1. Introduction Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004), despite its groundbreaking open-world design for the time, utilized a pre-canned animation system for character death and injury. When CJ’s health reaches zero, a scripted “death animation” plays—a fixed sequence where he stumbles, clutches his chest, or falls in one of several predetermined ways. This lacks the dynamic, physics-driven unpredictability of modern “ragdoll” systems (seen in GTA IV and V ), where a character’s body reacts naturally to momentum, collision points, and gravity.