As of October of 2017, the Grand Theft Auto series is turning 20 years old. While that title, originally released on DOS and Windows, then PlayStation a year later, is vastly different from the games we have enjoyed in recent years, the bottom line and underlying themes of these games have never changed. That first game featured a top-down format of gameplay, and took players to Vice City, Liberty City, and San Andreas for the first time. March and June 1999 brought us two expansion packs that brought the game to London. Later in that year, Grand Theft Auto 2 came out, which would signify the end of the 2D universe’s games.
The 3D Universe came next, offering us far greater overall detail and vastly increasing our ability to connect with the gaming world and cause mayhem. At was two years after number two came out, that we finally got GTA III. Vice City, San Andreas, Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories would follow, taking us on further adventures through the criminal underworlds of a fictionalized New York, Miami, and California. The most recent two games (along with Chinatown Wars), their expansions and the online game have made up what we know as the HD universe.
Between all of these games, there are multiple universes in which we could explore, get lost, and bring violence and destruction. The stories in these games are numerous, the characters range from disturbingly evil to just plain nasty, and with every new game, there seems to be more opportunity for fun and messed up virtual experiences. Needless to say, these games have absurd replay value and even with multiple playthroughs of each one, and reading about them online, there are still always things to learn about the series. Here are fifteen facts about GTA that even die hard fans of the franchise likely don’t know.
16 GTA V’s Improvised Scene
During the second half of the GTA V campaign, Michael De Santa is kidnapped and becomes temporarily unavailable to the player. The mission to find Michael and be able to play as him again is called “Fresh Meat” and starts out with a cutscene featuring Franklin and Trevor. During that scene, Trevor trips over a fence and Franklin starts to laugh at him. They then get into a minor altercation after Trevor gets offended by Franklin chuckling at him.
Here’s the thing, Shawn Fonteno, who voiced Franklin, was not supposed to start laughing. When he did, Steven Ogg, who voiced and did motion capture for Trevor, improvised his outrage and Forento followed his lead. The resulting scene was a memorable one, but wasn’t originally planned.
15 Rockstar Mocks Their Competition
Let’s be honest, in terms of coming up with amazing, sandbox style, criminal mayhem themes games, Rockstar has no competition. If you’re shaking your head and saying “Saints Row” right now, get a grip and figure your life out; even the weakest of the GTA games wipes the floor with those games.
Throughout the series, there are Easter eggs in which other open world series are mocked. In GTA III and Vice City, protagonists have to kill several players whose names are references to the Driver games. In GTA: San Andreas, there is a billboard for a street cleaning service called “True Grime.” There are a few other digs at the True Crime games. Several other series, including The Getaway, that get mocked. While GTA remains the frontrunner among the open-world franchises, True Crime NYC took some shots back at Rockstar, as did a couple of Saints Row games.
14 CJ And Franklin’s Voice Actors
Many people miss it, but there is an Easter egg in GTA V in which three NPC’s on bikes ride through Grove Street, who bear a resemblance to CJ, Sweet, and Ryder from San Andreas. Keeping in the spirit of Grove Street and the history of the families, few fans of this series know that the two actors who played Franklin Clinton and Carl Johnson are related.
Back in the early 2000s, Los Angeles born rapper Young Maylay was hired to do voice work for CJ in San Andreas. Shawn “Solo” Fonteno, who played Franklin Clinton in GTA V, is Young Maylay’s cousin. A pretty crazy coincidence — it’s a small (open) world.
13 The Voices Of Gang Members In GTA V
While there are certain things about GTA games that are wildly unrealistic, such as a completely untrained pilot being able to capably pilot a jet, or healing bullet wounds with pizza, there are some ways in which Rockstar goes all out to ensure as much authenticity as possible. For the most recent of the games, they did something interesting when finding voice actors for NPC gang members and criminals. They took to the streets and found real gang members to come in and provide their own voices.
Lazlow Jones (the real guy, not the GTA radio personality) said of the experience ““We get these guys in to record the gang characters because we don’t want a goofy LA actor who went to a fancy school trying to be a hard gang member. There’s nothing worse than that, so just go find the real terrifying people and say ‘can you come in here please?’ It makes sense, why get someone to fake it when you can get the real thing?
