How GTA 4 Captured a World That No Longer Exists

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]How did Rockstar make Grand Theft Auto 4 feel so 2008? Well, I went back and I looked at the in-game TV, the radio, the websites, the news. Let's break down and reminisce over how did Rockstar actually make this game so early 2000s.

[00:00:20]Firstly, let's head on inside the internet cafe over here because there's a few things I want to show you on the in-game websites first of all, which are really special. I think you should see.

[00:00:30]So, to access the internet in GTA 4, for the most part, you need to head to a specific location, otherwise known as an internet cafe. The game is preserving that point in time and history where going online was very deliberate, and it was something that you had to go out of your way to do. back when going to an internet cafe meant being in a giant shared room of other people who were doing the same weird new thing called being online. And you know what?

[00:00:57]Rockstar did an absolutely incredible job of mirroring what the internet actually looked and felt like in the early 2000s.

[00:01:06]horrific fonts, bright colored websites, disgusting user designs, and above all, just the most ridiculous colors in your face that look like they've been put together by someone on Microsoft Paint.

[00:01:19]I found so many websites that looked like this back in the 2000s, back in my childhood, just being a left alone with a computer for about an hour. But now, I haven't seen a website that looks like this for a very long time. I went back and looked at some of the genuine layouts that sites had back then. eBay, there's Twitter.

[00:01:40]This one is Apple, which looking at it now looks incredibly bad. But this was probably an amazing design at the time.

[00:01:48]And even the White House's official website looked like this in 2008.

[00:01:52]Genuine snapshots of what I found online. So why don't we see them anymore? Why don't we just randomly stumble across websites that look like this anymore? Because even if any of us wanted to create a website today, nine times out of 10, we're going to be using something like WordPress, all the personality has been taken out of it.

[00:02:10]And at some point along the road, for some reason, corporations decided that all of this personality wasn't what they wanted. So, how about we dig into some specific websites in the game that I find particularly quite interesting? My roomonline.net, net, aka MySpace in the GTA universe. But MySpace was like your own personal corner of the internet. You could customize literally everything about your MySpace page. The colors, the fonts, the random things that you posted on there. And that's exactly what Rockstar have mirrored in GTA 4 with my roomonline.net. Every page you go to is unique. It has their own character. And just by looking at these characters my room online pages, you can actually tell who they are as a person and gather quite a lot about their character and personality. There's the born in the wrong generation guy. Probably posts edgy quotes online. Uh yeah, we all know this guy. We know someone like this guy.

[00:03:11]Everyone knows one of these or has passed one. The dark gothic edgy type.

[00:03:16]Very minimal info, cryptic bio. And one of the trends of MySpace was people would have a section where they ask and answer questions about themselves. Well, obviously in true Rockstar fashion, feel free to pause the video because they've parodyied that on some of these profiles. And let's just say they are pretty hilarious. But this is 2008 we're talking about. And little did we all know at this time in the world quite what was coming around the corner when it came to social media. Between 2008 and 2009, Facebook pretty much overtook MySpace and many other websites just like it. And then within the next few years, these websites like MySpace ended up dying out. And what's really special about this is that by the time we get to GTA 5, if you go onto the internet and try and access my roomonline.net, they will actually have a page post which explains that they have been shut down thanks to Life Invader. In modern day, everyone is sucked into their own bubble. Modern platforms use the same layouts. No matter whose profile you're visiting, the layout, the aesthetic, the style, the personality, it's gone. Wiped from the internet. Another website I quite like is craplist, aka Craigslist.

[00:04:33]Now, Craigslist used to be a genuine way that people would spend their time on the internet. And it was a genuine website where people not only could go and post things for sale, but they could go and post random requests and some of the most bizarre stuff you've ever heard of. Blonde girl, minikrt, knee boots, red tea. You had a folder under your arm and looked in a rush. I was the guy with the ponytail who whistled and shouted, >> "Yeah, baby." You turned and looked like you were about to shout something back when an utter milk and truck knocked you about 6 ft in the air. I waited with you until the ambulance arrived. As you slipped out of consciousness, I'm sure that you winked at me. Fate works in mysterious ways. Drop me a line if you see this. That might sound crazy, but this was genuinely a genre of Craigslist posts that used to exist where there was this whole section on the website where people would do this kind of thing. Let me show you some very real um Craigslist posts of this nature. You were the tall brunette with the near perfect body that farted in the bread section last night.

