Summary
Rockstar Games are known for featuring not just incredibly fun things players should do during their regular playthrough, but also fantastic secrets they might never even come across when playing. TheseEaster Eggsbecame such a big deal upon the release ofGrand Theft Auto: San Andreas, but many of them were just hoaxes made up by players to fool other players.
Rockstar took this to heart and filled itsRed Dead Redemptiongameswith so many real—and really spectacular—Easter Eggs that players didn’t need to go on wild goose hunts for things that were not in the game. These are just some of the most memorable examples.
GTA San Andreaswas such a hugely popular game that it naturally spawned a large number of Easter Egg rumors. Most of these were fake, like the ones about the UFOs over Mt. Chilliad. The devs at Rockstar took note, however, and didn’t like the idea go to waste.
Red Dead Redemption 2features loads of supernatural content, and players might even stumble upon a seemingly abandoned house only to be greeted by a completely unmistakable set of bright lights leaving the ground and taking to the skies.
Apologies for the late spoiler, but just like the aliens from Mt. Chilliad, the Bigfoot—by far the most popularGTArumor—also doesn’t exist inSan Andreasgame. In a quest fromRed Dead Redemption’sUndead NightmareDLC,John Marston actually does meet up with Bigfoot, and instead of being scary or playing it for laughs, the game makes it one of the saddest moments in the history of gaming.
This is easily one of the best and most powerful Easter Eggs in history. Killing one of the Bigfoot(s?) will earn players an achievement named 6 Years in the Making, referring to the time betweenthe release ofSan AndreasandRed Dead Redemption.
The Wild West Was Even More Dangerous Than Previously Thought
It’s completely possible to beat the entirety ofRed Dead Redemption 2without stumbling upon any of the hints that’ll take players on one of the game’s most interesting side quests, the one where they follow a breadcrumb trail in the search for a serial killer.
In truth, the real Wild West was much tamer than most movies and games tend to paint it, so the developers ofRed Dead Redemption 2deserve big props for spicing things up in such an unconventional way. This quest is deeply unsettling, from finding the killer’s victims to tracking him down in his lair.
Whileroaming around in the originalRed Dead Redemption,players might stumble upon one man who knows way more about protagonist John Marston than anyone should know—a man who John himself has no recollection of.
Players can either write off their encounter as just a peculiar occurrence or go down the rabbit hole and continue the man’s quest line, which will leave them with even more questions—very ominous ones—than answers. The main consensus among fans is that the mysterious stranger might be death incarnate or even the devil. However, Rockstar will probably never reveal anything more about this peculiar figure, as the mystery is part of what makes his presence so unnerving.
Have You Seen Him?
One of the most interesting and devastating Easter Eggs inRed Dead Redemption 2features no paranormal entities or even physically brutal events. It’s about an NPC who players might encounter asking about his friend, a man named Gavin. This will begin a quest line that, spoiler alert, will never end in anything.
Later in the game, players will once again meet Gavin’s friend, this time in a more sorry state, though still on the lookout for his friend. This might leave players under the impression that they’d failed to find Gavin, and finding him would’ve prevented this man’s downfall, but that’s just not true. The mischievous developers simply left a quest that players could never solve, and it remains one of the most somber and darkly memorable moments in the series.
Choo Choo Goes The Train
One of the great—and true—mysteries ofGTA SanAndreaswas that of the ghost car, which would appear in front of players who dared venture into the game’s forests, seemingly driving itself. No matter how much CJ looked into it, there were just no quests or clues related to the game’s mysterious or very prescient self-driving cars that went nowhere.
Possibly in a nod to that,Red Dead Redemption 2features an entire ghost train—so seemingly the ghost of a train that died, not a train full of ghosts, in case there are doubts as to what this is. It appears randomly at night, running along one of the game’s many rail lines, and there is, once again, no quest associated with it.
Riding All The Way Down To Hell
Red Dead Redemption’s Undead NightmareDLC brings a lot of hardship in the form of hordes of zombies hellbent on tasting the flesh of players, but it also lends them a helping hand. Throughout the vast fields of the game, players will hopefully run into War, Pestilence, Famine, or Death, the four horses of the Apocalypse.
Catching and taming horseshas always been one of the coolest things to do inRed Dead Redemption—possibly because of how it satisfies the player’s urge to both steal cars inGTAand capture Pokemon—and taming one of these four legendary horses is almost as cool as what players can do with them. Each of these horses has different abilities—all pretty spectacular—and they have unlimited stamina, making them even more ridiculously awesome.
The Nosferatu Is Real
After dealing with a serial killer, a ghost train, Bigfoot, aliens, and the horses of hell, all that’s left forRed Dead Redemptionto feel like a secret Van Helsing simulator is a vampire, so the sequel gives players just that.
This isn’t even something belonging to a horror-themed DLC, but rather something players can really encounter in the base game. The vampire in question seems to have been modeled not after Dracula, but after the Klaus Kinski—and thus the scariest of all—version of Nosferatu from the Werner Herzog remake of the classic. It can be found stalking the streets of Saint Denis, and tracking it down actually rewards Arthur with a cool knife.
Quite The Unsavory Mix
After meeting so many “artists,” it’s only fair to meet the art. That’s the sad fate of Arthur Morgan, should he come across what can either be a very interesting scientific endeavor or experimental art. The “piece” is called the Man Bear Pig, and it’s, luckily, not a living chimera, but someone’s attempt to stitch the three very different (but somewhat anatomically compatible) animals together.
The result is one of the most gruesome sights players can find in a game that already features, well, all the other entries on this list, plus cannibals and, well, just regular old Micah Bell.
The least known entry on this list remains the most fascinating. For a short period of time in 2020, a large number ofRed Dead Onlineplayers kept taking to Reddit and online gaming forums to report sightings. Not of UFOs or Sasquatches, but of a bald man whose only remarkable attributes were his penchant for stalking players; oh, and his supernatural abilities.
Nobody knows exactly what the bald man was doing—maybe not even the devs. Players only knew that he loved walking on air near them, and always with an aura of mischief. Many say the Bald Man was a reference to Rockstar’s co-founder, Dan Houser, but nobody really knows—or everyone is just too afraid to speak out, lest the Bald Man come for them next.
