What Could Have Been / Grand Theft Auto V

• In 2012, a radio station called Nightride FM was announced by Kavinsky on his Twitter, and was stated to be hosted by him. It seems to have been completely cut and is not even mentioned in the final game - or Kavinsky lied about it ever existing.
• Vinewood Boulevard Radio was originally going to be "P.M.R", a 90's rock station similar to Radio X in San Andreas, and hosted by Trent Reznor. It was cut and replaced with the modern rock station we have in the final version, but this change seems to have been a late one as the P.M.R station logo is still in the game files.
• Worldwide FM was a jazz station before it became a world music one. This and the above example are referred to in the game files as "Jazz" and "90's Rock" stations respectively.
• Brucie Kibbutz was originally supposed to have a slightly larger role in the game, as one of the targets in Devin Weston's car theft ring in a scrapped story mission known as "Social Networking" where the player would have to steal his red Stinger by luring him with a prostitute. While most references to that mission have been removed, the car the player was originally supposed to steal (a red vintage Stinger convertible) is present as a sixth car on the Packer in "Pack Man", despite Devin only asking for five cars.
• There was going to be a heist called "The Sharmoota Job" that would have involved robbing Martin Madrazo's mansion and stealing a safe, his prized horse and Patricia Madrazo, his wife. It would have involved Michael and Trevor and have three options for how it would have been performed with one option being them dressing up as mimes, one involved them dressing up as clowns, and the third one had them pretend to be a gay couple with this option actually having some lines left in the game with most of them belonging to Trevor while referring to Michael as "Albert". In the final game this is reduced to Trevor kidnapping Madrazo's wife off-screen, with Michael being unhappy about it when he finds out, partly because the horse riding mechanism from Red Dead Redemption couldn't be implemented into the game.
• As mentioned above, Horses were supposed to be one of the animals encountered in the game, but we're cut due to the aforementioned mechanism from Red Dead Redemption being unable to be implemented in the game. Some leftovers of horses being in the game are still present, such as one shown on one of the many TV programs and one being shown in one of the in-game movies.
• Similarly, the Paleto Score had a second option that was abandoned.
• A design document and later a major leak across Rockstar Games confirmed that Single Player was to have 8 DLC packs; One continuing the default GTA experience which was actually teased along with the Heists update for Online and was known to contain even more flight school missions with its name implied to be "Assassination Pack" which would have added 12 more assassination missions for Franklin after the missions for "Agent Trevor" we're completed, one known as "Prologue DLC" which would have seen the player return to Luddendorf, North Yankton and take place before the prologue of the original game, one known as "Agent Trevor" with 23 missions where Trevor would work with the IAA to steal a submarine and stop a rich billionaire named Clifford and later rob the casino at the very end which Steven Ogg confirmed in a 2024 stream that he actually recorded lines for the expansion, an expansion where the player could return to Liberty City from the previous game with early screenshots showing what it would look like, a DLC themed around one of Rockstar's other game series "Manhunt", a relationship DLC, an enterprise DLC, one which featured aliens cracking open a mountain and starting a full-scale invasion with a ship hidden inside (The mural is believed to connect to it) and a Next Gen only Zombie DLC titled "Norman" in the sorce code. The latter two would have featured changes to the map, such as destroyed buildings, walled off Los Santos and campsites on the countryside. They were scrapped after Leslie Benzies left Rockstar Games and they were forced to reorganize their internals, with the GTA Online creators being the only unaffected. Modders have unearthed what seems to be a DLC select with the options "GTA" "Trevor" and "Dead". Rockstar eventually revealed that the main reason the singleplayer DLC's were scrapped was the growing interest in GTA Online and the then unannounced Red Dead Redemption 2, which required a lot of attention from them. This may be technically subversion, as a lot of the planned content eventually made it's way to the multiplayer mode, although heavily edited with "Agent Trevor" eventually becoming " The Doomsday Heist" and the finale becoming "The Diamond Casino Heist" only for Trevor's role to be cut out and the enterprise DLC was recycled as "The Business Update".
• The leaked source code for the game revealed that Cluckin Bell and Burger Shot both originally had explorable interiors where you could also order food from, just like you could in Grand Theft Auto IV, implying that the eating friend activity from that game was originally going to return. They were likely cut due to the game's massive file size which was reaching its limitations on the seventh generation console versions of the game.
• Datamining the game would reveal data for an EOD suit for Franklin that is not used, indicating that he would have had a more active role in the Paleto bank heist as opposed to just organizing the getaway.
• Similarly, Trevor has an unused fireman's uniform◊, indicating that "the Bureau Raid" might have taken place before "Bury the Hatchet." The Heist was also called "The Agency Raid" in the beta, implying that the IAA was supposed to be raised instead of the FIB.
• Michael has a police uniform - not the S.A.H.P uniform he wears in "I Fought the Law", but that of the L.S.P.D.◊ - that is unused.
• Trevor was meant to be an American who grew up in the countryside. When Steven Ogg was picked to voice Trevor, the production team rewrote his backstory to make him Canadian.
• Michael's fake name, Michael De Santa, was chosen after the name Albert De Silva was used during game production.
• There were originally going to be at least two more missions for Solomon Richards that were cut from the final game. One of these, "Harrier", had Michael steal a jet for Mr. Richards, while the other, simply titled "Save Film Studio", was implied to have Michael defend Richards Majestic Productions from someone who was attacking it.
