Art is suffering! I don't expect a man of your limited education to understand! Without darkness there is no light! Don't you understand anything? She died so millions of others could experience truth through my art! To understand pain, it must be administered as well as felt.
—Peter Dreyfuss, Grand Theft Auto V
The Grand Theft Auto series is famous for its dark settings filled with all sorts of unpleasant characters. Even so, a select few manage to reach a special level of evil.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
2D Universe
- London mission packs: Hans Nemesis is a terrorist specializing in bombs intending to kill countless civilians. During his first mission, Hans has potatoes replaced with bombs so civilians can be tricked into purchasing them, with an old man being killed by one of them. Fleeing the country shortly after said plan fails, Hans returns years later with multiple nukes armed to explode, aiming to kill as many people as possible, while taunting the protagonist at every possible moment during said mission. After his plans fail once again, Hans plans another massacre by lacing tea bags to poison thousands of civilians, only to be stopped once again. When finally confronted, Hans spitefully mocks the protagonist by blowing himself up.
- Grand Theft Auto 2's promotional short film (link
): Claude Speed, depicted here as a sociopathic crime-addict instead of a mute thug, orchestrates conflict between the gangs of Anywhere City to get ahead. A mercenary, drug dealer, and murderer with no allegiance to his bosses, Claude works for the Russian mob and the Yakuza, manipulating events so that both gangs massacre each other in a bloody shootout. Claude can only smile at the chaos and carnage he's responsible for, and ends his day by trying to break into a car, his thirst for crime still not quenched.
3D Universe
- Liberty City Stories: Donald Love, a recurring character in the 3D Universe, is among its most depraved. Love presents himself as a charismatic, if eccentric, powerful businessman, arranging a gang war between the Yakuza and the Cartel just to lower property values. In this game it's revealed he is a self-indulgent cannibal, and implied sexual deviant. Aligning himself with the Leone Crime Family, Love runs in the race for mayor, sends protagonist Toni Cipriani out to murder his rival's campaigners and collect more bodies to feed on. Losing his fortune and campaign, Love makes plans to regain his fortune, starting by murdering his mentor, real-estate tycoon Avery Carrington, in order to steal his city development plans, later cannibalizing the body; and killing many people through the bombing of the heavily-populated Fort Staunton city district, just so he can make money off of redeveloping the district.
- Grand Theft Auto III: Catalina is a sadistic, ambitious, hateful thief and Spree Killer turned crime boss, who started her career in San Andreas, purposefully escalating the violence in her robberies, killing numerous bystanders and cops with glee. Having a history of using and discarding her boyfriends and partners, Catalina shoots protagonist Claude, leaving him to die during a robbery, before rising through the ranks of the Colombian Cartel and abandoning her next partner, Miguel, later killing him. Catalina starts an empire, flooding Liberty City with the especially potent and mentally deteriorating drug, SPANK, turning even the Leone Crime Family and Yakuza against her. Among her distribution methods, Catalina spikes SPANK through coffee shops and street vendors across the city. Encountering a vengeful Claude, Catalina drugs multiple addicts into crazed suicide bombers to try to kill him. Out of spite, Catalina then abducts Claude's alleged girlfriend Maria, attempting to lure him into getting executed.
- San Andreas: Officer Frank Tenpenny is the crooked, self-righteous head of C.R.A.S.H., using the unit as his own personal gang in a quest to control all of San Andreas. For years, Tenpenny has abused his authority to exploit the gangs of Los Santos for his own profit while turning them against each other and orchestrating bloody gang wars. Tenpenny eventually throws in exclusively with the ruthless Ballas, supplying them with dangerous crack cocaine with which to flood the streets and turn countless civilians and crooks alike into suffering addicts. To secure Balla rule, Tenpenny ensures the systematic slaughter of smaller gangs, such as Grove Street, and in a haphazard attempt on the life of Grove Street's leader Sweet, Tenpenny has a drive-by carried out that kills Sweet's elderly mother. To keep his crimes hidden, Tenpenny regularly murders fellow officers of the law as well as other whistleblowers, either with his own hands or by forcing those like Carl "CJ" Johnson to do his dirty work, threatening the latter with having his brother raped and killed if he refuses. Tenpenny is also responsible for the corruption of Big Smoke, making him become the face of the drug empire Tenpenny has constructed, planning all the while to eliminate him. Tenpenny's villainy is so rampant that Los Santos begins tearing itself apart in an outraged riot over his unchecked evil, at which point Tenpenny tries to eliminate loose ends, leave his allies to die in a fire, and flee the state to save his own skin. Tenpenny's ambition nearly destroys San Andreas, and to the very end he sneers that those against him were nothing but "trash" to be taken out.
