As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- Why did the Boss add a giant 8 barreled turret to the White House (other than for the obvious reasons)? The boss knows that sooner or later someone big was going to gun for them. They also already lost one friend by letting their guard down, they won't lose anymore.
- The Boss picked one of the few countries in the world (the United States) where cabinet ministers and advisers don't have to be elected representatives of a Parliament. Which perfectly explains who he has in his / her cabinet.
- They never DID find Johnny Gat's body because Zinyak abducted him. Johnny had never been dead to begin with, so there was no body TO find! This does raise the question about Zombie Gat who you unlock at the end of Saints Row the Third, and why Philipe Loren talks about using Johnny's body as an example not to resist him. It could just be a clone or impersonator Loren used, though.
- Also possible Zinyak put a replacement there so as not to get people looking.
- On the subject of Johnny Gat, it actually makes sense that he'd be able to survive Loren stabbing him with a Bowie knife, despite the fact that Jyunichi stabbing him with a katana in the second game was enough to hospitalize him. Apart from the fact that a Bowie knife's a lot smaller than a katana, and therefore logically should cause lesser injuries, Jyunichi shoved that sword right through Johnny's body. Loren just stuck his knife in Johnny's stomach. And then Zinyak captured Johnny and presumably healed him before imprisoning him, just to rub salt in the metaphorical wound.
- How exactly Zinyak got on the airplane in the first place to abduct him seems like Fridge Logic. That is until the end of the game when you learn that the Zin have time travel capabilities and that Zinyak has been using it to abduct or make copies of earthlings he had taken a liking to.
- How does the Boss survive taking out the nuke and falling tens of thousands of feet into the Oval Office without a parachute? By the end of Saints Row: The Third, you should have unlocked No Explosion Damage and No Fall Damage - the Boss is immune to both. No Fall Damage could also be unlocked in Saints Row 2, and in all previous Saints Row games you could always pull a parachute from nowhere. Perhaps there was one hidden in the combat suit as well.
- Similar to the above, note how in the real world you regenerate health the normal way. Boss did that in the previous games so of course they're still going to have the ability outside the simulation.
- Why does Zinjai only show up to advise the Boss in the Golden Ending? If you play through the entire text-based adventure series, it turns out that Zinyak was very much a Bad Boss, going so far as to stuff Zinjai into the simulation after he invented it. By completing all of the loyalty missions, the Boss shows that they care deeply about all of their subordinates, thus convincing Zinjai that they're a much preferable alternative to Zinyak, so he volunteers his services and hands over the keys to time-travel technology that will keep the Saints in power.
- The mission title ""Back By Popular Demand" seems to be giving the player the false hope for the return of Gat. However, the title actually refers to the return of SR2 Shaundi, who is also very popular.
- Ben King still refers to the main character as Playa instead of Boss. This is not merely a reference to Saints Row 1, but also reinforces that King sees himself as an equal partner to Boss, not a subordinate. This is further reinforced by King still wearing HIS colors. And, of course, a bit of Leaning on the Fourth Wall to address the player directly.
- Look closely at the shoes of the jumpsuits the Saints wear on their spaceship. The shoes have a split in the middle fitting the Zin biology. They are most likely designed to adjust to the wearer's anatomy.
- You can spend an hour collecting code clusters to upgrade your powers, making the game super easy, right? However the story missions have a tendency to strip you of such powers. Suddenly you find out that you're going to have to put in the extra effort buying upgrades after all.
- Fun!Shaundi is far more spacy and clueless than she ever was in Saints Row 2. But it's a simulation of who she was, from Zinyak no less. It's intended to be a mockery to troll the real Shaundi. An Alternate Character Interpretation could be that this is how Shaundi remembers herself during the revival of the Saints, what with her low self-esteem and survivor's guilt. Notably, Fun!Shaundi becomes a lot less airheaded after "proving" to her future self that she wasn't just a worthless burnout at the end of their Loyalty mission.
- The existence of the Power Armor actually gives a reason for the Super Powers in the simulation to exist. Kinzie (or the Wardens) aren't just pulling those powers out of their ass — they're patching them over from whatever training simulations exist to teach people how to use that armor.
