Theory: The Vice City airport sign copies Hollywood's fake MIAMI sign

What Rockstar showsUnconfirmed

One of the official Vice City screenshots on Rockstar's site is captioned "A jet flying over a sign that says Vice City." At dusk, a row of huge white letters spelling VICE CITY stands on rust-red steel scaffolding, lit from below, with palm trees behind it. A business jet with its landing gear down passes low overhead on approach, so the sign sits at the end of a runway. GTA BOOM notes that the sign also appears in Trailer 1, where fan frame counts place it in a time-lapse shot at about 0:40. Trailer 1's highway signs point drivers to "VCI Airport", Vice City International.

Miami's sign that never existedUnconfirmed

Watch enough Miami action films and you will "remember" a giant MIAMI sign by the airport. Michael Bay's Bad Boys (1995) and Bad Boys II (2003) both show big MIAMI letters with planes passing over them, and Louis Leterrier's Transporter 2 (2005) crashes a plane into one. Cracked tracked down the company that built the Transporter 2 version, Set by Design. It said the 50-by-15-foot prop was made for that film and based on no real sign. The Bad Boys signs use different lettering, so at least three versions were built for a landmark Miami never had.

How it holds upUnconfirmed

The composition is the strongest argument. Rockstar shot its sign the way those films did: low angle, plane overhead, letters on a frame by the runway. Vice City is Rockstar's Miami, and its Miami has always been the movie version, from Scarface and Miami Vice in 2002 to this. A city sign that exists only in cinema is the kind of thing Rockstar enjoys making real.

On the other side, giant city letters are a GTA habit with a different source. The Vinewood sign has stood over Los Santos since San Andreas, as a take on the Hollywood sign. Big letters are also an easy way to tell players where a shot is set. Rockstar has not said where the idea came from. We think the film sign is the likeliest model, but it remains a theory.

More easter eggs

• Theory: Trailer 1's face-tattooed mugshot is the "Florida Joker"Trailer 1's crime-news montage includes a mugshot of a man with purple hair and a face full of tattoos. Viewers, and the man himself, linked it to a viral Florida mugshot, but the details differ and Rockstar has said nothing.
• Theory: Trailer 1's social clips recreate specific viral Florida videosThe phone-video montage in Trailer 1, with a gator walking into a store, a gator at a pool party and a man in a thong watering his lawn, looks like it was lifted from real viral Florida clips. How exact the matches are is debated.
• Theory: Trailer 2's Keys bar is based on Key Largo's Caribbean ClubJason and Lucia's dockside bar in Trailer 2 has a weathered "Hurricane Roxy" sign, and some fans link the bar to Key Largo's Caribbean Club, known for its tie to the 1948 hurricane film Key Largo.
• VC Port, "the cruise ship capital of the world", borrows PortMiami's sloganRockstar's official Vice City description sends readers "out to the VC Port, the cruise ship capital of the world". That is almost word for word the slogan of PortMiami, the real port behind Vice City's.
• "Channel the Original Kingpin": a weapon skin based on Tommy Vercetti's shirtThe Vintage Vice City Pack includes a tropical weapon pattern that Rockstar openly describes as inspired by Tommy Vercetti's palm tree button-up. It is the clearest official nod yet to Vice City's 1986 kingpin.
• A "Petty Forever" sticker on the liquor store doorDuring Trailer 1's closing robbery, the door of Uncle Jack's Liquors carries a rainbow "Petty Forever" sticker, a nod to Tom Petty, whose "Love Is a Long Road" scores the trailer.