While the gaming community loves to bicker and pick apart just about everything, one thing we can all agree on is that the GTA games are huge. With hours of dialogue from NPCs, hundreds of side missions, maps that are bigger than a lot of real-world cities, and more weapons than you can shake a chainsaw at, it is no surprise that worlds this big make fans go crazy with speculation. With something like fifteen games and expansions within the franchise, gamers have come up with some pretty wild theories about the massive series Grand Theft Auto. Some of them make sense, when you look at the clues presented, others are so far out in left field that you have to wonder what kind of head trauma you would need to first come up with something so strange. Although in a world where you can find a human meat butcher shop and a frozen alien, who's to say what counts as ludicrous anymore?
Let's not focus on the unsubstantiated claims like sightings of Rat-Man or Bigfoot. This isn't an article about urban myths. This here is an article about conspiracy theories, where small nuggets of existing facts contained within the game lead some viewers to mind-blowing conclusions. Are they totally unsubstantiated, or are they that little bit of headcanon that the developers were hoping some eagle-eyed fans would catch? Whether or not these theories hold water is totally up to you, dear reader, but true or not, one thing is for certain; these conspiracies are always entertaining.
25 Who's Your Daddy?
Michael De Santa's life kind of sucks. Despite all the wealth and a hot wife, he has his problems. He's faked his death, he has mounting money problems, his daughter is of loose morals, his wife openly cheats on him, and one of his only friends is a monster. So what else could be wrong with Michael's family?
Well, what if his good-for-nothing son isn't his? In the game, you meet Michael's friend Lester, whom he has known for a while. Lester is overweight, has a multitude of health issues, loves video games and does a lot of back research about the things he likes to talk about. Michael's son Jimmy is...exactly the same. Factor in this coincidence with the fact that Michael's wife openly sleeps with most people she meets, and you have a recipe for tragedy.
24 Death Is Only The Beginning
Every so often, you'll be tooling around the GTA universe and suddenly you'll be killed. Maybe you were on a spree and the cops caught up to you, maybe you tried to ollie over that Bleeter billboard and couldn't stick the landing. Either way, the end result is that all too familiar "WASTED" screen. And after you lose some cash and inventory, you are right back on your feet again, fresh as a daisy without a scar on you. That's....not exactly how that works.
So this may be credited up to simple game mechanics, but one theory posits that the health care in the GTA universe is so advanced that violence and near death is next to nonexistent. This explains how, in earlier games, you can watch ambulance drivers show up to an NPC you have murdered beyond repair, and in no time they revive them. This theory also further explains how you can see many of the same people around the various cities, especially after you are certain you had JUST ran them over twenty minutes ago. What's cool about this theory is that other fans have built off this assumption to explain why the world of GTA is so mature. In a world that is consequence-free of lasting physical harm, why not go on a murder rampage every now and then?
23 Big Brother Is Always Watching, Very Closely
Sometimes an NPC needs to get "got." This is a horrible thing to say, or think, but if we weren't horrible people, we wouldn't be playing Grand Theft Auto. So this guy who cut you off in traffic, you follow him home, you notice nobody around, zero witnesses, a shady alley, you run up and bash him to pieces. It's the perfect crime! Except, despite nobody seeing a thing that transpired, you now have one star on your "wanted" level. Was there some nosy neighbor you forgot to watch out for?
A popular theory for this is that in order for people to have lower insurance rates in this world, they submit to perpetual heartbeat monitors. That's right, some corporation is tracking your every vital sign at every given moment, so when you shuffle off this mortal coil, the authorities are instantly notified. In a world where companies openly run under the name "Life-Invader" this isn't much of a stretch.
22 Talk About Escalation
So you are tooling around GTA 5 as Trevor, you see an NPC, you act like a lunatic (as Trevor is wont to do) and murder them. Suddenly you have that wanted level we earlier discussed, and The Heat are after you. But these aren't the cops you remember running from as CJ way back in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, these guys mean serious business. When did cops get so OP?
One theory suggests that it is actually CJ to blame for how hard the cops act in GTA 5. The events of San Andreas happen twenty years before the plot of 5 happens, and as we all remember, CJ was a near unkillable one-man army (thanks to our own savvy violent gaming skills). Imagine twenty years of having to go head to head with a guy who routinely killed police officers in the hundreds? You are going to start militarizing your own police force against what is essentially a living god. So by the time Michael, Franklin, and Trevor are trying to carve out their own little piece of the action, they are up against an LSPD who are heavily equipped, well trained and out for blood.
21 GTA Must Not Have Al Gore
Eagle-eyed Reddit user Dr_Sandvich pointed out that the global map in GTA seems to show a world where every single continent has been ravaged by large-scale flooding. All land masses across the globe have had their shores pushed in or their lakes widened, with whole sections of the world that used to be above sea level now nowhere to be seen, lost beneath the waves.
