The GTA 6 trailer is full of references to real-life Florida stories

As 2023 comes to an end, cybercrime has become a critical issue. Insomniac Games, the famed developer of Marvel's Spider-Man and its sequel Spider-Man 2 became the latest victim of a lack recently. Nearly 1.6TB of information including developer builds of the upcoming Marvel's Wolverine, timeline of upcoming games, as well as personal data of employees were put online by hackers. While this hack was shocking, it isn't the only one suffered by a major gaming developer in recent years. Just last year, Rockstar Games was hacked and 90 early development videos of GTA 6 were leaked online. Sometime later, it was concluded that a teen was behind the hack, and now he has been sentenced to life in hospital prison.

By Emma Roth, a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

It's been just over two weeks since the GTA 6 trailer dropped, and the community has now reached the 'hair analysis' part of the hype cycle. 

GTA 6 fans are so desperate for new footage or any crumb of information that they've resorted to using braille on the bullet holes in a car to try and decipher the date of the next trailer.

Red Dead Redemption 2 star Roger Clark has told the ‘Florida Joker’ to use the extra publicity the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer has given him, rather than threatening Rockstar with lawsuits.

Grand Theft Auto 6 (GTA 6) finally got its first trailer earlier this month (December 4), and while it arrived to much applause, there was at least one person who didn't look upon it so favorably. 

While people patiently await the release of , the trailer for the game has been dissected, revealing that many of the moments held within are actually based on real-life viral events. With the rise of the Florida Man meme and no shortage of interesting and disturbing things happening in the state, there was plenty contained in the short trailer to chew on, and much of it is based on real life.

Innocent, dew-eyed babe that I am, I had no idea that the heavily tatted criminal who makes a brief appearance in the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer looked like a real guy. But he does, and now I will live with that knowledge until my last days. He resembles Florida Joker—real name Lawrence Sullivan—a resident of, uh, Florida with face tattoos and hair inspired by Jared Leto's portrayal of the Joker, who originally went viral for a 2017 mugshot.

Here's how GTA 6's Vice City stacks up against the 2002 version, as well as the real-life locations that inspired it.

The hotly anticipated GTA 6 trailer is out now, and you bet we’ve been watching it on 0.25 speed to try and pick up on any details you may have missed. As with any Rockstar release, while the clip itself is only 90 seconds long, each frame is densely detailed. And we can confirm the Scottish studio’s sense of humour is alive and well, as it lampoons modern American life in a number of different ways.

GTA 6, just like every other game in the series, will be a satirical take on the United States. Rockstar's sights are set firmly on Florida this time around, with the developer recently having confirmed the game will take place in Vice City, the GTA equivalent of Miami. To get the tone and absurdity of Florida as accurate as possible, it seems as though Rockstar looked to real-life events that took place in the state as inspiration for the game's first trailer.

Ned Luke, best known to many as Michael in GTA 5, was among the fans most excited for the GTA 6 trailer. In a two-hour watchalong and react stream on his personal YouTube, the voice actor shared his thoughts on the long-awaited open-world follow-up, and boy were a lot of those thoughts about butts.