About

Grand Theft Auto Cover Parodies are photoshopped parodies of the box art for the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) video game series.

Origin

Grand Theft Auto III, released on October 22nd, 2001, was the first game in the series to incorporate a multi-pane collage of guns, characters and locations on the box art, which subsequently became the signature style of GTA cover artworks. On June 12th, 2005, a photoshopped cover of Grand Theft Auto III titled “Grand Theft Auto Somalia” was posted to the Internet humor site Fugly.^[1]

Spread

On October 30th, 2007, the action-adventure game The Simpsons Game was released, which featured a level in which the character Bart plays a GTA parody titled "Grand Theft Scratchy" (shown below, left). On November 29th, Flickr^[2] user courtney_gripling27 uploaded a box art parody featuring the greeting card character Strawberry Shortcake (shown below, right).

On May 13th, 2008, the social news website Fark^[4] posted a thread for users to share original photoshopped GTA box art. On August 20th, the video game blog Electronic Entertainment^[3] posted a Super Mario-themed GTA parody (shown below, left). On July 23rd, 2010, VGBoxArt^[5] user Reject619 submitted a box art parody including several characters from the animated television show Spongebob Squarepants (shown below, right).

On December 30th, 2011, DeviantArtist Skeptic-Mousey uploaded an image titled "Grand Theft Pony," featuring a variety of screen captures from the animated television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in the GTA box art style (shown below, left). On September 17th, 2012, the tech news blog Geekenstein^[6] published a compilation of notable GTA cover parodies. On October 29th, 2012, DeviantArtist phihung940 uploaded a GTA box art featuring characters from the multiplayer strategy game Defense of the Ancients (shown below, right).

On April 9th, 2013, Redditor LewisSomerville submitted a box art with an illustration of Pope Francis to the /r/funny^[7] subreddit (shown below, left), which accumulated more than 1,500 up votes and 40 comments in the first five months. On July 1st, the Internet news blog UpRoxx^[8] posted a GTA cover featuring characters from the fantasy drama television series Game of Thrones (shown below, right). On September 18th, the Internet humor blog Smosh^[9] posted a compilation of notable GTA box art mashups.

Notable Examples

Search Interest

Not available.

External References