- In the two missions set in the 50's simulation, any swearing is bleeped out except for the last few lines, which demonstrates that the Boss has finally broken it.
- In the second visit, the Boss lets loose as they're running around disrupting the simulation, with some voices taking it so far as to drop one Cluster F-Bomb after another. S/he is testing to see if what they're doing is having any effect. And overloading the language filter to make the simulation crash faster. And, yes, venting frustration about being back in it in the first place.
- By merging Enter The Dominatrix and the original premise for Saints Row 4, Volition lost something they planned ahead for: the music. Look how puny the selection is, to the point that they had to cut a station. Now, imagine the new stuff as added on, instead. Then, go listen to some of the songs from Saints Row: The Third. In particular, Rise, Rebel, Resist and Arma-Goddamn-Motherfuckin-Geddon. Some of the Saints Row: The Third soundtrack selection makes a ton more sense if you take into account Enter The Dominatrix.
- Mr. Sunshine from Saints Row 2 appearing as the DJ for 420 makes no sense at first, but remember that other prominent gangs and gang leaders appear and are explicitly said to be based off of the memories of the Saints (and Ben King) as they are trapped in the simulation. Sunshine is probably another creation of the simulation. Him being the only member of the Sons of Samedi to return might also be a meta-joke about the fact that the man just did not die until the Boss cut off his head and threw it in a meat grinder.
- The locations of Pierce's Audio Logs in Virtual Steelport are rather significant: one is in a basketball court (mirroring his Japanese advert for Saints Flow), the second is in Sunset Park (where you first meet him after arriving in Steelport), and the third is in the Broken Shillelagh (which is his favorite hangout, as well as the Saints').
- Likewise with Cyrus Temple's. If you just did Kinzie's loyalty mission, you'll find his first two at Sierra Point, and hear him air his grievances against the Saints and rail against Monica Hughes for hamstringing his military efforts against them. You find the third log where he reminisces about his affair with his second-in-command, Kia, in Downtown near a Planet Zin, far away from the base.
- "The Boys Are Back In Town" is about old friends returning to much cheer, violence, and nostalgia. The same things that come with the return of Johnny Gat and his Loyalty mission where the song plays.
- Though being deprived of superpowers during most of the main questline and several of the sidequests is frustrating, this has an in-universe justification, instead of just being Fake Difficulty to make the quests more challenging: The superpowers are basically the result of Kinzie hacking the Boss' avatar properties. In the quests, the lack of superpowers usually happens in the real world (in which their absence is obviously logical) and in specific simulations not part of the main ones (Kinzie didn't have time or couldn't hack the Boss' avatar inside them). In the quests set inside the main simulationnote , the Boss is able to use them.
- "Cat statue:"
- When Kinzie is guiding the Boss to leave the 50's Steelport simulation, she directs him to a Professor Genki-shaped fountain, which she refers to as a "cat statue". Since Professor Genki is a television celebrity in the setting, why does she refers to it in such a generic way instead of using his proper name? Because, as a stereotypical nerd, it's likely that Kinzie has very limited knowledge of mainstream pop culture.
- It also has a gameplay justification. This line of dialog has critical importance in-game (it leads to a weapon), so using "cat statue" instead of a specific reference makes this part a lot easier to players who didn't play Saints Row: The Third, and don't have any idea who "Professor Genki" is.
- Also, according to Gat Out Of Hell, she REALLY hates him, so maybe she also just didn't even want to say his name.
- Keith David doesn't show up in any storyline missions after rescuing him from his simulation. And why would he? He turned on the Boss, tried to sell out the Saints to the Zin for a hollow promise to restore Earth, and almost doomed humanity's last hope. It would be extremely out-of-character for the Boss to follow Easily Forgiven, even more so with the running gag about Keith being compared to Julius Little. The VP should consider himself lucky the Boss decided not to rehash that particular part of history.
- In this game, the Boss becomes President of the United States. Yet they might not necessarily be American (particularly in the case of the British or French-accented Bosses). The President of the US is required to have been born in the US. However, this gets addressed in a line from one of the foreign Boss voices, saying that a constitutional amendment was recently passed that allowed them to run for president.
