Midway through Trailer 1, the picture turns into vertical phone videos with usernames and captions, like a social feed. One shows a man pulling an alligator out of a backyard pool, captioned "Stay Alert VC! Remember to check for uninvited guests before the pool party".
What the trailer shows
Around 0:42 in Trailer 1, the widescreen picture gives way to vertical phone videos with usernames and captions, as if you'd opened a social feed. The best-known clip (0:43) shows a man dragging an alligator out of a backyard pool, captioned "Stay Alert VC! Remember to check for uninvited guests before the pool party". Rockstar's site uses the same idea as its tagline: "Only in Leonida".
The real stories behind them
Miami New Times went through the trailer the week it came out and traced several clips to real South Florida headlines:
| Trailer moment | Real story, per Miami New Times |
|---|---|
| Gator pulled from a pool | Gators in Florida pools are "a somewhat common occurrence"; locals are taught to assume any body of water may hold one |
| A woman dancing on top of a moving car | A real 2017 video from the MacArthur Causeway, which New Times reported at the time |
| A man with a misspelled forehead tattoo | A nod to a man Miami media nicknamed the "Joker", arrested in 2017 |
| A man gardening with no clothes on | A 2018 story from Stuart, Florida |
That is the trailer's thesis in a minute: Leonida is Florida as the internet sees it.
How social media works in GTA 6
The phone feed is not just a trailer trick. GTA 6 has Snapmatic, Rockstar's Instagram parody, and you can scroll it, follow accounts and browse posts, IGN reports from Game Informer's cover story and its own preview. What you can't do is post: Jason and Lucia are a couple on the run and don't want a digital footprint. You can doomscroll while riding in a Ryde Me car instead.
Our take: these clips are the clearest statement of GTA 6's tone. Rockstar has always parodied American news, but here it parodies how people actually see the news now, in vertical videos from strangers, and Miami New Times' list shows how closely it studied the real ones. We expect Snapmatic to be full of clips like these in the game, many of them hinting at side events. Scroll it between missions; a feed you can't post to is still a feed you can learn from.
What to watch for at launch
- Whether Snapmatic clips point to real places or events you can find.
- Whether the trailer's clips appear in the game's feed.
- Whether anything you do ends up in other people's posts.
Submit a findSomething wrong or missing on Leonida's viral phone clips?
Sources
- All the Real-Life Easter Eggs in the Grand Theft Auto 6 Trailer (Miami New Times) (Dec 6, 2023)
- GTA 6: All the Major New Details Revealed Today (IGN, on the Game Informer cover story) (Sep 29, 2026)
- We Saw GTA 6 at Rockstar HQ: 69 Gameplay Details (IGN) (Aug 27, 2026)
- Rockstar Games: Grand Theft Auto VI, Only in Leonida (Oct 8, 2026)
- Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer 1 (Rockstar Games) (Dec 5, 2023)
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