Video Game / Mafia III

Family is who you die for.

"You people speak of family. Like you know what that word means. But you were born into yours. You never had to go looking for some place to belong. Never had to bleed in a jungle just to find your real brothers. Never had to turn your back on God just so someone would finally treat you like a son. Family. To you it's just a goddamned last name. If you knew what family really meant... you never would have fucked with mine."

— Lincoln Clay, Reveal Trailer

Mafia III is the third game in the Mafia series. It is developed by Hangar 13 and was released in October 7, 2016.

Taking place in the city of New Bordeaux in the year 1968, the game puts you in the place of Lincoln Clay, a mixed-race Vietnam veteran and a member of the Black Mob who seeks vengeance on the Italian Mafia for wiping out his adoptive family.

The game features a denser world than before, with a focus on building your own criminal empire by taking territories and criminal enterprises from your enemies and assigning them to your lieutenants.

Three story-based DLC were later released for it:

• Faster, Baby!: Lincoln Clay and Action Girl Roxy Laveau head down into the Bayou in order to fight a crooked sheriff.
• Stones Unturned: Donovan recruits Lincoln to help him track down a rogue CIA agent who has taken to arms trafficking in the wake of the Vietnam War.
• Sign of the Times: Lincoln and Father James rescue a young woman who is under attack by a sinister cult based on the Manson Family.

A Definitive Edition update of Mafia III was released in May 2020, with pre-existing owners of the PS4, Xbox One, and Steam releases getting the update for free.

---

This game provides examples of:

