being emotionless, heartless, and not caring for anyone around him. While it is true that Tommy is an Ax-Crazy criminal who is not above dealing drugs and shows absolutely no remorse for those he killed and only commits crimes to benefit himself, he isn't as heartless and emotionless as many often exaggerate. For all his criminal acts, Tommy has shown deep down that he does have a high level of respect for those who are actually useful to him (Colonel Cortez, Avery) and truly values loyalty and friendship to those he does consider his partners, even showing genuine sorrow after having to kill Lance Vance after the latter's betrayal. Also, he has shown to have a genuine soft spot for Earnest Kelly since he reminds him of his father, who Tommy is implied to have had a great relationship with. So contrary to the belief, Tommy, in spite of his psychopathic ways, does have a heart deep down and shows plenty of strong emotions when it really hits him.
• Demonic Spiders: The army, as it's the only enemy in game outside of a couple missions packing M4 assault rifles. Try driving next to Fort Baxter. Thankfully there is almost no mission involve fighting M4 equipped armies and in missions where Tommy fights an army, they are equipped with anything but an M4.
  • Any enemy armed with a shotgun, as they can stun Tommy and knock him down with the shotgun blasts. Particularly the female gang guarding the plate Tommy needs to steal in one of the Print Works asset mission.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Lance Vance definitely earns this since aside from the fact that the fans admire his charismatic cool attitude in the game, they also try to justify his betrayal on Tommy by stating that Tommy was mistreating Lance and not giving him a "fair slice". This is ignoring the fact that Tommy had saved Lance after the latter stupidly attempted to take out Diaz on his own and even carried him throughout their criminal activities, and that Tommy had done all the work to purchase and built empires and raise his own gang while Lance just sat back drinking (as shown in "Bar Brawl", where Tommy's curt diatribe towards Lance was highly understandable). Also, the fans who call out Tommy for his treatment on Lance during that moment completely ignore the fact that Vic, Lance's own brother, treated Lance the exact same way in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories for the exact same reasons.
• Even Better Sequel: While GTA 3 was already revolutionary when it came out, this game cranked everything up to eleven; A larger map, the introduction of motorbikes, controllable helicopters and planes, more weapons, a more colorful setting, improvement to graphics, gameplay, actual high quality 80's music fills the radio, and a more coherent plot with one of the series' most memorable protagonists (who, for the first time, actually had a personality).
• Evil Is Cool: Tommy Vercetti, who else? He is one of the few GTA protagonists who doesn't mind committing crimes, knows exactly what to do at almost any given moment, is an incredibly badass mobster, and doesn't let anyone stand in his way.
• Fanon: Tommy's Super Drowning Skills are usually considered to be a combination of A) growing up in Liberty City where — according to GTA III — the water was too toxic to practice swimming in, and B) hearing about Vice City having sharks and believing the waters are filled with them.^note You can occasionally spot a shark swimming around, but it's clearly not "sharks everywhere" level.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: According to the police dossier, Sonny Forelli has a "notoriously poor taste in clothes". Considering how blatantly mismatched his black jacket, tacky leopard print shirt and white trousers are, there might be quite a bit of truth in that statement.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The minigame "Cone Crazy" is a driving challenge that rewards you $200 the first time you complete it, then it rewards you double the highest reward you got every time you beat your best time. In other words, the money output grows exponentially. The first time you beat your high score, you'll get $400, second time $800, third $1600 and so on. This means if you intentionally go very slowly on your first try and then just barely beat your best time each time after that, you'll stack a lot of money fast. As this speedrunner demonstrates, it is an effective strategy for overcoming the Cash Gates later on in the game.
  • The free aim on the PC port turns the assault rifles, M-60, minigun, and the SPAS-12 Auto-Shotgun into this. With the clunky analog stick aiming substituted for mouse aiming, you can hit enemies at sniper distances, without recoil, with ease. It also makes shooting drivers out of their cars and popping tires a breeze.
  • Vice Street Racing (which you are eligible after purchasing the ownership of showroom), does not prohibit use of weapons. Also before even the racing starts you can blow up the competitors cars! And you can bring any car! Even without using weapons, the rival cars have difficulty navigating the narrow and dense roads of the city.
