The recent leak of 90 videos from the early development of Grand Theft Auto 6 has revealed that the next installment in the series will mark a return to Vice City, the sprawling, fictionalized 1980s-style Miami Beach that served as the titular setting for 2002’s Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. That news has invited speculation about whether the new game’s storyline will connect to that of its predecessor and, if so, which characters from the original might make a return in Rockstar’s forthcoming game. Although GTA: Vice City featured a great many deaths, including those of some of the game’s most memorable characters, there remain a number of survivors who could make an appearance in the upcoming sequel.
[Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.]Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was first released 20 years ago, but it remains a player favorite for its host of colorful characters, deep storyline, elaborate missions, and the glamour and grit of GTA: Vice City's open world setting. Remastered as part of 2021’s Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, GTA: Vice City followed the adventures of Tommy Vercetti, a small-time hood who climbs the ranks of Vice City’s gangs and syndicates to become the city’s criminal kingpin. Tommy has to rob, blackmail, beat up, run over, and shoot a lot of people on his ascent up the ladder of success in the city’s network of organized crime, leaving Vice City littered with bodies, including some of Tommy’s closest allies and competitors.
Not everyone dies in GTA: Vice City, of course, though some of the main characters who survived the game died subsequently, left the city, or just disappeared. The game’s survivors include its protagonist, Tommy Vercetti, who finishes GTA: Vice City at the height of his wealth and power, living in a mansion and running the largest drug syndicate in town. But other main characters also remained alive at the end, including some real villains and a few fan favorites who are still memorable long after finishing the game.
Ken Rosenberg Is Still Alive At The End of GTA: Vice City
Apart from Tommy, Ken Rosenberg is perhaps the best-known character in GTA: Vice City. A dirty lawyer and a fixer for crime families in the city, Ken gives Tommy some of his first assignments and later becomes his attorney and sometime-advisor on financial and criminal matters. Though the two subsequently drift apart as Ken becomes more heavily addicted to cocaine, Rosenberg - clean of drugs but disbarred from practicing law - returns in GTA: San Andreas, once again working for the mafia and running up against the police.
Colonel Juan García Cortez Lives But Flees Vice City By Boat
Colonel Cortez hails from an unnamed Latin American country but lives in Vice City, where he runs an international drug trafficking ring and offers Tommy some jobs in some of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's classic gameplay. Cortez employs Tommy to do some dirty work for him and later asks him for help in escaping the country to avoid French government agents seeking the return of stolen tech. Tommy helps Cortez to escape to sea and he disappears, possibly returning to his native land.
Avery Carrington Survives GTA: Vice City But Dies Soon After
A native Texan, Avery Carrington is a Vice City financier and developer and part of the city’s social elite. Tommy helps Avery deal with a labor problem at one of his businesses by starting a riot among the workers. Later, he starts a gang war between the Cubans and Haitians and kills a rival investor on Avery’s behalf.
Voiced by Burt Reynolds, Avery survives GTA: Vice City. He continues to expand his business: Proving the theory that the best way to make money in GTA: Vice City is buying property, Avery invests elsewhere and appears on a billboard in GTA: San Andreas. On a trip to meet with the Colombian Cartel to discuss the redevelopment of Liberty City in 1998, Avery is murdered by former protégé Donald Love, who later steals Avery's body and eats it.
Phil Cassidy Survives GTA: Vice City, Moves To Liberty City
Phil deals in heavy artillery, providing Tommy with some of the game’s most powerful weaponry. He and Tommy work together on a few jobs, and in one memorable instance Phil - an inveterate drinker - accidentally blows off his own right arm while testing a homemade bomb. By 1998, Phil has relocated to Liberty City where he runs a gun store.
Kent Paul Makes It Through GTA: Vice City Alive
Originally from England, popular GTA: Vice City character Kent Paul is a drug addict, a habitual liar, and prone to panic when the going gets rough. Following the events of GTA: Vice City, Kent cleans up his act and moves to San Andreas, where he tries to continue his erstwhile career in the music business. By 2002, however, Kent is back on drugs and living in a halfway house where he maintains a website called Kent Paul’s 80’s Nostalgia Zone!
Mercedes Cortez Survives Vice City, But Not For The Better
Mercedes Cortez has had it rough. She is the daughter of a criminal father (the aforementioned Colonel Cortez) and an unknown mother who dies before the game begins. Growing up in Vice City, Mercedes rebels by becoming a rock-band groupie and pornographic actress.
She continues to spiral downward, getting more deeply immersed in the sex and drug industries prevalent in Vice City. Though she is one of the surviving characters that could return in GTA 6, Mercedes has become a “street walker” (according to a phone call Tommy received from Kent Paul) in Little Havana. Through cheats, Mercedes can actually become a playable character in GTA: Vice City.
Mitch Baker Is Still Alive At The End of GTA: Vice City
“Big” Mitch Baker is a disgruntled Vietnam vet and leader of a biker gang that deals drugs and provides security for a Love Fist concert that Tommy organizes. Angry and bitter over the treatment of military veterans, Mitch is violent and aggressive, a man the VCPD call a “lawless degenerate sociopath.” Mitch somehow manages to remain alive at the end of the game.
Umberto Robina Survives GTA: Vice City
Umberto is the head of the Cubans, a street gang that runs the Little Havana district in Vice City. Voiced by Danny Trejo in Rockstar's GTA: Vice City, Umberto assigns Tommy missions to ambush and infiltrate a rival Haitian drug gang. A fan favorite, Umberto survives GTA: Vice City and appears later in GTA: Vice City Stories.
Candy Suxxx And Steve Scott Are Alive At Vice City's End
Candy Suxxx (aka Candy Shand, voiced by famous pornography actor Jenna Jamison) is a prostitute and performer who stars in several pornographic films directed by Steve Scott (voiced by Dennis Hopper). Candy serves as an escort to some of the game’s prominent male characters, including Congressman Alex Shrub. She is recruited to InterGlobal Films by Tommy, who kills her agent when he refuses to let her go.
Candy survives GTA: Vice City, appearing on posters for pornographic films outside Vice City, in GTA games in San Andreas, Los Santos, and Liberty City. Unlike Mercedes, Candy leaves that life behind, eventually becoming a noted writer and philanthropist. Steve Scott, who also survives the game, is seen in GTA V to have a star on the Vinewood Walk of Fame.
Jezz Torrent, Rock Star, Lives Through GTA: Vice City
Jezz is the lead singer of Love Fist, a Scottish heavy metal band. Jezz hires Tommy to burnish the band’s image by acquiring them drugs and women, to provide security for a concert, and to escort them to their gig in a limo wired to explode. Alive at the end of GTA: Vice City, Jezz appears briefly in GTA: San Andreas, claiming to have joined a cult.
Several other minor characters are also alive at the conclusion of Rockstar's GTA: Vice City's story. They include Doris, the dispatcher at Kaufman Cabs taxi company (voiced by singer Deborah Harry); Auntie Poulet, the leader of the Haitian street gang; and B.J. Smith, former tight end for the Vice City Mambas football team. The whereabouts of these characters are unknown, but it is possible that they - along with other characters from Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, including protagonist Tommy Vercetti - could return in a future Grand Theft Auto 6.