# Grand Theft Auto III

Grand Theft Auto III (2001) is a game in the Grand Theft Auto series by Rockstar Games.

## Dialogue

    Newscaster [Intro]: Liberty City is in shock today, as the police and Emergency Services deal with the aftermath of a devastating attack on a police convoy this morning. As yet, no details have been released about the prisoners being transferred in the convoy, and no group has claimed responsibility. The convoy left police headquarters early this morning for a routine transfer of felons to the Liberty Penitentiary. The attack took place on the Callahan Bridge, leaving few witnesses, and the bridge itself severely damaged. Some of the convicts are thought to have perished in the explosion that followed the initial attack. Revelations as to the professionalism of the attack struck police hours afterward, when identification of the missing felons were further hampered by an attack by computer hackers on police headquarter databases. With the Porter Tunnel project falling behind schedule, this disaster leaves Portland isolated from the rest of the city.
    Colombian Cartel member: Come on! Señor dickhead! It's no problem to kill you! You gonna be sorry. A'right, a'right. Get lost.
    Toni: You did good back there kid, real good. C'mon let's introduce you to the Don.
    Salvatore: Hey Luigi!
    Luigi: Oh, my girls have been missing you so much. Salvatore, you've been away too long.
    Salvatore: You tell them, when this unfortunate business has been taken care of, we'll go down to the club and celebrate. There is my boy.
    Joey: Hi, Pop!
    Salvatore: Have you got yourself a good woman yet? You know your Momma, god bless her soul would be turning over in her grave, if she ever saw you without a wife.
    Joey: I know, I'm working on it.
    Salvatore: TONI! How is your Momma? She's a great woman, you know! Strong, firenze.
    Toni Cipriani: She's good... fine.
    Salvatore: Terrific, Terrific. Now listen you guys, you go inside while I talk to our new friend here. I have nothing but good things for you, my boy...
    Miguel: [during the mission, Cutting The Grass, after following Curly Bob, he gets out of his taxi to go meet up with Miguel and Catalina at the docks in Portland Harbor] Here comes our little friend, Mr. Big Mouth himself.
    Catalina: Were you followed? You know what goes on here is our little secret, amigo.
    Curly Bob: No, no, I-I wasn't followed. [sniffing] You got my stuff?
    Catalina: Here's your SPANK, squealer. Now talk!
    Curly Bob: Okay, so the Leone's are fighting wars on two fronts. [sniffing] They're in a turf war with the Triads with no sign of either side giving up. Meanwhile, Joey Leone has stirred up some bad blood with the Forellis. Every day they're losing men and influence in the city. [sniffing] Salvatore is becoming dangerous and paranoid. [sniffing] He suspects everybody and everything.
    Catalina: [chuckles] With loyalty like yours, what has he possibly got to worry about?
    [she and Miguel leave Curly, then Claude shows up and kills him]
    Asuka Kasen: [for the mission, Two-Faced Tanner] Maria and I have gone shopping. Our source in the police has informed us that one of our drivers is a strangely animated undercover cop! He's more or less useless out of his car, so we've tagged it with a tracer. Make him bleed!
    Lazlow Jones: What? Hanging out with loads of naked chicks? I mean I see the fun in it, but... I just think that clothes have distinct advantages. Like... like not accidentally cooking yourself, or... or when you're working on a building.
    Naked Man on Chatterbox: We're not swingers! It's not about sex! It's about being one with the world.
    Lazlow Jones: Belief in what, I mean, look Jeff, I... I admire your passion, really I do, but... what will people be marching for? Wh... what's your rally about?
    Jeff: It's about justice, Mr. Low! A chance to shine and make a difference. [...] Look... look, do you wanna help or not?
