Grand Theft Auto has a really grim reputation outside of the gamer world, with people linking it to real life shootings and tragedies. Frankly, I believe that you can’t really blame the game for this outcry. After all, GTA has always been a not for kids game, meaning it shouldn’t be sold to any impressionable young children, just impressionable teenagers and adults. If a child somehow gets their hands on this game, through buying it online or on Steam, then it isn’t Rockstar’s fault as they have said that it isn’t for children.
Another interesting point I like to raise about GTA is that while it holds a high rating, games like The Sims walk away with a 12+. True, The Sims doesn’t have the same things as Grand Theft Auto, and the game doesn’t exactly encourage you to do bad things to your Sims, but it doesn’t exclude the fact that you can do these things! The Sims just hides its bad side behind an upbeat theme and trailer of people living happily together in their world.
Regardless of whether you think GTA should be held responsible for its consumers' actions, there are certainly some messed up aspects of the game. Then again, the missions rarely encourage you to go and beat up strangers with a baseball bat or harass random courtesans! If The Sims had an actual storyline where you had to lock them in a room and set it on fire the rating might go out. These comics highlight some of the weirdest moments of the game. Proceed with caution!
25 Where To Keep Yours?
Before things get really gross, let's start with something funny! I always wonder in video games, not specifically Grand Theft Auto, but during gaming in general, where your character is carrying all their stuff. Everyone in video games seems to have a backpack where they carry all their stuff and extends more experience you get, but no one in video games every carries a backpack!
So, stuff like this is cute to imagine. It’s also very courteous of the people they are fighting with to not shoot the person with the wheel and to pause the fight while you stand-up and pick your new weapon from the wheel. Either that or the real enemy here is that car (which would make sense reflecting on many games and action movies I’ve seen).
Comic by Ctrl Alt Del.
24 Busted By The Cops
This is an element of GTA I’ve always found questionable. You can run around Liberty City, causing all the chaos you can, until they send five police cars after you, chase you down and finally bust you... then let you back out onto the street minutes later! Sure, they take away some of your money for bail, but they still let a dangerous human being back onto the streets. And odds are you stole that money or got it from some dodgy mafia guy.
It also doesn’t matter how many times the police bring you in! It could be your fourth arrest for multiple things that day, but you’ll still be allowed to walk free after some basic admin. I can’t imagine what horrible things must be happening in LC to make them turn a blind eye to the player's shenanigans!
Comic by Portuguesegeese.
23 Leave The Baby!
Ah, the baby on fire meme! Probably one of my favourite Sims-based memes to come out of the internet. The feeling of getting a new video game is a questionable one, isn’t it? It’s a mix of the joy of getting a new game, particularly one you’ve been anticipating for a while now, alongside the dread of knowing how much else you have to do in your life. All your deadlines, chores and other responsibilities that you can’t just neglect. Obviously, you do anyway, but you feel bad about it. If that baby understood the anticipation of a new GTA game, then I’m sure they wouldn’t mind being left alone for a little while.
22 GTA On The Go
This kind of thing forces the GTA player to take a long hard look at themselves and consider what they’re actually doing. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with playing a video game, but when someone overhears something like this out of context it makes everything a lot more questionable. It’s the main reason why I didn’t buy GTA iOS, despite GTA III being one of my preferred GTA games.
Mind you, almost everything sounds wrong out of context! I still remember about seven years ago when a friend of mine was talking about Fable III on a bus when she loudly brought up how my character ended up with around five health issues, despite using protective measures. This earned me a questionable look from some middle-aged ladies in front of us.
Comic by Ctl Alt Del.
21 GTA Problems
This one made me laugh a lot. Particularly the fourth one! Obviously, we don’t endorse crime of any sort, just enjoy the funny comic. Again, a lot of these can be applied to gaming in general, especially the issue of spoilers and people talking about new games constantly. It did annoy me when Pokémon Go came out, for example, and people were constantly talking about funny named fictional creatures that I’d never heard of, which slightly irritated me. But at the end of the day, you can’t stop other people enjoying things and to escape everything that annoys you, you’ll have to go hide in a cave!
And as far as spoilers go, you can’t spoil GTA! There is no twist ending in GTA, it doesn’t matter if you find out about the missions beforehand. Just get in a stolen police car and drive on the pavement!
Comic by Dorkly.
20 Christmas In Liberty City
Doesn’t this one just crush your spirit? The poor children of Liberty City! Granted, I’ve never seen any children in the game (apparently there have been plans to include them in games, but it’s always been pulled), but if you lived in LC would you really let your kids out of the house?
