Grand Theft Auto 5 characters revealed?

Word on the Internets is that GTA5 is codenamed “Rush” and that several characters have been revealed via casting calls by Rockstar.

Although the casting calls are not labeled as “Grand Theft Auto 5“, it seems pretty obvious that they are related to the upcoming title, or at the very least a new GTA project.

One of the casting calls is asking for a 40-45 year-old male to play the voice of “Pedeaston”, who is a character from the previous two GTA games, San Andreas and GTA4, who is known for doing bad things to children. The description for him in GTA5, or rather for the casting call, reads: “a man-boy love activist who just got released from an Indonesian prison.” In GTA: San Andreas, he was a radio show host of WCTR and in GTAIV he was arrested in Indonesia. Rockstar did some viral-marketing for the game then by setting up a fake website called freejames.org asking for donations towards his legal fund (the site now forwards to the official GTA4 website).

Additionally, it is believed that Grand Theft Auto 5 will be set in Hollywood in Los Angeles, California, and these characters seem like they’d fit well within that setting. Samantha’s description even mentions Hollywood by name.

Other characters revealed in the casting call for “Rush” aka Grand Theft Auto 5 include:

Anthony: “A young, fast-talking boy fighting for the right of young boys to drink alcohol and have sex” (is between 10 and 15 years old)
Jose: “A white creepy man who thinks that technology is a poison against the wilderness” (is between 30 and 40 years old)
Matthew: “A liberal young male who believes in a conspiracy made by republicans to undermine America” (is between 18 and 25 years old)
Samantha: “A young female obsessed with sex parties, always dreaming of being a Hollywood celebrity.”

According to Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, we should be seeing GTA5 before the end of January 2012, which is when several key employees’ contracts expire. So we should probably learn more about the game at the upcoming E3 2011 in June.

Via Eurogamer. Thanks to Flickr for the awesome Strawberryland box artwork.