BJ Smith's Loan Shark is a cut character scheduled to appear in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
Description[]
No information is known about this character, other than he is a money lender operating in Vice City, Florida. The Vice City Mambas football team's former tight-end BJ Smith is a client of his, and by 1986 is heavily in debt to the loan shark.
BJ Smith acquires the Sunshine Autos car dealership in Little Havana and, under the name of BJ's Used Autos, uses it as a front for stolen cars in order to get money to clear his debts.
Eventually, Tommy Vercetti purchases Sunshine Autos for $50,000. BJ Smith leaves town, and Tommy Vercetti inherits BJ's Used Auto's debts. The loan shark threatens Tommy via phonecall, telling him the streets of Vice City will be very unfriendly until he pays BJ Smith's debt.
The entire loan shark section after Sunshine Autos' property acquisition, including his post-purchase phone call and five random phone calls, is left unused in the final version of the game.
On the promotional website, the SWF file for the Vice City Bureau of Investigation section contains an unused polaroid handwriting title "BJ'S LOAN SHARK," meaning this character was originally intended to have a crime record on the promotional website, although the actual content of his crime record is missing (render, description, etc.).
Trivia[]
- The loan shark and debt features are later repurposed for the casino gambling feature in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.