• Besides the scrapped Heist "The Sharmoota Job", there was also another Heist mission that was scrapped from the final game. Unlike the former however, this Heist mission was never actually given a name, implying that it was cut very early on.
• There was plans for a scrapped mission called "Final Furlong". Besides the name however, there is no other information about what was supposed to happen during this mission, implying that it was cut out very early on.
• According to Shawn Fonteno, in an earlier version of the mission "The Long Stretch", Franklin was the one that originally killed D after he lured the group into a trap. In the actual game, Stretch is the one that kills D instead.
• There was going to be a random event where you encountered a scrapped character, a military officer known as First Lieutenant Kyle P. Slater where upon completion, you would receive his phone contact. Interestingly, if you dial his number 328-555-0145 in the final game, you can still hear his voice mail.
• Another scrapped random event found in the game files would have involved the player controlling the RC Bandito which was also scrapped in a race. While the event was scrapped, the RC Bandito was eventually added to "Online" in the 2018 "Arena Wars" update with race challenges for it.
• There are lines from the police dispatch that go unused in the game for other crimes, including prowling, shooting endangered animals, drug deals, and riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Other lines include the dispatch identifying Michael, Franklin, and Trevor by name and appearance, as well as the names of various Grand Theft Auto IV vehicles that are inaccessible.
• It's heavily implied that you were originally allowed to enter Tequi-la-la outside of the Strangers and Freaks mission "Vinewood Souvenirs - Willie" and play Darts due to the presence of a Darts board as well as the inside of the bar being fully designed and finished. In the final game however, you can only play Darts with your friends at the Yellow Jack Inn all the way in Blaine County.
• It's heavily implied by the presence of the Pool table in the Yellow Jack Inn that Pool was originally planned to return as a minigame and friend activity like in the previous game before it was scrapped. However, the Pool cue was eventually added to "Online" as a melee weapon.
• The Pipe Wrench that Trevor uses in the mission "By The Book" was originally planned to be an actual melee weapon in the game instead of just appearing in the mission only. It was later added to "Online" in a later update.
• Shawn Fonteno came very close to giving up on the game early in production, due to being frustrated with the mocap work for the film, and not understanding what the game was really about (as Rockstar had not told him he was working on a GTA project for secrecy reasons). Thankfully, he was convinced to stay on.
• A pre-release screenshot suggested that Franklin would have chased the downed plane in Caida Libre. In the finished game, he was replaced with Trevor.
• Some phone contacts were cut from the final game, such as one for Chop, which was likely just a placeholder for actual contacts, one for Ashley Butler which implies that she was originally going to have a larger role in the game's story, and the LS Tour Board in the original PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game, implying that the wildlife photography challenge was planned for the original release before it was added back in the enhanced versions for returning players who linked their Rockstar Social Club accounts to the game.
• There was another street race known as "Terminal" planned for the game before it was scrapped.
• Sea Races were originally planned to only be available to Franklin in the game like Street Races are before it was later made available to all characters in the final game.
• In the files for the game, there are at least six unused mugshots for bail bonds targets, implying that there was originally ten bail bonds available instead of just the four in the main game.
• A third variant of the Stockade security vans belonging to Bobcat Security was planned for the game before being cut.
• Originally, each character was going to have there own unique mission passed jingle instead of sharing the same one. They are still accessible on the PC version of the game and can be accessed through mods.
• Early screenshots of the game showed more trees and foliage present in locations that didn't have as many in the final game.
• Michael and Trevor's deaths in the non canon endings for the game were originally planned to be much more gruesome than in the final game. Michael was originally going to fall to his death and drop into a helicopter's blades instead of just hitting the ground while Trevor was supposed to originally crash into a liquid nitrogen storage truck and freeze to death after being forced into it by Michael and Michael would have smashed his frozen body to pieces with his vehicle.
• There were going to be profile pictures for Michael,Trevor, and Amanda for the in-game dating website "Hush Smush".
• Slink Johnson confirmed that Lamar Davis was originally planned to have a bigger role in the game than what was shown. However, Johnson got caught up with something else in real life for a few months and Rockstar was forced to move on from what they originally planned for Lamar in order to finish the game while keeping Johnson as the voice of Lamar.
• Multiple Strangers and Freaks missions ended up being cut from the final game. One was another mission for Barry as Franklin where he had to deliver a helicopter full of drugs near Barry's apartment and would have taken place in between the Grass Roots missions "The Pickup" and "The Drag", Two missions for Franklin involving him meeting a character named Dale outside a nightclub with the first mission being him asking Franklin to take photographs of ten hot women around town and send them to him as a sort of Collectibles mission with the second one revealing that Dale was drugging said women and Franklin was drugged by him as well and had to kill him in order to stop him while still drugged, three missions for Michael where he meets Magenta Andrews with the first mission having her ask him to attain true perfection by buying and wearing high-end clothing in order to be welcomed by her and access the second mission at her house where he is invited in to the sight of a group of elderly people having sex and becoming disturbed in the process where he exists building and calls his shrink for more therapy with the third mission being mostly unknown, and finally five missions for Franklin split between two characters known as Mrs. A and Mrs. B who both have each other where he would help one of them sabotage the other throughout most of the missions with the final mission having both of them confronting and attempting to kill each other with Franklin having the option to either join in the fight or watch them kill each other.