The greatest thing about the Grand Theft Auto series is the escapism it offers our sheltered minds. Where else is there a place, besides Chicago, that you can take things and harm on a whim and probably get away with it? That's not really fair to Chicago; there's no place on Earth more dangerous than a GTA V karma server. Maybe some warzones, but that's an entirely different story.

From a bird's eye view game to a 3D first-person adventure, Grand Theft Auto has given us over 20 years of enjoyable mayhem. The game has changed a lot since its first installment, but there was always a theme of committing crimes for money. Every upstanding citizen for the past 20 years has been able to play the villain. We wonder if that has anything to do with how great America has become.

But it's not all awful stuff and chaos. There are real characters to investigate and complex missions that are really just advanced puzzles where crime is your tool. A game where mayhem is the major focus can be a great thing. But GTA is much more than that, it's a lifestyle. You're either down with GTA or you're a scrub.

26 First Dates Are Interviews

It's quite amazing what some of the passengers or bystanders are willing to witness and put up within GTA. In one of the GTA games, they introduced dating and love affairs with certain characters as a sort of side quest. When they eventually got into a vehicle with you, their dedication to love was tested by the number of humans you may or may not have hurt while avoiding all of the traffic laws and sometimes gravity.

Sometimes the woman would get out of the car running and screaming for the slightest bit of shenanigans. Only for you to be able to call her immediately and see if she's ready to try again. While others, like the woman above, are willing to become an accomplice in the name of successful courting.

25 Bad Thoughts Are Bad

My favorite part of the Spider-Man universe is the memes. Tobey Maguire hurt everyone's feelings with those movies, but now it seems as if we've been given the Spider-Man we deserve. And that is the meme Spider-Man you see above these words. We're not really sure if Spidey takes off his entire outfit to go to the bathroom, or to do other things, but it's probably more along the lines of something like a zipper that is hidden in a seam.

GTA V had some serious money put into its production.

Upwards of 265 million dollars was used for development and advertising. Within 3 days of its release during the holiday season, it made 1 billion dollars. Billion with a B.  That probably includes preorders, but that is over 16 million games give or take. That's a lot of people, Spider-Man.

24 Ignore My RPG

No one ever said GTA is realistic. Especially when it comes to the police. They don't care one bit that you're walking around with 30 guns on your persons. They really only care when you touch their vehicles, it makes them super angry and they will literally chase you until the ends of the Earth with horrible intent. It's what makes the game fun.

Perhaps one day our world will be like this. People free to walk down the street with rocket launchers on their shoulders or grenades strapped to their chest. What better way to worship the NRA and our 2nd amendment rights than to own and carry unconcealed a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. If only they were collapsible and made for the pocket.

23 If Only We Had The Courage

Admit it, when you've been stuck behind one of these vehicles in traffic or on the highway, there are a few seconds of debate on whether to take the risk. Let us be the first ones to tell you that it is 100% worth the risk. You can't choose when glory will find you, so you must seize it at a moment's notice. That way you can earn that glory in the form of medals or the tears of your enemies and the tears of your enemies family members when your enemies are no more.

This falls into the category of desirable scenarios we wish we could take from GTA without any real consequence. We're not psychos, but our GTA avatars certainly are. Therefore there is no simple way to drive cars off jumps and through fields without getting caught easily. Especially during the daytime in the city.

22 Traffic Lights Are The Enemy

One of the potential issues with children playing Grand Theft Auto is that we cannot know what we forget to leave out in the raising process. There's a possibility that we as parents or aunts and uncles forget to teach certain things like traffic laws. Only for the child to turn to GTA for those answers. Sometimes that sort of craziness is a great way to show children how not to act but there always ends up being a child who takes some things too literally and we end up with professional criminals and 37 Fast and Furious movies.

Don't ignore your kids when they ask you why you get so angry at red lights and explain that GTA is only what we wish we could do and drive like. Not so much that it's the way we should all drive, but merely a dream we all share.

21 Behold The Golden Path

There are always times when you are stuck in traffic or have to travel 20 minutes to a place that's only about 3 miles away. It's during those times where you should dig deep into your GTA training and decide whether you want to become a hero of travel. So what if your car will be destroyed, no one told you not to steal someone else's beforehand.

When you realize that most of the damage you do to vehicles in GTA have no bearing on you financially in the game it's pretty great.