    Lazlow Jones: I don't know what I'm helping!
    Jeff: You're helping America! What kind of patriot are you? It's a rally!
    Lazlow Jones: You don't know what it's for, do you?
    Jeff: It's for hope. Please come, everybody! It'll be real good!
    Lazlow Jones: Alright, you fight the power, brother!
    Momma Cipriani: Toni's off making people bleed, or trying to. He'll never be as tough as his Pop, but he left you a note on the table.
    Toni: The laundry has agreed to pay - you did real good kid! Go collect the cash and bring it back here. Watch out for the Triads. They may be shoving a firecracker up your ass, but don't take no crap. Nobody, I mean nobody, messes with TONI CIPRIANI!
    [introducing the song "Shake It Up" by Giorgio Moroder and Arthur W. Barrow]
    Toni: This one reminds me of waking up on the [static] band tour bus. What's his name? The one with the highlights and the mascara? He was wearing this great jacket with shoulder pads and he started playing along to this song on a kazoo. We were wild.
    [repeated line]
    Lazlow: What are you talking about?
    Old Woman: [having her car stolen] I'm an old lady, for Christ's sake!
    Old Woman: [stuck in traffic] I gotta get my face plucked!
    [at Joey's garage, Joey is fixing a car]
    Misty: Are you ready already? I want to play with your "thing" again.
    Joey: Just this one more, then...
    [Joey notices, that The Player has arrived]
    Joey: Ah, my friend!
    Pedestrian: You can look but you can't touch!
    Freddy: When I was a boy in England, I had a nanny. She was very strict, Lazlow. [...]
    Lazlow: How old is your son?
    Freddy: Excuse me?
    Lazlow: How old is your son?
    Freddy: I don't have children! I can't stand the little brats! But Freddy needs a nanny...
    Lazlow: Alright, that's enough of him! God, who gave this guy a green card?
    Gay Construction Worker: In the Navy!
    [Lazlow finishes a conversation with a caller on Chatterbox]
    Lazlow: This is really going nowhere. Do you have anything else to say?
    Caller: Yes...
    [yells]
    Caller: Free Kevin!
    Chinatown Pedestrian: Mo money, Mo problems!
    Gay Construction Worker: Young man!
    [later]
    Gay Construction Worker: There's a place you can go.
    [later]
    Gay Construction Worker: Call the YMCA.
    Caller: I'm promoting my organization, Citizens Raging Against Phones.
    Lazlow: Crap? Your organization is called CRAP? How many people are there in this crap?
    Caller: Citizens are raging against phones!
    Lazlow: How many people?
    Caller: There are three of us. It's hard organizing meeting without the phone. We've had to resort to carrier pigeons and they keep disappearing.
    Lazlow: Wait a minute, you want to stop people from using the phone? But you're calling up on a phone to tell the world about it!
    Joey: "Chunky" Lee Chong is pushin' spank for some new gang from Colombia... or Colorado... or something, I'm not really sure... who needs details anyway? That rat has sold his last stirfry. I want you to take him out! Sort yourself with a nine, you know where it is, right?
    Diablo: You gonna die now, Homes!
    Columbian: You're a brave man, eh?
    Kenji Kasen: YOU! How fitting you should choose this moment to show your worthless face! It would appear your attempts to dissuade the Jamaicans from becoming bed fellows with the Cartel were wholly inadequate! Yardie pushers line Liberty's streets selling packets of SPANK like they were selling hotdogs! Those Cartel pigs are laughing at us, at me! I will give you one last chance to prove my sisters faith in you to be well founded! Run these scumbags into the ground and wash your shame in rivers of our enemies blood!
    Salvatore Leone: Me and the fellas need to talk business so you're gonna look after my girl for the evening. HEY MARIA! MOVE YOUR BUTT! Dumb broad does this every time. And here she is, the one and only Queen of Sheba! What were you doing up there? Whatever it was, I bet it cost me money.