  • The helicopter is this for missions. As soon as you can access one, you can bypass a lot of problems that were specifically set up to hound people in cars. With the exception of missions that force you into vehicles, taking a helicopter is always a better choice than driving. The Hunter helicopter (either get 100 hidden package or finish the final story mission) also enables Vigilante missions to be done by Death from Above, making it very easy to amass a millionaire fortune.
  • Collecting 30 hidden packages causes a .357 Colt Python to spawn at some of Tommy's safehouses. While it has a slow rate of fire, it kills most enemies with a single hit.
  • The SPAS-12 Auto-Shotgun is no slouch either; It is able to empty its 7-round magazine in just over 1000 miliseconds allowing one to mow down a group of people, or detonate a non-bullet-proof car in one magazine or even less. It isn't as versatile as the aforementioned rifle-class weapons, but damn is it still deadly.
• Genius Bonus: In his interview on "Pressing Issues", Jeremy Robard lists "Lebanese" as one of the countries where he owns a vacation home. In 1986 Lebanon was in the middle of a devastating civil war that had reduced the entire country to rubble and completely obliterated what used to be a vibrant tourism industry. This claim foreshadows Robard being exposed as entirely full of shit by the end of the interview, fresh out of jail and living in a shoebox apartment next to the gas works. Not only is it highly unlikely that Robard's vacation home would survive the violence even if he actually owned one, but it shows an understandable lack of knowledge of current events given he just spent a substantial amount of time in jail.
• Genre Turning Point: Before Vice City, music in video games was limited either to original tracks or from very obscure artists. Even Grand Theft Auto III was mostly made up of new songs for the game. After III's success, the Houser Brothers believed they could still make money while populating their game with a vast amount of licensed tracks. They used their contacts in the music industry to put together a track list of some of the biggest pop/rock music from The '80s. To this day, it's still regarded as one of the best soundtracks in gaming history and played a huge part in establishing the game's atmosphere. Afterwards, the number of video games using licensed music for their soundtracks jumped up.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • After completing "Trojan Voodoo," the last mission in the gang war side mission chain, the Haitian gang turns hostile to Tommy. If they spot you they will begin to shoot you, whether that be on car or by foot. They are not difficult to take out by any means, but dealing with them also means taking the risk of gaining a one or two-star wanted level. If you are doing any Taxi Driver, Vigilante or "Ice Cream" selling side missions, you are better off avoiding Little Haiti and its surroundings unless you want to deal with these gang members and the subsequent police officers.
  • Patrol Invest Group members (PIGs for short) can be quite the nuisance when doing the "Ice Cream" selling side missions. If they spot you, they will run up to you, pull you out of the vehicle and the mission will automatically end, forcing you to go all the way back to the Ice Cream factory and start the mission again, and to add insult to injury they start shooting you when you are out of your vehicle. You are way better off avoiding Starfish Island and the Mall for those side quests.
• Good Bad Bugs: In rare instances, a glitch may occur within your save file that gives you unlimited ammo for the revolver, which can make breezing through enemy laden levels a cakewalk.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • On "Pressing Issues", John F. Hickory warns that unless Florida curbs immigration, "We will be piled on top of each other like they are in Australia!" Come The New '20s, Australia would experience a housing shortage that many experts claim rising immigration is at least partially to blame for.
  • In a post-mission phone call, Tommy asks Avery "What's eating ya?". Come Liberty City Stories, he is not only killed, but is eaten by his ex-protégé Donald Love.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In universe: In the cutscene before Phenom Penh '86, Ricardo Diaz yells out, "Soon any mom and pop will think they can sell Gallo in Vice City! Who's next, the stinking mafia?!?" Guess who would take over Diaz's empire shortly afterwards?
  • This game was made at that point in time when Rockstar still made liberal use of the voice talents of famed actors. One of them was Burt Reynolds, who played Avery Carrington, a character that was unceremoniously killed and eaten later in the series. Fast forward to 2011, where he plays himself as the mayor of a Vice City in the GTA series' most prolific competitor to date.
  • Petstuffers is now a real thing, thanks to Xtreme Taxidermy, the company documented on the Animal Planet series "American Stuffers".