- Vice City Stories: Marty Jay Williams is the redneck leader of the Trailer Park Mafia, who distinguishes himself as the worst abuser in the 3D universe. Marty uses his gang to run a Protection Racket threatening multiple innocents, and upon opening a brothel, he begins pimping out multiple women. Abusing his wife Louise for years, Marty threatens her life and the life of their baby on a regular basis to keep her in line, and when Louise finally tries to leave him, Marty kidnaps her with plans to force her into prostitution at his brothel.
HD Universe
- Grand Theft Auto IV: Dimitri Rascalov presents himself as a reasonable man in the criminal world, but he is actually a duplicitous, manipulative snake with no sense of morals, empathy, or honor. Having created the Faustin crime syndicate with his best friend Mikhail, Dimitri uses Mikhail's violent ways to profit and oversees a wide variety of brutality, extortion, and murders through the likes of Vlad. When Mikhail outlives his usefulness, Dimitri tricks Niko Bellic into murdering Mikhail, abandons Mikhail's wife and daughter to homelessness, then tries to kill Niko himself before burning down the business and entire apartment building of Niko's cousin Roman. Dimitri is revealed to be in cahoots with Ray Bulgarin, who Dimitri empowers for further mayhem while also beginning a country-wide cocaine operation that threatens to destabilize the whole nation. Running his criminal empire far more brutally than Mikhail ever did, Dimitri tries to massacre a Senator's convoy to silence his campaign, blackmails Bernie over his sexuality, and tries to torture Roman to death. In the "Deal" ending, Dimitri feigns agreement to a heroin deal only to turn on and slaughter the buyers, kill his ally Pegorino, and orchestrate Roman's death at his wedding, proving himself to be a spiteful opportunist that every other criminal views with disdain.
- Grand Theft Auto V: Peter Dreyfuss is a seemingly eccentric but egotistical retired Vinewood director, and a twisted "artist" obsessed with the suffering of others. The culprit of Leonora Johnson's infamous murder, Dreyfuss had tortured and raped Leonora for an extended period, mutilating her both physically and sexually while she was still alive, before decapitating her. Years after the fact, Dreyfuss torments her surviving family with taunting phone calls and messages, regularly sending them Leonora's belongings and severed body parts. In a confession letter to his "friend", Dreyfuss subtly belittles him for not understanding why he did it, comparing it to other instances of torturing hitchhikers; sleeping with young girls; and paying two prostitutes to stab each other. Confronted by Franklin, Dreyfuss cowardly tries to flee, attempting to justify himself by claiming he "immortalized" Leonora through his art.
- Online's The Doomsday Heist: Avon Hertz is a genius billionaire tech mogul, inventor and "father" of the insane A.I. Cliffford, and the true main antagonist of the Doomsday Heist scenarios. Petty and egotistical to the extreme, Avon had his own vision for a perfect world. He sought to create a dystopia where all of mankind was replaced with sapient machines who worshiped him as God. He tricks the Online protagonists into feeding data to Cliffford under the guise of rooting out the Russian terrorist Bogdan, when he was actually using them to gain access to the United States defense grid. After trying to blow of the submarine the players and Bogdan are on, he reveals that he will use Cliffford to hack into missile systems throughout the world and unleash nuclear armageddon to completely wipe away humanity. Hiding out in an abandoned missile silo, Avon tried to use a nuclear warhead to wipe away San Andreas and buy time to allow Cliffford to hack into weapons systems around the world to unleash doomsday. While Avon and Cliffford are ultimately killed, his genocidal ambitions lifted him above all other villains in the franchise in terms of evil grandeur.
