Well, we knew that fans would be pouring over every inch of the GTA 6 trailer, given that it’s the first one that we’ve seen in a year and a half, and probably the last one we’ll see in close to a year before the game comes out after its recent delay to May of 2026.
Fans have spotted more than GTA 6 clues (a map with two islands?) but rather some details that connect all the way back to Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption series. There are two main ones fans have found in the three minute spot, and one questionable one.
- Money seen in the GTA 6 trailer has the face of one of the fictional presidents from Red Dead Redemption.
- The fictional Duke gun brand from Red Dead Redemption still exists in GTA 6 to this day and makes modern weapons seen in the trailer and released images.
- The last one, and this is a bit more far-fetched, is that some believe Jason looks enough like Arthur Morgan to possibly be one of his descendants (as far as we know, Arthur Morgan did not have surviving children after his son was murdered).
The idea here is that the two games take place in the same universe but it’s a bit of a stretch to say that with these Easter Eggs alone. One of the key pieces of evidence against that theory is that Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that refers to real-life cities, ie. New York is not Liberty City, and a theory that “they were just renamed eventually” seems implausible.
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Second, there is effectively no way anything sort of descendant storyline is meant to be official or part of the story here. I don’t even think the alleged appearance thing is a real Easter Egg. The other things, the money, the gun brand, are, but I think everyone is reading too much into things to say these are literal shared universes.
This is also not the first time the series has done this, as there were also many references to Red Dead in GTA 5, like a book written by “J. Marston.” You can also select that name as a father for your GTA Online character. There are some shared name locations like Armadillo and Cholla Spring, streets named after locations in Red Dead. MacFarlane’s Ranch exists in the GTA world. Madame Nazar is a fortune-telling arcade game. There are a decent number of these, and I expect there will be more in GTA 6 once the game is more than a trailer.
This is just…a fun little thing. I don’t think the intention here is to literally make a shared universe, as that would never actually come up in a real storyline and it’s not like there’s going to be a side mission where Jason signs up for 23 and Me to trace his DNA back to Morgan. But it’s neat to see all the same, and you can look for more next year.
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