Michael De Santa

## Family

Amanda De Santa (wife)
Jimmy De Santa (son)
Tracey De Santa (daughter)

**Michael De Santa**, formerly **Michael Townley**, is one of the three protagonists in *Grand Theft Auto V*, along with Franklin Clinton and Trevor Philips. He is voiced by Ned Luke.

Michael is a former bank robber and career criminal, who faked his death to retire and live a peaceful life with his family in Los Santos. However, he suffers from his unhealthy relationship with them, and soon gets pulled back into his criminal life, forcing him to return to his old ways. Michael's story centers around how his seemingly idyllic and halcyon lifestyle is brought to a halt as his past demons and morally compromising mistakes come back to haunt him.

Meanwhile, his midlife crisis pushes him to his ultimate snapping point, and he becomes determined to achieve something more with his life, while also attempting to escape his past, become a free man and start a new life with his family. Michael is an old friend of fellow protagonist Trevor, and, early on in the storyline, he also befriends Franklin and becomes a mentor figure to him. He is the husband of Amanda, and the father of Jimmy and Tracey.

In the World Protection Security Agency stories, Michael is a recurring character in the series.

## Appearance

Michael is a Caucasian male, aged either 45 or 48, with grayish black hair and light green eyes. Michael is of heavy build and is 6' 2" (1.88 m) tall and weighs 210 lbs (95 kg).

Medical examiners in Dead Man Walking describe Michael as overweight, with fat deposits on his abdomen suggesting a fondness for Bleeder Burgers, leading them to suspect his "death" as result of coronary failure. They, as well as Trevor in Derailed have noted his poor hygiene due to his habits of drinking and smoking cigarettes, giving him discolored teeth and fingers, with the examiners estimating he smoked approximately a pack of cigarettes a day, along with cigars. The medical examiners also noticed broken capillaries around his nose to indicate his alcoholism and deduce he has an unhealthy liver.

## Personality

Michael is a very muddled person, even confused by his "good and evil" personalities. He spends an uncommon amount of time in his head, where he can comfortably think or reminisce about certain things or aspects that give him a brief moment of nostalgia from his glory days. Nevertheless, it also constrains him into a world of wistfulness and bewilderment as he ponders the reason why things aren't going in the direction he planned it would. Michael has an obsession for materialistic appearance and images, making it the main reason for why he dreamt of living out his *Vinewood Dream* with his family. He claims to Franklin that he has lived a repeated pattern of "*Chase things, get em', hate em'.*".

Michael holds a deep-seated amount of self-hatred, due to him wanting to live a life that's a falsehood rather than coming to the conclusion that his troubling mistakes has garnished a great deal of misfortune upon himself, his family, and old friends and associates of his (his deal with the FIB is a prime example). The self-hatred gives him an exceptionally short temper that he doesn't know how to control, which fills him with rage and causes him to not think at times. One example would be where he caught Amanda having an affair with her tennis coach, Kyle Chavis. He chases Kyle to a mansion and pulls it off a hillside believing that it belonged to him (however, nearly everyone around Michael (except Franklin), including Chavis himself, knew that the mansion was too expensive for him to afford with his salary). Sarcasm is something that Michael firmly grasps because of the self-hatred, as he doesn't know how to respond to his family or friends properly at times without it. He indicates this in the mission Paleto Score Setup, where he proclaims that sarcasm is one of the only things he has left in this world that can't be taken away from him.

Michael is a highly egotistical and narcissistic person. He'll only be concerned about the issues he's being pulled through, instead of the situations that he constantly puts his family or his friends through and will often get unfairly defensive when someone rightfully criticizes him. A case in point of this wrong doing is shown in one of the many heated arguments he has with his wife, Amanda. At the start of Fame or Shame she castigates him for not giving her any support in raising their children and only wanting to cater to himself by *Getting drunk, or you're staring miserably at the clouds, or you're out there doing God only knows what*. He responds with the fact that he, *Pulled you out of a midwestern trailer park, got you a big mansion in Rockford Hills*, and that the only thing she'll have to worry about is *What part of your body you want to have chopped off or sucked out again*. Another instant is in the same mission, where Trevor chides him for letting Tracey humiliate herself on public television the way she did and labeling it as *Poor parenting.* Michael responds in a defensive manner, *Yeah, thanks for the fucking feedback. It means a lot coming from you.* The same goes for Lester and Franklin as well. During Predator, Trevor criticises Michael for instantly thinking about himself, claiming it is "typical" of him. During The Paleto Score, Michael argues with Trevor over the latter's kidnap of Patricia Madrazo, resulting in their exile in Sandy Shores to avoid the wrath of her husband Martin. Michael complains that Trevor is not making his situation any easier, with Trevor again criticising Michael for only thinking about himself. At the beginning of The Bureau Raid (Fire Crew entry), when Lester is explaining the plan to Michael, Michael describes it as 'a bit idiotic'. Lester explains that he tried his best and that Michael chose this method. He then claims that Trevor has a point about Michael "whining too much", to which Michael responds by giving Lester the finger. At the beginning of the Roof Entry setup for the same mission, Lester continuously reproaches Michael for his constant bickering about the former managing to still stay calm and collective as they're about to pull off a dangerous raid on one of the most secure buildings in the country. Michael gets annoyed to the point where he refused to give Lester's cane back to him unless he takes back everything he stated previously. Lester does so reluctantly. When Michael tries to pull the same bickering move on Franklin, the latter fires back at him with irritation, leaving Michael to apologize for now noticing how self-absorbed he's been.