- One of the guards in Asha's nightmare says "Not again!" when you kill him. At first it seems like a joke, but eventually it's revealed that the nightmares play over and over again, and that both Asha and Mr. X remember the previous loops. If they remember, what's to say the guards don't, and if they do they'd certainly remember being killed. Suddenly, 'not again' makes a lot more sense. Horrible, horrible sense...
- Also, the part that makes this Asha's nightmare is that Asha keeps failing her mission, each time having to restart the same mission and run through the same script watching the same events play out the same way over and over again. Kind of like the player does when they hit That One Level.
- In the credits when the characters sing along to "Just a Friend" (which includes a majority of the main cast), Zinyak is absent with a line. Why? Because he fucked up Biz Markie earlier in the game! No chance the Boss was going to let him screw with their music again!
- Even if he sang the song correctly, it would have been difficult to mix Zinyak's loud, booming, powerful voice into the recording so that he can still be heard without overpowering the rest of the cast and detracting from the song transitioning to a solo from Michael Clark Duncan at the end.
- The homie conversation between Keith David and Maero reveals that the Boss has never talked about Maero to Keith. It's Played for Laughs with Maero as the butt of the joke, but what was he responsible for? Possibly the darkest mission in Saints Row history, where the Boss had to personally put Carlos out of his misery after he suffered a horrendous keelhauling at the Brotherhood's hands. No wonder the Boss doesn't want to talk about him.
- After rescuing Pierce, the Boss is much nicer to him than in the previous games. In the opening cutscene of Pierce's rescue mission, the Boss is called out by CID for constantly treating Pierce like crap. Add onto that the likely crushing guilt that their resistance against Zinyak caused the destruction of Earth, and they realized the Saints left are their only company, so of course they would want to be on more friendly terms with all of them.
- When Boss manages to break the '50s-sitcom Steelport simulation, Zinyak pulls them out and drops them into...SR3 Steelport. Everything about the way Steelport worked in the previous game is here; you can still steal cars, kill people, and cause chaos. But the cribs are gone, you can't buy the shops, and there's no Forgive and Forget. Even if the Boss leveled up enough to become invincible like in previous games, they'd eventually run out of things to do. Everything Saints-related has been turned into a Zin parody for the express purpose of reminding the Boss that they're a Zin prisoner in a Zin cage, and the only way out is to give up the false freedom the Boss has been given in exchange for a life of no freedom at all. Kinzie may have been the only factor keeping that version of Steelport from being a much greater Fate Worse than Death for the Boss than wholesome-'50s-sitcom Steelport ever would've been.
- When Zinyak busts out a reading from Macbeth, the Boss casually dismisses it. Some voices claim ignorance, while others just go right for the throat ("Fuck Shakespeare! Jane Austen or go home!"). This is listed as an example of the Boss being Book Dumb. However, previous games have shown that the Boss is really good at finding an enemy's weak points and pounding on them with an oversized purple dildo until they let their guard down. If you listen to Klassic 102.4 you'll find Zinyak's. The Zin warlord hates it when people dismiss or disrespect the classics he adores. For example, he closes out his announcement of Bach's "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" by threatening to execute anyone who dares refer to the piece as "the Dracula song".
- But don't worry, Zinyak pays the Boss back in kind later on by fucking up Biz Markie.
- Why, in Matt Miller's loyalty mission, does Nyte Blayde's acting becomes much worse once he accuses Matt of having betrayed him? Because, since Zinyak personally caused the simulation to go off the rails, and since Zinyak has already been characterized as a Troll who especially loves messing with his prisoners to break their mind, it totally makes sense to assume Zinyak took special effort to also ruin Nyte Blayde's voice acting, to piss off Matt to the fullest extent.