Like, hey everyone, the whole point of this game is to steal other people's cars and destroy them on the way to steal other people's cars. Which is not the case in real life because the world sort of frowns upon stealing other people's things. Especially cars. Unless you're Nicholas Cage, in which case you can do anything you want. Except make a decent film post Raising Arizona.

20 They Never Tell You What Comes After

There are only two games that we can think of where one of the major annoyances are phone calls from people you don't want to talk to. The first one is Pokémon, and the second one is GTA. The people always call you nonstop for you to pay attention to them but don't they realize the struggle and grind of the open world?

When we're battling the police or trying to capture Pokémon, the last thing we need is our phone/Pokédex going off alerting the enemy to the position. But in GTA IV Roman continually calls you to go bowling, in GTA V there are a dozen idiots calling, and in Pokémon, there are hundreds of defeated trainers who are trying to be your friend. It's absurd.

19 From Donuts To Downey Joon

The best part about GTA is that you can sign on, and basically with fist or firearm, you can engage in a war with the police indefinitely. Some of the most enjoyable experiences are the escaping from the police after eliminating about forty of them. They get really angry and try to run you off the road. If you're a veteran of GTA then it's not that difficult to escape the police when you need to, but this isn't about that.

In GTA IV you're stuck with the choice of escape easily or stand and fight until the police finally drain your energy with ten thousand bullets. In GTA V the chase is real. If you want to have a good time and really have a challenge, these police are the answer. They come hard and they don't let up until you earn your escape.

18 Secret Racism Not So Secret

It's not unknown to the gamers of GTA that this was the scenario in the series. But to be completely honest, the characters who we get to play as that weren't black also steal cars and do criminal things as their first mission. It's just a not so blatantly racist stereotype. The thing about stereotypes is that they are based on something that may have happened once in the world but some jerk decided to hammer into the cultural zeitgeist.

But the real racism of GTA comes with the online players who are clearly a mix of keyboard warriors and internet trolls.

The slurs they shout at random is pretty ridiculous and there's really no way to govern the issue. It's possible that one day racism will no longer exist, but that may never be the case in GTA online.

17 The Will Of Fried Chicken

The concept of food as health regeneration is not too far from the truth of warm-blooded creatures such as us human beings. We have to burn calories to keep our organs functioning and our body temperature at a certain point. But we have yet to create food that heals us directly like in video games. Still waiting on the curing capabilities of macaroni and cheese.

This isn't that farfetched of an idea in video games either. Legend of Zelda, Mario, and Skyrim all have healing mechanics involved directly with food. Breath of the Wild introduced a cooking mechanic that allowed Link to make all sorts of healing foods. But most of the time I'm in the menu eating 40 apples in five seconds to fill my hearts back.

16 Cheating Is For Losers, Unless Cheating Helps You Win

The good thing about cheat codes in a game is that if you screw it up you can just do a new cheat code to correct it. Except in the older GTA games, if you used too many cheat codes or used certain specific cheat codes, the game could become corrupted. It's not the worst thing in the world but many of the people who play games sink hours of their lives into these things. Always worth it. Except in Ark: Survival Evolved.

It wouldn't be a situation where the game would no longer work, but a scenario where all the civilians have machine guns and all the vehicles are tanks. That coupled with an aggressive NPC cheat could make the game unplayable for lack of being able to survive such consistent onslaughts.

15 Welcome To Reality

It doesn't always arrive at this point in real-life, but there are certainly moments of our existence when we realize that we're behind an actual steering wheel and not a PS4 controller. The times stuck in traffic where there is a perfectly empty sidewalk to drive upon would save plenty of time. There never really is a time where we think that it'd be fun to harm a bunch of pedestrians, we're not monsters. But it's completely normal and within the realm of sanity to wish you could avoid traffic lights and drive through fields to reach our destinations faster. But someone will call the police, and those police in the real world don't let you off with a hospital visit and a fine. Unless of course, your dad is a judge or something like that. Life is unfair. Unless, again, if your dad is a judge.

14 Ruthlessness Incarnate

There are certain things in the world that capture the unique attention of random impulsive desire. Like a folded potato chip, or the perfect nacho, and especially a pedestrian ready to be smashed between two objects in GTA. The case of the humans who play GTA not being psychopaths is becoming an increasingly difficult argument to make. Why would one see the opportunity to completely crush an NPC as a perfect moment in gaming? Does this mentality transfer to our real-life driving minds? It could be a similar idea that must be purged from our minds as we drive down the street. We know you want to run people over and steal cars, maybe just take it easy instead and drink something. But never drive afterward.