• The '60s: With all the racial strife, dirty cops, assassinations and wonderful music included.
• Achievement Mockery: The achievement "Next Time Swim Faster" is for being killed by an alligator.
• Action Girl: Roxy Laveau is a grenade throwing, machine gun shooting antihero.
• Actionized Sequel: This is the most action packed entry in the Mafia trilogy.
• Advertised Extra:
  • The Southern Union, curiously enough. Much of the game's advertisement and magazine coverage has mentioned Lincoln fighting both The Mafia as well as The Klan. In fact, the Southern Union is only one gang in one district. That said, they also feature in the Faster, Baby! DLC, working with the crooked cops in Sinclair Parish.
  • A strange case is this with one of the in-game cars, the De'Leo Stiletto (based upon the first generation Maserati Ghibli). Despite appearing as the getaway car in at least three missions in the game, and being featured in the Faster, Baby! concept art, it's not one of Lincoln's fleet vehicles he can use. The Stones Unturned DLC finally makes it a car that Lincoln can unlock after doing a bounty-hunting sidequest.
• Afro Asskicker: Roxy Laveau in Faster, Baby! sports a glorious one and is quite the ass-kicker.
• A.K.A.-47: Unlike the previous games, all guns are given fictionalized names.
• The Alcoholic: Thomas Burke, the Irish mobster. He's already a drinker before his son Danny dies. He becomes a full blown alcoholic afterwards.
• The All-Seeing A.I.: Averted. Enemies only know your position based on line-of-sight; if you manage to break line of sight using cover, enemies will fire on your last known position rather than your current position, allowing you to flank them.
• All There in the Manual: Some further insight into the plot can be found in the pause menu, which add in Donovan's intel and snippets from Lincoln's private journal as the game progresses.
• Amusement Park of Doom: Baron Saturday's Fun Park. You visit it in the climax of the first area, Delray Hollow, to track down Richie Doucet.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • While the soundtrack does not have as many anachronistic songs compared to the first two games in the series, some songs are off by at least a couple of years. For example, the songs "Born On The Bayou" and "Bad Moon Rising" didn't come out until 1969 (a year after the game's event), while "Good Times Are So Hard To Find" was released in 1970.
    • Invoked on the drive to the finale. During that drive (and only then), several of the songs on the radio are replaced with modern covers of the 60's classics, such as the Ramones' version of "Palisades Park", The Avengers' take on "Paint it Black", and Mourning Palace's cover of "Bad Moon Rising."
  • Many of the electronics that are advertised as "new" in the game were already released as early as the late 1950s.
  • A few cars are also off by a couple of years, such as the De'Leo 58 (1970 Datsun 240z), Lassiter Palatine (1969 Lincoln Continental Mark III), and the DLC-only Berkley Stallion (1969 Ford Mustang). Most egregiously, the Eckhart Champion (alongside its Police variation) are based on the 1975 Plymouth Gran Fury, despite the fact the game takes place 7 years before this model was produced.
    • Lincoln's prized personal vehicle is a black "Samson Drifter", based primarily off the real-life 1970 Ford Torino GT; not too bad, but according to the dialogue, it was his pride and joy even before he enlisted, meaning he would've had to acquire it in 1963 or '64, when muscle cars were still in their relative infancy and A-body frames weren't nearly that streamlined.
  • Lincoln's knife is an M9 bayonet, which wasn't designed until 1986.
  • The abandoned and flooded "Baron Saturday's" theme park is based upon the defunct "Jazzland" and later "Six Flags New Orleans" theme park, which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and remains closed to this day.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: A particularly bizarre example is the Biker Gang outfit unlocked by completing the Sign of the Times DLC. Bikers play no role in the story and indeed there are no motorcycles in the game, anywhere.
• Antagonist Title: Unlike in previous games, the Mafia is now the enemy faction.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Unlike previous Mafia games, the police won't come after you for speeding, violating traffic laws, or minor fender-benders. They only care about acts of violence or extremely high-speed collisions. As a result you can drive as fast as you like without a care as long as you avoid driving over pedestrians or slamming head-on into a nearby car.
  • Once Lincoln has given enough rackets to certain underbosses, they will enable perks that will make certain aspects easier.
    • Cassandra will give Lincoln access to a mobile gun shop and a switchboard operator who is able to shut off the phone lines. Aside from being able to buy ammo, Lincoln can also buy equipment, upgrades, and vehicle parts as well later on.
    • Vito will give Lincoln access to an armed hit squad and his consigliere, who will deposit Lincoln's cash for him (and even collect his kickback and reveal enemy locations once Vito has enough rackets).
    • Burke will give Lincoln access to a police dispatcher who can make police ignore crimes in an area and a man who will deliver Lincoln's personal vehicles if you don't have a car.
  • The missions like to sync music to the action sequences, one example being "Long Tall Sally" to the escape from the Federal Reserve heist. However, if a player fails the mission multiple times, the songs will start to rotate so the player isn't forced to listen to the same intros repeatedly.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The sneaky approach can trivialize a lot of the game due to the poor field of vision of the AI, making it easy for the player to have Lincoln hiding in a doorway or behind a corner and use the whistling distraction to lure them in one by one and then picking them off before they ever realize what's going on. To counter this, attack on police automatically triggers a search even if the same trick works on mafia enemies.
  • If you drive at excessive speed, pedestrians will panic and dive into the path of your car (even if you're clearly not aiming for them), getting themselves killed and attracting the attention of the cops to you. It's so bad that it's not uncommon for pedestrians to leap off the sidewalk right into the road so they can be slammed by you. In contrast, in the previous 2 games pedestrians would correctly dive away from speeding cars.
• Artistic License – History:
  • Black Mobs like Sammy's not only were heavily involved in reefer (which Ellis acts like Marijuana Is LSD or an even harder drug) but also heroin. Notably, this is Lampshaded in-universe by Cassandra being heavily involved in the drug trade and viewing Sammy with contempt. This is notably fixed in the Definitive Edition where the Black Mob is already dealing weed but is thinking about branching into heroin.
  • One of the game's side-missions has Lincoln help Burke steal some cars so that Burke can send them to his friends in the IRA who wants to turn those cars into car bombs as part of their bombing campaign against the British government. In Real Life, the IRA (particular the Provisional IRA) bombings began in 1970, 2 years after the events of Mafia III. Then again, completing the side mission reveals the cars for the IRA was a cover story as Burke is actually selling those cars to leave some money for his daughter should he die.
• Artistic License – Law: Judge Holden is the final target for the French Ward district. Donovan says that he is a Fifth Circuit Judge, but incorrectly states that he was elected by the people of Louisiana (Circuit Court judges are nominated by the President of the United States and voted in by the Senate) and that he is overseeing the murder trial of Hollis Dupree (even if the murder was a federal charge, a Circuit Court judge would not preside).
• Asshole Victim: The majority of the people which Lincoln Clay murders are human traffickers, mobsters, members of a Captain Ersatz for the KKK, and general all-round scum. Played with as Lincoln can potentially kill their Token Good Teammate members too. One of the jerks even stole his car.
• Authority Equals Asskicking: Assassination targets are generally a bit more durable than standard Mooks (having roughly three times as much health or so and thus being able to take several bullets instead of just 2 or 3), they don't take extra damage from headshots, and quite a few have some tricks up their sleeve like stronger-than-average weapons, a single-shot rocket launcher, or a posse for backup. None of them are tough enough to be considered a full on boss fight, though.
• Author Tract: In addition to talking about racism in the Sixties, many of the issues Charles Laveau talks about numerous issues on "The Hollow Speaks" relevant to today's audiences, from the legalization of marijuana, racial injustice, assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK to the imprisonment of black men.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Basically every Special Weapon of the game falls into this, due to their very limited ammo supply, and the fact that, in most cases, you can only resupply them via the Arms Dealer.
  • The Hartmann 7.62mm (an Expy of the M60, and the game's only light machinegun) is the perfect tool to get rid of large groups of enemies very fast. However, it burns through the two belt boxes of ammo in the blink of an eye, and since it's not classified as an automatic weapon, you cannot refill its ammo count on the field from dropped weapons (meaning that you must ditch it for something else found on the field, or switch to your sidearm once it's empty). If you have the Sign of Times or Stones Unturned DLC installed, it suffers from an even bigger handicap, because in that case, you can get hold of the otherwise late-game Stromer .223 (Expy of the M16A1) relatively early in the story via the DLC mission chains, which outdoes the Hartmann in every field (damage, accuracy, recoil) except magazine capacity, and can be refilled from any automatic dropped by enemy mobsters.
  • Explosive weapons suffer from the limited ammo supply even more. They hit hard whenever you land a shot, but even if the ammo capacity perks have been unlocked and purchased, Lincoln can carry only a handful of rockets or grenade launcher rounds for them (1-2 for the former, 6-8 for the latter), meaning that you must resupply at the Arms Dealer or ditch them after a single firefight, as they occupy the primary weapon slot. Automatic weapons and hand grenades handle larger crowds just as well as the launchers, are readily available at the Arms Dealer (or at enemy hands), and can easily be refilled from dropped weapons.
  • The Dormer Dart Gun, available in the Stones Unturned DLC is an accurate and completely silent sidearm, capable of incapacitating any Mook or cop with a single shot. The downside? You only carry a maximum of 12 dart rounds, and the gun must be reloaded after each shot, making it a difficult tool to use even on stealth runs, and completely impractical when the fight goes loud. Granted, the weapon comes free when the DLC is completed, but the other non-DLC two silenced handguns in the arsenal can also be unlocked from Burke and Vito via district takeovers, and stand their ground even in straight-up firefights. If you have the free Judge, Jury + Executioner weapons pack installed, you'll have the Silentium silenced pistol the minute you gain access to the arms van. This relegates the dart gun to be used only in the Bounty Hunting missions.
• Badass Preacher: Father James is not afraid, if he has to, to kill criminals who are cruelly mistreating the people of New Bordeaux. Including Lincoln in the Crime Lord ending.
• Back for the Dead: It can happen to Vito Scaletta if he undergoes Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal for reasons stated below or if you choose to kill him and any other surviving lieutenant in the Crime Lord ending.
• Being Evil Sucks: Sal wants to go legit because of this. He notes that he never had a good night sleep for 43 years.
• Being Good Sucks: Gameplay-wise, you can treat all three of your bosses the same and not screw any of them over, but you will never get any of them to their full potential.
• The Big Easy: New Bordeaux is basically New Orleans under another name. The specific reason was that the devs wanted a city with catacombs but with New Orleans being built on swampland that wasn't going to happen.
• Bilingual Bonus: True to New Bordeaux as well as New Orleans, some of the population speaks French, and it is not translated in the subtitles.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Donovan to Senator Blake in the epilogue
  Donovan: SIT DOWN AND SHUT THE FUCK UP
• Bittersweet Ending: No matter which path you choose in the end, you end up with one of these. If Lincoln decides to stay, he becomes a crime lord and either rules the underworld with his remaining lieutenant(s) (Burke, Vito, and Cassandra, minus any who defected due to not receiving enough rackets), becoming rich and powerful, but just as bad as Marcano had been or he decides to kill them and dies of a car bomb courtesy of Father James. If he decides to leave, he disappears from history, and heads to California where he makes a good try at going straight. Eventually, however, he returns to a life of crime, spending the next few decades as a vagabond all over America, eventually moving to South America and even Vietnam. Either way, Father James gives a sad, depressed confessional about Lincoln's fate (though he's slightly more optimistic if Lincoln leaves town, reasoning that his choice to walk away from money and power proves that there was still some good left in him).
  • If Vito is left in charge of New Bordeaux, he gets the happiest ending among the underbosses. He manages to successfully fulfill Sal Marcano's dream of legalizing gambling in the state of Louisiana before transforming New Bordeaux into the Las Vegas of the South through constant development and smart plays. The epilogue shows that he's still alive as of now.
• Blackmail: One of the rackets centers on city corruption. Half of the operation is a network of bribes paid to certain politicians to aid the Marcano crime family, and the other half, as the trope implies, using said politicians' dirty secrets against them if they aren't so willing to dance to their tune.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The game has a very strong theme of it with Sal Marcano being a man involved in human trafficking, betraying his underlings on a regular basis, and happily working with the worst racists in New Bordeaux. However, he is opposed by a gang which is far more violent and, if you play Lincoln as a Villain Protagonist, willing to kill literally hundreds of people.
• Bland-Name Product:
  • The Big Hank at Hank's Burger Bar is one for the Big Mac, which went nationwide in '68.
  • Near Baron Saturday's is a "Perfect Waffle" with the same color and layout as a Waffle House.
  • "Madeline LaCroix' House of Voodoo is a French Ward stand in for the real "Marie La Veau's House of Voodoo" museum and trinket shop.
• Blaxploitation: Although the game was released in 2016, and takes place in 1968, this trope still applies. Lincoln Clay, a Scary Black Man who's good with his fists as well as a gun? Check. Has a personal vendetta against The Mafia? Check. Faces discrimination on a daily basis because of his race? Check. Goes up against (an Expy of) the KKK? Check.
  • The mission set "Faster Baby" has Lincoln help out a Black Panther like organization trying to file a federal Civil Rights case against Sheriff Walter "Slim" Beaumont of Sinclair Parish, just outside New Bordeaux, and whose deputies gleefully enforce the Sheriff's unofficial "Sundown Policy," which states that any non-white that hasn't vacated the "Whites Only Parish" by sundown will never be seen or heard from ever again. To take down Sheriff Beaumont, Lincoln partners up with Roxy Laveau, a fast talking ass kicking activist. For better effect, play these missions with Lincoln wearing the "Revolutionary" outfit which has him sporting a bald head, as well as a Black Panther style outfit.
• Bloodier and Gorier: There's a good deal more blood and gore in this game than it's predecessors, especially in the cutscenes. Not helped by Lincoln's preference for his army combat knife to dispatch his enemies.
• Book Ends: Lincoln's quest for revenge starts and ends to a song by The Rolling Stones; The Black Mob is slaughtered to Paint it Black, and after dealing with Marcano, Lincoln makes his ultimate choice of whether to rule or leave New Bordeaux to Sympathy for the Devil.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Two major offenders: Tommy Marcano in the main storyline, and Sheriff Beaumont in the Faster, Baby! DLC.
  • Tommy Marcano actually realizes that Lincoln has infiltrated his fight night posing as a boxer, and confronts him with several mobsters. However, instead of killing him on the spot, he gets Lincoln knocked out, tied up on a chair, then scolding him while pouring gasoline on Lincoln to burn him alive. Needless to say, Lincoln is tied up next to a metallic shelf, with edges sharp enough to let him to cut loose with a quick-time event. The attempt then ends as expected: with all mobsters dead, and the boxing gym burning to ashes.
  • Sheriff Slim Beaumont gets the drop on Lincoln (something that not many people around New Bordeaux can brag with), but instead of killing him outright, he chains him to a pole, and lets his Southern Union friends torture him to death, all the while boasting to Lincoln that he will never be caught (all this after several deputies have been killed by Lincoln and Roxy already). If you guess that Lincoln gets out of his chains a couple seconds later, you get no bonus points.
• Boring, but Practical: The automatic weapons. Most of them have lower damage than the other weapon categories, however, their rate of fire makes them a good choice both in close quarter battles and mid-range firefights (comprising about 90% of the gunfights occuring in the game), and they also stand their ground both against single foes and larger groups of enemies.
• Bottomless Magazines: Definitely averted: Lincoln can only carry a limited amount of spare ammo for each gun-two magazine's worth, three if you're lucky until you invest in upgrades. Played straight with enemies of course, who do have to reload but never run out of bullets.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: While you're wrecking Southern Union propaganda centers in Frisco Fields, you can find a shopping list in a garage.

