To the Beast Crew, who were riffing about people not dying consistently from bullets: Nishitani got shot like half a dozen times and so did Oda (who was then shot in the head) and are both super dead. All the other people got shot once (Makoto and Sera) or twice (Sagawa in the back and in the hand, Kiryu in the shoulder and the leg) and they all received treatment (Remember Sagawa's bandaged hand, Kiryu getting saved by the guys from Little Asia, and Sera was at his own headquarters where his guys in the masks could save him). The only exception to this is Lee, who got shot a bunch by those yakuza in his office, but he also got treatment from his Chinese underground doctor friend. Getting exploded by a car bomb was the only thing that could finish him off.
Regarding the side stuff, I would say to just finish the story at this point. You guys are so close to the end and stopping for an episode or two to finish the businesses or do some other substories would really kill the forward momentum you guys have had going in the last couple episodes. It would also probably lead to more of the "who's this guy?" and "how did that happen again?" questions that have been popping up since you guys came back from E3.
There's a menu in the pause screen under Notebook/Help -> Characters that has all of the major characters in the game sorted by their affiliations and has their picture and a paragraph that tells you about their backstories and relationships.
The game tells you about it in the very beginning but never mentions it again. Hope that helps.
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