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Tommy Vercetti, aka the Harwood Butcher, is a member of the Forelli crime family who, shortly after his release from prison, is sent to Vice City to expand the family's influence in the drug trade. After a drug deal goes wrong due to an ambush, he begins investigating who was responsible so he can recover the stolen money and product and take revenge. Upon discovering that his new employer, drug baron Ricardo Diaz was behind the incident, he kills him and takes over his operation. Tommy decides to branch out into legitimate business, using some of the properties he acquires as fronts for criminal activity. Double-crossing his nominal boss Sonny Forelli to become independent and successfully straddling both sides of the law, Tommy makes himself the most powerful crime lord in Vice City.
  • "Mr. Black" is a mysterious, unseen criminal who runs a vast hitman organization that he offers to paying clients. Black has his hitmen use untraceable payphones to contact him, where he sets them up with the proper equipment and uses his intelligence-gathering skills to inform them of their target's patterns and identities to help their objective go smoothly. When Tommy starts taking jobs, Black gives him the weapons he needs for the jobs and the targets he is after, ranging from troublesome wives to entire gangs, and Black always pays Tommy what he is owed after every hit is complete.
  • Auntie Poulet is the seemingly-kindly matriarch of the Haitian gangs, who winds up using Tommy as a puppet. Poulet has waged war on the Cubans for years, so when Tommy begins helping the Cubans, Poulet tricks him into drinking her drugged tea and hearing her Compelling Voice, manipulating him into striking several key blows against the Cubans. After Tommy has helped the Haitian obtain multiple wins, Poulet honors her initial promise and lets Tommy walk free from her control, albeit with the ultimatum that if he interferes in Haitian business again, her gang will try to kill him on-sight.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Due to the game's lack of a swimming feature, Tommy is often portrayed as a butt monkey for swimming-related GTA memes.
  • That poor biker Tommy had to rob it from him for his nice bike.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Tommy doesn't know how to swim.^ExplanationWhile every single Grand Theft Auto game until that point had featured a protagonist with Super Drowning Skills, Vice City is particularly notorious in this regard with bodies of water being found at the city at almost every corner. This lead to fans poking fun at Tommy being unable to swim.
  • "Tommy we are being overrun by the French!"^ExplanationColonel Cortez's last mission, "All Hands On Deck!", involves protecting Cortez from French hitmen. Whenever an enemy enters Cortez's yacht, he will say the aforementioned line, which can lead to Cortez saying it ad nauseam.
  • "Tommy Vercetti...Huh! Shit. Didn't think they'd ever let him out."^ExplanationSonny Forelli says it so quickly that it sounds unintelligible.
  • Tommy is fat.^ExplanationThe reveal trailer for the Definitive Edition of III, Vice City and San Andreas showcased how the games would look, and many people stated that the updated graphics, alongside with some camera angles and the textures of the clothing, made Tommy look fatter than in the original game, thus leading to jokes about him putting on weight.
  • "Guitarhenk Booths Avaiable"/"AR GUITARS FROM $199".^ExplanationWhen the Definitive Edition came out, many were quick to discover that the signage for an in-game store called Screamin' Collins Guitars featured the following misspellings (the original signage read "Guitarwank Booths Available" and "Air Guitars"). The former, consisting of one actual word sandwiched between two Perfectly Cromulent ones, is nonsensical enough to speak for itself; the latter has resulted in several jokes about the guitars being augmented-reality or assault rifles.
  • "Looking for something special? I got what you need! Thanks for the money, sucker!"^ExplanationA line from the mission "Love Juice" uttered by a dealer who has the ingredients for the eponymous Love Juice and attempts to rip Tommy off and run away. This line was used in light of the Definitive Edition being a buggy and unfinished mess that costs $60, which many fans feel is the equivalent of Rockstar Games and Take-Two ripping them off and running away with the money.
  • "Tommy Vercetti. Remember the name." ^ExplanationAfter Ray Liotta passed away in 2022, many people paid tribute to him by quoting that line.
• Misblamed:
  • There are some fans that disliked how Tommy had treated Lance and felt he was being selfish and not giving Lance a fair share while claiming the entire business as his own when in reality, Tommy had always treated Lance with loyalty and only berated him in one cutscene in "Bar Brawl", and that was only because Lance was lazing around instead of assisting Tommy with the job, as Lance was even expecting everything to be handed to him without actually earning it.