Milk

Eggs

Ground beef

2 steaks

Burger buns

Kerosene

Twine

Duct tape

Bleach

• Broken Aesop:
  • A series-wide one, which has always been Being Evil Sucks. Sal Marcano believes that being a gangster ruined his family and life. A sentiment that was echoed with Mafia II and Tommy as well as Vito's experiences with The Mafia. However, Lincoln Clay can end up as a Friendly Neighborhood Gangster who rebuilds the Hollow as a respectable middle-class neighborhood. Vito can also end up with a Belated Happy Ending where he's ruler of New Bordeaux. It's played straight with Cassandra and Burke who can end with Downer Ending results.
  • Also broken with Faster, Baby! which is all about using the system to bring down Sheriff Beaumont legitimately rather than just killing him for being the Hate Sink Politically Incorrect Villain he is. You break dozens of laws, probably kill more than a dozen cops as well as The Klan, and more to get him put behind bars. He's then assassinated as soon as he gets out of jail anyway.
• Bullet Time: Two flavors of it were added in patches.
  • First was one for cars, allowing you to make hairpin turns and avoid collisions. It functions almost identically to the one seen in Grand Theft Auto V.
  • Second was the classic gun type. Guns that can be used in bullet time will have a clock icon next to them on your HUD.
• The Cameo:
  • Leo Galante from Mafia II makes an appearance in the ending, revealed to be The Commissions contact with the Dixie Mafia. He offers Lincoln Marcano's old position in return for the same cut Marcano had been paying them. If Lincoln chooses to stay in New Bordeaux, he takes Galante's offer. And Leo's driver looks suspiciously like a friend of Vito's.
• Chekhov's Gun: The Federal Reserve heist goes sideways when Giorgi opens up a cage in the vault with its own alarm. Giorgi was stealing printing plates to use in a counterfeiting operation the Marcanos are setting up.
• Christianity is Catholic: Justified, since the game is set in a stand-in for the New Orleans, whose religious population is mostly Catholic.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: The game portrays this as an integral part of organized crime, which breeds paranoia and greed in everyone involved. Sal Marcanos entire life has basically been one long list of betrayals to let him rise to the top. Lincoln can either subvert this, or go along with it.
• CIA Evil, FBI Good: CIA Agent John Donovan is a lifelong friend and mentor to Lincoln Clay, and inadvertently helps him damage New Bordeaux during his war against the Marcano family. FBI Agent J. Maguire is a Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist who goes after Lincoln after he had already ruined New Bordeaux. However, Donovan admits that the CIA did torture people in Vietnam, including dismembering a Vietnamese woman to get her son to talk.
• City of Canals: New Bordeaux features a network of canals and underground drains that can be traversed by boat.
• Collapsing Lair: The mission to kill Uncle Lou has Lincoln sinking his ship and going through mooks to get at him.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Used to show who controls what racket or district, and for whom various optional missions in the Bayou are performed. Cassandra's Haitian mob are purple, Burke's Irish mob are green, and Vito's Italian gang are dark blue.
• Cluster F-Bomb / Cluster N-Bomb: Much like its predecessor, Mafia III contains a lot of swearing from almost every character in the game only with racial slurs added in. Even the above quote for the game's TV Tropes page has Lincoln Clay use the f-word.
• Combat Pragmatist: Lincoln's melee takedowns often involve hitting the enemy with his fists or a gun butt, followed by shooting them in the head.
• Content Warning: Given the plot involves an African-American in the Deep South in the 1960s and the issues that entails, the game opens with a warning about the racism Lincoln experiences.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Zig-Zagged. Unlike Tommy Angelo and Vito Scaletta, Lincoln has no ties to the Mafia whatsoever and is fact targeting the mafia after they killed his family. Like Vito, Lincoln is a military veteran turned career criminal. However, whereas Vito works for the Italian mob for primarily selfish reasons, Lincoln works against the Italian mob for revenge. Made all the more notable as their shared military service leads to an Odd Friendship forming between the two.
• Crapsaccharine World: New Bordeaux is this for its citizens, at least in its more well-to-do districts. While publicly a lovely and thriving city, the racial tensions are boiling to explosive levels. Police corruption and brutality is rampant as well, while the more impoverished districts are neglected if not outright left to rot. This is Truth in Television for many American cities of the time period but it gets worse due to the fact the city is run by a mixture of The Mafia and The Klan with Lincoln Clay willing to inflict extreme collateral damage to remove both. Things can get better or worse depending on the player's decisions.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: This seems to be how Lincoln deals with every leader of the Marcano crime family, which is explained by Donovan as a form of psychological warfare meant to send a message.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option:
  • With most racket missions, you're given a choice of letting the owner of said racket join you as an underboss or killing them, with the former option giving the player more money. However, if you don't have any information on the racket leader (either by ignoring informants or not wiretapping junction boxes), you're forced to kill them. This is most prominent in taking over Frisco Fields, where only the informants are allowed to live, as Lincoln will automatically kill any Southern Union member he finds.
  • The mission where you assassinate Lou Marcano on his riverboat, The Delphine, stands out as the most prominent mission where massacring dozens of civilians is unavoidable. Lincoln basically bombs the riverboat, causing Lou's patrons to either die in the fire or leap into the bayou water where they get eaten by alligators.
• Darker and Edgier: While the Mafia series was already quite dark, Mafia III seems to have made things up to eleven. Lincoln's adoptive family is betrayed and murdered in front of him, the place is extremely racist and hostile, executions are excessively brutal, there's a lot of mass murder and disturbing content, and the antagonists are even more despicable than before. Interestingly, Mafia III has much more muted colors in pictures. Heck, the "Sign of the Times" DLC doubles with Bloodier and Gorier and features a homicidal Satanic cult.
• Dark Reprise: The rock song Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival is one of the period songs that plays on the radio. A slow, dark, and somber version of the song (by Mourning Ritual) plays at the very end of the game during the drive to the final mission area where you're going to finally confront Giorgi and Sal Marcano.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Getting in and out of a vehicle. Instead of pressing Y/Triangle like the vast majority of games in the genre, you press X/Square instead.
  • On the computer platform, interaction and vehicle entry are initially mapped to different buttons, later all mapped to E as opposed to GTAV's F.
• Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!:
  • Played straight with Giorgi, but averted with his father, who wants to go legit with his casino because he's spent a lifetime in the mafia, and the paranoia and violence is quite literally killing him. He mentions in one cutscene that he hasn't had a decent nights sleep in 40 years.
  • Played With Lincoln Clay himself, who is totally focused on his revenge scheme and never gets to enjoy the benefits of being one of the most powerful mob bosses in the city (before becoming THE mob boss of the city). He lives in purely functional safe houses, dresses in his military fatigues, and generally avoids anything resembling fun. This changes if he stays and takes over New Bordeaux. Embracing a life of power and luxury as he expands his criminal empire, though still making a point to help improve the city and its people.
• Decade Dissonance: While much of New Bordeaux and the more well-off districts are on par with what you'd expect from a late '60s American city, River Row seems trapped in another time, from its old-fashioned industrial buildings to ramshackle slums straight out of the Great Depression. The Bayou isn't much better, being littered with dilapidated early 20th century buildings and '50s style establishments.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: As the game is set in the Deep South during the late sixties, expect bigotry and racial slurs to abound, since Lincoln just happens to be both a rising crime-boss and biracial.
  • The very first mission of the game involves a federal reserve guard asking, "What's this shitheel doing here?" when Lincoln arrives (posing as a truck driver to rob the place), then scoffing when told he's an "affirmative-action" hire; the guard then orders him to carry down both the cash bags on his own, all while making friendly small talk with Lincoln's white partner and lamenting how his decorated Naval cousin, "a God-fearing white man", can't become a guard while Clay can, as if Lincoln isn't standing right next to him. It's a pretty effective primer for what's to come.
  • The Southern Union is one of Lincoln's main arch-enemies, as they're New Bordeaux's local Klan.
  • Lincoln (who is hit with racist slurs himself) has absolutely no problem calling an Italian-American a "wop".
  • Police can be encountered harassing mixed-race couples.
  • Some businesses only serve whites, and the management will be quick to call the police on Lincoln if he enters the premises (which is considered to be trespassing and loitering).
  • This even bleeds into the game mechanics: police will respond much quicker to calls for help in wealthier districts than in the poorer (and mostly black) ones. Suspicious civilians and store-owners may call the cops on Lincoln even if he hasn't committed a crime.
  • There's also Thomas Burke's daughter, Nikki who was ousted for being a lesbian. Many Civil Rights activists looked down on homosexuality, and the gay rights movement did not get national prominence until the Stonewall riot.
  • Some of the "communist" propaganda posters aren't about communism at all, but rather criticism of capitalism. Even to this day, this remains a common misconception against some right-wingers, intentional or no.
  • Lincoln's adoptive brother Ellis fears pot dealing may be a bridge too far, despite having no problems with participating in violent crimes like armed robbery. Marijuana was viewed in a far more negative light by most Americans in the 1960s than it is today.
