The concept behind the character was not created with a lot of forethought, as the developers fleshed out a bare minimum amount of detail for his role within the 2006 video game's narrative.

In spite of this, Johnny Gat has been acknowledged as one of the most beloved and iconic characters from the Saints Row series, with some critics lauding his characterization as layered and nuanced.

[2] Because Gat's character was meant to lack subtlety, the team found it easy to develop scenarios by simply envisioning how he would react to a hypothetical situation or cope with its specific circumstances.

In one instance, Gat proves his loyalty to the player by helping them escape an ambush and allowing himself to be captured and tortured by their enemies after sustaining a gunshot to his leg.

Following the defeat of all the rival gangs in Stilwater, Gat joins the Saints' war with the massive Ultor Corporation, participating in the assassination of its head, Dane Vogel.

The character meets his apparent death early on in the game, during a confrontation with Belgian crime boss Phillipe Loren, and he is last heard over intercom which is cut short by the sound of gunfire.

In 2013's Saints Row IV, it is revealed that Gat did not perish during his encounter with Loren, but was instead abducted by aliens who saw him as a threat to their upcoming invasion and forced him to continuously relive Aisha's death via a simulation that his brain was plugged into.

After defeating Satan and rescuing the player, Gat is summoned by God, who allows him to choose his reward: be reunited with Aisha in Heaven; become the new ruler of Hell; recreate the Earth (which was previously destroyed by the aliens); find a new planet to rebuild humanity; or learn the secrets of the universe.

Matt Liebl from GameZone as well as Sam Prell from Engadget noted that Johnny Gat does have redeeming qualities, such as his loyalty and devotion both to the Saints gang and to Aisha, in spite of his "outwardly violent nature".

[16][23] In a retrospective assessment of the character, Jody Macgregor from Rock, Paper, Shotgun called Gat a mascot for Saints Row as he represents a "celebration of open-world games as consequence-free romps", and a symbol of the series' point of difference to its competitors.

[17] He argued that Johnny Gat is the most relatable and complex of the Saints Row universe's cast of characters, and that his story arc, which is filled with numerous implausible or outrageous scenarios, has arrived at "a special place in gaming history, but for all the wrong reasons".

[17] O'Connell also cited Aisha's funeral in Saints Row 2, which culminated in the “Get up” cutscene involving a vengeful Johnny Gat, to be an emotionally impactful moment.

[25] On the other hand, Kris Ligman from Unwinnable called Johnny Gat "a sociopathic clown who seemed disruptive a decade ago but now seems as quaintly conventional in our playing vocabulary as hurling furious avians into porcine blobs".

[26] Ligman highlighted and discussed Johnny Gat's role in Saints Row IV within the context of retroseriality, and found that the more she replayed the game, the more she realized that her fascination with the character's "lone wolf act and carefully cultivated brutal masculinity" is in fact a "scar tissue" of who and what he used to be.

[26] Ligman observed that while Gat is largely a caricature of murderous protagonists from the Grand Theft Auto video game series, she claimed that such character archetypes had ceased to be interesting, shocking or funny by the 2010s.

[26] James Troughton from TheGamer opined that the upcoming fifth entry in the Saints Row series can succeed without an appearance from Gat or any other recurring characters as they "had their time to shine".