Rockstar Games has always had plenty to say. The Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption developer captures a moment in time through multiple projects by not just providing recognizable visual and audible cultural references defining the era a game is set in, but also biting satire of real-world political, economic, and social issues that remain timeless.
With the official reveal of the next Grand Theft Auto game, then, the question lingers over what Rockstar plans to parody next. The GTA 6 trailer all but confirms we’re heading back to Miami, Florida, which may be familiar to you if you’ve played GTA: Vice City. This time, though, we’re ditching the sleazy glam of the 80s for something more modern.
As plenty of people who have been picking through the trailer can tell you, the city of Leonida has already seen plenty of obscene moments that play out like a greatest hits collection of the weird and wonderful things that Florida natives see on the regular – whatever Rockstar’s version of TikTok culture looks like will have lots to say, no doubt.
The real-life references of GTA 6’s trailer remind us of a little game that may help us further get a feel for the sort of world that Rockstar plans to parody. If you’re curious about the other kind of shenanigans that happen in Florida, all you need to do is Google your birthday alongside the phrase ‘Florida man.’ We’ve done it ourselves and if it tells us anything, Rockstar couldn’t have picked a better well - or person - to draw inspiration from.
Being born in the early days of May – a maybe, if you will – tells me that GTA 5 protagonist Trevor easily be Leonida's Florida man. My first hit tells me of a chap who crashed their lawn mower into a police car. Aware of how dire his situation was, he simply threw his arms up to say, “fuck it, I’m drunk. Take me to jail.” Would Trevor go along so easily? Probably not, though he’d dang sure crash a lawn mower into the fuzz while under the influence. Speaking of other things that Trevor would do. My second news hit our Florida man getting arrested after being found half-naked behind a school dumpster. If this tells me anything about GTA 6, it’s that we won’t be short of the drunk and disorderly, which is just about right for Grand Theft Auto.
Things reach a crescendo for the Florida Man – which part of me just sees as one very busy, very unhinged person – in December as both of my December 3 stories involve being an idiot when a cop is around. First up we've got a 2018 special about Florida Man offering an undercover cop a burger in exchange for a sex act. Obviously he didn't know the woman was an undercover cop, but either way I hope women in Florida have higher standards than that. The guy went to jail on a misdemeanor, so clearly she said no to his sloppy Joe. Part of me hopes you'll have the opportunity to slap a burger out of a man's hand in disgust somewhere in Leonida. It would be so satisfying. The second tale, though, does feel straight out of a GTA game when a side mission goes wrong. According to this story, the Florida Man was arrested for quitting his job mid-trip while transporting prisoners. The guy just left the van on the highway with four criminals locked in the back after just driving on past the place he was meant to drop them. The man ended up facing felony charges of second-degree kidnapping and larceny, but you know you'd have just jumped into another car and gotten the heck out of Vice if this was GTA 6.
When I first heard about the Florida Man game I thought my colleagues were being ridiculous – like, surely the American state can’t be that wild? But oh, how wrong I was. Now, I was born in the middle of August when the weather in Florida is hot, hot, hot. And as it turns out, this does change what Mr Florida Man gets up to as he goes about his daily business, as I found out upon Googling. The first entry that shows up is simply – and rather effectively, may I say – headlined: ‘Shirtless man rides motorcycle down the highway while lying on his back.’ And if you were wondering just how he does that, of course, there’s a video of the man looking rather relaxed as he drives down the highway, with the footage being edited with slow-mo at the end, too, for dramatic effect. The thing that perhaps shocks me the most about the video isn’t the fact that he doesn’t have any hands on the steering wheel, it’s the bare feet! I know it’s boiling outside but come on now – that just screams danger to me. Trevor Phillips would be proud.
For whatever reason, late-April Florida Man goings-on appear to take a far darker turn than anything noted above. My first foray into the Google search-driven panhandle prisoner party, for example, details the case of a golf cart-riding Florida man who's accused of shooting a bystander for walking their dog on the golf course. Given it was the original Vice City that introduced golf courses as visitable locations, golf clubs as melee weapons, and, indeed, golf carts as drivable vehicles, this real-world instance actually fits both the remit of the Florida Man game and the central location of GTA 6. My second hit's headline, on the other hand, speaks for itself: 'Florida man found guilty of murdering wife after she refused to go on the home renovation TV show.' In this instance, it's reported that a six-day trial was concluded when the jury returned with a guilty verdict in less than five hours, after which the accused was sentenced to life imprisonment. My third search hit reads: 'Florida man stabbed nephew for hogging bathroom,' whereby a 72-year-old Florida man is said to have repeatedly stabbed his nephew because he was taking too long in the bathroom. In this instance, at the time of the news story's publication, the victim was expected to live. So that's a win, I guess?
Florida Man really is busy year round, it seems. My birthday lands in early September, and just like the months that precede it, there are some suitably unhinged antics going on in the state that I could easily imagine popping up in GTA 6. The first story follows the escapades of a Florida fellow who got into an, and I quote, "sticky situation" with the law after lobbing a lollipop at a store manager in the heat of an argument. Vice City is home to many stores, and judging by the GTA 6 trailer, we'll be getting up to no good in some convenience shops with our partner-in-crime, so who's to say we won't be able to use a lollipop as a weapon? It would be quite funny to see a homage to this particular scenario, even if it's just in a throwaway scene. The next frankly wild report details a Florida man who was arrested after attempting to cross the Atlantic in a homemade vessel resembling a hamster wheel. Just when you think you've seen it all. While it happened just before my actual birthday, it's well worth mentioning for the sheer wild factor. We're sure to have plenty of modes of transport in Leonida, with the trailer showing off speedboats, cars, and even airboats across what looks to be the Everglades. Why not add a makeshift floatation device resembling a hamster wheel into the mix? We may not try to make our way to London like the man in the news story was attempting to do, but it would surely make for a rather interesting way to traverse through Rockstar's take on the Floridan seas.
All of the above could speak to some of the antics that Leonida's locals get up to, though we'd like to think it would make for one truly chaotic GTA 6 NPC. With news surely set to ramp ahead as the 2025 window approaches, though, we don't have long to wait and find out.
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