  • At one point in the game, a guard can be overheard expressing disbelief that Thomas Burke would team up with a black person like Lincoln against “his own kind”. Another guard corrects him with “Burke ain’t white, he’s Irish.” This might seem confusing to modern audiences, but it was a sincerely held belief among some sections of Anglo-American society that Irish people were of African origin, based on pseudoscientific observations about skull shapes and facial features.
• Developer's Foresight: The game's cutscenes vary significantly based on the order in which you liberate the districts and complete the game's 9 main story questlines, as this has a major effect on the order in which the major characters in Marcano's mob are killed off.
  • Wrecking the boat while leaving the vault results in a cutscene featuring Agent Maguire in which he remarks the heist couldn't have gone down that way!
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: Sal Marcano needlessly betrays the Black Mob rather than just taking his share of the Federal Reserve Heist and waiting a little longer to build his casino. He could have also have gotten other investors or settled for something slightly less grandiose and impractical. 2 million dollars is a helluva lot of money in 1960s dollars even without however much Sal has from his other investments. Justified as Marcano's time running a criminal empire is wearing down on him and while he wants out he still has an ego.
• Dirty Cop:
  • The Marcanos cooperate with the police, and officers protect certain areas where the Southern Union are hosting events.
  • Taken up to eleven in the Faster, Baby! DLC with the Sinclair Parish Sheriff Department, who are so obsessed in keeping the village an all-white community that they keep the town in constant terror, and are (unsurprisingly) on very good terms with the Southern Union as well. Their racial hatred is also indicated in actual gameplay: unlike New Bordeaux cops, the uniformed sheriff deputies are programmed as enemies (similarly to mobsters, they have red blips on the minimap), and attack Lincoln on sight even if he commits no crime, solely because he is biracial.
• Dirty Coward: The Southern Union soldiers regard the higher-ups in the group as this (one of them even states that he hates snobby rich white folk MORE than black folk), considering them little more than rich assholes who like yelling racial slurs and wear fancy robes, but not get their hands dirty. Sure enough, when you attack their rally, they all attempt to flee without putting up a fight and can be shot like fish in a barrel.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • You can get a Blackburn FAF-33 (the best non-custom pistol in the game) as well as an AK-47 at the beginning of the game immediately once you get access to free roam, at a Haitian revolutionary training encampment in the woods just immediately south of the Delray Hollow border. These items are available for purchase from the beginning of the game, but the cost is so high that you normally wouldn't be able to afford them until you've already taken over a few districts. Both are endgame-level guns and make the early missions significantly easier.
  • A free Stromer .223 (M16A1 in the real world) can be found in a weapon locker in the second Stones Unturned mission.
  • The Judge, Jury and Executioner weapon DLC, originally a pre-order bonus before it became free to all players just a month after release. Not only does it give you a Hartmann .30 rifle and an Elmwood 1925 shotgun without having to save up, but a Silenced Masterson pistol, a gun that normally takes nearly half the game to unlock depending on how you play, the instant the Arms Dealer becomes available. Combine that with the Slow-Mo Shooting update to draw easy headshots, and early stealth encounters plummet in difficulty.
  • The Throwing Knives from Sign of the Times, unlocked not far into the DLC as soon as the first three districts become available. Completely silent when hitting their target, can be aimed with pinpoint accuracy while still remaining in cover like grenades, can be retrieved from corpses, and will result in an instant noiseless death no matter what part of the body they hit — it's less like fancy cutlery and more like a godsend to the player that prefers to go in quiet.
• Disproportionate Retribution: While Sal Marcano and his lieutenants are all Asshole Victim types, Lincoln can execute hundreds of lesser criminals whose offenses are more along the lines of being loan sharks or drug dealers. Many of whom he could have recruited for his own business. This can be averted in gameplay, too, which shows it's a conscious choice to slaughter everyone.
• Disney Villain Death: During the climax, Lincoln stabs Marcano in the chest while he's sitting in his office chair, then kicks him out the window. His body is shown splattered on the pavement in crime scene photos during the ending.
• The Don: Sal Marcano is the ultimate head of the Mafia in New Bordeaux, and is Lincoln's primary target in his quest for revenge. The primary goal of the game is taking down Sal's existing criminal empire and becoming the boss of a new criminal organization. If Lincoln takes the Commission's offer of replacing Sal, he becomes the reigning criminal kingpin of the American Southeast.
• Downer Ending:
  • If Burke is left in charge of New Bordeaux, his violent temper and conspicuous excesses prompt him to start gang war after gang war. He survives until 1984, when he is finally assassinated, but he ends up leaving behind a power vacuum which leads to a never ending gang violence in New Bordeaux, since no criminal organization can sustain dominance for long.
  • If Cassandra is left in charge of New Bordeaux, her Suicidal Overconfidence sets in and no one takes her claim seriously because she's both black and a woman. So, dozens of gangs from across the South try to take the city from her. She manages to butcher and defeat them all, but this draws the attention of the State government, which tries to put her down. She eventually assassinates the Governor after he declares martial law, causing the government to cut off most federal aid to the city, causing it to be devastated when a hurricane hits. In the aftermath, Cassandra's ultimate fate is unknown; while many believe she was amongst the casualties of the hurricane, rumors still persist that she in secret rules the scattered remains of the former city's underworld from somewhere out in the bayou.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • If you don't do anything when you finally confront Sal, he'll shoot himself.
  • Anna from Sign of the Times slits her own throat to prevent a baby sired by the Ensanglante priest from being born.
• Drugs Are Bad: A point that is hammered home multiple times throughout the game, though not for the reasons you might think. The drug trade is bad because it will inevitably draw the attention of the South Americans, who are both far more ruthless and bloodthirsty as well as more heavily armed than the Mafia. In Burke's ending where he becomes the Boss of New Bourdeaux, he turns the city into a drug dealing capital; as a result the Cubans come in and kill him, turning the city into a war-zone which it remains to this day.
• Drunk Driver: NPCs sometimes drive like they've been imbibing, even the police. Which makes tailing missions or avoiding collisions with patrol cars a bit difficult.
• Elite Mooks:
  • "Tough" enemies can survive about twice as much damage as regular Mooks and can also break out of your melee combo chain. They're burlier than regular Mooks, charge in with shotguns, and have more aggressive combat dialogue. Oddly, in the 3 endgame districts their health doesn't go up even though all other Mooks get about double health, making them more even with the other Mook types.
  • Every Racket Boss has at least one and up to several Enforcers that act as their personal bodyguards. Enforcers are extremely well-dressed and equipped with high-powered rifles that can take you down from full health to critically injured in one shot. They also have about twice as much health as a normal Mook early on, and nearly as much health as a full on Boss in the later districts. They're scattered around the map in free-roam mode, and any you don't hunt down and kill will be protecting the Racket Boss when you finally attack the Racket at the end of each Racket mission chain.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil:
  • Lincoln's gang is an alliance between the Italian, Irish and Haitian mob run by a half-black man, though this is born more out of a combination of Pragmatic Villainy and mutual hatred for Marcano.
  • Marcano's outfit seems to be a deconstruction. They worked with the Irish and Black Mobs when it suited them, then tossed them aside in favor of allying with white supremacist groups like the Southern Union and Dixie Mob. Note that they don't seem get along with them well (Remy Duvall calls Sal a "greasy wop" and Sal was just using him to ahold of some land contracts). They also deal with Cuban communists, but talk in private about how much they hate them. They're equal-opportunists not because they welcome everyone, but because they're willing to use everyone.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Lincoln normally has no qualms about continuing established rackets, but once he discovers what the Southern Union are really up to in Bellaire's (human trafficking) he wants absolutely no part of it. Once you take over the store, Lincoln makes it very clear to his lieutenants that they will NOT be in the business of selling people and will find some other way to make money through the store. This is reinforced when Lincoln is interrogating the racket bosses, as unlike every other racket in the game, there is no option to spare them.
  • Sal Marcano is against having heroin being sold in his city due to its effects. Also, while he's pretty racist, he's nevertheless somewhat disturbed by Santangelo's love for killing blacks.
  • Despite being on Lincoln's hit list, Olivia Marcano was spared as despite being part of the crime family Lincoln holds a deep-seated grudge against, he is not above killing women, innocent or otherwise; her own nephew Giorgi murdered her in Lincoln's place instead.
• Evil Plan: Sal Marcano is revealed to have one. He steals the money from the Federal Reserve Heist and screws out Sammy Robinson, Thomas Burke, and Vitto Scaletta of their shares in order to take their six million dollars (in 1960s money no less) to serve as the seed money for a casino in New Bordeaux which will have the front man of Remy Duvall. Sal's ties in government will also be blackmailed or bribed into legalizing gambling in New Bordeaux. In short, a fairly straightforward real-estate scam of the Chinatown variety. Lincoln Clay becomes the Spanner in the Works when he not only survives the massacre at Sammy's party but allies all of Sal's enemies and those screwed out of their share of the Federal Reserve Heist money.
