Jack Howitzer

Official Grand Theft Auto VI footage shows a DVD of Exploder: Evacuator Part II among other films for sale in a 24/7 store. This is the only stated GTA VI appearance: the material identifies the item as a DVD copy and the location as a 24/7, but gives no trailer timestamp, region, price, interaction, or further role for Howitzer himself.

After his action-star period, Howitzer made Special Needs Cop during the 1990s. The film is described as aggressively politically incorrect and has him placing special-needs children and other bystanders in danger. By that period, he had become convinced that the events in his films were real, while also fearing a Soviet attack even after the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991.

His name reflects the artillery weapon called a howitzer, linking the character to his war-film persona. His films draw on action cinema associated with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Exploder: Evacuator Part II parallels Commando through its soldier-and-abducted-family premise, while other titles invoke Terminator, Kindergarten Cop, Rocky, and the Rambo films. His forceful American delivery is closer to Stallone’s manner of speaking than Schwarzenegger’s. Randy Pearlstein voices him.

A Weazel News item in The Ballad of Gay Tony said that Howitzer received a 15-year prison term for shooting a radio host during the 1990s. He had been paroled by 2008 and was then expected to front a reality programme. Between 2008 and 2013, however, he was convicted again in connection with aggressive driving and a pursuit involving a police vehicle, returning him to prison.

By 2013, he had left Bolingbroke Penitentiary and was living in a room at the Motor Motel while cameras followed him for the reality series. Talent agent Rufus Bellows attempted to prevent impulsive acts and proposed a comeback vehicle centred on Howitzer, though the production had no willing participants or backers. The script was considered outdated, alongside concerns about Howitzer’s lack of popularity and his unstable emotional state.

In Grand Theft Auto V, Howitzer uses Ho Chi Sock, an Asian-dressed sock puppet, as a coping device. He remains mentally fixed on the 1980s and treats the middle of that decade through the early 1990s as America’s best era. His motel habits, including urinating in bottles, resemble accounts of Howard Hughes in later life and inform the portrayal of his deteriorated state.

Bellows helped him establish Lifeinvader and Bleeter profiles. After Moe Chinpoko provoked him online, Howitzer responded by setting fire to Moe’s Mirror Park home. He also has the in-game site JackHowitzer.com. Television broadcasts in Grand Theft Auto Online continued to air reruns of his reality show, and the 2019 Diamond Casino & Resort update allowed players to place posters for Evacuator, Exploder: Evacuator Part II, and Push-Up - The Movie, as well as Howitzer-related props, in a Master Penthouse.

Grand Theft Auto IV already referred to the planned reality show. An Algonquin pedestrian near a newsstand mentioned it and made a crude remark involving Ho Chi, while a startled female pedestrian could shout an insult using Howitzer’s name. In Grand Theft Auto V, a Weazel report again connected his imprisonment to the shooting of a radio host in the early 1990s.

That report alludes to an earlier version of the character from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, in which he accidentally shot Billy Dexter on Entertaining America, without identifying either the programme or victim in the later report. His GTA V show also includes a line recalling the finale of M*A*S*H, concerning a baby mistaken for a chicken.