12 Franklin’s Voice Actor’s Story About Ice Cube
A we said earlier, Shawn Fonteno is the voice actor who played Franklin in GTA V. The Los Angeles based rapper has had an interesting life story to say the very least, and we don’t need to tell you, but he did a fantastic job voicing this GTA V protagonist. While he has spent much of his adult life rapping, periodically acting in some garbage films, and working on video games (he also worked on San Andreas and Watch Dogs), he was a drug dealer and gang member in his youth. He was also close with Cypress Hill back in the 90s when they (and others) were feuding with legendary rapper Ice Cube.
Fonteno went by the rap name “Solo” back then, and apparently, he met Ice Cube to deal with some business at an L.A. intersection one evening. Ice Cube started a scrap, and Solo finished it, stealing Ice Cube’s West Side Connection chain in the process.
11 There’s Something About GTA 3’s Flashback FM Station
One of the best things about any GTA game is the numerous options for radio listening while driving cars. While Vice City likely has some of the greatest licensed music (and some original tracks, courtesy of Love Fist) the world of gaming has ever seen, all of the games have memorable tracks that add to the experience. While the influence of the iconic film Scarface is obvious in Vice City, the creative team drew heavily from that movie for the making of GTA III. In fact, they set up a radio station called “Flashback FM 95.6,” that played five songs from the film, on loop. Elizabeth Daily’s “I’m Hot Tonight” and “Shake It Up,” along with Debbie Harry with “Rush Rush,” Amy Holland’s “She’s On Fire,” and of course the incredible tune “Scarface (Push it to the Limit)” by Paul Engemann were those five songs.
10 Max Clifford The PR Master
Recent Grand Theft Auto games have all had their fair share of controversy. Whether it be hiring “women of the night” and then killing them to get your money back, trafficking drugs, murdering people, driving too fast or you know, torturing people, there are plenty of reasons for irritating losers to freak out over some good, dirty, violent fun.
Early on, however, Rockstar had a different approach to media scrutiny compared to these days. Back in the 90s, they hired a publicist to stir up drama in the media. That man was Max Clifford, who has also represented Simon Cowell, among numerous other celebrities.
Clifford managed to get the media good and riled up prior to the release of the first game, and the series has been reviled by politicians and uptight activists ever since. Clifford’s private life has been nasty by the way, as he has been in and out of jails and courtrooms for numerous “assault” crimes, many of which were committed against young women.
9 How Many Children Are In The Series?
We have to give credit where credit is due. Rockstar clearly have a line in the sand. While that line in the sand has nothing to do with murder, assault, robbery, or any other crimes, they do keep children out of their games. Play them all again, there are virtually no young people in any of these amazing games. The games are violent, and Rockstar clearly have hearts, as shown by their decision not to include too many children in the series.
With that said, there are two very minor characters who are young. Mary-Beth Williams is just an infant when we encountered her in Vice City Stories. She was the child of minor characters Louise and Marty Williams, who are both killed during the game’s campaign. The child survives and is not seen or heard from again.
The other young character is Jill Von Crastenburg, a 13 year old socialite who is meant to parody the sexualization of child stars who grow up too fast. At just thirteen years old, she is already very “active” and has a criminal record.
8 Jack Thompson’s GTA IV Reference
Jack Thompson is a former lawyer and activist who has spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to fight the video game industry that has become more and more popular partially thanks to the publicity and criticism that people like him bring to the world of gaming. He has been particularly vocal as a critic of Rockstar, taking aim at GTA numerous times, along with the Manhunt games (obviously) and Bully.
In GTA IV, Niko is instructed to kill a certain lawyer who, during their interaction, says “guns don’t kill people, video games do”; which is a favorite quote of Thompson. He said that the inclusion of this character constituted a direct threat to him and demanded that the person be removed from the game, but nothing ever became of this little “demand.”
7 Is Amanda De Santa On Ashley Madison?
Anyone who has played the games knows that there is an entire society inside of the HD universe. While there was great detail in the 3D universe’s games, GTA IV and V not only have plenty of unique individuals walking around the streets but also movie theaters, bowling alleys, and other activities. Of course, this include the internet, on which someone can get lost for several hours. One of the sites in the game is hushsmush.com, a GTA version of the cheating website Ashley Madison. Amanda De Santa has a fairly obvious profile on this site, under the name Foxymama21. She describes herself as someone with a husband who just drinks by the pool all day and ignores her, and indicates her love for yoga. Given the events of the game, nothing about Amanda’s online presence on this site surprises us.
