Grand Theft Auto has at all times run a second recreation past the boundaries of your controller, a scavenger hunt set in movement by an enormous neighborhood of secret hunters decided to crack open the sequence and clear up the meta mysteries inside.
GTA is a lightning rod for city legends and a magnet for myths, and hunters will cease at nothing to dig up the cryptids, creepypastas, and lower content material that merely should be hidden someplace within the vastness of every title.
What are probably the most well-known rumors all through the sequence’ historical past? Did any of them transform true? And what does the long run maintain for sleuths and speculators within the age of leaks and datamining? These are GTA’s strangest myths.
Half 1: Dodos and Darkels
Grand Theft Auto 3 launched after a last-minute, three-week delay out of sensitivity to the September eleventh assaults. Not a lot was really modified: solely about 1% of the sport by Rockstar’s personal estimate, little issues like police automotive livery and pedestrian barks.
However within the cauldron of conspiracism that was the early 2000s, we questioned what else we weren’t alleged to see. The grey metropolis forged in hazy headlights felt lonely and liminal, with vehicles that spawned out of nowhere and a sense that one thing clandestine was simply across the nook.
Contemplate the Dodo, a Cessna with clipped wings that hardly achieves liftoff. It’s not an enormous leap to presume that the plane was grounded as a part of the 9/11 cuts, or that it was initially a part of a mission the place it smashed into Donald Love’s towering HQ. Why else would Rockstar mannequin a aircraft and implement flying controls simply to hobble it?
However the Dodo was by no means meant to fly. A purported design doc requires a “wingless Cessna,” a compromise pressured by the PS2’s information streaming pipeline. An airworthy Dodo would outrun the sport’s capacity to load itself.
There was no technical motive to chop Darkel. The misplaced character’s existence is well-supported. IGN’s early previews famous a prophet who “says bizarre issues and asks you to do bizarre issues,” and he seems within the design doc as a creepy personification of the Rampage missions.
Why the omission? One idea is that his missions have been too violent and taboo even for Rockstar. Suppose El Burro’s Ice Cream Truck mission however worse. Working for an anarcho-terrorist was a non-starter after 9/11, however Darkel was really axed effectively earlier than the assaults.
Not each character works out, particularly when a floating cranium icon might do their job with rather a lot much less yappin’. Solely fragments stay of Darkel in GTA 3: a reputation within the credit, an unused texture, and a circle of vagrants who hang-out a Harwood tunnel.
The final of his followers, maybe. Typically they’ve molotovs. Nobody is aware of precisely what they’re as much as, not even your good friend’s uncle who works at Sony.
Schoolyards and examine halls have been the supply of information within the days earlier than CCU numbers and open betas. The gaming press served lovers who traded secrets and techniques in journal letter pages and the message boards of sizzling new web sites.
Mags would supply morsels of filth in return, confirming and debunking rumors and typically creating them out of complete fabric, however month-to-month magazines might solely transfer so quick.
The dialog was heading on-line, and avid gamers bought there early. By 2001 the web had grown into an enormous incubator for myths and legends. For GTA followers, issues have been about to get furry.
Half 2: Bigfoot
Liberty Metropolis, as realized in GTA 3, is a tiny place. It’s solely about 3 sq. miles by most measurements, and the O.G. Vice Metropolis isn’t a lot greater.
2004’s San Andreas is sort of 5 instances the dimensions of LC, a complete state with three complete cities and huge swaths of forest, desert, and farmland between them. There’s extra room to discover and get misplaced in, with loads of empty area for creativeness to fill the gaps.
GTA: San Andreas pushes the getting old recreation engine to its restrict, producing numerous little moments of unreality in a recreation designed to simulate fashionable(ish) life. Ghost vehicles roll throughout the road with nobody inside. A photographer flings himself off a cliff. Planes fall from the sky and scorch CJ’s face. All of those glitches within the Matrix could be defined by quirks of the code, however the place’s the enjoyable in that?
The anomalies and eerie draw distance fog give the lo-fi world a way of simulacrum. There’s a haunting unknowability to San Andreas. Step off the overwhelmed path and also you’ll find yourself misplaced within the woods like a fairy story. Right here there should be monsters.
Rockstar excels at cheeky commentary on all issues Americana, and it’s not an enormous leap to presume that they will need to have included the nation’s favourite cryptid someplace within the San Andreas wilds. Some name him Sasquatch, the Skunk Ape, or Harry. Most know him as Bigfoot, the lacking hyperlink of the Pacific Northwest. You’ve in all probability seen his beef jerky advertisements.