It's no secret that the world of Grand Theft Auto seems to revel and bask in its' consumerism, with almost every character that you ever encounter being obsessed with material possessions. Has that widely accepted decadent lifestyle led the world to care less about pollution, and thereby raising our sea levels, swallowing up whole sections of otherwise inhabitable land? Well, there are theories on how the flooding happened...
20 When The Moon Hits Your Eye
So what if the cause of all this flooding wasn't human beings? What if the world that these characters inhabit is different from ours not just in its' insane levels of violence, but in an actual astrological sense? What if their moon was bigger, or closer?
A simple comparison of our moon, as viewed from the ground, to the in-game moon reveals that it's WAY bigger in GTA. This change in heavenly bodies might do much to explain why everything is so flooded in their world. It also doesn't help that shooting the moon with a sniper rifle changes its' size.
19 Water, Water, Everywhere
So, for whatever reason, be it global warming or an out of whack moon, every GTA game map takes place on an island. It would seem that the perpetual presence of island cities further strengthens the ideas that the previous two theories proposed. But still, OTHER theorists think the answer to "why so many islands" is a more cheeky answer.
This theory goes on to say that Rockstar Games put the games on islands in America as a way to criticize the isolated, close-minded and America-centric attitude most Americans have. Since each city is its' own little microcosm, with its' own issues, economy, and world, Rockstar was pointing out how shunning the world around them is kind of what America is all about. Wonder what they would have to say about Canadians?
18 Three Generations
Rockstar is a fairly clever company, not just for cranking out some of the best games of the last thirty years, but because they almost always have something to say outside of what appears to be on the surface. And when you've been around for as long as they have, they probably have a lot to say, especially about their own property.
With this in mind, one theory suggests that the three main characters of GTA 5 represent the three eras of the franchise itself. Trevor, who seems to only want to pursue destruction and instantaneous gratification, represents the first two games, which focused solely on carnage. Franklin is a rags-to-riches story, building up his cred and empire, like the era of games around the release of GTA 3 and the surrounding spin-offs. This leaves Michael, who is a sort of post-modern approach to the series, focusing on storytelling and personal drama, a la GTA 4 and onward. Whether this was a conscious decision on Rockstar's behalf or not, this theory definitely adds a little flavor to the gameplay of the most recent game.
17 Things Yet To Come
Franklin, to me, was the most endearing character in the fifth installment. Trevor was a depraved mess with no moral compass, and Michael was too in his own headspace to truly appreciate anything he had, or had ever done. Franklin knew his own self-worth, was willing to put in the time, cared about those around him and truly pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. When it comes to fully realized and fleshed out characters, Franklin was one of the only ones in the game.
So what if Franklin doesn't just represent the GTA 3 era games, but also a fork in the road for how crime can be utilized (we here at TheGamer.com in no way condone or idolize the use of crime to further one's own ends). Franklin has a choice, to become a psychopath like Trevor, who does crime for crime's own sake, or act like Michael, who only wanted to commit crime so as to provide a better life for himself and those around him.
16 What Does It Mean?
So Rockstar, when they develop a game, seems to leave a lot of room for speculation, making a breeding ground for some of the most interesting, entertaining or outright insane conspiracy theories in all of gaming. So, of course, the Mt. Chiliad Mystery has been no exception. In the map for GTA 5, somewhere on the already complex Mt. Chiliad is a mural depicting...something. A flying saucer, an egg, maybe, also maybe a jetpack. We don't know. So what is the mural actually depicting?
Most people think this is Rockstar's way of getting a good dig at the conspiracy theory community. By creating a mysterious image that seems translatable, but is ultimately full of gibberish, Rockstar knew that the tinfoil hat crowd would be banging their head against the wall trying to solve a riddle that doesn't even exist.
15 The Strong, Silent Type
The Grand Theft Auto series is known for either some of the best or worst dialogue in gaming, depending on who you ask. Love it or hate it, the dialogue is there in abundance, which is why it's always baffled fans why the protagonist of GTA 3 was mute.
Some think that the events at the beginning of the game, in which our hero Claude is betrayed by Catalina and subsequently shot, has something to do with his lack of vocals. Ignoring the earlier theory that healthcare professionals can cure anything, this theory claims that Claude was shot in the throat, causing him to lost the ability to speak, which is certainly a better theory than "he's just darn cool." As for the debate as to whether Claude is the same character as "Claude Speed" from GTA 2 is something worth investigating in a different list.
14 Time Is Relative
Ever notice that you can blast your way past cops at any speed without them batting any eye? It isn't until you clip someone that they go into full out berserker mode, so what gives? We know they have speed laws because the signs are all over the side of the road. Are cops all nonchalant about speeding violations?
What if you aren't speeding? Like ever? The clock inside the game is one second in the game equals on minute on the clock, right? That means that whatever speed you think you are doing, you are actually only doing about one-sixtieth that speed (feel free to check our math). So anytime you thought you were blazing your way through traffic, you were actually taking several minutes to overtake the car in front of you. Which is a little too close to real life, if you ask me.