[00:05:38]I was the guy next to you that looked over and asked, "Was that you?" You quickly replied, "No, it wasn't me." You almost seemed insulted, I would ask. As the stink grew, you continued to deny flatuence, but it was evident. I tried to get rid of the stench by waving two loaves of sheer batter. You proceeded to storm off in an angry manner. You are beautiful and even if you were a liar and fart like a Clydeale horse, I'd still love to meet up sometime. Yeah.

[00:06:02]No, that that that's a real uh post.

[00:06:06]That ain't something in GTA 4. So whether it's an old man looking for a new young person to join him and his wife in some love activities or the girl who lost her crocodile somewhere in Liberty City, these are all mirroring very real Craigslist posts like this woman trying to get rid of a life-sized hamster wheel. Uh just just get inside the hamster wheel and run around like a hamster while I take a photo for you.

[00:06:31]You don't get that anymore on eBay. And that's the beauty of Craigslist. So, the next thing is going to be mobile phones.

[00:06:39]And GTA 4 does the mobile phones really well in a way that really does capture how clunky, awkward, and crap they were back in the early 2000s. Despite the iPhone already being released by the time GTA 4 had come out and the era which GTA 4 is set in, they weren't quite as popular as they are nowadays.

[00:07:00]It's not like everybody would have one like they do now. You've got the clunky buttons. You've got the way how when you press the buttons, they make these really annoying loud beeping noises all the time. When you're speaking to someone on the phone, it sounds like they're talking to you out of a tin can strapped to their anus.

[00:07:18]>> I love to watch the girls bend down and pick up balls. Of course, they have a ball with you.

[00:07:23]>> Custom ringtones and themes. We would browse websites like Jamster and we would find things like the crazy frog ringtone and uh we would set that and un not you know unironically that would be our ringtone and we would think it was wicked. Using the wayback machine to look at this Jamster website for 2008 is a throwback in itself. You can see even the advertisements for what was popular at the time. But what else is interesting is that on this website you could also download your own custom themes. And just looking through these gives you an idea of what people thought was cool at the time. Yeah. And in GTA 4, they've parodyied their own version of this with a website called VIP luxury ringtones.com. On this website, you can go on there and you can download custom ringtones and custom themes for your phone.

[00:08:18]>> And while we're on the topic of phones, why don't we talk about phones with cameras? Because if you were lucky, your phone camera would come with a whopping 5 megapixels. So if you took a picture of your grandma from a foot away, you'd be lucky if you could bloody make out her wrinkles with that thing. And in GTA 4, they recreate this really well as well because if you whip out your phone and zoom in with the camera, the further you zoom in, the more pixelated it gets, which I absolutely love. Now, you may be familiar with an app in real life called Shazam where you press it up to the speakers and it tells you what song is playing. Now, Shazam did exist way back in the early 2000s, but rather than it being an app on your touchscreen phone, yes, you had to actually ring a number and dial it and it would charge you and you would be lucky to get a text back with the right song. And Rockstar obviously thought this was relevant enough to parody in GTA 4 because if you actually dial this number for zit in the game um while you're listening to the radio, they will text you back with what song is playing. And I freaking love it.

[00:09:21]Now, I'm about to do something that's going to fire up the neurons inside your brain and take you back to the 2000s. I guarantee it. If you were born anytime before 2005, this is going to basically bring you back to your childhood. So, you're driving in GTA 4, listening to the radio, and suddenly you hear this.

[00:09:50]>> And this is called GSM, radio buzz.

[00:09:53]Whenever your phone was about to receive a call or a text, it would send short radio bursts to nearby phone cell towers. And if any unprotected devices were in the area, like speakers or TVs, then this is the result. You'd get this noise. But we can't talk about how GTA 4 captures the essence of the early 2000s without now talking about the broader world. What do the citizens of Liberty City really care about? What is actually going on in the world of pop culture?

[00:10:23]Well, let's find out. And it all begins with the TV.

[00:10:28]The in-game TV is filled to the brim with over-the-top celebrity obsessed TV shows that will remind you of the good days where you would sit there and watch MTV all day. But this is Rockstar we're talking about and they do it in Rockstar way. So, you have American [ __ ] obviously, um, American Idol turning talent shows from something that was already extremely harsh in real life, where back in the 2000s, most of these shows would literally be all about laughing at the stupid people that came on the stage.

[00:11:09]>> I'm sorry, James. Would you like me to sing something else?

[00:11:17]>> Yeah, they shut that down pretty quickly. Then you've got I'm Rich, which is basically MTV cribs, but obviously done in rockstar fashion. This show is absolutely no substance. It's just rich people showing off the rich things they have that poor people cannot have. The unnecessary things that even the most rich billionaires wouldn't need. And Rockstar go way overboard with it. And I love it because it is just basically MTV cribs dialed up to 11. They were pretty spot on with some of these TV shows is basically the point I'm trying to make.

