The constitutive equations for the irreversible mechanical phenomena, e.g. the plastic deformation and the sliding between solids with the friction have been studied over the several centuries. Especially, they have been studied for the description of the cyclic loading behaviors in the last half century in order to respond to the high developments of the mechanical, the civil and the structural industries. Then, various constitutive models for these phenomena during the cyclic loading have been proposed hitherto. In this article, the mechanical features and the advantages/disadvantages of the constitutive models which are adopted widely for mechanical design and installed into a lot of commercial software will be clarified by the critical review for the further developments of the research on the plastic deformation/sliding phenomena and the engineering design of solids and structures, since plural different models are not necessary to these ends for the analyses of identical deformation/sliding behaviors. Eventually, it will be described that the irrational formulations involved in the past formulations can be solved out thoroughly by the recent formulations of the subloading-overstress model and subloading-overstress friction model for the monotonic and cyclic loadings under the general rate of deformation/sliding from the quasi-static to the impact loadings in unified equations, disusing the rate-independent plastic/sliding constitutive models.