6 The Scarface Apartment In Vice City
This is one of the coolest Easter Eggs in the entire series. There is no secret as to the inspiration for not only the setting of the game Vice City but also some of the major events. It is the movie Scarface. That film has plenty of incredible, unforgettable scenes, including Tony Montana’s final stand atop the staircase, his “bad guy” rant in the fancy restaurant, and of course the cocaine deal gone wrong.
In that scene, Tony (Al Pacino) and his friend Angel are ambushed by some Colombians, and Angel is brutally murdered with a chainsaw. Tony’s backup finally shows up and they are able to kill the drug dealers and make their escape. In the Ocean Beach area of Vice City, there is an apartment building with a pink roof. On the south side of the building is room 3C, which is empty, except for a chainsaw and blood stains in the bathroom. There is also a small briefcase with some cocaine in it, so evidently, Chi-chi forgot to get the yayo.
5 Voice Actor Steven Ogg Recorded Trevor’s Lines HOW?
We already mentioned some interesting facts about “Solo” Shawn Fonteno, who voiced Franklin, but there are also some interesting stories about the gents who played Michael and Trevor. Ned Luke, who voiced Michael De Santa, said that putting on 25 lbs helped him get into character, playing a man in his mid to late 40’s who was overweight.
Steven Ogg, who did a brilliant job portraying unhinged maniac Trevor Philips, in voice and motion capture, had a different way of getting into character. He recorded much of Trevor’s dialogue in his underwear, in order to better stay in character. Ogg did a fantastic job, and since his work on this game, he has earned some other significant roles, including Westworld and The Walking Dead.
4 Even The Voice Actor Hated San Andreas’ “Supply Lines” Mission
There have been some profoundly frustrating missions throughout the Grand Theft Auto series of games. The mission “Demolition Man” in Vice City was one of these, when you had to fly an RC helicopter to blow up a construction site. A shockingly similar, radio controlled vehicle-based mission in San Andreas made us about as infuriated as we could have been while playing one of these games.
CJ works for RC shop owner Zero in this mission and has to fly an RC plane around San Fierro to destroy vans owned by Zero’s rival Berkley. Unfortunately, the RC plane has a limited amount of fuel and the vans basically drive in different directions, making this a mission that takes at least a few tries. Comedian David Cross played Zero, and admitted that he hated the mission when he played it, and hated the voice he used to portray Zero.
3 Who Was Darkel And Why Was He Removed From GTA III?
With games as large as any Grand Theft Auto title, there are things that are constantly being cut and added during the development stage. Much like we mentioned with the weapons earlier, characters are often remodeled, and some are cut altogether. Most of these characters are minor and their absence is never noticed, but there has always been some speculation over a character named Darkel who originally lived underneath the Callahan Bridge on Portland Island in GTA III. The original rumor that spread was that Darkel was a quest giving NPC who would have Claude blow up buildings, but his content was cut after the 9/11 attacks because it would have been offensive to many American players to be demolishing buildings.
This rumor has been denied by Rockstar, who simply indicated that his missions didn’t fit with the rest of the game well enough to include them as part of the plot.
2 What The Heck Was Race’n’Chase?
As we all know, the first of the GTA universes known as 2D, took the form of top-down gameplay animation. These early games were actually the result of another project known as Race’n’Chase. The game was a top-down driving game that would allow players to either play the part of either a cop or a criminal and either try to get away, or try to catch up. A glitch caused the cop cars in the testing phase of this game to constantly try to crash into player controlled cars, and the developers, then known as DMA Design (now Rockstar North), decided to change the game slightly, keeping the top-down format but making players criminals and adding stories to the game. This was the birth of the early Grand Theft Auto series.
1 Shout Out To A Famous Computer Hacker In San Andreas
Unless you listen to the radio banter on the talk shows in these games very carefully, you will miss some amazing references to events and people in real life. While there are more in these games than we care to count, one of the most incredible came from San Andreas. One of the popular segments on West Coast Talk Radio is “Area 53,” which deals primarily in conspiracy theories. One of the callers, who introduces himself as Kevin, claims to have been put into solitary confinement because he was such a skilled hacker that he could whistle into a pay phone and launch nuclear weapons.
This caller is a direct reference to a real life computer hacker named Kevin Mitnick. Now one of the most famous hackers in the world, he spent some time in prison several years ago, he was put in solitary confinement because apparently corrections employees told a judge (who believed their nonsense) that Kevin could whistle into a phone and launch nuclear weapons. These days, Mitnick is a security consultant with several books written on the subject of social engineering, manipulation, and hacking in general.
