Grand Theft Auto (series)/Trivia


 * Banned in China: The series was banned in Saudi Arabia, Thailand (no thanks to a highly publicised incident where a man shot and killed a taxi driver in an apparent imitation of the games) and the United Arab Emirates.
 * Dueling Games: With the Driver series initially, thanks to some not-so-friendly jabs that III took towards that series. In the IV era, Saints Row became its main rival.
 * Fanwork Ban: In February 2021 a group of modders released reverse-engineered source code recreations of GTA III and Vice City that would allow the game to be played on modern and future platforms while incorporating quality of life improvements such as SkyGFX and SilentPatch, though it would still require original assets from the games to run (as is with Doom source ports). Take-Two took notice and issued DMCA notices against the developers; when this did not work, the company resorted to suing the developers, spuriously accusing them of causing "irreparable harm" to the company. This, alongside Take-Two's crackdowns against other total conversion mods, is speculated to have something to do with the Definitive Edition remasters, though the latter's release also created its own can of worms. The suit was eventually settled in 2023 under undisclosed terms.
 * Hey, It's That Guy!/Hey, It's That Voice!: With the series' celebrity voice casts, this is bound to crop up.
 * What Could Have Been:
 * A multiplayer mode similar to that of Grand Theft Auto IV was revealed by former Rockstar Games graphic designer Steven Walsh on his website. This mode was at some point scrapped in favour of GTA Online, which also serves as the muliplayer portion of GTA V but is otherwise marketed and supported by Rockstar as a separate product.
 * Grand Theft Auto: Online Crime World was reported to be in development between 1999 and 2000, but was silently canned.
 * Perhaps the best known of the cancelled multiplayer modes was the scrapped multiplayer portion in GTA III. Initially only the text strings referencing multiplayer were left from the PC version, but in 2011 art assets of the game's multiplayer maps were found lying dormant in the mobile releases.
 * A port of GTA 1 for the Sega Saturn was announced, reportedly running off the same engine used by Clockwork Knight. It was canned likely due to the console's disastrous release in North America.
 * Story mode DLCs were in development for GTA V, as evidenced by references from both within the game files and interviews with the game's voice cast who obliquely hinted at working on expansions for single player. This would ultimately be scrapped and repurposed as content updates for GTA Online given the latter having become a Cash Cow Franchise for Take-Two.