The Most Forgettable Grand Theft Auto Playable Characters

Key Takeaways

• Some of the playable characters in the Grand Theft Auto franchise lack depth.
• Some protagonists like Claude, Johnny Klebitz, Vic Vance, and Huang Lee suffer from a lack of memorable traits.
• GTA has had multiple protagonists with little character development, resembling blank avatars more than unique characters.

Few video game franchises have been as successful as Grand Theft Auto. From the humble beginnings of the 2D Grand Theft Auto 1 has arisen one of the world’s highest-selling video game franchises. There are plenty of reasons Grand Theft Auto has been successful, from epic open-worlds to top-notch gameplay, but one of the things Rockstar has long been known for is its storytelling.

The company has given us some of the most iconic characters in video gaming, but they haven’t all been hits. When we think of GTA protagonists, we usually think of the likes of Tommy Vercetti or Trevor Philips, but a fair few GTA protagonists have been duds. They don’t jump to mind because they’re just so forgettable. Allow us to jog your memory of these utterly unremarkable GTA protagonists.

8 Claude – Grand Theft Auto 3

A Voiceless Paper Cut Out Of A Character

So Claude might seem like an odd pick to start this list with. As the protagonist of one of the most beloved games of all time, Claude is one of gaming’s most famous characters and is instantly recognizable to multiple generations of gamers. Grand Theft Auto 3 was one of the best open-world PS2 games and millions of gamers have spent dozens of hours running around Liberty City as him. Yet we know next to nothing about Claude.

He might be famous, but there’s nothing memorable about him. He has no voice and his character design is about as bland as it gets. His motivation throughout GTA 3 is a simple revenge mission, and he doesn’t interact with any other character in a meaningful way. Rockstar probably intended him to be a way for players to insert themselves into the story, in the same way old FPS protagonists were often voiceless. If Claude had been the protagonist of a lesser game, he’d be nothing more than a footnote in gaming history. Most people who played GTA 3 probably don’t even remember his name.

7 Johnny Klebitz – Grand Theft Auto 4: The Lost and Damned (2009)

A DLC Character Given Less Time To Shine

Grand Theft Auto 4 was full of memorable characters. It had one of Rockstar’s longest development times and the studio clearly spent as much time as possible fleshing out the game’s characters. Niko Belic is one of Grand Theft Auto’s most memorable protagonists, but unfortunately, the same can’t be said for poor old Johnny Klebitz. While plenty of fans have a soft spot for Johnny, many more have forgotten him completely.

A fair part of that is down to his role as a DLC protagonist. Not everyone who played GTA 4 played its two excellent expansions, while those who did spent considerably less time with Johnny simply because the expansions were shorter than the main game. For a GTA protagonist, Johnny himself was pretty laid-back and quiet compared to other protagonists. His story was also a fair bit more depressing and subdued too. Looking back, Johnny was actually a great protagonist, but that doesn’t mean people remember him. These days, most who do just remember him getting his skull squished by Trevor in Grand Theft Auto 5.

6 Victor “Vic” Vance – Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories (2006)

The Only Good Guy In A Series Led By Villains

One of the things that makes most Grand Theft Auto protagonists so memorable is how morally reprehensible they are. Half the fun of playing a GTA game is playing as the villain. But Victor Vance is a good guy. Brother to the treacherous Lance Vance from the original Vice City, Vic is the most noble of all Grand Theft Auto’s protagonists. He joins the military to help pay Vance’s medical bills and is only thrown out because he’s framed by a corrupt sergeant.

He doesn’t start a life of crime by choice, but so he can provide for his family. Even after becoming a criminal, he’s anti-drug and maintains a strong moral compass. The problem with Vic is that being a goody-goody just makes him a bit bland. As his eventual fate proves, nice guys always finish last, and being a hero in a franchise full of notorious criminals makes you forgettable.

5 Toni Cipriani – Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (2005)

A Cookie-Cutter Mobster And Tony Soprano Knock-Off

When picking a protagonist for Liberty City Stories, Rockstar opted to take a side character from GTA 3 and give him his own game. The problem is that the character wasn’t very interesting to begin with, and Liberty City Stories did very little to flesh him out. He’s a generic Italian-American mobster – born into the Leone crime family and comically loyal to his mother.