Another of Michael's negative traits is his hypocrisy. He frequently scolds the people around him for their mistakes and habits but refuses to acknowledge his own. At the start of the mission Daddy's Little Girl, he criticizes Jimmy for slouching all day in front of the TV, playing video games and eating profusely, despite the fact he does almost the exact same thing. With Tracy, he denies her the opportunity to become famous by intervening against her wishes while actively currying favor with Solomon Richards to be a famous movie producer by working with unsavory individuals. With Amanda, he claims that she is wasteful with his money even though she notices that Michael's day trading is hurting the family finances during The Good Husband on their way home. He does the same thing towards Trevor, openly judging his will to maim, kill, and steal with ease and pleasure while not showing any signs of remorse, even though Michael himself shows little to no remorse for the various people he kills, while he actively provokes trouble with Simeon, Blake, Lazlow and Madrazo over petty issues his family has. During The Paleto Score, Michael complains to Trevor that he misses his family, with Trevor angrily retorting that Michael never paid them any attention and only misses them now that they've left him. Although he openly claims to his therapist that he does the same thing, he hides it underneath multiple lies, a few of them being that he doesn't enjoy the thrill of the action or that he doesn't hold a plain yet willfully strong addiction to chaos.

The see-through hypocrisy can simultaneously show how easily and massively dishonest he is. Whether or not it's with himself, his family or his friends, Michael displays difficulty when trying to convey the truth. For instance, whenever Trevor brings up a subject involving Brad, Michael will immediately yet vaguely change the topic and once Trevor realizes that Brad is dead, Michael continues to make lies about his grave being empty instead of it actually containing the former's corpse. Even after Brad's corpse is shown, Michael will unwittingly lie about his death, instead of coming out with the truth about the staged robbery that took place nine years ago, which causes Trevor to grow irritated and angry. At the end of the mission Surveying the Score, Franklin questions Michael's past relationship with Trevor to the point where Michael has to steadily ask him to stop, in hopes of covering his tracks and not letting Franklin catch wind of his deal with the FIB nine years ago and quite possibly letting Trevor know in the process.

His judgement calls will also cause negative repercussions. After being "green lit" by Martin Madrazo, he brushes it off, telling Franklin that he's known worse human beings. He then begins to take it back after receiving an astringent blow to his midsection with a baseball bat, which was delivered by Madrazo himself. He even declares Martin a *terrifying psychopath.* With Devin Weston, he wanted no part in Weston's plans to highjack several high-end vehicles, that is, until Weston promised to arrange a meeting with Michael's idol, Solomon Richards. After this, he makes the choice of keeping Devin in a positive mood in order to make sure that none of his business ventures are ruined, even if that means making Franklin work for Devin continuously without payment.

Despite all the negatives, Michael does possess a good side to his personality. He is a very considerate individual, as he paid Franklin for doing what he was forced to do and drive through the front of his boss' business, even though the latter broke into Michael's mansion. Despite all the problems he has in his family, he dearly loves them but is frequently angered with Tracey's social life, Jimmy being jobless, lazy and a video game addict and Amanda spending most of his money and cheating on him. However, after reuniting with his family, Michael's family issues slowly started to dissolve.

It should also be noted that it's very clear that Michael cares for his friends more than he shows. If Franklin chooses to kill Trevor in the end, Michael will stop hanging out with Franklin for a while because he is devastated by Trevor's death. However, he will later apologize to Franklin and reassure him that they are still friends. If you choose to kill Michael, his extremely aggressive behavior towards Franklin shows that he loved him as a friend and can't believe Franklin didn't feel the same.

Being the opposite of Trevor, Michael is thorough and rational when it comes to crime. This makes others leave him to the planning and leading of robberies and missions, as he is usually the one to come up with a plan for a heist alongside Lester. He also shows consideration for people caught up in robberies. An example is that, if you choose to pose as guards for the Union Depository heist, Michael will give the guard he blackmailed a bar of gold for helping them get past security.

Michael will also always put his family's safety above anything else, going as far as to make a moral compromise with the FIB to ensure his family was not in danger. When Trevor first came back to find Michael in his house, Michael immediately put himself in front of Jimmy, not knowing what Trevor was going to do. When Devin Weston sent Merryweather to Michael's house to kill his family, Michael instantly abandoned his movie premiere to engage the hostile forces, rescue his family and subsequently move them to a new location. Michael's care about his family is finally reciprocated by Amanda towards the end of the game, at which time she makes him promise not to get killed.

Towards the end of the game, Michael has started to accept his borderline-sociopath personality, with him stating in the final cutscene of the Deathwish ending that he still hates himself, but at least he knows the words for it. Michael has also started to work on his anger issues when his family comes back and can be seen showing a great amount of regret due to the decisions he's made, becoming more truthful and open. This is evident when he hangs out with Franklin; he expressed great distaste for his decision to betray Trevor with the help of Dave to secure a future for himself, seeing as the decision itself was hollow and only created more problems as well as causing much more hatred for not only for himself but the people around him as well.

## Powers and Abilities

Michael's Special Ability is called "Area Kill." While active, Michael enters a bullet-time-like effect, allowing him to slow time and gain the advantage in shootouts. By enhancing this skill, you increase its maximum storage capacity, which directly affects its duration. Michael's Special Ability lasts for 30 seconds when the Stat Bar for Special Abilities has been maxed out.