13 Can It Still Go To McDonald's

There isn't much more of an exciting scenario than when you're escaping from the police in GTA and one of the fastest cars in game crosses your path. You almost owe it to the developers to take this gift of speed and push the limits of it to the absolute extreme. And while you're at it, make sure you run down as many people as possible so that nice red paint job stays red.

Ther's nothing really to be lost in GTA. Even in GTA Online, it's not difficult to make money and pay for things that you want. Like most other games it just involves the grind set before you to advance. So take the fast cars and crash them into people's legs or run them off cliffs. They deserve it.

12 They All Get Revived Anyway

If you stick around after you eliminate a bunch of cops in GTA you'll notice that the ambulance comes to revive them. The problem with that scenario is that no one sticks around after they destroy a bunch of cops. There are a few reasons behind this. One of them is that the cops know it was you, so unless you eliminate all the cops in the game at the same time, then the word is going to get out that you're a cop destroyer. Also, if you do manage to eliminate all the cops around and you're left with a scenario where you're there long enough to watch them revived only for them to resume their attempted destruction of you. So, it's all bad. Respect the police.

11 Boromir Plays GTA

What's the point of being careful driving around in GTA? Part of the fun of driving in GTA is that it's pretty simple, you press a few buttons and ignore everything you've ever been taught about driving and traffic laws. The laws of logic and limits no longer apply to you anymore. Plus Boromir is one of the coolest characters in LOTR. Partly because Sean Bean is the man and always will be.

Another great thing about those driving controls in GTA is that basically anyone can learn them.

You can put that controller in anyone's hand and they can enjoy themselves for hours. But there's just no way for them to drive carefully. It's almost implied that whatever vehicle they get into will become destroyed.

10 Trevor Vs. Bieber

This topic would certainly be up for a healthy debate. On one side of the argument, we have Trevor and the creation of the character rooted in the mentality of the gamers who rampage through the worlds of GTA. On the other side of the argument lies the millions of dollars that Justin Bieber has made as well as his loyal fan base of "Beliebers." Are you a Belieber?

Research done on Trevor can dig up the information that he was created in the wake of how most people play GTA. Sociopathic, nearly unstoppable bad guys and recidivist criminals. It's not truly known if the creators of GTA knew that many of the players of their games would spend so much time ending civilians and cops. And if it was planned for that to occur, who are these developers truly?

9 Grand Theft Auto Logic

What is the mechanic built into the NPC programming in this game that forces them to flee on foot from gunshots? This doesn't always happen so it must just be an occurrence within the matrix that is GTA. Sometimes the NPCs just slam on the gas in their vehicle and if you're unlucky enough to be in their path, you're going to get smashed.

No matter what the case may be, if someone is running away from you in GTA then that probably means you did something wrong or evil. Or even that they are running from physical problems as well as their emotional problems. Any of those scenarios basically gives you the right to shoot at them. It's science. And science is a beautiful thing.

8  Speaking Of...

There are people who enjoy the driving aspects of the games, some who enjoy the ability to fly or use boats, other who love the missions, some who enjoy the chaos, and then there are those who do it all. But there are a certain group of people who just sign on to gun people down. If only for 30-minutes.

You cannot directly find these people for they exist within us all, the only difference is what mood we happen to be in and what sort of evil we dream of. You could be doing literally anything in GTA and all of a sudden a switch will flick and you turn into the Terminator. Your mission may have failed, but you'll be darned before you allow those who witnessed the failure to live.

7 Grand Theft Auto Cops Show No Mercy

One overlooked gem that GTA offers us mortals is the ability to be under the influence and drive vehicles. Risky driving is never okay. It's a selfish act and causes more pain than any video game ever could. So if anyone feels the need to do such, do it on your couch with an Xbox controller.

The guy in this meme seems like he's having one of the best, or worst, days of his life. He's sweaty in the nastiest of ways and his eyes say something that you never want to tell your children. Sort of similar to the feelings that we get when we play GTA. This guy has such a look to him that reminds us of the sloth character from the movie series Ice Age.