Those poor kids are sat inside all day every day, not even able to go to school as all the buses have been trashed in junk yards. They wait and dream every day for Christmas when Santa will bring them lots of nice things and Christmas cheer. Only for him to be chased out of the streets of Liberty City by the many criminals that run rampant and it’s not like the police are doing anything to stop them! Happy Christmas!
Comic by Shaideblog.
19 Doing The Missions
I’m not going to lie, this is how I play! I’ve never played a GTA game where I’ve completed all the missions. I’ll do them to unlock new areas or content, but I’ll power through them, rather than do them because they’re a key part of the fun of the game! They’ve just never been as good as the sandbox world! Missions are normally just picking someone up or dropping someone off and it’s just not as fun as running around like a maniac.
I feel a little bad for the writers who come up with the missions. They’re sitting in their office thinking about what a jolly lot of innocent fun everyone will have playing their game, and that no-one would possibly think of going crazy just for the fun of it. Oh, you poor sweet things!
Comic by Ivanev.
18 How To Drive
As much as I’d like to envision the creators thinking of the game as a jolly innocent adventure, this next comic proves me wrong!
I’ve tried so often to drive normally in the game. Sometimes I’ve loaded up the game and decided just to try driving around like a normal person trying to get to work. I don’t know why I decided to do this, I just wanted to. But the game is just not made for normal driving. Someone else will hit you and mess up your car, or a pedestrian will step in front of your car without warning and everything will go crazy!
The player isn’t the problem; every other driver and all the pedestrians in LC are the issue! Drive around normally for a few minutes and see for yourselves.
17 The Things They Put You Through
I don’t think this one needs any explanation. You can disagree with me about any of these crossing any line or not representing the themes of GTA, but honestly, this one creeps me out so much! One could argue when you create a game with all the themes and crimes of GTA, you’ve already thrown caution to the wind, but personally, this scene was too much for me.
Perhaps one could argue that it wasn’t the comic that crossed the line, but the scene itself, but any reminder that the scene exists makes me uncomfortable. I don’t know, maybe I’m too innocent and soft for this! If you enjoyed this moment, then good for you (but you should probably reevaluate some things). I think I’d rather watch Dads.
Comic by Letsbefriendsagain.
16 Don’t Touch The Police
Granted getting arrested doesn’t have the consequences in LC as we’ve already established, but it doesn’t mean that the police have much tolerance! I understand why they might be cynical given that every day someone runs around on a spree and that there is more crime in their city in a week, then everywhere else in the world gets in a year! It’s absolutely ludicrous!
Maybe the more civilians that cops get for nudging them slightly, the fewer civilians there are for these maniacs to get on the rampage. Perhaps they think of it as a more merciful demise or a more noble end. Or perhaps considering that criminals spring randomly every day, they’re not willing to take any chances. Today it’s a nudge, tomorrow they're jacking ambulances!
Comic by DaltonKeslar1206.
15 Dodgy Loading
GTA is a funny experience. I don’t know whether the loading screen is just against players or what, but it certainly brings a lot of questions to the table. It isn’t really a great argument when people who think that GTA is a mess or a bad influence walk in and see this! The loading screens aren’t always that bad, but the ones that are get a bit embarrassing when you’re not alone.
With as popular as GTA is with teenagers, I think the developers should take this into account. The parents of teenagers aren’t that great when it comes to things like knocking and privacy, so they should really look at their game with this in mind. Mind you getting caught with a loading screen is a lot worse than beating a courtesan behind an on-fire police car.
14 It Could Be Worse
Along with being a very funny comic, this would be a good one to send to anyone you know who thinks GTA leads to violence or influences people to commit the crimes in real life. I don’t know whether it would make them laugh or make them tut, but it would be fun.
Obviously, GTA players don’t do this sort of thing. People who do these sorts of things don’t have time to play video games or have different hobbies, such as the crimes listed. And those who play GTA don’t do these sort of things because they’re too busy playing GTA! This is a funny comic, but it’s also a little dark! Obviously, you shouldn’t do any of these things! If you have the urge, then play GTA and see if that helps. If not, seek help.
13 The Sequels Formula
This pretty much sums up all the GTA sequels. Sure, the graphics get better, more weapons are introduced and new characters, but it’s basically the same concept. Jack cars, run around, shooty-shooty bang-bang! Sort of in relation to what I was saying earlier about spoilers in GTA, the concept and fun will remain the same. There is only so much Rockstar can do can improve on this concept, although faster cars do help!
