GTA 5 fans keep starting NPC riots in the silliest way possible

It doesn’t take much to get Grand Theft Auto 5 NPCs all riled up, but fans of Rockstar Games’ open-world game have found a way to turn rage-baiting into an art form. Armed only with innocuous items, players spark chaotic GTA 5 chain reactions that feel straight out of Looney Tunes.

On Monday, a post showcasing this NPC phenomenon went viral on the GTA 5 subreddit. That clip is only one instance of a wider trend, but it’s also a great encapsulation of why these videos are getting attention from millions of viewers in 2026. It begins with a lone snowball thrown at a car that is being driven by a grandma. The old lady, now angry, quickly reveals she’s packing a baseball bat. The situation somehow continually deteriorates over the course of five minutes. Cars explode. Planes crash onto the street. Everything is on fire, and everyone is out for blood.

Average Grand Theft Auto players probably can’t recreate something like this, as the Reddit user appears to be using mods. But as evidenced by TikTok and YouTube videos with a similar concept, it sure is entertaining to watch. In a late-March upload that has 7.3 million views, GTA player ohegta lobs a snowball at a police officer only to accidentally recreate Bird Box‘s violent opening. And if you go to ohegta’s channel, nearly every video they have uploaded over the last few weeks runs with a riot-starting snowball concept.

The same is true of YouTube account EkoGTA, which has also garnered millions of views by starting riots in unexpected ways. While the channel’s most successful videos involve snowballs, EkoGTA has also experimented with societal breakdown via a rolled-up newspaper.

Starting a riot in GTA 5 is not a new concept: There’s a popular 2015 mod which programs all NPCs to be one small inconvenience away from losing it. But the idea has evidently undergone a renaissance in 2026, as content creators reintroduce it to nascent social media ecosystems, like YouTube Shorts and TikTok. The difference between GTA 5 riot videos now and the ones uploaded a decade ago lies in how that riot began. In the past, most users went into the fray equipped with a gun, not an everyday item.

In 2026, there are also entire channels themed around enraging GTA NPCs. Many of them have a better sense of what “works” on YouTube, and can use AI to make YouTube thumbnails in the style of Mr. Beast videos. A YouTube account named Toaster, for example, has only been around for 11 months, and sticking to videos about NPC riots has ensured that nearly all of its videos reach 100,000 views or more. But when a game like GTA 5 has been around for over a decade, it’s only natural that trends come and go in cycles. Or in this case, flames.