  • Additionally, Tommy is also blamed for abandoning Ken just six years later after declaring him his new partner in-crime at the end of the story, completely ignoring the fact that Tommy did it due to Ken's cocaine addiction, and let's face it, you wouldn't want a coke addict as a partner if it meant it would do more harm than good to business.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Most Wonderful Sound: That smooth, smooth synth piece that plays whenever you successfully complete a mission.
• One-Scene Wonder: This game is likely the series king of having memorably quirky one-off characters scattered through its missions.
  • The random biker who Tommy steals a bike from on his way to the yacht party at the start of the game. The hilariously blunt dialogue in that scene remains one of the game's most quoted moments, and the biker himself has a Memetic Loser reputation among fans.
    Tommy: Hmm... Nice bike.
    Biker: No, my bike!
  • "The Psycho", Love Fist's Loony Fan, has just two scenes (one of which is entirely off-screen via a recording) but his Large Ham performance (involving the thickest Northern England accent any actor has ever attempted) makes him easily the most memorable minor villain in the game.
    "I'll see Love Fist burn! Love Fist ruined my life!"
  • Giving the Psycho a run for his money is the dealer in "Love Juice" who tries to rip Tommy off, whose one line of dialogue became a meme:
    "Looking for something special? I got what you need! Thanks for the money, sucker!"
  • In "All Hands On Deck!", the extremely thick-accented Scottish sailor who fights alongside you and is very scared of the helicopters sent to kill them is a genuine highlight of the mission.
    "Oh my God, they've got a helicopter!"
• Polished Port:
  • The original PC version features improved camera controls, allowing the standard WASD/mouse combo instead of the awkward "stand-still, auto aim" of the console version. The only issue is that it makes robbing stores harder, but players could switch back to the console targeting system.
  • Much like with III, the Xbox version features enhanced graphics and custom soundtrack support.
• Porting Disaster: The Trilogy Definitive Edition... On the one hand, it backported the aforementioned Polished Port features to all console and PC versions of the game. On the other hand... See the YMMV page for the whole series for details.
• Rooting for the Empire: A rare Villain Protagonist example here, as while he's still a ruthless, hot-tempered psychopath who shows little to no remorse of killing anyone, it's still easier to root for Tommy over his main antagonists, as while one could argue that Tommy had stabbed Sonny in the back by keeping everything for himself after starting his criminal empire without giving Sonny his cut, this is countered easily by the fact that Sonny was implied to have Tommy killed in the ambush earlier in the game and sold him out from the start, as evident by the drugs and money sitting on the table Sonny was at earlier. It is also known that Sonny had deliberately set up Tommy fifteen years prior to the storyline and had tried to even have him killed during the time. So Tommy betraying Sonny comes off as justified since the guy he treated as family had sold him out in the beginning, making it much easier for the gamers to root for him in spite of his ruthlessness.
• The Scrappy: Hilary King is a major one for fans, not just for being a pain in the ass to recruit, but ultimately failing in his mission by getting killed mere minutes into the heist and rendering his tedious level completely pointless.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The police spawning. In an effort to correct III's laughably easy-to-avoid police (once you got used to the game's quirks), they overdid it. It's next to impossible to lose even a two-star wanted level without going to a Pay 'N' Spray. This is because once you hit two stars, the cops continually spawn everywhere. No matter how far away you get from those following you, no matter how inconceivably remote of an area you attempt to hide in, they will show up. Also, see the supercop glitch. SA and onward adjusted this, but it's still really hard to get away from even a two star level until IV.
  • The controls for boat driving are very finicky, making it hard to do even simple turns and keep the boat going at a straight line. The checkpoint missions involving them do not help as their time limits are strict and do not take the controls into account.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: Though still challenging at spots, it's a much more forgiving game than Grand Theft Auto III. It's much easier to get around the map due to the addition of bikes and helicopters, the missions are generally more fair and the open-ended structure means that many of the ones that do qualify as That One Level can be skipped, gang hostility is greatly toned down, and there's no circumstances where missions or sidequests can disappear or become impossible to complete, making 100% Completion much, much easier.
• Song Association: A lot of people associate Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" with Vice City because it's the first song you hear in the game.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Playing the Xbox version on an Xbox 360 causes the game's music to be extremely quiet while driving.
  • During the mission "Cop Land" in the Definitive Edition, Lance reverts to his original model from 2002 when putting on the cop uniform.