I’m not trying to knock GTA, I like GTA, but it’s not like you need to play all the previous games in order to understand the storyline here! I’ve not played all the GTA games, but I’ve never felt confused about why someone needed to be hunted and why a courtesan needed to be dropped off.
12 Age Appropriate
I’m not going to lie; my mother purchased my first GTA game for me at age twelve. It wasn’t a present, I paid for it with my own money, but she didn’t deny me the game. And nowadays with things like Steam and online gaming, it’s a lot harder to restrict what games our kids see. But it also doesn’t discount the fact that adults play GTA! It doesn’t change that fact that it’s for adults, and more adults play it than children.
That’s why I love this one. Sure, it’s gross, but it’s not the job of the employees of GameStop or anywhere to restrict what games people play. But it’s also not the employee's fault if a kid gets hold of a game, even if an adult is blatantly buying it for a kid.
11 The Frustration!
This is one of the reasons why I hate the missions! There is something about Liberty City that gives it very selective levels of destruction. Lampposts fall over the moment they’re tapped; the slightest knock leaves your car smoking, and one sharp turn can send you flying through the air.
So, whenever you’re at the end of a difficult mission, one you’ve attempted many times but you’re feeling serene as you finally approach the end... then you’ll encounter something or get nudged by someone, mess up the car and the mission will have failed! I was very comforted when I found this comic, as I now know that it isn’t just me. It’s always good to learn when someone else is just as ticked off as you are at something that doesn’t matter that much.
10 Never Ending
I mentioned earlier how pointless getting arrested in GTA is (sure you’ll fail the mission, but screw the mission) but running out of health is even more ludicrous!
It doesn’t matter if you’re being shot repeatedly in the heat as you run away from the police, being hit by multiple cars before being set on fire, you’ll always be fine afterward! You’ll go to the hospital, pay the bill, and then walk out of the building completely fine! Sure, you were missing two limbs and your frontal lobe when you walked in, but they patched you up grand.
And this must get very depressing for the cops who find the laws of mortality don’t apply to the most dangerous man in LC. Not that arresting him would be any more satisfying.
Comic by Dorkly.
9 The Anticipation
A new GTA always causes a bit of a stir. It shouldn’t, as I pointed out earlier, as a new GTA would be any worse than an old GTA game and there is no point getting annoyed at a video game. And look at the joy it brings to people who might be going through a hard time! An unemployed gamer who might not have a lot going for them right now or a student who isn’t getting a great deal of satisfaction out of class.
I’ll also say, as a gamer, it is very annoying when the release of a game you’ve been praying for falls on a very busy week, or when you have an assignment that needs to get done. I can’t speak for fearmongering newscasters though. They’re probably covered in the current political climate anyhow.
Comic by Dorkly.
8 Construction Of Liberty City
If there is one thing every GTA player knows, it’s that Liberty City’s construction of lampposts, road signs, and concrete walls is dangerously underfunded, but their greenery is very well funded and well grown. While lampposts fall over when anything heavier than a thumbtack nudges them and while cars can smash through anything made of metal, including fire hydrants and mailboxes, trees will set your car on fire!
Maybe there is a positive environmental message somewhere here. That we shouldn’t crash into trees or hedges but just leave them be. Maybe Rockstar is worried that if we’re allowed to destroy nature in their games it’ll lead to us hurting the environment. And given how many cars there are in LC and how many they go through, they need all the greenery they can get!
Comic by JonasZimmerArt.
7 Karma Server
I actually think this should happen. Sure, maybe it’s a little crazy and the only people who would willingly go on the Karma Server have some issues, so they might have to do it like this where it’s a surprise. Every now and then the game will randomly put you in a Karma Server and the severity of the situation will depend on your own behavior in previous missions. I can’t see Rockstar really getting on board with the situation, but it would certainly play well with the people who complain about how bad GTA is, giving the players a taste of their own medicine!
Actually, they’ll probably think it was invented to play out torture fantasies or something. But so what, each to their own!
Comic by Ctrl Alt Del.
6 GTA Sesame Street
Doesn’t this one just cross a line you didn’t even know what there? I see a lot of these “GTA: Random Place” memes. The first two I saw made me laugh a little, but overall there are just too many for it to be funny anymore. But this one just surprised me!
I was never big into Sesame Street when I was a little kid, Big Bird freaked me out just a little too much. But I know it was a huge part of growing-up for so many people. As an adult, I’ve watched several clips from the show, like how they dealt with grief, divorce, and autism, and now think that it’s a very positive experience for little kids. Now imagine some maniac running through Sesame Street, the police running after him.
Childhood ruined?
Comic by ThePhenomenal92.