The Unknown Guy

The Unknown Guy, also known as the Unidentified Male and MALE01, is a strange pedestrian in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

Description[]

MALE01 is one of the strangest and most commonly overlooked pedestrians in San Andreas. He is a medium-height African-American male dressed in khakis, sneakers, and a hooded denim jacket with a grooved haircut. The pedestrian's model is based off of a character played by rapper Tupac Shakur in the movie Juice. The pedestrian model has a generic name and is referred to by various different names by players. The term Unknown Guy primarily in use by myth hunters originates with an investigation uploaded by YouTuber ulown00b under that name.

The Unknown Guy's appearance is situational and the ped is almost never seen walking the streets, known only to appear on-foot when a carjacker pedestrian has hijacked him or when CJ himself hijacks his vehicle. He does have several set spawn locations across San Andreas:

Will always spawn as a train conductor. Does not react to threats if CJ hijacks the train.
Will always spawn as the driver of combine harvesters in the countryside.
Will almost always spawn as the captain of any boats that appear in the game's waterways.
Occasionally spawns driving a Bobcat in all areas of the map, ignoring the other factors that determine a vehicle's spawn such as the area's wealth or gang affiliation.

The Unknown Guy also has a strange model name in the game's files, MALE01.^[1] Typically, a pedestrian's model name will include information detailing where they are supposed to spawn, for example, CWMYHB1 stands for Country-White-Male-Young-HillBilly-1. Strangely the Unknown Guy's model name gives no indication of where he is supposed to spawn.

A possible explanation for why he acts so strange and him being a placeholder in a lot of scenarios and him being named just "MALE01" is that he might be the first pedestrian model ever made for the game or at least added in very early development. However, it's worth noting that "MALE01" has technically been in gta3.img since GTA III, and has been a different character for the same purpose through the last two games. He could've at least gone through several iterations before they settled on his final design.

Ballas gang connection[]

A myth hunter has reported that he witnessed the Unknown Guy not only spawn with a 9mm pistol but quickly began shooting into the air while running along as if aiming behind him. The Unknown Guy entered into a shootout with responding police and was shortly killed. It is likely this was caused by one of the game's events where normal pedestrians are spawned engaged in a car chase with the police while exchanging bullets. While in Los Santos, the Unknown Guy's car may be targeted by the spotlight of a passing Police Maverick, which causes him to exit the vehicle and flee. This is another random pedestrian behavior which is supposed to only occur to gang members.

Grove Street gang members can be seen attacking the Unknown Guy as they do to Ballas gang members, often tearing him from his vehicle and shooting him dead in the street. Recruited homies will sometimes attack the Unknown Guy when they spot him driving around. Grove Street members will only attack the Unknown Guy when he is driving the Tahoma or Majestic, the vehicles associated with Ballas members in the game's Car Group file.

In the second of the two videos, Grove Street gang members can be heard remarking "Ballas gettin' a take-down" when pulling the Unknown Guy out from his vehicle, cementing the fact that they recognize him as a Balla. Strangely, no Ballas territory existed anywhere in Los Santos when this remark was heard.

End of the Line mission involvement[]

During the final chase sequence of the mission End of the Line, the Unknown Guy can be seen throwing Molotov cocktails in both Willowfield and Ganton, just the same as the Vagos and Ballas, who were also participating in throwing Molotovs at previous roadblocks. He also can be seen in Big Smoke's Crack Palace's entrance with some prostitute.

Explanation[]

There is actually a simple explanation of Unknown Guy's strange behavior. If one uses a text editor and opens up the game's PEDGRP.dat file, the file that assigns certain character models to specific groups, then Unknown Guy's true intentions will be seen.

“

...contains the list of ped groups for each group type. Each ped group should contain 32 ped type names. Please dont use 'male01' in any of the pedgroups

”

Unknown Guy simply acts the way he does because he is not bound to any specific group, and thus can be spawned in the game world as a member of any of them. Usually, this is not a noticeable effect, but he can spawn in the Ballas or Grove Street ped group, which would cause his aggressive behavior. MALE01 also serves as a placeholder model for the game, being used in generic applications, such as taxi driving or conducting a train, and is a failsafe in the instance that the game doesn't load another model properly. The MALE01 model will replace story characters during missions if viewed in Replay mode, but this is because many story characters are from the CUTSCENE.img file and not GTA3.img, causing the replay to spawn in a placeholder model instead. These factors are why the Unknown Guy can sometimes be seen in large groups, as there are multiple opportunities for him to spawn.