With the release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition, new and returning players will have the chance to experience the deliciously twisted payphone missions involving Marty Chonks in GTA 3. GTA 3 was considered by some to be the beginning of the open-world era of games, with Rockstar packing content into GTA’s Liberty City and letting players run wild however they saw fit. The game is full of bombastic missions that have become synonymous with Grand Theft Auto titles over the years, but the more personal payphone missions that featured the character Marty Chonks stands out among the crowd.
Marty Chonks appears in Grand Theft Auto 3 as one of the mission-givers, enlisting the help of Claude to help him commit some truly murderous criminal activities. Marty first contacts Claude by payphone in the Trenton district of Liberty City, introducing himself as the owner of the Bitch’n Dog Food factory close to where Claude is taking the call. Marty claims that he has run into trouble with his finances, and that he’s meeting with his bank manager later on in the day who has been raising his loan repayment prices and taking some for himself. Chonks asks Claude to go pick up the bank manager and bring him back to his factory so they can “talk” about things.
After players get GTA 3’s protagonist Claude to pick up the bank manager and drop him off at Marty’s factory, the bank manager can be heard telling Marty to “get your hands off me” and then a squishing sound, indicating that Marty has seemingly killed the bank manager for stealing money from him. Claude is tasked to take the car he drove the bank manager around in to the Harwood Autocrusher and Junkyard to be destroyed, seemingly getting rid of any incriminating evidence that could lead the cops to link the manager’s disappearance to Marty. It seems like Marty’s problems may have been solved, but things get more complicated from there.
During the proceeding mission titled “The Thieves,” Claude uses his weird-looking GTA Trilogy hotdog fingers to answer a new phone call from Marty at the same payphone and learns that Marty apparently hired two thieves to break into his apartment and steal some of his stuff so he could collect on the insurance money. However, the two thieves are threatening to go tell the insurance company unless Marty gives them a bigger cut of the money, and Marty just can’t stand for that. He implores Claude to go pick the thieves up in the car he has provided and bring them back to his factory like he did with the bank manager, all to show them “Marty’s point of view.”
Claude travels to the Red Light district to pick up the thieves and brings them to Marty’s factory as planned, and things play out in a similar fashion to the bank manager in the sense that Marty murders them. Players then have to take Marty’s car and have it resprayed a different color to hide any sort of evidence, and bring the car back to park it at the factory once again. Marty’s money troubles still aren’t solved, however, as the payphone starts ringing once again as soon as Claude finishes his mission.
During “The Wife” mission in Grand Theft Auto 3, Marty claims that his business is about to go under if he doesn’t soon come into some money. He states that his wife has an insurance policy that he’d like to get his hands on, and since she’s never been anything but “a hole in his pocket,” It’s time to collect on the insurance. Marty leaves Claude another car near his factory and tells him to go pick his wife up at Classic Nails, which Claude does and brings her back to the factory. Mrs. Chonks walks inside and proceeds to be murdered by her husband, and Marty asks Claude to dump the car into the sea to get rid of evidence once more.
To nobody’s surprise, killing his wife hasn’t solved all of Marty’s problems, who calls Claude during the mission “Her Lover” to explain that his wife was having an affair with a man named Carl who he owes money to. Marty arranges a meeting with Carl to “pay him off,” and asks Claude one more time to travel across GTA 3’s Liberty City setting to pick the man up in another car that he has supplied. During Marty’s final conversation with Claude, he reveals that “Liberty’s dogs are gonna get yet another flavor this month!” after his impending interaction with Carl, which is the first allusion to the fact that the man has been turning his victims into dog food. This information takes an already messed up situation and cranks it up, driving home the point of how deranged Marty has become in his quest for financial gain.
When bringing GTA Trilogy’s somewhat weird-looking Carl back to the factory, Marty is actually standing outside of his factory instead of remaining inside, making this the first time that players (and Claude) have actually seen the serial killer in person. Marty tries to appeal to Carl and buy time to get him the money, inviting him inside his factory so they can talk more about some options of payment. Carl declines to go inside and states that it’s too late for Marty to pay him and that he plans on taking over the business in Marty’s stead. In a karmic twist of fate, Carl pulls out a shotgun and shoots Marty in the chest while Claude watches from the car, killing Marty where he stands and putting an end to his serial killer ways. Players can choose to either let Carl live or kill him as well, with killing Mrs. Chonks’ lover rewarding Claude with a new shotgun.
Taking part in these missions to help Marty kill off all of the people supposedly causing him trouble is certainly twisted, making Claude a pretty obvious accomplice to a newly created serial killer in Grand Theft Auto 3. In the early payphone missions, Marty’s commitment to his lust for money seems to blind him to the fact that he’s creating more problems on top of his financial woes, but the more Claude and the player get caught up in his crimes proves that he actually does realize what he is doing and just doesn’t care, as long as he gets his money in the end. The reveal later on that he’s not just murdering these individuals, but actively turning them into dog food to avoid leaving any trace of his crimes behind for the cops to find shows that he’s even more wicked than players generally thought given the level of premeditation. Marty Chonks is one of the more memorable side characters in GTA 3, and players will get to experience his twisted story once more in Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition.
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