UPDATE: This story was originally sourced from a satirical gaming website, but passed on as fact by many larger gaming networks. That is to say this is confirmed false.

Interesting story making the rounds today as Gilbert Gottfried, so-called "funnyman" and "actor", apparently tweeted this: "just found out I'm voicing the lead in grand theft auto 5! also I hate japan lol."

Rather tellingly, nobody thought to screencap the tweet, and it doesn't appear in Google's cache of his Twitter feed. Based on Gottfried's previous tweets making fun of the earthquake/tsunami in Japan, it's possible he never actually said this and it's just a publicity stunt or random attempt at comedy.

I actually had to IMDb him just to find out who he was, nothing noteworthy at all there. He certainly doesn't seem like the sort of person who'd play the lead in a videogame like GTA, a minor character is much more likely, his

Regardless of how much truth lies in this phantom tweet, if any, I'm not sure we really need "confirmation" that GTA5 exists - it's safe to assume it does. Various guesstimates on when we'll have an official announcement are flying around, but as of yet the game does not officialy exist, we'll just have to continue being patient for now.

Source: TheNobleEskimo [via CVG]