• Evil Power Vacuum: It's made clear throughout the game that killing Sal Marcano will just result in some other ruthless crimelord taking his place. At the end of the game Lincoln and Donovan decide that the best outcome would be for Lincoln to be that crimelord, reasoning he'd at least run things better than whoever the city would otherwise shit out to replace Marcano. Sure enough, if Lincoln is convinced by Father James to leave the city instead of taking the throne, either Cassandra, Burke, or Vito will end up taking over instead, and Cassandra and Burke both end up running the city into the ground if they take over.
• Evil Versus Evil: Sal Marcano and the Italian New Bordeaux Mafia are racist, backstabbing, drug-pushing crime lords who at least know how to hold back. Lincoln Clay is on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Sal and will kill anyone who gets in his way, New Bordeaux be damned. Can be Averted if the player chooses to only kill the bare minimum of people necessary to bring down Sal Marcano's organization.
• Expy: The game is full of these, starting with the fact New Bordeaux is one for New Orleans.
  • The Dixie Mob is one for the Dixie Mafia, though it incorporates elements of The Klan.
  • The Southern Union is a more direct stand-in for The Klan.
  • Remy Duvall has a number of qualities similar to infamous RL Klan-spokesman David Duke.
  • Sal Marcano has a lot of similarities to infamous New Orleans mobster Carlos Marcello. Including being accused of masterminding JFK's assassination.
• External Combustion: If Lincoln chooses the ending where he rules alone and kills all of his lieutenants, the next car he gets into turns out to have a bomb installed that kills him, which turns out to be from Father James.
• Fat Bastard: Lou Marcano, Sal's brother. The man greases the palms of the city's politicians or has them blackmailed if they won't get in line, runs a massive drug racket, and has a sex racket in which people who pay enough money can mutilate and maim the women he pimps out to their heart's content.
• Face Death with Dignity: Marcano doesn't bother to beg and plead and just tells you to get it over with after sharing a drink. If you don't do that, then he will take care of it himself.
• Faux Affably Evil: Clay was friendly with Giorgi Marcano from before he even shipped out, and Sal is nothing but accommodating the first time Lincoln meets him. The instant the reserve heist is over and the celebrations begin, they both coldly betray Sammy Robinson, gun down everyone else involved, and leave them for dead as Sammy's bar goes up in flames.
• Fell Off the Back of a Truck: When sneaking around to steal a truck full of guns for Vito's rackets, one of the Dixie Mafia might wonder how they can tell how much of their inventory is this trope.
• Felony Misdemeanor: Unlike the first two games, the cops will immediately attempt to murder you if they witness a crime, even for non-violent offenses such as slamming into a parked car at high speed. Also, if they see you being shot at by gangsters (even if you're unarmed), they will immediately join in on the side of the gangsters. Justified in that the New Bordeaux police are explicitly in the pocket of Sal Marcano, unlike the first two games in which the cops were dirty enough to accept bribes but weren't directly controlled by one of the Mafia families. Also justified via Deliberate Values Dissonance — remember you are playing as a black man in the Deep South in The '60s, so even if they weren't flat-out Dirty Cops, they'd still likely be massively racist and employ Disproportionate Retribution as go-to policy.
  • The flip side of this is the cops will ignore most non-violent crimes which would at least be ticket-worthy in the previous games, such as speeding, and only intervene when you slam into something at high speed or injure/kill someone.
• Forever War: If Burke is left in charge, this is what eventually happens after Burke is gunned down in 1984, with no one major gang controlling the city like Sal Marcano.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Enemy marksmen (the mooks equipped with semi-auto rifles) all wear eyeglasses, including the Hitmen leading the Retaliation squads. There's also Marcano Lieutenant Tony Derazio, a sociopathic accountant who wears eyeglasses.
• Fourth Wall Psych: The reveal trailer has Lincoln giving his monologue on family to what appears to be the player, finally staring right at the camera via the rearview mirror...only for the camera to turn around and reveal he was talking to an unfortunate Bound and Gagged mafioso in the back seat.
• Framing Device: An aged Father James, retired FBI agent Jonathan Maguire, and various other characters are clearly being interviewed in the present day (2016), as the game and dialogue suggested that they were speaking about the past and mention dates way past 1968, i.e Maguire retiring as a FBI agent in 1999.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: Clay is a Vietnam vet who went into organized crime soon after leaving the military.
• Full-Circle Revolution: After dismantling the Marcanos' crime rackets, Clay can strike a deal with the rest of the Mafia to rule New Bordeaux's underworld in their place.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: You can have Clay use non-lethal takedowns but people will always react to you as if you'd murdered the people involved.
  • At one point in your racket income damage spree, you can come across a truck full of medical supplies. If you choose to give it to Father James, the dialogue implies Lincoln is donating it for free, but you'll have an extra $8,000 in pocket afterwards.
  • Integration: John Donovan testifies that Lincoln doesn't kill women, in claiming that he did not murder Olivia Marcano. In the few situations where Lincoln fights hostile female enemies (predominantly in the Sign of the Times DLC), Lincoln will use non-lethal takedowns if you engage in hand-to-hand combat with them.
• Generic Ethnic Crime Gang:
  • Lincoln is a former member of the Black Mob, which was wiped out by Sal Marcano. The Black Mob's main source of income was the Numbers Game, an illegal lottery scheme that was widely used by real life black mobs.
  • Lincoln's lieutenant Cassandra leads the Haitian Mob, based in a settlement in the swamps of Bayou Fantom. Their primary rackets are marijuana and arms dealing, which makes them resemble the Yardies though Yardies are generally from English speaking Caribbean Islands.
  • The Dixie Mob is a generic redneck Deep South gang of poor white stereotypes.
  • Vito leads a rare Italian version of this trope, called the Italian Gang. Most of the membership are disgruntled Mafiosi who sided with Vito after his fallout with The Commission, though some members aren't Italian such as the Cuban born Alma.
• Genre Shift: Sign of the Times which takes a turn right into horror game territory, Stones Unturned has the plot of an action-war-spy film, and Faster, Baby! is a mystery thriller.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • Jackie Grimaldi, Donovan's friend from the U.S. Treasury who's investigating Olivia Marcano, all but authorizes Lincoln to make Chester Moreau, Remy Duvall, and the Southern Union at large pay with their lives after learning of both the human trafficking and slave auctions going in Frisco Fields.
  • In the Sign of the Times DLC, the otherwise empathetic and Actual Pacifist Father James gives Lincoln his blessing to wipe out the Ensanglante after Anna's suicide and learning of what drove her to that point.
  Father James: The Lord will keep his own but all the Wicked he will destroy.
• Going Native: Sal Marcano and his branch of the Mafia generally speak with Southern accents, have a sizable stake in New Bordeaux and refer to Vito as a “carpet bagger.” These underscore how much they’ve assimilated into American society and how removed they’ve become from their Italian roots.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Sign of the Times implies that Lincoln's investigation and takedown of the Ensanglante, a cult with ties to New Bordeaux's founding, remains largely unknown to the wider world, with only a small handful like Father James knowing of it.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: Lincoln suffered from this as half-white half-black orphan with the Black Mob being the one of few who cared about him. As a result, his definition of family and need for companionship is different from the Thicker Than Water traditional definition.
• Happily Adopted: Sammy Robin adopted Lincoln and treated as if he was his son after the orphanage closes, thus his good relations and Roaring Rampage of Revenge after his death.
• Hauled Before A Senate Subcommittee: In between missions, the game shows footage of Donovan testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. As it turns out, it was all part of his plan to get close enough to Senator Blake to kill him and send a message to all the other conspirators involved in JFK's death.
• Have a Nice Death: Failing story mission objectives will cut to Maguire mentioning how Lincoln's war failed because he screwed up somehow. If he fails in the prologue, the scene is instead Maguire digging through the files in bafflement and noting how that can't be right.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: While the Southern Union's rank-and-file are recognizable enough, their upper class superiors, including Remy Duvall, are part of New Bordeaux's high society and are more discreet about their affiliations to avoid drawing too much attention.
• Heel–Face Turn: Lincoln can potentially recruit sixteen of Sal's organization to join his. Seventeen if you count Vito.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Played with. Lincoln's murder of members of New Bordeaux's syndicates cause massive public outrage and horror... with the city's white population. Black citizens take a wry amusement at the Dixie Mob leader's lynching and other acts of violence, eventually elevating Lincoln Clay to folk hero status. Also averted if he becomes a crime boss as he becomes a Villain with Good Publicity.
• Hillbilly Horrors:
  • Subverted with Sinclair Parish in the Faster, Baby! DLC. At a glance, it's a "sundown country" where Jim Crow is still king and is lorded over by bigoted cops and the Southern Union, so you half-expect the whole area to be filled with backwood hicks ready to lynch at a moment's notice. Except that the townspeople at large are generally decent folks, while Sheriff Beaumont's efforts to keep the parish white are ironically turning them against those very policies. Tellingly, no one in Sinclair Parish mourned Beaumont's murder after he's eventually released from prison.
  • The Southern Union itself plays this straight, at least with the rank-and-file. Even compared to the similarly bigoted and trashy Dixie Mob, it has very little scruples about lynching minorities, harassing anyone deemed an enemy to the white man, and even holding slave auctions.
• Historical Villain Upgrade:
  • In real life the KKK and Mafia hated one another since the latter consisted of Catholic immigrant criminals, things the former violently opposed. But in the game the Mafia is revealed to have a close collaboration with the Klan Expy, something which would have never happened in real life. Though, for full context's sake, the "collaboration" consists of a non-Italian associate of the Marcano mob (Olivia) striking up a working relationship with the head of the local KKK-Expy to convince him to bankroll Sal's casino. Both Sal and Duvall drops lines to suggest there's no love lost between them.
