Ever since the advent of Grand Theft Auto III, the GTA series has practically been defined by the iconic art that's accompanied every release. It's adorned every cover and loading screen in the series so far, and when it changes - as it did to reflect the more realistic tone of Grand Theft Auto IV - people take notice. Distinct and memorable, it's added to the series' hip edge and made its characters into fearsome symbols of fearsome badassery, giving them a larger-than-life quality that jumbles of in-game polygons just can't pull off.
But really, how closely can those polygons resemble their illustrated counterparts? There've been a few notable deviations over the years, but in general, we've been too busy running over pedestrians to notice if they looked anything like the art. To answer this suddenly-burning question, we've pulled out a dozen key illustrations from the series' past and present, hunted down the in-game characters they're supposed to represent and slapped them down, side by side, to see how well they match up.