Cheats in GTA San Andreas

Cheats in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas are similar to those of its predecessors, requiring input of a series of controller button commands or a keyboard. When a cheat code is successfully entered, a "Cheat Activated" message will appear on the upper left corner of the screen to confirm the cheat has been entered. The following cheat codes must be entered during gameplay. Entering cheat codes during pause menu will not activate the cheat unlike its predecessors.

Note that the PlayStation 2 and Xbox require the use of the D-Pad (up, down, left, right), (NOTE: this is not the analog stick) for directional input. For the Xbox 360, Black is RB and White is LB. For the PlayStation 3 port of the game, the triggers that need to be pressed must be pressed in the opposite way. For example, where one would normally press / in a cheat, they must press /. (e.g. would be the correct input for the PS3 port of the game of the "Unlimited Ammo" cheat.)

As earlier, the pedestrian hate and riot cheats are permanent and cannot be reversed if the game is saved while the cheat is active. These pedestrian-related cheats can hinder progress during missions.

Themes/pedestrian behavior
Many of these cheats are used in the game during the Los Santos Riots.

Negative effects of cheating
Cheating in GTA San Andreas has been proven to have some negative effects on missions and gameplay. The following list contains side effects that may arise by playing the game with cheats. To avoid any of these side effects, it is recommended to use cheat codes only after the game has been completed or on an alternate save file. However, some minor side effects from a save file with cheats can spread onto a file without cheats.


 * Cheating decreases the Criminal Rating by 10 (except for "Health & Armor" cheat).
 * Enabling the "Health and Armor" cheat during the bike chase of Just Business and during shooting from the car in End of the Line will fail the mission, destroying the bike/Feltzer (End of the Line), and CJ will eventually be Wasted.
 * If the player had activated "Invulnerable Cars" cheat before Big Smoke gets on the bike and input the cheat during another cutscene happens in the same mission, CJ won't get wasted, but the mission will fail (in Just Business only).
 * Enabling the "Health and Armor" cheat during the Lure mission will immediately destroy the car doors, making the mission more difficult and challenging (unless the player kill the bikers first).
 * The Health and Armor cheat has no effect on the DA's car on 555 We Tip.
 * Enabling the "Health and Armor" cheat at any time during a taxi driver sub-mission will immediately empty the tip bar, making the player unable to get the Speed Bonus (this doesn't always happen on PC version).
 * Enabling the "Lock Wanted Level" cheat will cause a glitch on the Mike Toreno mission stopping the script after the red marker (unless the "Lock Wanted Level" cheat is disabled).
 * The Max Fat and Max Muscle cheats make it difficult for the player to date Helena Wankstein (unless the player collected all Oysters).
 * The Minimum Fat and Muscle cheats make it difficult for the player to date Michelle Cannes & Barbara Schternvart (unless the player collected all Oysters).
 * The Super Punches cheat are not recommended during the Riot events of Los Santos. Since any civilian (including CJ) being punched with this cheat turned on will automatically die (unless the infinite health cheat is turned on).
 * The Recruit Anyone cheats reverse in effect during Gang Wars.
 * The missions Burning Desire, Life's a Beach, Photo Opportunity, and Madd Dogg cannot be completed if too many cheats have been used before the mission.
 * Enabling the Jetpack cheat whilst CJ has stepped on a red mission marker will cause the game crashes before the mission starts. This no longer happens on the PC version.
 * The Pedestrians Riot cheat makes the mission "Madd Dogg" impossible to complete, as Madd Dogg falls off before CJ has enough time to park the truck under him.
 * The Pedestrians Riot cheat also makes the mission Tanker Commander impossible to complete, as Mr. Whittaker will instantly attack Catalina upon meeting her, causing her to shoot him, making the cutscene permanent.
 * If the player inputs the Flying Cars cheat, and then drives a car into any body of water, CJ will become stuck in the car and will not be able to get out (unless the "Flying Cars" cheat is disabled). Same applies when bailing out whilst in the air (rarely).
 * If the player enters the Cars Float Away When Hit cheat too many times, cars will sometimes spawn in midair and fall from the sky. Also, random cars will explode as soon as CJ is within spawning distance of them.
 * If the player inputs the Flying Cars cheat, random NPC cars may suddenly lift off and fly away.
 * Enabling the Health and Armor cheat during the mission Reuniting The Families (the chase part) will not repair Sweet's car.
 * Enabling the Destroy All Cars cheat during the mission Reuniting The Families (possibly to make the cop cars & bikes destroyed quickly) will make Sweet's car explode and will make CJ stuck inside the car (unable to get out & killed) (Include Tanker Exploding Before Sweet's Car Crash into it that make Game Completely Stop).
 * If the Cars Float On Water cheat is enabled, the Nevada, Rustler, Stuntplane and Cropduster will roll backwards when they spawn. It is unknown why this happens, but it is hypothesized that they roll backwards because their nose tilts upwards when parked.
 * Enabling time cheats (Midnight for example), may cause the in-game time to progress and it will never stop unless the cheat is enabled again (causing the clock to speed up like the "Faster Clock" cheat until it catches up to whenever it should be).
 * Enabling Fat and Stamina Cheats will cause CJ to not be allowed to work out in any gym.
 * If the player has the "Flying Cars" cheat enabled while starting any Racing side-mission, all of the opponent's cars will lift off and fly away as soon as the race starts.
 * If the player has the Riot cheat enabled, pedestrians can be seen fighting each other in the background during mission cutscenes. Sometimes pedestrians may interfere with the cutscene and attack CJ.
 * Sometimes when the player steals or attacks an NPC's car, they walk away instead of running away or fighting Carl. This cheating side effect can occur after only one cheat is activated.
 * When the player activates "Health and Armor" cheat when driving a vehicle is about to explode when the vehicle is fixed, the car still explode during Blood Bowl Sub-Mission.
 * Enabling the "Raise Wanted Level" & "Six-Star Wanted Level" cheat during the mission "555 We Tip" will fail the mission.
 * Enabling the "All Cars Explode" cheat during Race Tournament Sub-Mission will eventually CJ to be disqualified (if CJ exits the vehicle) & wasted (if CJ fails to exit the vehicle).
 * Enabling the "Invulnerable Cars" after getting in a car is uneffective because if the player tries to damage a car and that car explodes, his/her car will also smoke and explode, eventually making CJ wasted (if the player fails to exit the car in time).
 * If the player enables the Jetpack cheat while having a private dance in a strip club, the dance will be skipped.
 * Enabling the "All Cars Explode" on some side and mandatory missions that uses a vehicle other than those mentioned in this list will cause the vehicle to explode, thus failing the mission or if the player fails to go out of their vehicle especially on any schools in which he/she is not allowed to exit, they will die.