  • The Dixie Mafia gets this as well. Here they are portrayed as white supremacists and remnants of the Confederacy, but the real life Dixie Mafia was/is little more than a loose association of White Southerners and was motivated purely by greed, not ideology of any sort.
  • The Mafia is also indicated to be partially responsible for JFK's assassination. This is a popular theory but one that has no basis in reality.
• Hollywood Silencer: Lincoln can use guns with silencers for stealth kills.
• How We Got Here: Part of the game's framing device takes place during John Donovan's testimony before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, where he describes his actions in assisting Lincoln in taking down the Marcanos, while another is in the form of a documentary hosted by Agent Maguire, who was originally assigned to investigate the Marcanos, but focused in on Lincoln when he created disaster in New Bordeaux.
• I Can Rule Alone: By the end of the game, the player can have killed off all of Lincoln's underbosses, and Lincoln can as such ascend the throne of the underworld at the end of the game without having to share any of his power. This triumph is short-lived, however, as Father James decides that Lincoln is now no better than Sal Marcano and has him assassinated via car bomb.
• Important Haircut: Upon coming home from hospital after being left for dead by Giorgi, Lincoln shaves off his beard and trims his hair into a crew cut, with particular emphasis on where the bullet scarred him.
  • One outfit Lincoln wears can completely make him bald.
• The Irish Mob: Lincoln's lieutenant Burke leads the Irish Mob based in the neighborhood of Pointe Verdun.
• It's Always Mardi Gras in New Orleans: Lincoln and his friends end up in a Mardi Gras festival in the French Ward, after robbing a bank. To be fair, they had reasons for planning a high profile robbery during a festival, and Mardi Gras does not continue constantly for the rest of the year.
• Karma Meter: Surprisingly, one exists in the game. If Lincoln performs lethal takedowns, kills targets, and executes his opponents then he'll be more murderous in cutscenes. If he spares informants, bosses, and uses non-lethal takedowns then he'll be more inclined to mercy as well as human decency.
• The Klan: The "Southern Union" is a racist organization whose members violently assault minorities, plaster the Confederate Flag on every truck and building that they own, commit cross burnings during meetings, and even go as low as to traffic Haitian slaves. According to Lincoln, they're somehow separate from the actual Klan itself despite being identical in all but name. They may be a possible sibling organization, offshoot, or cover organization.
• Knee Capping: At some point Sal Marcano sent Roman Barbieri (AKA "The Butcher") after Burke, who now has a permanent limp in his left leg. After Burke and Lincoln take down Roman, Burke drags him off to take revenge. Back in the present, Maguire talks about that when Roman's body was found years later, the police had trouble identifying it. Among the many mutilations, Roman's legs had been broken so many times there was barely any bone left in them.
• Laser-Guided Broadcast: While Lincoln is never mentioned or addressed by name on the radio, Charles "The Voice" Laveau and an increasingly unhinged and drunk Remy Duvall come pretty close in certain broadcasts of their respective shows.
• Lore Codex: Lincoln's Journal in the Pause Menu covers all of the major main story events that take place throughout the game, from Lincoln signing his discharge papers and getting his ticket home, to finally killing Marcano and deciding on what to do. Included in this journal are mugshots for several of Lincoln's major targets, including the racket bosses that serve directly under Marcano's Lieutenants and Capos. Sadly, this journal doesn't cover any of the events of the three DLC campaigns. In addition to this, there's the Kill List also found on the Main Menu, which, as its name implies, is a detailed list of high-ranking Marcano Family Capos and Lieutenants that Lincoln needs to take down to get to Sal himself. Each is updated once the target is killed or usurped.
• Man on Fire: Lincoln kills Remy Duvall, head of the Southern Union, by burning him alive on the Unions burning cross marker.
• The Mafia: Continuing with the theme of the series, this depicts the decline of the Italian-American Mafia through the 60's and the rise of the more modern criminal.
  • There are technically two Mafia families in the game. One is run by Sal Marcano, and serves as the main enemies of the game after they betray and murder Lincoln's surrogate family in the Black Mob. The other is run by Vito Scaletta, who is able to provide Italian mobsters of his own to serve as backup for Lincoln if he calls on them.
• Metro-Specific Underworld: New Bordeaux's underbelly is clearly based on New Orleans:
  • The Mafia dominates the underworld much as it did in New Orleans for decades.
  • The Dixie Mafia is also present, they only show up works set in the South
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal:
  • Vito has been nursing a grudge against the Mafia following the events of Mafia II, which only worsens as he is further abused by Sal Marcano. This is why he joins Lincoln to bring the Marcanos down.
  • This can also happen if you don't divide territory and rackets fairly between your lieutenants. Depriving one too much will cause them to turn on you. This seems to happen if a lieutenant doesn't receive territory after 4 consecutive district takeovers.
• Mob Debt: At the start of the story, it's revealed that Lincoln Clay's stepfather and head of the Black Mob, Sammy Robinson, owes local Mafia Don Sal Marcano millions of dollars in debt. In order to pay back Marcano, Sammy agrees to help arrange a heist of the local Federal Reserve. While successfully managing to steal more than enough money to pay back Marcano twice over, complete with a cut for their Underboss Giorgi, Marcano ends up betraying and killing Sammy and his associates anyway, with Lincoln being the Sole Survivor.
• Monster Clown: Played for laughs with "Captain Pennies", a racist con artist and VIP john in the French Ward who dresses up in whiteface and a red afro wig to enact his sexual fetish... explaining his Ponzi schemes in detail to very bored prostitutes.
• Multiple Endings: The game has three endings depending on what choice you make after the final mission, and the "Leave" ending has 3 sub-variations based on which of your lieutenants is the most powerful. Lincoln either forms a syndicate with any remaining lieutenants and takes over organized crime in the South and lower Midwest, kills them and gets blown up, or simply takes off and leaves New Bordeaux behind, leaving his highest-earning lieutenant (randomized if all have equal income) to take control of the city instead.
• Mushroom Samba:
  • In the mission to kill Olivia Marcano, Lincoln pours LSD-laced wine to people at the country club, getting them super high and lost in their own hallucinations.
  • The cultists in Sign of the Times are able to achieve this with a powerful hallucinogenic incense called Sky, an offshoot of LSD that makes Lincoln (who inhales some of the stuff by accident) suffer vivid hallucinations during parts of the DLC such as imagining the Wells Park Middle School (which was destroyed after a case of arson) was on fire again or Lincoln being dragged into a large pool of blood by freakishly long arms trying to drown him before an apparition of the recently deceased Anna pulls him out of it.
• Nasty Party: Inverted. The Marcano Family slaughters the Black Mob at a party celebrating the Federal Reserve heist, but in this case, they're the guests killing the hosts.
• Neighborhood-Friendly Gangsters: The Black Mob donated to needy families in Delray Hollow and even were on good terms with Father James, even though he disapproved of them personally.
• Never Smile at a Crocodile: There are indeed gators and crocs in the swamps. They serve as a water hazard, or as a potential way to dispose of enemies.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The first trailer would have you believe that Lincoln Clay's new posse would be a surrogate family of True Companions. In reality, his syndicate unites by Pragmatic Villainy and is always a hair's breath away from murdering each other.
  • The TV spot also has Lincoln and his friends in a Power Walk, but there's some problems: they're only ever around for when Lincoln decides who gets territory, and nowhere in the game does John Donovan ever be in the same room as the bosses outside of Lincoln.
• No Communities Were Harmed: New Bordeaux basically replaced New Orleans in the Mafia universe, receiving all of the same events that New Orleans received in history (except Lincoln's rampage for obvious reasons) and is the largest city in Louisiana. There are a few small differences like the sizable Cuban population (more of a Miami thing in real life).
• N-Word Privileges: Averted. The black jerkass headwaiter in service of Olivia Marcano, who Lincoln works for in disguise during Remy Duvall's eulogy is absolutely loathed by his employees for calling everyone a nigger. Played straight with the other black characters who only use it as part of a joke (the Black Mob) or to call out attention to an issue (Cassandra saying all the cops sees in Lincoln is a big nigger with guns).
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Lincoln has the option of making these to all of the rackets' lieutenants if he's wiretapped their phones and knows their weaknesses. Notably, these offers are always presented at knife-point after he's disabled their guards.
• One-Man Army: Slightly more justified than normal, as Lincoln is a trained soldier and special forces operative, fighting an army of mostly untrained criminals.
• Oppressed Minority Veteran: Lincoln Clay is a black Vietnam veteran who suffers systematic prejudice and discrimination upon returning to his home town New Bordeaux (fictionalized New Orleans).
• Pariah Prisoner: Referenced in the Faster, Baby!, DLC, where Roxy taunts Sheriff Beaumont by telling him that bad cops are extremely unpopular in prison, and implies he won't last long locked up.
• Police Are Useless: Played With. In more impoverished areas, the police take their sweet time responding to reported crime sightings, and are generally less eager to go after Lincoln. In more posh districts, however, they're much quicker in responding with extreme prejudice.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Obviously, considering the time and location of the game. Not counting the local Klan, Marcano constantly drops the n-word like it's going out of style.