That’s about all the characterization Toni gets. A bit like Claude, he’s a stoic psychopath who the player is expected to insert themselves into. He has little agency in the game’s story and other characters call him Fido because he’s obsessed with doing his master’s, Salvatore Leone’s, bidding like a good dog. There’s just nothing particularly memorable, which is a pity because his story had the potential for Godfather and Soprano’s level of mob drama.

4 Huang Lee – Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars

System Limitations And A Cliché Story Hold Him Back

Considering he’s the protagonist of one of the best handheld Grand Theft Auto games, Huang Lee should be more memorable. Unfortunately, Chinatown Wars was good despite, not because of him. Part of the problem is that Huang Lee’s story is a total cliché: he arrives as an immigrant in America determined to track down and kill the man who killed his family. Only to discover the villain was someone close to him all along. Heard that one before?

The other part is the fact that Chinatown Wars was a technically limited handheld game. Lee doesn’t have any voice lines and most of the time we only got to see him from a top-down perspective, neither of which helped his memorability. Most players who do remember him only do so because they found him so unlikable. At the end of the day, there’s just not much to like or remember about Lee.

3 Mike – Grand Theft Auto Advance

Rockstar Didn’t Give Him A Personality

Grand Theft Auto Advance was a far cry from other modern GTA releases and has a lot more in common with the first two games when it comes to both story structure and gameplay. Thanks to hardware limitations, pretty much every aspect of the game was watered down and nowhere was that more apparent than in the game’s story and protagonist. Both of which are barebones. There are lots of iconic Grand Theft Auto characters. Mike isn’t one of them.

All we know about Mike is that he was once homeless in Liberty City, and he’s intensely loyal to his best friend Vinnie. The game follows Mike’s revenge mission after Vinnie is seemingly killed in a car bombing. Sound familiar? Everything else about Mike is generic. His design in the game’s artwork doesn’t exactly stand out and he receives little characterization outside his loyalty to Vinnie and the occasional sarcastic remark. Combined with the fact that Grand Theft Auto Advance was released around the same time as San Andreas, Mike ends up being one of GTA’s most forgettable and easily overlooked protagonists.

2 Claude Speed – Grand Theft Auto 2

His Place In Canon Is Sketchy At Best

Grand Theft Auto 2 is a weird game, especially the lore surrounding it. The game is supposedly set in a place called “Nowhere City”, but little about the city makes sense. The date is meant to be 1999, but the city itself and many of the weapons players use are futuristic. At the same time, many of the cars are decidedly retro. Even Rockstar doesn’t seem to know what it was aiming for.

The sense of confusion extends to the game’s protagonist, Claude Speed. In the game, he has no personality whatsoever and is a complete blank slate. Most players probably didn’t even realize he had a name. But then Rockstar released GTA 2: The Movie to promote the game. This short movie featured live-action Claude completing missions for rival gangs before being assassinated. This version of Claude Speed looks decidedly like Claude from GTA 3. Are they one and the same? No one knows, not even Rockstar. Some think originally Rockstar planned for them to be the same character back when no one was taking Grand Theft Auto’s lore too seriously. Once GTA 3 became a smash hit, they decided to distance the two characters, especially since so few people even remembered Claude’s name from GTA 2. Either way, GTA 2’s Claude has no backstory, no character and we’re never told his motivations. He’s such a forgettable character that even Rockstar can’t decide if he’s canon or not.

1 Multiple Protagonists – Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto London

Plenty To Choose From, All Blank Slates

Lots of GTA fans probably think the first entry in the franchise to have multiple protagonists was Grand Theft Auto 5. They’re wrong. GTA V may be one of the best GTA games, but the first Grand Theft Auto was actually the first to do this, way back in 1998. Grand Theft Auto London also had multiple protagonists. Each version of the original Grand Theft Auto between the PS1, PC, and Game Boy Advance versions all had slightly different rosters of potential protagonists.

The reason so few people realize this is that these protagonists were little more than named player avatars. Each played the same, none of them had personalities or backstories and the differences between them boiled down to hair color and clothing changes. Considering the fact the player could rename these protagonists, even their names weren’t special. The original Grand Theft Auto’s protagonists were characters in the loosest possible meaning of the term. The original GTA was all about causing mayhem, the story wasn’t a priority.