Trivia / GTA Radio

• Actor Allusion: See Celebrity Paradox.
  • Tommy "The Nightmare" Smith, host of San Andreas' classic rock station K-DST, complains about the plaid-wearing grunge rockers featured on the modern rock station Radio X, which his own voice actor — Guns N' Roses vocalist Axl Rose — was famous for wearing himself in real life.
  • Earlier in Lazlow's and Couzin Ed's real life radio careers, Lazlow was the sidekick of Couzin Ed, whom he would almost always tease on-air.
  • In San Andreas, one of the callers in WCTR's "Area 53" segment complains about having been placed in solitary confinement for hacking, having the ability to "launch nuclear missiles just by whistling into a phone", but is now only using "[his] powers for good." The voice actor is the legendary Kevin Mitnick, once the most wanted hacker in America back in the mid-90s, who is now a computer security consultant after serving prison time.
  • Zachary on Kult FM is played by David Cross, who played Zero in San Andreas. He talks about having to drive up to San Fierro to get equipment from this "total zero" with "the most annoying voice".
• California Doubling: Of a sort. Stock Footage from Red Dead Redemption (then still in development) is used in a Weazel News segment to stand in for the Middle East.
• Corpsing: When the lady representing Citizens Raging Against Phones starts calling Lazlow childish insults, the voice actress sounds like she's trying not to break down laughing.
• The Danza:
  • Lazlow.
  • Konstantinos Smith is voiced by occultist Konstantinos.^note Who is credited as his website domain.
• Defictionalization:
  • Lazlow Jones, radio scriptwriter for most GTA games from III onwards, has an actual XM radio show, in large part because of his resurgent popularity stemming from his involvement with the series, including, but not limited to, hosting a radio show in each game. He directly references it in IV, when he uses lines about remembering a time "when 16-year-olds could drink, smoke at bars, listen to heavy metal, and get into high-speed accidents" which was lifted directly from the opening to his show.
  • While not related to the station from IV, Tuff Gong Radio was a temporary station on SiriusXM. Just like the IV station, it focused on Bob Marley.
  • There actually exists a radio station named Lips 106, albeit an oldies station broadcasting out of Southern Luzon, Philippines. Judging from the station name itself and their use of Pricedown for the logo, the station manager appears to be a huge fan of the Grand Theft Auto series.
• Fake Nationality: While the original incarnation of IV's Vladivostok FM plays mostly Russian music, its DJ, Ruslana Lyzhychko, is actually Ukrainian, and has even performed and won for that country at the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest. In fact, her winning song, "Wild Dances", is part of the original soundtrack.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Starting with Vice City, the games have been losing songs 10 years after their release. Fans have used downgrader patches in order to restore the original versions of the stations.
• What Could Have Been: The game files provide evidence that plenty of songs were in the game at some point, possibly being cut due to legal issues, lack of space or just being placeholders. Some songs are likely cut due to other games being released around the same time licensing them first, as seen with "Sucker MC's" which was in Saints Row 2, or "Everybody Wants to Rule The World" being in BioShock Infinite. In V's case, a good chunk of these songs later wound up in the 8th gen and PC enhanced versions.
  • Pastor Richards from Vice City was supposed to have a much larger role in the game (explaining why he appears in person during the yacht scene at the beginning of the game).
  • WorldWide FM was originally intended to be a jazz-funk station, likely as a successor to Fusion FM from IV before being reworked into a downtempo and worldbeat oriented station. The prescence of Candido, Tom Browne and Donald Byrd on the station are artifacts of that original concept. The file containing it's audio still refers to it as a jazz station.
  • V was also to feature a station called Pre-Millenium Radio (PMR for short) that would've played 90s alternative rock, and presumably acted as a Spiritual Successor to Radio X, similar to West Coast Classics being one to San Andreas' version of Radio Los Santos. It wound up being replaced with Vinewood Boulevard Radio, which is internally referred to as "90s rock" in the game's files.