    Maria: Well, you don't think I hang around for the conversation, do you?
    Salvatore Leone: Get in that car and keep your big mouth shut. Take the limo but bring it back in one piece, yhear me? And watch her, she can be trouble.
    Maria: Yeah, yeah, yeah! I'm sure your new lap dog has everything covered, and isn't he big and strong? Hey Fido, Let's go visit Chico and get some party treats! He's at the rail station at the Chinatown waterfront I think.
    Maria: M-E-N, Oh, it's a dirty word but there's only three letters.
    Maria: You broadcasters are all the same, aren't you, I mean I heard about you, you're always out on boys nights!
    Lazlow: Whoa, Whoa what are you talking about, I'm married!
    Maria: One of those convenience jobs to protect you, I bet? I know what you're all like! You know more about men than I know about leopard-skin furniture!
    Reed Tucker: Our ancestors didn't eat chicken wings, they lived at one with nature and their eco-system. Existing on a diet of nuts, berries and leafy vegetables.
    Lazlow: Yeah, and they threw stones at their own shadow and died of old age and fear at twenty-four!
    Police helicopter co-pilot: We're gonna KILL YOU!
    Police helicopter pilot: [to pilot] You can't say that it's not in the book!
    Donald Love: Experience has taught me that a man like you can be very loyal for the right price, but groups of men get greedy.
    Pedestrian: Give me a doughnut! I'm hungry!
    Caller: Countries that don't have guns aint American!
    Lazlow: You're right, countries that don't have guns aren't American...
    Maria: You broadcasters are all the same, aren't you, I mean I heard about you, you're always out on boys nights!
    Lazlow: Whoa, Whoa what are you talking about, I'm married!
    Maria: One of those convenience jobs to protect you, I bet? I know what you're all like! You know more about men than I know about leopard-skin furniture!
    Caller: Wow, I got through! Uh, Lazlow, I think your last two callers are a perfect example of manners in this city! People are rude, and they don't seem to care about anything but themselves. Perfect example: the other day, I stopped at the store to pick up an exercise bar because I hadn't had breakfast or lunch. So I go up to pay, and the lady's like, "A dollar twenty-five please." So I get out my checkbook, and this guy behind me is like, "Oh come on lady, you don't have two dollars?" And I said, "As a matter of fact, I don't! I spent my last two dollars last night buying gas at these ridiculous gas prices. And besides, who are you anyway? Can't you see that I'm wearing my 'I walked for the cure' T-shirt?" People are so inconsiderate!
    Lazlow: Well, you'll get no argument from me. I mean, I get every inconsiderate moron in Liberty City calling into this show. I mean, people think that I have no feelings what-so-ever!
    Caller: Exactly! Another perfect example: the other day I'm over at the hospital to have my lunch with my girl friend Cherice, and this maniac comes right up on my bumper, flashing his lights, and I'm like, "Hey guy, the light is red, you can't just come up behind me honking and flashing your lights!" Then he gets over this megaphone and says, "To the woman in the teal Maibatsu Monstrosity, please move to the side!" Can you believe it? I mean, who has a megaphone hooked into their car? People are sooo obnoxious these days! And rude! I mean, I tell my nanny to teach my kids some manners.
    Lazlow: You know, I think that's a lesson to us all! All right, hello next caller, you're on Chatterbox.
    Freddy: Hello Lazlow...
    Lazlow: ...ugh...
    Freddy: ...did that woman say she was a nanny? Because Freddy needs a nanny because he's been a very naughty boy...
    Lazlow: *Nooo, no nannies*!
    Lazlow Jones: Get off! Get lost, you're just a cheap pimp from upstate get out of my studio!