Bigfoot’s existence in San Andreas was surmised with staggering velocity. Inside days of San Andreas dropping, yarns have been being spun on-line about mysterious UFOs and cellphone cubicles within the desert and a legendary creature roaming the countryside. However the “San Andreas Bigfoot Hunt” wouldn’t actually choose up steam till the sport got here out a second time.
The “Scorching Espresso” controversy, wherein a scrapped intercourse minigame was found hidden on the disc, resulted in San Andreas being pulled from cabinets and re-released with out the offending materials. There was definitive proof on the nationwide information that Rockstar buried secrets and techniques inside the recreation. Something was potential now, even Bigfoot.
The pursuit of Bigfoot in San Andreas by the blossoming on-line myth-hunting neighborhood mirrors a lot of the true world seek for the elusive beast. There are harmless errors, the place fleeting glimpses of the mundane are misremembered as hulking monsters. A random pedestrian who mistakenly spawns within the woods can scare us sufficient to conjure a terrifying ape man in our minds. A creepy growl heard within the Again O’ Past woods after hours of looking might be the monster, even when it’s really simply C.J.’s abdomen rumbling.
A lot of the “proof” for the true Bigfoot comes from shaky footage and blurry snapshots, and the identical could be mentioned for the San Andreas creature. Within the pre-OBS age, when capturing video required devoted {hardware}, sightings have been shared as poorly-compressed information filmed straight from a smeary CRT. These obscure pictures lack readability however ooze spooky vibes, and the fuzziness performs a serious position in sustaining an aura of forbidden thriller.
Rockstar itself addressed the rumor with co-founder Terry Donovan declaring in no unsure phrases that “there isn’t a Bigfoot, similar to in actual life.” A doctored model of his quote unfold by means of the neighborhood with fairly the other impact because of the apocryphal addendum of “there’s something within the woods.”
Bigfoot brings out lots of fakers. Simply ask the numerous con artists all through the many years who spent their hard-earned time on picket footprints and fictional taxidermy. Even probably the most well-known Bigfoot proof of all, the Patterson-Gimlin movie, was not too long ago, nigh-definitively uncovered as a hoax. The GTA fable hunter scene was equally rife with opportunists who shamelessly cast proof for his or her pet theories, doubly so when the PC model of San Andreas arrived with the power to mod in a Bigfoot, snap some screenshots, and stir the pot.
Talking of the PC model, couldn’t a easy exploration of the info put the parable to mattress as soon as and for all? In idea, if Bigfoot existed within the information, modders would absolutely discover remnants ala Darkel, however nobody has ever produced an genuine mannequin or texture. True believers aren’t moved by this lack of proof.
Possibly he was on the unique discs and was scrubbed after the Scorching Espresso controversy, or eliminated in a later port. Patches present the believable deniability that’s important for each enduring fable.
Rockstar was clearly conscious of and amused by the Bigfoot craze. In 2010, Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare DLC straight confronts us with a number of Sasquatches, and killing one earns the achievement “Six Years within the Making,” reflecting the period of time because the launch of San Andreas.
The arrival of GTA 5 in 2013 heralded a completely new crop of rumors for followers to obsess over, however the devs didn’t neglect their past love. Within the recreation, Franklin can meet a hunter who has been obsessively chasing Bigfoot for “eight years,” roughly equivalent to the hole between San Andreas and V. His quarry seems to be a person in a dressing up, however later updates would permit the participant to embody the precise monster as a part of an additional convoluted golden peyote quest that appears straight out of schoolyard gossip.
The chase itself had turn into a part of GTA lore, and the neighborhood it created would quickly transfer on to a brand new monster.
Half 3: Ratman
The Sasquatch is a principally rural, West Coast phenomenon, and doesn’t actually go well with the HD streets of Niko Bellic’s Liberty Metropolis in Grand Theft Auto 4. A “Bigfoot of Bohan” allegedly haunts Welham Park, however GTA 4’s farcical tackle the 5 boroughs deserved a cryptid that referred to as it dwelling. Enter Ratman.
New York is crammed with critters. Pigeons, squirrels, the odd Eurasian eagle-owl. It’s not unusual to take your rubbish out and see an opossum’s eyes glowing again at you. However it’s the widespread brown rat that’s town’s spirit animal, resilient, resourceful, and large.
Residing in NYC means coping with the odd rodent jump-scare: a glimpse of motion out of the nook of your eye, a feeding frenzy round a discarded pizza field. City legends abound of big rats lurking within the metropolis’s sprawling tunnel system, mutant hybrids that stroll and speak and scold their adopted kids for uplifting Ninja Rap. One thing’s bought to be down there.
Like its real-world counterpart, GTA 4’s subway is impressively advanced. Though Niko can simply cellphone a cab and skip the journey, Rockstar carried out a true-to-life LTA transit system with 4 distinct strains and 26 stops. It’s pretty nonsensical by railfan requirements, however there have been loads of locations to cover.
