... along with 10 other tormentable celebrities who were slipped into games without their knowledge
Grand Theft Auto IV's Niko Bellic is... Vladimir Mashkov While he's had a relatively long and illustrious career in his native Russia, actor Vladimir Mashkov is best known in the US for his villain role in 2001's Behind Enemy Lines - which is to say he's practically unknown in the US.
Still, the hard-faced, track-suited Serbian sniper he played in that movie seems to have been at least a partial inspiration for Grand Theft Auto IV's immigrant anti-hero, Niko Bellic. If nothing else, the visual resemblance is striking, and not just because Mashkov and Bellic have identical taste in track suits. Take a close look at their faces and imagine Mashkov with a full beard, sunken eyes and a haunted expression born from years of human trafficking. And also rendered in 3D, with a little more hair. It's uncanny.
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After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.
