The Mafia City meme refers to a series of bizarre and illogical mobile game advertisements for the strategy game 'Mafia City' by Yotta Games. These ads gained viral notoriety in late 2018 and early 2019 due to their repetitive 'Level up' sequences where characters would suddenly transform from a 'Level 1 Crook' to a 'Level 100 Boss' after performing simple, often unrelated tasks. The trend was catapulted into mainstream internet culture by YouTuber Slazo and gave birth to the iconic catchphrase 'That's how mafia works.' It is primarily used to satirize ridiculous power scaling, absurd logic in video game advertising, and the concept of instant success or 'grinding' in modern digital environments.