There’s a split-second reference to Red Dead Redemption 2 hiding out in the new GTA 6 trailer, somewhat unsurprisingly.
Rockstar Games has been tucking clues and Easter Eggs in its open-world games for decades, and over the years, it’s become increasingly obvious that its cowboy romps (Red Dead) are set a few decades before its modern crime fest satires (Grand Theft Auto).
In the new GTA 6 trailer, if you zoom in on any of the scenes set in a strip club – for research purposes, of course – you’ll be able to spot President Thaddeus Waxman’s (RIP) face and permanently frowning moustache printed on all the flying dollar bills. And if you were bored enough to flick through all the newspapers in Red Dead Redemption 2, you might remember that Waxman led the country during the events of the game, starting in 1899.
This isn’t the first connecting glue between the two series, either. GTA 5’s world has tons of ‘Red Dead’ books on various bookshelves written by a certain ‘J. Marston,’ and that’s without mentioning all the sasquatch shenanigans littered across both.
Over the years, some fans have pointed out that Red Dead has a knack for name-dropping real-life places, like New York and San Francisco, instead of GTA’s fictionalized versions, like Liberty City and San Andreas, potentially disproving the shared universe theory.
Cash in GTA 6 has the faces of Presidents from Red Dead Redemption 2’s lore on themI guess in some way, you could say those games are in a sort of shared universe pic.twitter.com/R06ULBoOYhMay 7, 2025
But this article kind of sent me down an endless rabbit hole of useless Rockstar Games facts. For one, did you know that GTA 4 directly names the state of Florida, too? That would mean GTA 6’s state of Leonida exists alongside Florida, it’s not just a satirical stand-in. The same thing happens in Red Dead Redemption 2, as well, since the game’s take on the Rockies is called the Grizzlies, but the Rocky Mountains are also explicitly named in the same reality. Rockstar has a habit of adding ever so slightly wilder versions of real-life places to the USA, rather than simply replacing them.
So, this seems like a shut case. GTA and Red Dead Redemption more than likely exist in the same timeline, and the newest trailer only adds more fuel to the fire.
Let’s hope my theory doesn’t completely fall apart when GTA 6 drops on May 26, 2026 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