- Phillipe Loren's new voice actor is probably just the result of schedule conflicts for the original actor, but it also makes sense from an internal perspective. In Saints Row IV, Loren appears as an AI created by Matt Miller. Loren died early during the story of Saints Row: The Third, at the very least five years earlier (not counting the unspecified length of the hiatus between the end of The Third and the prologue of IV). Also, the destruction of Earth obviously prevented Matt from keeping any Syndicate-related notes, documents, or audio recordings he may own, but he would probably not have kept them anyway since he abruptly defected from the Syndicate and fled to England to join MI6. So, SRIV!Loren has a different voice because he has been made from scratch, entirely based on Matt's old memories of Loren.
- When the Boss receives from Kinzie the sidequest of gaining control of the Leather and Lace store, Kinzie mentions it's one of her favorite shops. Saints Row: The Third contained a few references to Kinzie being a BDSM fan. In both games, goods sold by Leather and Lace include BDSM gear.
- Asha's simulation being That One Level makes perfect sense from a character standpoint. For many of the other characters, the nightmares provided by Zinyak always exploit their personal failures or fears. However, in a gameplay perspective, they can be overcome with ease given the player's relative detachment from their significance. Asha's hell, however, takes the form of the more objective form of failure. That is to say, the odds are stacked against her even without the personal punches of friends dying and the simulation's insults. None of the player's upgrades work here either, there's an abundance of Demonic Spiders in the form of Murderbots, and the boss of the nightmare being an absolute bullet sponge ensures that overcoming this nightmare being as difficult as possible in gameplay.
- Zinyak considering Johnny a bigger threat to his empire than the Boss makes some sense. Zinyak was clearly monitoring Earth's culture throughout its history, up to and including the Saints' self-aggrandizing media pop culture as seen in Saints Row: The Third. Zinyak saw Johnny Gat being propped up as the Saints' official mascot, his reputation as an unstoppable Blood Knight put proudly on display. Then he saw the comic book starring Johnny as a space hero defending Earth from the threat of alien invasion. And then Zinyak saw Johnny Gat's history with the Saints, and realized that indeed, this particular individual might actually be more of a threat to Zinyak's own invasion attempt than is portrayed in Gangstas In Space.
- The Boss, on the other hand, doesn't get much facetime in Saints-Ultor media. They can't act worth a damn, and their being a fully-customizable player character means the promo-art Boss seen on billboards and advertisements may not look anything like the "real" Boss. With Gat, Pierce, and Shaundi getting most of the brand's spotlight, the Boss isn't promoted by the Saints as a Gat-level Memetic Badass warrior, so Zinyak went off of what he saw of the Boss in the Saints' history: a silly, braggadocious clown who only lives to sow chaos and kill people while spewing profanity, cracking jokes and wearing ridiculous costumes. Which isn't someone that an arrogant Cultured Badass Galactic Conqueror like Zinyak would take seriously as a threat.
- When Zinyak brings back gangs from past Saints Row games, why are the Brotherhood, Ronin and Morningstar the only gangs to show up? Because they killed someone close to the Boss - the Ronin killed Aisha, the Brotherhood killed Carlos, while Morningstar (seemingly) killed Johnny Gat.
- While Aisha herself isn't close enough to the Boss to justify her being the reason the Ronin are present, Boss did help her fake her death and felt sorry for Gat after she died (Possibly even more after realizing that Gat was forced to relive her death for years), who they were close to - enough to bring the Ronin into the mix. After all, the simulation is a virtual prison which forces you to relive your worst fears.
- There is still the Vice Kings' presence, which probably can't be explained with this reasoning.
- While being trapped in your personal hell is horrible, it becomes worse for Johnny when you realize that he was abducted in the third game. We don't know how much time has passed between the end of SR3 and the first level of this one, but afterward, there's a five-year Time Skip to the present. We also don't know how long Boss was in his own simulation before Kinzie busted him out (it was, at least, enough time for her to escape, free Keith David, steal an alien vessel, and learn how to pilot it). At the very least, he was trapped in there for over five years. At worst, he could've been there for nearly a decade. That means a decade of reliving Aisha's death in SR2 coupled with his inability to save her. Wow, that must suck. On the plus side, when he escapes it, it helped him get past her death and come to terms with it, and now he's happy to move on with his life (and possibly start a relationship with the Boss).
On the headscratchers page.