Tricks

 * During the third mission, Sweet & Kendl, if the player types in the cheat "Bounty on your head", it will cause the gang to attack Carl. However, if Carl is able to run them over with a vehicle, and then de-activate the "Bounty on your head" cheat, activate the cheats "Recruit Anyone" and "Maximum Respect" cheat, lock on and recruit them, they will become his allies. They have a lot of health and they can take a lot of damage. Also, they never de-spawn. This is confirmed for PC.
 * Whilst the "Speed up time" cheat is activated at least twice, inputting Left, Down, Right, Up, Left, Down, Right, Up on the PS2 controller when listening to the radio in a vehicle will allow the player to skip tracks.
 * If the player enables the "Invincible Vehicle" cheat code, then enter any car, (Except aircraft and boats) then disable the cheat while they are in the same vehicle, the car will still be invincible, but won't destroy other vehicles on contact. (If using Pay'n' Spray or Mod Shop or store the vehicle in a garage, it will lose its invincibility)
 * If the player activates "Gang members have gunfights" cheat, they will see other gang members that usually stay in other cities spawn in the current zone the player is in (including rural areas and Lil' Probe' Inn). Also, in some missions (OG Loc, Ryder, etc.), if the target Carl must kill fires a gun through the street, the gangsters on the street may pull out their guns and turn against the target, making the mission become easier to complete. However this is the opposite in Grove 4 Life, Beat Down on B Dup, Nines and AKs and so on. Additionally the streets will be covered with gang vehicles, however most stationary vehicles will not change because of this cheat. Also in some places, after inputting the cheat, normal pedestrians may still spawn.
 * During any mission involving car chasing that the main objective is to Kill targets (Such as High Noon or chasing part in A Home in the Hills).If player gets out of his/her car that he/she used for chasing and typing "All Vehicles explode" cheat, it will be resulting that the target is instantly dead and mission will be passed.

