What is Thats How Mafia Works?

It's a caption meme parodying Mafia City Instagram ads, built around a suited cartoon businessman who points at the screen and says the line.

Where did Thats How Mafia Works come from?

Australian YouTuber Slazo popularized it in his December 30, 2018 video "Hilariously Bad Instagram Ads," then his subreddit r/slazo turned it into a template.

What does Thats How Mafia Works mean?

It's an ironic punchline used to frame something as tough or edgy, commonly stacked with a low-level vs. high-level comparison.

How do you use Thats How Mafia Works?

Place the businessman ad screenshot under a "level up" or before/after image and add the caption "That's how mafia works".

Is Thats How Mafia Works still popular?

It peaked in early 2019 on Reddit, where GopnikMihail's r/dankmemes post pulled over 11,000 upvotes, and use has slowed since.

Thats How Mafia Works

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Published August 1, 2026

Thats How Mafia Works is a caption meme built around a suited cartoon businessman from Instagram ads for the mobile game Mafia City. Australian YouTuber Slazo pulled the line out of the ads in a December 2018 video, and his audience turned it into an ironic Reddit reaction template through 2018 and 2019.

catchphrase memes advertising memes mobile game memes deep fried memes reaction memes

Overview

Thats How Mafia Works is a caption meme built around a suited cartoon businessman from Instagram ads for the mobile game Mafia City. In the ads, the character points at scenes of in-game violence and delivers the line "That's how mafia works," which viewers turned into an ironic reaction template 3. The image works as a mock-serious punchline, often slapped onto anything considered edgy, tough, or absurd 5.

The format usually pairs a "level" progression joke with the businessman's declaration, riffing on Mafia City's own tiered ad style 5. It also became a fixture in deep fried memes and shitposts, where the low-res ad clip fits the pixelated, over-compressed aesthetic those communities favor 3.

Gallery

Origin & Background

Platform

YouTube (source), Reddit (viral spread)

Creator

Slazo

Date

2018

The meme traces back to Australian YouTuber Slazo, who on December 30, 2018 uploaded a video titled "Hilariously Bad Instagram Ads" that mocked various Mafia City promos 3. One clip in particular, showing in-game crimes capped by the suited businessman pointing at the screen with the caption "That's how mafia works," got repeated callbacks throughout the video.

Slazo's audience picked up on the bit and started posting remixes on r/slazo. A meme by user BoinkoMan cleared 400 upvotes and reached the Hot page of that subreddit 1.

How It Spread

From r/slazo the caption jumped to bigger communities. Redditor mat383 submitted a "That's How Mafia Works" post to r/memes 2, and Redditor ThatCandianJacket released a clean .png version that made template edits easier 3. That version fed the deep fried and shitpost circles, where recut variants kept surfacing.

Not long after, user GopnikMihail posted a version to r/dankmemes that pulled over 11,000 upvotes and 150 comments within days 4. The catchphrase ended up glued to the wider Mafia City meme wave, showing up in the comments of "level" jump edits and other Mafia City jokes 3.

How to Use This Meme

The typical build places the businessman screenshot at the bottom of a "before/after" or "level up" progression and adds the caption "That's how mafia works" underneath 5. Users often pair a low-tier example with a high-tier one, or drop the line as a sign-off on a Florida Man post or an edgy clip 3.