[00:11:48]Culture as a whole back then, pop culture in the 2000s, this is what a lot of stuff on the TV really was like. And yeah, it they've done a good job of parodying it. So, here's where we're about to get deep. Why do all of these TV shows and websites exist in the world of GTA 4? Why do they exist in real life? because they're all a distraction.

[00:12:10]Behind all of the crazy TV shows about celebrities, behind all of the random websites where people overshare online, you have the real stuff that's going on, the stuff that they're trying to distract you from. And this is where we need to take a look and a peak behind the curtain of what kind of things can we find on the in-game news in GTA 4?

[00:12:33]what kind of things political and what kind of events are going on in the universe of GTA at this time. A lot of the in-game news and political um feel of the game is very focused on making people feel insecure, making people feel unsafe. It seems like whoever's in control of these news websites is trying to portray this sense of paranoia and nervousness in the city tied directly mostly to obviously the war on terror because we see the very real effects of it in the game with all the bridges being shut down. So almost everything happening in the universe at the time is very heavily political and focused on this fear-mongering of terror. But obviously being Rockstar, they do kind of put a little bit of humor into it.

[00:13:22]You've got like these random security threat alerts like Defcon 7 and Aqua 5.

[00:13:28]It's satire, but it's rooted into something that was very real at the time. And I think this is also why GTA 4 is special because Rockstar acknowledged that. They acknowledged that a lot of the political talk and stuff that was going on in the world was very heavily focused on these kind of stories and they felt it relevant enough to parody it in GTA 4. There's also, if you dig a bit deeper, you'll see a lot of rhetoric and a lot of talks on the in-game websites and TV about legalizing gay marriage. Obviously, you have to remember that this game came out at a time where this was still going on in political talks. This game isn't really that old, and it's interesting to see that Rockstar felt it necessary enough to parody that in the in-game news. But something else very serious happened in 2008. So serious that not only Rockstar parodyied it, but it's also the focus of many movies, and it's even taught in history classes now. And that is the 2008 financial crisis, the stock market crash of 2008. And yes, if you go onto the news in GTA 4, you can find articles basically talking about this also happening in the universe of Grand Theft Auto. But what I like that Rockstar have done is that they've buried it. In order to find it, you have to actually go out of your way to research. And instead, the things that are shoved down your throat and the things that the citizens of Liberty City seem to care about are these reality TV shows, these celebrity websites, and all of the gossip going on in the celebrity world rather than what's actually going on in the world.

[00:15:03]Something I found really interesting when playing games like GTA Vice City is thinking just how old and retro the vehicles looked and felt. But here's something that might scare you. GTA 4 was almost released now 20 or so years ago. So, it's very soon that this game will be as old as the 80s were when GTA Vice City came out, which is absolutely crazy. And that's why looking back at some of the vehicles in GTA 4 is really special as well. You see, up until now, it's been fairly reasonable to assume you could still see 2008 vehicles driving around on the streets, but that's going to become more and more uncommon over the next few years to the point where soon the vehicles we see in GTA 4 are going to be absolute retro classics. And some of them already are.

[00:15:49]You've got things like the Sentinel, clearly here based off the BMW M3 E46 model. You've got the Infamous or Infernace, which is clearly based off the Lamborghini Mercielago. And if you flip the thing round, it's actually a Pagani Zonda on the rear. And it has all of the body and beautiful things that you would expect to go along with that.

[00:16:08]And the game also beautifully betrays the time period where SUVs were still off-road vehicles, but they were just about bleeding through into the world of sports vehicles. Now, one particular show that had a huge influence on the game was The Sopranos, which is a 2000's TV show. And it's quite apparent if you've ever seen The Sopranos, it's quite apparent how how much Rockstar lifted from the show and was inspired by it. A lot of Nico's oldeny chapters, you know, the last island in the game, are heavily mob focused, and you can really see that Rockstar took influence from the Sopranos for this. Some missions are taken directly out of a strip club that just so happens to be located in an industrial area just like it is in the Sopranos. But there's even Easter eggs that are so black and white you just can't deny it. Like for example in the Sopranos they quite often and frequently sit outside of this pork store. And Rockstar even used this exact storefront asset pictures of it the real deal in the game as a location you can find in Ordin. And it's for these reasons I've brought up today I think GTA 4 belongs in a museum. It's the perfect snapshot of the world before everything changed.

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