Vice City Characters: Sonny Forelli, Diaz, Ken Rosenberg
A guide to the major Vice City characters around Tommy Vercetti: Sonny Forelli, Ricardo Diaz, Ken Rosenberg and the A-list voice cast behind them.
The supporting Vice City characters are half the reason the 2002 game still holds up: a rogues' gallery of mob bosses, drug barons, sleazy lawyers and bikers, most of them voiced by genuine Hollywood names. Built around Tommy Vercetti, the cast pairs Sonny Forelli, Ricardo Diaz and Ken Rosenberg with a deep bench of antagonists and allies. Here is a profile of the major players and the actors behind them.
Tommy Vercetti and Lance Vance: the core duo
Tommy Vercetti, voiced by Ray Liotta, is the playable protagonist and the first fully voiced lead in mainline Grand Theft Auto. A made man sent down from Liberty City after 15 years in prison, Tommy spends the campaign rebuilding from a botched drug deal into the boss of an empire. For the full breakdown, see the Vice City game hub.
Lance Vance is Tommy's partner for most of the story, an ally who helps take down Diaz and then turns on Tommy in the finale, siding with Sonny for a bigger cut. His betrayal sets up the climactic mansion shootout.
Sonny Forelli: the Don who never lets go
Sonny Forelli is the main antagonist of GTA Vice City and the Don of the Liberty City-based Forelli crime family as of 1986. He is the man who sends Tommy south to set up a drug operation, and the man Tommy has owed since a 1971 setup put Tommy behind bars. The relationship sours across the game as Tommy builds his own power base instead of feeding profits back north.
Sonny is voiced by the late Tom Sizemore (Saving Private Ryan, Heat), who died on March 3, 2023, at age 61. Sizemore plays Sonny as a controlled, charismatic mob boss whose patience runs out in the final act. The confrontation arrives in the closing mission "Keep Your Friends Close...", where Tommy tries to fob Sonny off with $3 million in counterfeit cash printed at his own Print Works. Lance leaks the location of the real money, the mansion erupts into a gunfight, and Sonny confirms he engineered the 1971 ambush before dying on the estate.
Ricardo Diaz: the drug baron of Vice City
Ricardo Diaz is the self-styled drug baron of Vice City, a volatile cocaine kingpin who employs Tommy and Lance before becoming the story's mid-game target. He is voiced by Luis Guzmán (Carlito's Way, Boogie Nights), who also reprised the role in Vice City Stories.
Diaz runs his operation from a heavily guarded mansion on Starfish Island, complete with CCTV and armed guards. Tommy and Lance assassinate him in the mission "Rub Out," shooting through the grounds and into the main hall, where Diaz and his eight guards are killed. The reward is $50,000, and Tommy takes over the property, which is renamed the Vercetti Estate and becomes the game's main save point and garage. Diaz's death is the hinge of the entire campaign: it is the moment Tommy stops working for other people and starts running Vice City himself.
Ken Rosenberg: the panicking lawyer
Ken Rosenberg is the nervous, coke-addled attorney who is Tommy's first contact in Vice City and runs the firm K. Rosenberg & Co. Ken handles the legal side of Tommy's rise, brokers introductions, and spends most of the story in a state of barely controlled panic. He is voiced by William Fichtner (Prison Break, The Dark Knight), credited as "Willian Fichtner" in Vice City. Fichtner returned to the role in San Andreas, making Ken one of the few characters to appear across both games and tying the 3D-era timeline together.
Avery Carrington and Steve Scott: the businessmen
Avery Carrington is a ruthless Texan real estate mogul who hires Tommy for property-related dirty work, including intimidation and arson to clear land for development. He is voiced by Burt Reynolds (Smokey and the Bandit, Boogie Nights), and the character later turns up as a minor figure in Liberty City Stories.
Steve Scott is a hard-partying film director at the InterGlobal Films studio Tommy buys into. Scott is voiced by Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now) and plays as a clear parody of a self-important Hollywood auteur. Through Scott, Tommy turns the studio into a money-making asset by producing an adult film.
Umberto Robina and Mitch Baker: the gang leaders
Umberto Robina leads the Cubans, the street gang that controls Little Havana, and operates out of his father Alberto's café. He repeatedly tests Tommy's "cojones" before sending him against the rival Haitian gang in missions like Stunt Boat Challenge, Naval Engagement and Trojan Voodoo. Umberto is voiced by Danny Trejo (Machete, Heat), and the character is modeled closely on Trejo's own look.
"Big" Mitch Baker leads the biker gang based at The Greasy Chopper bar. Tommy has to earn the bikers' respect (recovering stolen alloy wheels, then handling Mitch's dirty work) before they will provide security for a concert. Baker is voiced by Lee Majors (The Six Million Dollar Man).
Mr. Black: the voice on the payphone
Mr. Black is the mystery employer behind Vice City's payphone assassination missions. He is never seen, only heard, contacting Tommy through ringing payphones scattered across the map and assigning hit contracts. There are five of these optional payphone missions, including "Road Kill," "Waste the Wife," "Autocide," "Check Out at the Check In" and "Loose Ends." They sit outside the main story and are a reliable early money source. For the full picture of the game's content, the Vice City cheats page covers the codes most players reach for first.
Why the Vice City cast still lands
The strength of these Vice City characters is that nearly every major role went to a recognizable actor, an unusual move for a 2002 game. Liotta, Sizemore, Guzmán, Fichtner, Reynolds, Hopper, Trejo and Majors give the 1980s Miami pastiche a film-grade voice cast that most games of the era could not match. Combined with sharp writing and a tight story, that cast is a big part of why Tommy Vercetti's supporting players remain among the most quoted in the series.