  • Santangelo takes the cake by expressively stating how he loves to kill 'the niggers', which disturbs even Sal Marcano. Even when at Clay's mercy after failing to kill him, Santangelo refuses to call him by his name and just drops the n-word again.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Averted. Giorgi shooting Lincoln in the head isn't enough to kill him, but it leaves a huge, nasty scar on the side of his head that stays for the rest of the game.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Vito of Mafia II returns as one of Lincoln's lieutenants.
• Punch-Clock Villain: All of the racket bosses are this. None of them have any particular loyalty to Sal Marcano due to his Kick the Dog and You Have Outlived Your Usefulness habits. The vast majority are happy to work for Lincoln if he makes them a better offer (with the caveat it always happens at knife point).
• Ragnarök Proofing: Downplayed with the abandoned Soviet bunker at the end of the Stones Unturned DLC. The facility is still semi-functional, with enough working lights and machinery for Aldridge and his mercs to use as their main holdout. Yet even though the Soviets only abandoned it around the Cuban Missile Crisis, which would have been just a few years before the game's events, it's already showing signs of being overgrown and is teetering on the brink of caving in at any moment.
• Real Is Brown: The shading is dominantly brown, as if trying to evoke movies or TV shows of the era, in stark contrast from previous games.
• Red Herring: There are some hints that Lincoln's adoptive brother will betray him because Sammy seems to favor Lincoln as his successor over him. He's killed along with everyone else when the Marcanos stab them in the back.
• Relationship Values: Vito, Burke and Cassandra's loyalty is measured by the amount of money they're making. You raise it by assigning districts as well as performing jobs for them. Raising it leads to additional upgrades to each bosses perks as well as new weapons and guns being available.
• Religion of Evil: The Ensanglante, the antagonists of the Sign of the Times DLC.
• Renegade Splinter Faction: Vito Scaletta leads a rebel Italian gang based in the neighborhood of River Row.
• Replacement Goldfish: During the opening heist mission, Lincoln recalls a rather harrowing story about a Vietnamese mother who carried both her baby and a live pig on a leash as she was about to board a medical ship during a civilian evacuation in Quảng Ngãi. The MP told the mother she could only carry one thing onboard, so she tossed the baby into the water, much to the shock of the MP who ordered someone to retrieve the helpless child and berated the woman for (possibly) killing her offspring. The woman scoffs it off, saying she could always have another baby anyway.
• The Reveal: Sal Marcano and Senator Blake were involved in the assassination of President Jack Kennedy. And now they're dead.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • Lincoln's end goal is to avenge the deaths of his adopted Black Mob "family".
  • John Donovan enacts revenge upon Senator Blake for his involvement in the Kennedy assassination during the end, and boasts that he will continue to hunt down and kill everyone else involved with the conspiracy.
• Rogue Protagonist: If Vito Scaletta is mistreated (by not being assigned a fair amount of rackets and territories), he will betray Lincoln, and will have to be fought on his home turf.
• Rule of Three: The collection missions. Three marijuana drops for Emmanuel, three cars for Burke, three marijuana samples for MJ, etc.
  • Also, when taking over rackets, the new occupants almost always arrive in three identical cars.
• Scary Black Man: Lincoln becomes cold and bloodthirsty after being left for dead by the Marcanos.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Lincoln Clay can do this as his final choice at the end of the game. He can choose to ally himself with the Commission in Empire Bay and become the new head of The Mafia despite being an African American or he can leave to go straight again. Somewhat zig-zagged as his gang can be his True Companions by this point.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: A Senate committee is questioning CIA agent John Donovan on whether he helped Lincoln murder the entire Marcano family, and he simply gives a smug smile and openly admits it.
• Sex Sells: Played for laughs with the in-game radio advertisements for Hank's Burger Bar, which describe its "Big Hank" double cheeseburger in the most ABSURDLY homoerotic ways.
• Shout-Out:
  • The M60 machine gun is referred to in-game as the "Hartmann 7.62". The M1 Carbine and M79 Grenade Launcher get the same treatment.
  • Random NPCs will sometimes mention "the Captain" kissing Uhura.
  • A silenced pistol called Deacon .22 becomes available from the arms dealer after Lincoln develops a high enough relationship with Burke. That has got to be deliberate.
  • One of the antagonists is a corrupt, overweight court circuit judge named Cornelius Holden, who is frequently referred to as "Judge Holden" by both other characters and the game's text.
  • The Stones Unturned DLC is a not so subtle homage to Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker from also being set in Central America during the 70s, to Donovan going the latter half of the DLC in the same outfit as Kaz Miller in said MGS, to mentioning him and Lincoln working with Militaires Sans Frontières back in 'Nam.
  • The "Sign of the Times" DLC wholly replicates the crime scene investigation mechanics from L.A. Noire.
  • Coupled with Parallel Porn Titles, one of the smut films that the "Sex" racket is distributing is a spy film entitled "Mr. Yes".
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Slavers are portrayed as the scum of the earth even compared to the other criminals in the game. Lincoln is a violent and ruthless Well-Intentioned Extremist at best and a self-serving rat-bastard at worst, but one thing he absolutely despises no matter how he gets played is slavery. As such, no matter if their districts are wiretapped, you can't recruit Merle "Trigger" Jackson from the Dixie Mafia or Chester Moreau from the Southern Union, as they are respectively behind drugging Black women and turning them into sex slaves or running an actual human trafficking operation. Lincoln will just kill the little parasites the second he gets his hands on them.^note Admittedly, you aren't able to wiretap Merle's district until after you take down his rackets, but would Merle even have been worth keeping around anyway?
• Small-Town Tyrant:
  • The racist Southern Union is settled in the affluent neighborhood of Frisco Fields, where they enjoy a considerable amount of power in the public and in the criminal underworld.
  • The "Faster Baby" DLC pits Lincoln and an Action Girl named Roxy against a sheriff who is harassing civil rights activists outside of New Bordeaux.
• The Smurfette Principle: Both Clay and Marcano's family have one female lieutenant, Cassandra and Olivia Marcano. Donovan is actually shocked that a woman could be a capo in Sal's mafia.
• Soundtrack Dissonance:
  • Hearing Dusty Springfield croon out "Son of A Preacher Man" while Lincoln shoots his way through unfortunate Mafiosi is pleasantly jarring.
  • During the final part of the mission to kill "Uncle" Lou Marcano, "Green River" plays as Lincoln confronts a dying Lou... right when his luxurious riverboat The Delphine has exploded and set on fire, killing pretty much everyone on board besides them two, while Lincoln himself is suffering from a wound.
  • The Duprees "You Belong To Me", a very romantic and heartwarming song, eerily plays as Lincoln shoots down Olivia's guards and subdues her. A rock version by Misfits later plays again during the post-mission cutscene that reveals Giorgi killed her, and during "Yet Here We Are".
  • During the scene where Vito tortures and then murders Michael Grecco, one can hear "Running Scared", an operatic power ballad, play in the background.
• Southern Gothic: The Bayou and the more dilapidated portions of New Bordeaux give this vibe, whether it's abandoned plantations or the bands of Dixie Mob and Southern Union thugs roaming about.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: Charles Laveau does this when discussing the death of Remy Duvall, and justifies this by pointing out that Remy used his public image to hide the fact he was really the Southern Union's leader.
• Stepford Suburbia: Frisco Fields is New Bordeaux's nice little slice of upper-middle class, white flight suburbia. The housewives have gotten themselves addicted to a 'weight-loss supplement' that turns out to be PCP, while their husbands support the Southern Union. Meanwhile, the fringes of the district, conveniently hidden away by woodland and highways, are littered with appalling shantytowns and dilapidated trailer parks, populated by local blacks and Southern Union rank-and-file respectively.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • While being an open world game, as you play as a (half) black man in 1960s Louisiana, not only do normal white people not trust you, but no other race does, either. You can't even walk in front of the (white) police without raising some suspicion, and they are all too happy for an excuse to beat you up.
  • If enemies see Lincoln, they'll be hostile to him. If they hear a gunshot or find a dead body, they'll go looking around and attack Clay when they see him.
  • The people running Marcano's businesses aren't blindly loyal to him; if faced with death, they will offer to work for Lincoln Clay instead.
  • If you kill the witnesses of your crimes, nobody will report them to the police.
  • The fact that the Marcano crime family helped organize the opening bank heist does not stop them from killing the rest of the heist crew except Lincoln, who lives after the bullet merely graces his skull, leaving him with a permanent scar.
  • In the final mission, Sal Marcano's death is not the result of a spectacular boss fight, but rather Sal, depressed after losing his son and criminal enterprise, begging Lincoln to shoot him or shooting himself.
  • Lincoln's war with Sal Marcano didn't go unnoticed. Keep in mind that Sal is a member of the Commission, a syndicate of other crime families, so when one of them is under attack, it's only natural that the other families will soon hear about it. By the end of the game, after killing Sal and his son, the Commission sends over Leo Galante to confront Lincoln over what he's doing; unsurprisingly, they want him dead out of fear that they might be next. That being said...
  • The Commission does not care if the Marcano crime family is replaced by the Clay Mob, as long as the new mob pays its kickback.
  • In the Sign of the Times DLC, when Lincoln says they need to get Anna to a hospital for her broken mind, Father James shoots it down. As he points out, no one in town cares for the infirmed, let alone someone with no money to her name; they'll toss Anna in a padded cell and forget about her.