Trivia

 * In between the end of The Green Sabre and the end of Home Coming non-GSF peds cannot be recruited with cheats in Los Santos. However the recruiting cheats still work in all other areas outside Los Santos during this time period.
 * Up to 7 (the normal GSF maximum) Non-GSF peds can be recruited with cheats no matter how low CJ's respect is.
 * So far, GTA San Andreas is the only game to have a cheat code wherein the player cannot (automatically) earn any wanted level for trespassing in any prohibited area (in the case of GTA San Andreas, San Fierro and Las Venturas if both cities has yet to be unlocked) as Wanted Levels cannot be disabled for trespassing in prohibited areas including the Washington Beach Police Station in GTA Vice City, the tarmac of Francis International Airport and the areas that has yet to be unlocked in GTA IV, and Fort Zancudo, Humane Labs and Research and the tarmac of Los Santos International Airport in GTA V (if the player has yet to purchase a hangar as Michael and Franklin or when playing as Trevor)
 * Enabling the "Sports Cars" cheat will replace normal civilian cars with sports cars (and some of them are rare) spawning throughout the states, like Phoenix, Euros, Hotknife, Uranus (They are considerably rare in free roam if this cheat has not been activated yet). The same as "Cheap Cars" cheat.
 * If enabling the peds attacking Carl with weapons cheat while on vigilante missions, a glitch will occur where the targeted criminals will sometimes separate from their cars. For example if Carl is on Level 4 (where there are four criminals in a car), this cheat code will sometimes cause two of the criminals to abandon the car while the other half continues to drive it.
 * Enabling “BIFBUZZ” will also spawn the ninth gang that is unused normally. And if the player activates this cheat in areas outside of Los Santos, they will see Los Santos gangs spawn in other areas (even rural areas), much like somewhat in the Riot.
 * However the cheat cannot spawn Russian Mafia gangsters (that appear in Just Business with unique models). It was possibly that this idea was scrapped.
 * If the time stuck at 00:00 cheat is used and sometime is passed some times, an oval thing that resembles the sun, but is smaller in size appears. It has the same colour as sun. It is believed to be a NIGHTPROWLER glitch.
 * The "Invulnerable Cars" cheat doesn't protect the player's vehicle from the minigun shot with the Police Maverick, the gun from Police Predators. If one of those vehicles explode near CJ his vehicle would set on fire and explode, leading to a potential death or significant loss of health. This is more than likely a glitch. It is possible that this cheat wasn't fully completed when the game was released.
 * Similarly the cheat won't have an affect on boats (except Vortex), like if the player had activated the cheat before CJ entered a boat and inputted "All cars explode" cheat code, the boat still exploded and CJ would most likely die. It is unknown if it was affective on boats during beta or a glitch, or the cheat was not successfully implemented as a leftover code.
 * If typing both cheats "Gangs spawn much faster" and "Gangs having gunfights", the Mafia will commonly spawn and act like a gang. Sometimes they may be found holding beer bottles. And they will even point a gun if provoked by nearby gunshots from other gang members or the player himself. They will drive in Admirals, Feltzers and Sentinels. This is done in the PS2 version and PC version.
 * Cars in Valet missions needed to be driven away won't be affected by "Fast Cars" or "Poor Cars" cheat. However they can be affected by "Ninja Theme" or "Pink Theme" to go through in the two special colors.
 * If the player has typed the "Maximum lung capacity" cheat before, and then drives a vehicle (except for planes, motorcycles, bicycles, quad bikes and boats) into the water, they will not lose the lung capacity nor health, and when the vehicle reaches the underwater ground, its lights will change (the headlights will be turned off if it has been turned on before at night times) Carl will be able to drive it, albeit harder than in the air. The player can also use this trick to drive their vehicle out of the water and then return to the land. However if the player exits the vehicle while driving in the sea, it will be impossible to return to the car.
 * If doing this trick in some missions, the mission will fail as "the vehicle has been destroyed", however the sunk vehicle still remains intact.
 * The CJPHONEHOME cheat is a reference to Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.
 * Typing "JCNRUAD" cheat and then quickly deactivating the following cheat before Carl gets in the vehicle will make the car invincible.