    Fernando Martinez: I saved your daddy! I saved your husband! It is a miracle
    Lazlow Jones: Get out of here!
    Fernando Martinez: IT'S A MIRACLE!
    Lazlow Jones: Well Toni...
    Toni: Toni? How did you know my name was Toni? Are you tracing this call, because if you are, you're gonna become real intimately acquainted with- what your brains look like. My name ain't Toni, okay?
    Lazlow Jones: Alright.
    Toni: But my mom she keeps goin, Toni, Toni be a real man stand up for yourself don't take no shit! But all I wanna do is to be a good son and show that she cares for me, show that she loves me, and you know, say I was a good kid but it seems like nothings ever good enough for her you know what I mean? What do I do?
    Luigi Goterelli: There's a new high on the street, goes by the name of SPANK. Some wiseguy's been introducing this trash to my girls down Portland harbour. Go and introduce a bat to his face. Then take his car, respray it. I want compensation for this insult.
    Salvatore Leone: Me and the fellas need to talk business so you're gonna look after my girl for the evening. HEY MARIA! MOVE YOUR BUTT! Dumb broad does this every time. And here she is, the one and only Queen of Sheba! What were you doing up there? Whatever it was, I bet it cost me money.
    Maria: Well, you don't think I hang around for the conversation, do you?
    Salvatore Leone: Get in that car and keep your big mouth shut. Take the limo but bring it back in one piece, yhear me? And watch her, she can be trouble.
    Maria: Yeah, yeah, yeah! I'm sure your new lap dog has everything covered, and isn't he big and strong? Hey Fido, Let's go visit Chico and get some party treats! He's at the rail station at the Chinatown waterfront I think.
    Claude: I'm gonna tear those triads apart!
    [after Flashback FM plays a song called "She's on Fire"]
    Toni: Oh she's on fire! Luckily I've never have been... I've done a lot of crazy things, I can tell you that... but I've never been on fire... at least not to my knowledge.
    Lazlow: Hello, caller... you're on Chatterbox.
    Caller: Lazlow, I just wanted to make your viewers aware that...
    Lazlow: Okay, now this is a radio-show, we don't have viewers... we have listeners.
    Caller: Er... okay... anyway, Lazlow, I just wanted to make your viewers aware the...
    Taxi Driver: [having his taxi stolen] Get in the back, aaaah!
    Pedestrian: Yep, I've been drinkin' again.
    Caller: I told you before man, don't mock me! My taxes pay your salary, you pansy!
    Lazlow: Sir, this is a commercial radio station owned by Love Media. Advertising revenue pays my salary.
    Caller: Liberty City was great before phones ruined everything.
    Lazlow: Liberty City was a church, a cow pasture and three houses when the telephone was invented!
    Caller: Liar!
    Lazlow: You're the liar!
    Caller: Liar liar, pants on fire!
    Lazlow: What are you-are you-are you three years old?
    Caller: Lazlow's a liar! Lazlow's a liar! I bet that isn't even your real name!
    Lazlow: Shut up!
    Caller: You shut up!
    Lazlow: Stupid!
    Caller: Nany nany booboo, stick your head in doo-doo!
    Lazlow: Eugh, we're going to commercials.
    Pedestrian: I'm gonna get a gun.
    Pedestrian: Guns don't kill people.
    Pedestrian: People kill people.
    Pedestrian: Guns help though.
    [just before the player takes control for the first time]
    8-Ball: I know a place on the edge of the Red Light District where we can lay low, but my hands are all messed up so you better drive, brother.
    Luigi Goterelli: Some Diablo scumbags has been pimping their scuzzy bitches in my backyard. Go take care of things for me.
    Police Officer: [Screaming] Take him out!
    Donald Love: Nothing drives down real estate prices like a good old-fashioned gang war. Apart from an outbreak of plague, but that may be going too far in this case.

