The GTA 6 easter eggs you'll only catch if you played Vice City

The two GTA 6 trailers are packed with nods to the series: the hotel where Tommy Vercetti started out in Vice City, his palm-tree shirt, an ad for Phil's gun store, the old V-Rock station and even banknotes featuring presidents from Red Dead Redemption 2. None lasts more than a couple of seconds, and many were found by fans going frame by frame. Here they are one by one, with the timestamp where we know it, which game they come from and what they might mean.

The nods to GTA: Vice City

Going back to Vice City twenty-four years later was always going to show, and Rockstar has filled the trailers with clues for anyone who played the 2002 original.

The Ocean View Hotel, Tommy's first home

In the first trailer, around the 34-second mark, the camera sweeps along a street lined with parked sports cars and, in the background, there's a building with a pink neon sign. Zooming in, fans read «Ocean View Hotel»: the Ocean Beach hotel where Tommy Vercetti had his first safehouse in GTA: Vice City, where you saved your game and changed clothes early on. GameSpot picked it up in its trailer breakdown.

Rockstar hasn't said whether you'll be able to go inside or buy it in GTA 6, but just having the building standing is a statement of intent.

Tommy Vercetti's palm-tree shirt

The most famous outfit in the series is the blue palm-tree shirt Tommy wears for most of Vice City. In the second trailer, around the 33-second mark, Jason slaps a shop clerk and, at the back of the store, there's a wooden lizard figure wearing that very shirt. A Reddit user spotted it more than a year after the premiere, as Dexerto reported, and the clip went viral:

GameVerse@TheGameVerse

Call me crazy, but this is the first Tommy Vercetti Easter egg I found in GTA 6 Trailer 2.

Guns in the trunk, like Tommy and Lance

Jason and Lucia pull their weapons out of a car trunk before a job. The scene echoes one of Vice City's most recognisable images, with Tommy and Lance Vance doing exactly the same, and it was one of the nods Dexerto highlighted in its list of details from the second trailer.

A V-Rock T-shirt

In the second trailer, Jason wears a V-Rock T-shirt, Vice City's rock and metal station, the one hosted by Lazlow. It could just be vintage clothing or a hint that the station is coming back. For now it isn't among the six stations Rockstar has confirmed, although Rockstar has said there will be many more, including a classic rock one.

Phil and his gun store: is Phil Cassidy back?

Around 2:09 in the second trailer, on the TV Jason is watching, there's an ad for Phil's Ammu-Nation: a long-haired man firing into the air from the roof of his store. The name is no accident. Phil Cassidy is one of the series' best-loved side characters: Vice City's boozy arms dealer, voiced by Gary Busey, who also appears in GTA III and Vice City Stories.

One detail doesn't add up: in Vice City, Phil loses an arm in an explosion, and the Phil in the ad has both. That's why Den of Geek thinks he may be his son, or a new take on the character. GTA 6 is also set in the present day, forty years after Vice City.

And although it isn't an easter egg as such, Ammu-Nation itself is a classic: the gun store chain has been in the series since GTA III.

The Red Dead Redemption 2 connection

This is the find that got people talking most, because it links two Rockstar series. On the banknotes seen in the second trailer and in one of the official screenshots there are two familiar faces: President Hardin on the $1 bill and President Thaddeus Waxman on the $10. Both are US presidents in the world of Red Dead Redemption 2, set in 1899. A Reddit user uncovered it, and SynthPotato's comparison was shared by the thousands:

Synth Potato🥔@SynthPotato

Cash in GTA 6 has the faces of Presidents from Red Dead Redemption 2's lore on them I guess in some way, you could say those games are in a sort of shared universe

Does it mean GTA and Red Dead share the same world? It's the most tempting reading, and outlets such as Notebookcheck have raised it, but Rockstar has never confirmed it. The safest bet is to take it for what it is: a wink between games from the same studio.

Other nods to the series

• The Liberator monster truck. In the first trailer, at a mud-bogging meet, a Liberator shows up, the monster truck you could already drive in GTA V.
• Liberty City plates. Among the Leonida plates there are some from Liberty City, the series' New York, and from Glorianna, its parody of Georgia. In other words, Liberty City still exists in this universe.
• «Just fixing some leaks». At the start of the second trailer, Brian asks Jason what he's doing on the roof, and he says he's fixing some leaks. Coming from a game that suffered a massive leak in 2022, the line has been read as Rockstar poking fun at itself.

Will Tommy Vercetti return in GTA 6?

It's the question that keeps coming up, and the short answer is that nothing points to it. Rockstar hasn't shown Tommy or talked about him, and there are two clear obstacles: everything suggests GTA 6 is set in the «HD» universe of GTA IV and GTA V, which is separate from the original Vice City's, and Ray Liotta, the actor who voiced him, died in 2022. What there is, though, are tributes, like the lizard's shirt or the hotel. And for anyone who pre-orders, there's the Vintage Vice City pack, with a '55 Stanier, a garage in Ocean Beach and looks inspired by the original.