Mafia III Timeline Explained: Every Key Event in Order

The Mafia III timeline is one of the most layered in the entire series. Unlike Mafia and Mafia II, which unfold across tight, linear chapters, Mafia III spans decades — from Lincoln Clay's birth in 1945 New Bordeaux to the 1971 Senate hearings that close out his story. Understanding that timeline matters because the game's revenge plot is built directly on real historical events, and the dates are woven into radio broadcasts, mission briefings, and environmental storytelling.

Related Mafia III guides you may find useful:

• Mafia III Map Size — How Big Is New Bordeaux?
• Mafia 3 Trophy Guide: All Achievements & Endings
• Mafia III Cast: Every Main Voice Actor & Character This walkthrough breaks down the Mafia III timeline year by year, with tables covering the prologue, the 1968 revenge campaign, and the post-game epilogue. Whether you're replaying the Definitive Edition or trying to piece together how Vito Scaletta ended up in New Bordeaux, this is the chronological order everything actually happens in.

Why the Mafia III Timeline Is So Hard to Pin Down

Hangar 13 built Mafia III as an open-world game with a non-linear structure. After the prologue, you can tackle districts, rackets, and underbosses in almost any order you choose. That design choice means the game itself never hands you a clean, dated sequence of events.

The community over on the Mafia Wiki has spent years assembling a working timeline, and even they flag specific conflicts. The most cited problem is the game's stated date for Anna McGee's death — listed as June 6, 1968 — which clashes with in-game evidence that Lincoln was still recovering in early June.

According to community reports on the Mafia Wiki timeline discussion thread, the most likely reading is:

• Lincoln is shot on February 27, 1968 at Mardi Gras
• His recovery montage runs through late May to early June
• The TV in Father James' home shows footage of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination on June 5, 1968
• A scripted NPC conversation references James Earl Ray's capture on June 8, 1968

That places the start of Lincoln's revenge campaign in the first or second week of June 1968, not February as some players assume.

Mafia III Timeline at a Glance

Here's the full chronological spread of the game, from pre-birth background to the final hearings.

The table above is the skeleton. The sections below fill in the detail you actually need for a walkthrough.

The Prologue: 1945 to 1967

Birth and Early Life (1945–1958)

Lincoln Clay is born in January 1945 in New Bordeaux — the game's fictional stand-in for New Orleans. His mother abandons him at age two, and he's raised by Father James at Saint Michelle's Orphanage in the French Ward.

When the orphanage closes in 1958, a 13-year-old Lincoln is taken in by the Robinson family. Sammy Robinson becomes the closest thing he has to a father figure, and Ellis Robinson becomes his brother in everything but blood. That relationship is the emotional core of everything that follows.

Military Service (1964–1967)

Lincoln enlists in the United States Army in 1964 at age 19 and deploys to Vietnam. By 1966 he's transferred to the 5th Special Forces Group, where he meets CIA operative John Donovan in Laos. Donovan becomes Lincoln's handler and, later, his most important ally.

This stretch of the timeline is easy to miss because it's delivered through cutscenes and dialogue rather than playable missions. But it explains why Lincoln is a trained killer by the time the main story starts.

February 27, 1968: The Mardi Gras Heist and Betrayal

This is the single most important date in the Mafia III timeline. Everything in the game flows from it.

Lincoln returns home from Vietnam on February 20, 1968. One week later, during Mardi Gras, he joins a crew to rob the New Bordeaux Federal Reserve. The team includes:

• Lincoln Clay
• Giorgi Marcano — son of Sal Marcano
• Danny Burke — son of Thomas Burke
• Ellis Robinson

The heist succeeds, but the celebration doesn't. In the aftermath:

Lincoln survives — barely. A nun finds him and gets him to Father James, who hides him while he recovers. This is where the game's actual revenge loop begins.

March to May 1968: Recovery and a City on Fire

While Lincoln is fighting for his life, the world outside keeps moving. The game uses radio broadcasts and TV footage to anchor this period to real history:

• April 4, 1968 — Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis. The resulting riots are referenced repeatedly in-game as happening while Lincoln was "fighting for his life."
• April 11, 1968 — President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968.

For walkthrough purposes, this stretch is mostly cutscene and montage. There's no player control until Lincoln is back on his feet.

June to November 1968: The Revenge Campaign

This is the bulk of Mafia III's playable content, and it's where the timeline gets fuzzy by design. Because you can take districts in almost any order, the community generally treats this as one block: June through November 1968.