The primary Ratman discussion board threads have been created inside weeks of GTA 4’s launch and met with skepticism at first, however the clues stored coming. Suspicious orange puddles appeared all through the subway system. Gamers reported listening to odd squeaks when exploring the tunnels, with a number of posters claiming they heard a voice shout “I’m the Ratman!”
These rumors have been rapidly dismissed, since cryptids don’t are inclined to introduce themselves. They do, nevertheless, excel at posing for blurry, inconclusive picture proof. Earlier than consoles slapped a Share button on each controller, fable hunters needed to doc their sightings the laborious method. Our impressions of Ratman have been filtered by means of Unregistered HyperCam 2 and the Moto RAZR’s VGA picture sensor. The outcomes have been so murky you didn’t must Photoshop them, although lots likely did.
The ambiguous imagery stored Ratman’s mystique intact and allowed us to take a position on his true nature. Is the orange liquid the blood or bile of a monstrous bipedal creature who feasts on town’s unhoused inhabitants? Or might the Ratman merely be a ragged, disturbed human ala Darkel?
We might by no means discover the solutions, as Ratman was by no means conclusively discovered inside GTA 4 or any of its information. Nonetheless, the hunt continued, even when it appeared like Rockstar was straight mocking it. An in-game article on the Liberty Tree web site stories on city myths inflicting widespread disturbances “within the minds of insane residents,” naming sasquatches, secret cities, and different notorious GTA mysteries. It wasn’t laborious to get the impression that the builders have been teasing us, however the neighborhood took it in stride and confirmed no indicators of slowing down.
GTA myths are constructed on prime of one another, tons of coexisting directly throughout console generations. Whispers of aliens, of shady males in trenchcoats and ghosts of slain NPCs echo by means of many years. The GTA Myths wiki was based in 2012 to catalogue this physique of contemporary folklore and hold issues sincere. The large database homes 1,500 pages of myths and guidelines them systematically with a verdict of confirmed, potential, unlikely, or false.
A couple of choose rumors sit above this scrutiny, below the safety of the wiki’s Protected Heritage coverage, the valhalla of unsolved GTA legends. Ratman and Bigfoot are there. So is Piggsy, the masked maniac from Rockstar’s Manhunt who followers swore was hiding in San Andreas. One entry is conspicuous in its absence from this pantheon, maybe the largest fable of all. The one which turned out to be true.
Half 4: The Chiliad Thriller
Excessive above the foggy woods of Blaine County, overlooking the lonely Alamo Sea and towering over tiny cities of Grapeseed and Paleto Bay, is Mount Chiliad. It stands 800 meters above sea degree, although an indication inside the world claims it’s a staggering 2,700 meters, placing it in the identical league as California’s Mount San Jacinto. Both method, it’s the tallest level in Grand Theft Auto 5 and it’s lots of enjoyable to climb.
There are a lot of methods to achieve the summit of Chiliad. You may hike the paths, drive up a dust highway, or pedal a bicycle till your thumb feels prefer it’s about to fall off. You may fly in by helicopter or drop in from a aircraft, however if you’d like a extra leisurely journey to the height and have 10 bucks to spare, a cable automotive will carry you up in consolation. As soon as they reached the station, gamers found the doorway to a thriller that will eat the GTA fandom for the following decade.
Scrawled on a wall beside two sealed doorways is a mural: a crude diagram of Mount Chiliad topped with a halo of lightning and topped by a beaming, all seeing eye. Contained in the drawing, a community of strains join packing containers throughout the mountain, 5 of them marked with X’s. Alongside the underside sit three unusual symbols: a UFO, a cracking egg, and a humanoid determine with a form on its again that positive appears like a jet pack.
The hunt was on. Mount Chiliad’s web page on the extremely influential GTA Myths wiki was created three days after GTA 5 launched in September of 2013. The subreddit r/ChiliadMystery, arguably the linchpin of the scene, shaped 4 days later. Contemporary off the Breaking Unhealthy finale, communities throughout the web turned their theorycrafting power in direction of scouring the mountain for clues. Right here’s what they discovered:
The X’s on the mural roughly correspond to factors throughout the mountain the place painted glyphs are hidden. The photographs depict the attention from the mural together with icons just like the moon or a raincloud. One glyph is tucked beneath an commentary platform. Above it, on the deck, earlier than a wide ranging view, you’ll see a phrase: “Come again when your story is full.
Rockstar wasn’t actually being refined. For the primary time, it embraced somewhat than mocked the parable hunters in its midst, giving them greater than a morsel to chew on. We didn’t have to have interaction in wild mass guessing over glitches and lower content material and fuzzy recollections anymore. GTA 5 gives an elementary ARG, with tangible clues and concrete targets and a narrative that evolves over time. What was the objective? What have been we looking for? The mural symbols appeared like guarantees.