13 A Wall Wouldn't Have Stopped Niko
So Niko Bellic can pretty much do anything, from fly a helicopter to tolerate his cousin Roman enough not to kill him. He's a better man than I. So with such a large skill set, he seems to be lacking one crucial ability: buying a car. Why is it that the only cars that Niko can own are stolen ones? That isn't a limitation to other characters in other games.
Here's the thing: as much as we love him, Niko is still very much an illegal immigrant. As anyone who owns a car can tell you, it is a disgusting pile of red tape to purchase a vehicle, and a lot of it depends on your ability to prove you are a legal citizen. So it stands to reason that without proper documentation, Niko would only really "own" his ill-gotten gains. Good thing there was no travel ban on Serbia.
12 A Deal With The Devil
What do GTA 4 and Goethe's Faust have in common? Not much, most would say, but one Reddit user thinks differently. There's the obvious inclusion of how one character is named Mikhail Faustin, who behaves much like the titular "Faust" in that they attempt to live their lives to the fullest.
There's also the inclusion of Niko's nearly superhuman rise to power in the criminal underworld. The theory goes on that by having characters like Faustin present, plus other allusions to "Faustian" literature, is an admission that Niko has otherworldy help in becoming such a key figure in Liberty City.
11 A Real-World Conspiracy
We won't blame you if you don't know what the 1933 Business Plot is. In short, it was a plan to have then president FDR thrown out of office in a coup, and replaced with a puppet dictator. This plan was supposedly put in place by major captains of industry at the time. Although this treasonous ploy is said to have failed (if it existed at all) it is still widely discussed today.
What does this have to do with Grand Theft Auto? Well, some think that the world of the franchise takes place where the Business Plot succeeded, and is therefore a world in which America is secretly ruled by corporations. This goes to explain the rampant consumerism and lax gun laws. What really baffles me is why someone is smart enough to know what the 1933 Business Plot is, but chooses to use that brain power on half-baked video game conspiracies. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess.
10 It Never Happened!
If that last entry was the smartest theory (not the most plausible, though), this one has to be the stupidest. Much like how everyone believes that the end of Taxi Driver all takes place in Travis Bickle's head, this theory claims that the entirety of the fifth game is inside Michael's head.
It's kind of hard to dissect this insane theory here, but it claims that Trevor is Michael's mental illness personified. Plus Franklin is a fabricated biography for a stranger that Michael wanted to know, and who he imagined as a better son than the one he had. Add on abandonment issues, and a sexual identity crisis, and this theory is one that can be easily dismissed.
9 A Happy Ending?
Remember when you finally got to roam around in GTA 5? One of the first things you did was head back to your old stomping grounds from San Andreas, the cul-de-sac for CJ and his crew. But when you get there, you'll find the old crew is nowhere to be seen, CJ's house is gone, and it is overrun with Ballas. What happened?
Some folks believe that this is clear indication that CJ got his act together and left the life of crime. Without the demigod that is CJ to protect the neighborhood, the old gang was chased out and The Ballas moved in. The theory even goes so far as to say that CJ started the security company that Lester uses all over his house. This little bit of supposition is nice, because it provides us with a bit of enjoyable closer that isn't usually present in most of the series.
8 The Spirit Of Radio
Rockstar has stated that the GTA Universe is divided into different eras, independent of each other, going from 2D to 3D to HD. It's accepted that Rockstar has claimed this so they don't have to have any sort of uniformity between games, like laws, physics, look or even long-lasting consequences.
It's funny then that the one universal constant that these games have are radio personalities, such as Lazlow Jones. Lazlow was present in Vice City Stories, which took place in the 80s, and his career has been moving along steadily throughout all the games since. If this is true, and each era operates independently from one another, does that make Lalow and his radio brethren inter-dimensional beings?
7 Only Logical Conclusion
In the immensely fun GTA Online, you have a lot of interactions with key figures from the main game. You work with Lester, Trevor, and Lamar, for starters. In fact, you do a lot of key work with them, which is bound to make a lasting impression. However, as soon as the main game rolls around, since Online takes place before the events of the central storyline, nobody thinks to utilize, or even mention you.
The fairly standard and accepted conclusion here is that, somewhere between the events of Online and the start of GTA 5, you died. You aren't an asset anymore, despite pulling off a lot of successful jobs. It's better this theory than suggesting you have no real lasting impact on the world at all.
6 Master Of Puppets
This theory is a doozy, so we recommend you look into it yourself. In GTA 5 you play as three different characters, all with distinct motivations, characteristics, and instincts. Heck, sometimes, as you take control of them, you will find them in the middle of doing something in their everyday life. Of course, they drop whatever it is they are doing to pursue your ambitions. So how do you explain that these three disparate characters all behave in the way you want them to?
Remember when we said that your GTA Online character died? So the theory posits that, since the character from Online only ever acted the way you made them act, that it is their spirit possessing Michael, Franklin, and Trevor, bending them to your will. That way when you go out of your way to screw with the lives of the characters in ways that is totally unlike them, it's actually the ghost!