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In the GTA Online character creator, players can choose Claude from GTA III, Niko Bellic from GTA IV, or John Marston from Red Dead Redemption as their custom protagonist's father, quietly tying the online world into the wider Rockstar universe.
Go back and play the first game and you won't hear Arthur's name mentioned anywhere. Rockstar never had a sequel planned when RDR1 released, so one of the most loved characters in gaming simply hadn't been written yet at that point.
Out in the wilderness sits a corpse with a strange, almost feline curl to his lip. Dig through the game's internal files and he's actually labelled COUGAR_MAN, which has led people to tie him back to an old glitch from the original Red Dead Redemption where a human character model somehow ended up with a cougar's attributes.
Take a proper look behind the counter at the Saint Denis general store and you'll spot the Undead Mask from the first game's zombie-themed Undead Nightmare expansion sitting on a shelf. It's purely a display piece this time around though, you can't pick it up or wear it.
Head into Bluewater Marsh after dark and you might come across a crying woman, or grim little scenes of bodies strung up in the trees. Get too close to either and the Night Folk will crawl out of hiding to come after you. Anyone who played the original game's Undead Nightmare DLC will recognise the vibe instantly.
Pop into the general store in Saint Denis and take a proper look behind the shopkeeper's counter. Sitting there is the zombie mask from the original game's Undead Nightmare expansion, just quietly hanging around eight years later. You can't buy it or wear it, it's there purely as a nod for anyone who noticed.
Back in the original 2010 game, a rendering glitch could occasionally spawn a woman with what looked exactly like a donkey's head sat on her shoulders. It was never an intended feature, just a broken asset swap, but it became one of those glitches players actively went hunting for instead of reporting.
Grab the Undead Nightmare DLC and you can genuinely track down and kill Bigfoot, a direct wink at the years of rumours that Bigfoot was hidden somewhere in GTA San Andreas. Rockstar basically decided to settle the debate by giving players the real thing, teeth and all.
Fans spent years arguing over who, or what, the mysterious Strange Man actually is. Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser eventually confirmed his identity himself in an interview, closing the book on one of the series' longest-running mysteries and giving a whole new meaning to some of his cryptic dialogue.
By the time Red Dead Redemption 2 opens, John Marston has already spent fifteen years riding with Dutch's gang, having only recently come back after running off for a year. It's a detail that quietly reshapes how you read his whole arc once you know just how long he'd been in this life before the story even starts.