Maybe the egg was of extraterrestrial nature. There’s aliens abound in GTA 5, from DMT hallucinations to dudes in costumes. You’ll find one frozen in ice mere minutes into the tutorial. Conspiracy tradition round little inexperienced males has lengthy been a goal of GTA, most notably within the unique San Andreas’s Space 69. The mission noticed CJ blasting out of a authorities compound with a jetpack, one other object prioritized as a potential prize. That leaves the UFO.
It’s indeniable that there are 4 unidentified flying objects within the recreation. Most seem at night time, floating within the sky as excessive as the sport engine will permit. Two of them resemble conventional hubcap alien craft and are marked with FIB lettering, whereas the one at Fort Zancudo is matte black and seemingly artifical, like a reverse-engineered copy of the alien unique. How does the navy have entry to this know-how? It could possibly be from the fourth spaceship discovered sunken on the ocean ground.
That is the reply to the Mount Chiliad thriller: After reaching 100% completion because the message prophesied, ascend Mount Chiliad throughout a rain storm, per the glyphs’ directions. Stand looking out platform at 3:00 AM and behold: a UFO, fairly much like the opposite “Plan 9” model ships, although there are clues that this could be some form of projection or hologram. Stroll away and it vanishes, very similar to the goals of many a fable hunter who had hoped for one thing extra.
Many refused to consider that it ended with the UFO, satisfied that the Chiliad was a pink herring to disguise the true revelations nonetheless ready to be found. They searched in useless for the jetpack, or poured their efforts into different myths just like the ghostly girl who spawns atop Mount Gordo (true!) or the Goatman who lives beneath a bridge in Cape Catfish (not a lot). The neighborhood wasn’t completed with GTA 5, and neither was Rockstar.
A couple of yr later, Rockstar re-released GTA V on PS4 and Xbox One, with a PC model the next spring. Upgrades included greater resolutions and first-person view, with sharper textures permitting for nearer appears at clues. Delicate modifications have been launched within the next-gen model as effectively: a creepy face discovered on the mountainside was changed by a rooster, and a tiny tattoo appeared on Trevor’s hand, the identical all-seeing eye image from the summit.
What did the builders imply by the alterations? Had been we studying an excessive amount of into it, or was Rockstar steering us towards the true solutions? Does fixing a thriller nonetheless depend if the information hold altering?
Detective fiction has a rule for this, referred to as “taking part in honest:” the answer can’t hinge on one thing the reader has no method of realizing. You may’t slip DLC chapters into an Agatha Christie novel after the ultimate web page, however that’s how Rockstar has been working the hunt for years.
Grand Theft Auto On-line turned the sequence right into a residing recreation, refreshed on a schedule with a relentless stream of latest content material, from weapons and automobiles to recreation modes, heists, and ultimately the holy grails we’ve devoted our lives to discovering.
The Doomsday replace in 2017 seems to be the ultimate phrase on the Chiliad thriller, revealing a secret, high-tech facility within the mountain bearing the identical iconography seen on the summit. The climactic heist sees you blasting out of Chiliad with the Thruster, the totally useful jetpack of our goals. It prices about $2 million to maintain it.
Different updates launched ghost searching, aliens, and trippy Sasquatch communion, and whereas there’s nothing improper with giving the individuals what they need, there’s one thing deflating about handing out the payoffs to long-running myths in service of promoting extra Shark Playing cards. Our years of looking and deciphering ended with as a lot which means as “you should definitely drink your Ovaltine.”
The neighborhood continues to be round, nevertheless it’s by no means been the identical since. As a substitute the power has turned from discovering secrets and techniques contained in the video games towards studying all the things we will about them earlier than launch. The previous few years of GTA rumors have revolved round high-profile leaks fed by the fevered frenzy for GTA 6. There are positive to be numerous secrets and techniques and huge depths to find inside probably the most anticipated recreation of all time, nevertheless it’s going to really feel totally different having peeked behind the forbidden curtain, realizing it could actually all change on a dime.
Video games was a completed factor. To procure the disc, took it dwelling, and, presuming there have been no secret intercourse minigames inside, that was it. Every part there was to cover was already etched on DVD, secrets and techniques mounted in low-res amber precisely the place we left them. The hunt won’t ever finish for Grand Theft Auto myths, as a result of nobody can patch out chance.
Charlie “Moose” Lopresto graduated regulation faculty, handed the bar, and made a financially questionable choice to jot down about video games and flicks as an alternative. Contributing to IGN since 2021, he collects solo board video games and reworking robots.