## About Grand Theft Auto III

* GTA III was a showcase for the powerhouse PS2. Earlier games in the series were fun, prankishly rude ditties; you played a criminal, and observed the gridlike world from an omniscient, top-down perspective. GTA III created an entire three-dimensional world, setting you at ground level in a city that could be freely explored. It wasn’t the first game to combine different genres into one, but the component parts of GTA III‘s gameplay were well integrated: it was a driving game, a third-person shooter, an RPG-inflected adventure, a crime thriller. The Casual Gamer — a primordial notion, five years pre-Wii — probably thought that GTA III was less a single videogame than an entire entertainment system unto itself. GTA III kickstarted whole host of changes in the videogame industry. Along with Halo: Combat Evolved, released in November 2001 as an Xbox launch title, it’s a central to the paradigm shift in the early ’00s that transformed videogames either into “a legitimately cool and important cultural force” or “that annoyingly fashionable Hot New Thing that meant Lindsay Lohan attended the launch party of Saints Row The Third” — depending on your perspective. (I’ll never forget watching The O.C. and noticing that Seth Cohen had a Rockstar Games poster up in his bedroom.)
** Darren Franich, “'Grand Theft Auto III' anniversary: Co-creator Dan Houser speaks!”, EW, (Updated October 21, 2011)
* "Most of the delay in releasing the game, which was only a couple of weeks, was a product of the fact that our office in New York was pretty close to Ground Zero and so any work that had to be done there was made impossible for a period," Houser added. "The mood in the office... It was very upsetting, very unnerving and overwhelming. It was the same for us as it was for anybody. But we also felt we'd come this close to making this great game and that despite these problems, just as despite the problems of Take Two, it was our duty to finish it."
** Dan Houser in “How 9/11 changed Grand Theft Auto 3”, by Tom Phillips, Eurogamer, (Updated on 18 November 2011)
* According to what we have termed an identity simulation account, these effects are a consequence of identification with deviant video game characters (e.g., Fischer, Kastenmüller, & Greitemeyer, 2010; Konijn et al., 2007) and self-perception of correspondent deviant personality characteristics and attitudes (e.g., Uhlmann & Swanson, 2004; Fischer et al., 2009; Hull et al., 2012). Although we do not have measures of the extent to which participants identify with game characters in the current research, we can distinguish protagonists in the games they report playing in terms of their motives and values. Specifically, in Grand Theft Auto III, the primary character is an underworld thug working his way up the criminal hierarchy, whereas in Spiderman II the primary character is a superhero using his powers to fight villains. Although these games are similar insofar as both lend themselves to unlimited aggressive behavior, in support of the proposition that the character and motives of the protagonist matters, 13 of 15 specific comparisons between these two games were statistically significant: Play of GTA III was associated with greater behavioral deviance than play of Spiderman II. These differences even extend to our primary measure of aggression.
** Jay G. Hull, Timothy J. Brunelle, Anna T. Prescott, and James D. Sargent; “A Longitudinal Study of Risk-Glorifying Video Games and Behavioral Deviance”, J Pers Soc Psychol. 2014 Aug; 107(2): 300–325.
* Before “Grand Theft Auto,” there wasn’t a lot of freedom in games. You might be able to choose the order of missions, but if you wanted to just explore the world, it wasn’t possible. “GTA” encouraged that and gives you lots of ways to do so. You can fly planes, drive tanks or ride jetpacks. You can steal an ambulance and respond to emergency calls. Carjack a taxi? Pick up fares to earn extra money. Rockstar dubbed its game a sandbox for players - a term that has stuck as other developers have copied the formula.
** Chris Morris, “Grand Theft Auto: The controversy, the money and the impact”, CNBC, (Sep 13 2013; Updated Sep 13 2013)

### Dialogue about Grand Theft Auto III

* Q: Okay, let’s get theoretical here. You’ve had the ’80s-era game, the ’90s-era game. Say you want to do a Grand Theft Auto that is set in 2001, when Grand Theft Auto III came out. How would the new game be different from GTA III? What kinds of stuff would you want to incorporate into it? What’s your vision of the early 2000s?
    A: I think we got pretty close in some ways. We had things that seemed very important then, like absurd websites. That was just at the end of the first dotcom boom. The bust had happened in early 2000, but the Internet was still hot new news. And things like SUVs… Now, they’re completely acceptable, but that was when suddenly everyone was beginning to drive SUVs, and not worrying about their fuel bills anymore. That was a big issue. Real estate was becoming a big issue. It really hadn’t fully kicked off in 2001. And that was before 9/11. The game came out about six weeks after 9/11, but was set before 9/11. If my memory serves me correctly, in that particular period — apart from the stock market collapse that was then obscured by the credit bubble — there was very little pain in the world. People were still believing it was a sort of post-historical world. To mine some of that — what now seems like naiveté — you couldn’t not do that now.
   * Dan Houser in “'Grand Theft Auto III' anniversary: Co-creator Dan Houser speaks!”, by Darren Franich, EW, (Updated October 21, 2011)
* Attention concerned parents: Today’s episode features Grandad demonstrating responsible parenting, playing the controversial video game “Grand Theft Auto 3” to answer any questions he may have and to reinforce the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behavior. We suggest all those with young children take note. Thank you.
    Grandad: Good aim boy! But remember that in real life, it’s very, very wrong to throw a grenade at an ambulance.
    Riley: Yes, Grandad.
   * Aaron McGruder, The Boondocks, (1/18/2002).

## External links

* Official Grand Theft Auto III website