Grand Theft Auto III/Trivia


 * Fan Nickname: Due to being ordered around for the entire game, before his real name was revealed, Claude was referred to as "Fido". Also, Maria refers to Claude as "Fido" when he is ordered by Salvatore Leone to be her driver.
 * Hey, It's That Voice!: The first Grand Theft Auto game with a name-actor voice cast, each one known from cult crime movies and TV shows, including Frank Vincent (Goodfellas), Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs), Joe Pantoliano (The Sopranos), Robert Loggia (Scarface), Debi Mazar (Goodfellas), Michael Rapaport (True Romance) and Kyle Maclachlan (Twin Peaks).
 * The Shelf of Movie Languishment: It was delayed for a bit while some editing was done due to 9/11.
 * Shrug of God: ? "No one knows for sure what happened there" is the official line.
 * Too Soon: After 9/11, Rockstar North changed the paint jobs on the police cars so that they didn't resemble those of the NYPD. Some pedestrian dialogue was also changed. There was insufficient time between the disaster and publication for extensive alterations.
 * What Could Have Been: Originally, there was going to be children, school buses, elderly people with walkers, the ability to blow off limbs, as well as a hobo anarchist-terrorist named Darkel, who was still in the plot long enough to get his voice actor credited in the manual. Some of his missions include distributing ice cream that was effectively a bomb, blowing up a school bus full of children and flying a plane into a building to kill one person.
 * Actually, according to a recent Q&A on the Rockstar website, they revealed that Darkel, and all his missions were removed long before 9/11, because "...they just weren’t as good as the rest of the game, and tonally they were a little odd." They also add "None of these missions involved blowing up buses of school children." And for good measure "All of the more extreme rumours are amusing but impossible to have been achieved in such a short period of time."