• A Taste of Power: The Federal Reserve heist features Lincoln grabbing a Hartmann 7.62mm out of the vault armory and cutting down waves of guards; excluding Stones Unturned, it'll be his last encounter with the gun until a series of favors for Vito, which, based on the player's decisions, could come at the middle of the game or right near the end. (It also serves as an introduction for the shooting controls, since a big gun with an even bigger magazine doesn't need a whole lot of accuracy or subtlety to get the point across.)
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: What Lincoln does to the Marcano family and their allies, stating that he wants them to experience what he experience, which was losing everything.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Lincoln's lieutenants are united solely by a combination of greed and a hatred for the Marcanos. Otherwise, they still bear old grudges against one another and see each other as competition more than anything.
• Time Skip: After Lincoln is left to die and is saved by Father James, a time skip occurs from Febuary to around July-August of 1968, due to Lincoln recovering from his wounds.
• Token Good Cop: While most of the New Bordeaux Police Department is in the pocket of Sal Marcano (to the point of actively protecting Marcano properties), not to mention being heavy-handed and thoroughly racist, Detective "Big Jim" McCormick is an exception. He's a dedicated, honest, cordial and notably not racist individual, who is sincerely disgusted the damage that Doc Gaston's drug ring is doing to the French Quarter. Given that the NBPD's corruption has caused all his efforts to bring Gaston down to fail, he's willing to accept Lincoln Clay's help to get rid of the drug dealers.
• Too Dumb to Live: Scared pedestrians dive in any old direction. Including directly in front of your car!
• True Companions: The Black Mob were this to Lincoln Clay, hence why their destruction at the hands of Marcano sparked his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Sal's casino, Paradiso, is this at the end of the game.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Oddly, weapons used by police vanish upon being killed or knocked out.
• Vice City: As expected of a game about crime, New Bordeaux is a city with no shortage of crooked bastards, with different flavors of corruption for each of its ten districts. Even the nicer-looking areas have their fair share of dirt. "Sign of the Times" takes it even further, suggesting that besides the usual period slavery, the city was founded based upon regular human sacrifice of poor Blacks by a cabal of wealthy Whites. Donovan's assessment of the city as a Wretched Hive certainly rings true.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Most of the racket bosses you have to defeat in order to conquer a racket really aren't as bad as Sal Marcano, some of them even hating him. If you have their racket wiretapped, you'll be able to recruit them and gain an extra profit from the racket... or murder them and get only 1/4 of said profit.
    • This also applies to informants you have to interrogate.
    • This doesn't apply to the Prostitution (Doucet's) and the Southern Union (Bellaire's Supermarket) racket bosses, who Lincoln will instantly kill due to not wiretapping the city yet (for Doucet's) and because Bellaire's owner secretly uses the business as a front for human trafficking.
  • During "Burn To Napalm", you can either Mercy Kill Tommy Marcano when he's down, or simply leave him to burn to death alongside the rest of his boxing ring.
  • During the final mission, you're given the choice to kill Sal Marcano by stabbing him to death (resulting in Lincoln pushing him out of his penthouse's windows rather than shooting him to death. If you don't do either, Sal will simply take the pistol lying beside him and kill himself.
• The Vietnam Vet: Lincoln and John Donovan. Their experience and tactical knowhow as well as Lincoln's proficiency with psychological warfare and shock tactics was put to "practical" use during their quest to take down the Marcano family.
• The Vietnam War: The game is set during 1968, at the height of the conflict in Vietnam. Lincoln, being a veteran of the Vietnam war, has military training that lets him get rid of his enemies with tactical precision.
• Villain Has a Point: Connor Aldridge, the deranged and mercenary antagonist of the Stones Unturned DLC, is correct in at least one aspect — the Vietnam War was an equally brutal conflict on all sides, and largely pointless due to the region's limited strategic value ("there are no dominoes"). He even correctly points out that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was largely trumped up as an excuse to get America into the conflict, a fact that wouldn't be formally acknowledged by top officials for decades. Unfortunately, this moral relativism and desire to end the war led him to think that selling the NVA a thermonuclear warhead was a good idea.
• Villain with Good Publicity:
  • Sal Marcano is known to the public as being a wealthy businessman and a philanthropist during Lincoln's war against him.
  • The Southern Union are based in the rich neighborhood of Frisco Fields, and host various parties, rallies, and propaganda drives. Especially Remy Duvall, their leader. Him being burned alive by Lincoln is seen as a blow against decent society by the rich and white, and the death of a scumbag racist by everyone else.
  • If Lincoln chooses to rule New Bordeaux with his surviving lieutenants, he becomes this.
• Villainous Breakdown: Remy Duvall will have one on the radio just after you've shattered most of his criminal enterprise. He barges into the studio absolutely wasted and lets the mask of Southern civility slip, calling out Lincoln and the mob until the staff come in and drag him out kicking and screaming.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Lincoln's lieutenants don't bother to hide how much they hate each other with meetings oozing contempt. They can even turn on Lincoln and vice versa.
  • The rank-and-file working class soldiers of the Southern Union hates their rich, upper class superiors, seeing as they're too gutless to actually get their hands dirty. You can even overhear one of them talking about how "the only thing worse than a nigger is a rich white man putting on airs" and says that once they're done with the black citizens, he wouldnt mind going after the rich white ones next.
  • The Marcano Mob isn't much better in the grand scheme of things despite being literal family. Routinely, Lincoln is just ahead of a hit squad by the mobsters.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Combined with Posthumous Character. Sammy and Ellis Robinson and Danny Burke only appear in the first mission arc of the game before their brutal deaths at the hands of the Marcano.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: In-universe, Lincoln murders look like political statement from a black supremacist, while what he really does is targeting Marcano's crime family via psychological warfare. It's really just a bonus that he gets to kill The Klan and a judge who tries absolving a man who shot a black couple asking for help.
• Wham Episode: The Stinger. John Donovan goes on a rant about how he dismembered an old lady in Vietnam and saved a bunch of lives just before he learned the president was assassinated, pulls out a gun in front of a senatorial hearing, and then executes Senator Blake for his involvement in said assassination before making a public announcement that the remaining conspirators are next.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?:
  • The Haitians. Whether's a plainly exaggerated French accent forcing Haitian Creole words into their mouths or an Jamaican accent trying to sound Haitian. At least Emmanuel's Haitian accent stood out the most.
  • The Irish accents found in the game range from ’not terrible’ to ‘barely being recognisable as Irish’. The most egregious example is probably Thomas Burke, whose voice actor *is* Irish, but from the opposite side of the country from the accent he’s attempting.
• Who Shot JFK?: The epilogue reveals that the reason John Donovan is so focused on Clay taking on Marcano is because he suspects that the Marcano family was involved in the assassination. He's right, and the senator in charge of the hearing was involved too as revealed by Marcano's files. Donovan shoots him when the interview is over, then tells the camera that he's coming for the other conspirators.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: When Lincoln lays out his complex plans for bringing down Marcano, Burke suggests they just get in his car, drive to Marcano's house and shoot him. The others respond that it just means he'll be replaced and nothing will change. Donovan and James also asks why Clay is targeting so many people instead of just Sal (Donovan even mentions that Clay could clean them up with an assault rifle and war paint) since he only wants revenge, Lincoln says he wants Marcano to know what it's like to lose everything.
• With Catlike Tread: Many of Lincoln's stealth takedowns are, well.....not.
• Would Hit a Girl: Lincoln has absolutely no problem shooting Olivia Marcano, or pressing her bullet wound to get information out of her, though he leaves her alive. She's later murdered in the hospital by Giorgi.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Cassandra is first introduced after Lincoln kills Baka, the supposed leader of the Haitian gangs. After Lincoln shoots him, she crawls out of a closet she's been hiding in, and starts beating Baka's corpse, claiming he's been using her as a sex slave. Its later revealed that Cassandra herself is the real leader.
• Wretched Hive: Once you peel away the gilded exterior, you'll find New Bordeaux has some very serious rot. This is one reason why Lincoln doesn't just go to Sal's house and kill him: he fears that even if the Marcano family ends up unable to retain power, the city will just vomit up a new scumbag to take charge. At the end of the game, once Sal is dead, both Lincoln and Donovan seem to believe that the only solution is for Lincoln to step up and become that scumbag.
• Worst News Judgment Ever: Generally averted. The reports heard on the radio are generally news-worthy, including actual events from 1968 such as The Vietnam War and the early stages of The Troubles. Meanwhile, though Lincoln Clay is never mentioned by name in the broadcasts, even his more discreet actions leave enough damage that they make headlines anyway.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: If Lincoln decides to stick around to rule New Bordeaux, he's given the option of killing off any remaining lieutenant so that he can rule alone at the urging of Donovan. Doing this however leads to him getting blown up by a car bomb planted by Father James.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: After dealing with Sal, Lincoln is given the option by Leo Galante to take over his position as the kingpin of New Bordeaux as long as he gives the Commission their typical 20% cut.
• Zerg Rush: If the amount of active enemies gets too high (likely because you allowed a Sentry to call for reinforcements), they'll stop taking cover and will all charge at your position at once, which can lead to you being overrun and quickly killed if you're not prepared.

---