The Opening Moves

• Lincoln recruits Cassandra as his first underboss after clearing out the Haitian gang in Delray Hollow
• Hollis Dupree is arrested for the murders of Lamont Harris and Trey McCall, then the trial ends in a mistrial
• Senator Walter Jacobs is killed when a riverboat collides with a coal dumper in Bayou Fantom

The Underboss Structure

A key part of the walkthrough is understanding that your district assignments change the ending. Here's how the three underbosses break down:

Each underboss controls districts you hand over. Give one of them too much territory and the others will eventually turn on you — that's the game's loyalty system, and it directly affects which ending you get.

The Marcano Takedowns

The campaign climaxes with the elimination of the Marcano family leadership. One of the most memorable beats is Lou Marcano's body being found gutted and hung from a statue in Jackson Memorial Park — a detail that shows how far Lincoln is willing to go.

By the end of November 1968, Lincoln either:

• Takes control of New Bordeaux and runs the empire himself, or
• Leaves the city to one of his underbosses

That choice is the fork in the road for the game's multiple endings.

Late 1968: The DLC and Side Story Events

The three major story expansions slot into the same 1968 window. Community consensus places them after the main campaign's events, though the exact dates aren't stated.

The Stones Unturned thread is worth flagging because it connects back to the 1962 crash of a Cuban military cargo plane carrying a nuclear warhead — a detail the base game plants early and pays off in DLC.

The Epilogue: 1969 to 2016

The Mafia III timeline doesn't end when the credits roll. The game's framing device is a 2016 documentary about Lincoln Clay's 1968 activities, which means the epilogue is delivered through interview footage and archival material.

Key post-game dates:

• 1969 — John Donovan leaves the CIA. The Paradiso Hotel & Casino is completed in North Lake.
• 1971 — FBI Agent Jonathan Maguire tracks Lincoln to a California shipyard, where he's working as a welder. Lincoln vanishes before he can be caught.
• August 1971 — The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence holds hearings into Lincoln's activities. Senator Blake is murdered by John Donovan at the end of the hearings.
• 1980 — Former Sheriff Walter Beaumont is released after serving 12 of his 15-year sentence.
• 1983 — Roman Barbieri's corpse is pulled from the Mississippi River during dredging.
• 1989 — Walter Beaumont is killed in his own driveway.
• 1999 — Jonathan Maguire retires from the FBI.
• 2016 — The Pappideaux Building is demolished, and Gus Borelli's body is found in its foundation. The documentary releases.

That 1971 Senate hearing is the true endpoint of Lincoln's story. It's also where Donovan's arc closes, since he's the one who pulls the trigger.

How Mafia III Connects to the Rest of the Series

If you're playing the series in order, the Mafia III timeline sits at the far end of the chronology. Here's how the three main games line up:

The connective tissue is Vito Scaletta, the protagonist of Mafia II, who appears in Mafia III as an underboss. His exile to New Bordeaux in 1951 — part of a peace deal brokered by Leo Galante — is the direct bridge between the two games. If you want the official backstory, the Mafia series page on Steam confirms the Definitive Edition bundles all three games together.

Common Timeline Confusion Points

A few dates trip players up repeatedly. Here's the short version:

• The game does not start in 1968. It starts with a 2016 documentary, then flashes back.
• Lincoln's recovery is not shown in real time. The montage covers roughly three months.
• Anna McGee's listed death date of June 6, 1968 is likely a developer error. In-game evidence points to Lincoln still being hospitalized at that point.
• The DLC dates are approximate. Hangar 13 never gave exact placements, so community reports place them in late 1968.

If you're writing a walkthrough or a lore video, flag those four as "community consensus" rather than confirmed canon.

Final Thoughts on the Mafia III Timeline

The Mafia III timeline works best when you treat 1968 as a single, dense year rather than a strict sequence. The prologue sets up the betrayal, the summer and fall deliver the revenge, and the 1971 hearings close the loop. Everything in between — the DLC, the underboss loyalty system, the district assignments — is yours to sequence however you want.

For players coming from Mafia II, the biggest payoff is watching Vito Scaletta's story continue two decades after Empire Bay. For everyone else, the timeline is a reminder that Hangar 13 built a revenge story on top of one of the most turbulent years in American history — and mostly got the details right.