• Spiritual Licensee: This may be the best Scarface (1983) game ever made.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Right before there was an actual Scarface game (Scarface: The World Is Yours).
  • Likewise, it makes for a great video game adaptation of Miami Vice right down to the title, setting, and even Philip Michael Thomas as Lance Vance. There are even two Vice City police officers who are Expies of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: Some people have noted that the main theme sounds similar to R.E.M.'s "Orange Crush".
• That One Achievement: On the Playstation 4 version, there's "Take the Cannoli", easily one of the most time-consuming trophies to earn in the game. Getting it requires getting the criminal rating to Godfather, which you get by getting a million criminal points and having $10 million. Getting points depends on how many people you kill, vehicles you destroy how much money you have and your accuracy. It would be the last thing that affects how much points you have. And if you get any other trophy and play all the missions and get 100% completion, you will more than likely have your accuracy rating low and if you want it, expect to do hundreds of hours of grinding. There are quicker ways to do this, though they would still take several hours before you get it. This video covers one's efforts and exploits to earn this.
• That One Level: See here.
• That One Sidequest:
  • "RC Raider Pickup", the RC helicopter side mission. Remember that mission when you blew up that building? Good. Because this mission is a slap in the face to that. The helicopter, in complete defiance of the perfectly manageable one you flew before, is so damn sensitive that you'll literally do flips if you press a directional key. Not press and hold, just press. At least it's a checkpoint mission and the time limit doesn't affect 100% Completion.
  • "PCJ Playground", a checkpoint mission with a time limit that has you hopping roofs and riding up stairs. The route to take isn't particularly obvious on a first playthrough, and with how sensitive Tommy is to getting thrown off the bike, it will take some trial and error until you find out what it is. And once you do, you'll find in your path trucks that are scripted to drive past and block your way for a second.
  • Melee weapon rampage events. Targets tend to appear in groups, and being gang members they are armed. Sometimes with guns. This is especially bad with the chainsaw, since you can't run while they can.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The 10th Anniversary edition and all future versions since got hit with a lot of criticism for removing several licensed tracks from the game due to music rights for them expiring and Rockstar not wanting to bother paying the fee to license them again.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • You remember how Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas had The Introduction showing everything that happened prior to the events of the storyline? We could've had the same thing with this game, where we see Tommy's brief moment getting out of jail, a flashback of how he joined the Forelli family after rejecting his father's footsteps to work at the Print Works, and how Vic Vance, protagonist of the game's prequel, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, decided to return to drug dealing after swearing them off for good at the end of the prequel. Granted, the latter game wasn't planned to be released, but still....
  • Considering Tommy had purchased many business assets around the city, there could've been a moment where he decides to build his own empire and see how it ends up.
• The Un-Twist: It's pretty obvious after the first mission that Ricardo Diaz was behind the attack on the drug deal at the beginning of the game. In his first appearance, he tells Cortez there are "barbarians at the gates" who are trying to muscle in on his business, and Mercedes even describes him as Vice City's coke baron. After stealing the phone of the hit man who ambushed the deal in the next mission, you receive a phone call from someone looking to set up a deal for Diaz’s merchandise. In fact, it's so obvious that there's no real reveal; Tommy and Lance just casually mention that they figured it out and implicitly did so when they started working for him, if not before.
• Values Dissonance: The way Steve Irwin gets ruthlessly parodied as Pat "Mr. Zoo" Flannery on K-Chat may not sit well with younger people who play the game today, given how much of a beloved figure he has become since his unfortunate death. However, Irwin was one of the most frequently parodied public figures of the early 2000s and some of the period caricatures make Vice City's seem respectful in comparison.
• Values Resonance: To modern gamers, Jeremy Robard could serve as an effective parody of the social media influencer scammers that keep popping up everywhere.
• Wangst: A lot of people didn't take well to Lance's constant crying and complaining about how Tommy treats him like a little kid and acts pouty if Tommy doesn't ask him how he's doing. Lance mentions how everyone would always act condescending towards him when he was younger and practically begs Tommy to not do the same to him. The fact that he gleefully betrays Tommy in the end just for those minor grievances and being greedy over his share of the profits didn't win him over with anyone and most were glad to finally be allowed to put a bullet in his head.

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