LEONIDA KEYS IN REAL LIFE

Rockstar sells the Leonida Keys in three words: "Gateway to Paradise." Then it undercuts them straight away. "The dress code is casual, the bars are loaded," and you are "right on the doorstep of some of the most beautiful and dangerous waters in all of America."

That description could hang in any Key West bar. The real Florida Keys are a chain of islands strung along a 113-mile highway, known for sunsets, loose dress codes and a smuggling past that locals still tell stories about. Rockstar has not said the Leonida Keys are the Florida Keys, but the overlap is deliberate enough to walk through.

How to read these pairs: the first image is an official GTA VI screenshot; the second is the real Florida Keys. A pair shows a shared idea, not a claim that Rockstar copied a specific place.

Bridges between islands

One official screenshot shows "a seaplane flying over water in the Leonida Keys. In the background a bridge with cars connects two islands." It is the single most Florida Keys image Rockstar has released.

GTA VIGTA VI: official Rockstar screenshot of a seaplane over the Leonida Keys, with a road bridge linking two islands.
GTA VI: official Rockstar screenshot of a seaplane over the Leonida Keys, with a road bridge linking two islands.
Real worldReal Florida Keys: the Seven Mile Bridge from the air, 2003. U.S. Department of Transportation, public domain.
Real Florida Keys: the Seven Mile Bridge from the air, 2003. U.S. Department of Transportation, public domain.

The real Overseas Highway runs 113 miles from Key Largo to Key West across 42 bridges. It opened in 1938, partly on the spans of Henry Flagler's old railway, and in 2009 it became the first All-American Road in Florida. The best known of those crossings is the Seven Mile Bridge. We are not saying the bridge in Rockstar's shot is the Seven Mile Bridge; fans already argue about that, and Rockstar has not named it. The idea is the same, though: in the Keys, the road is the landscape.

Seaplanes belong here too. The National Park Service lists the seaplane as one of the ways to reach Dry Tortugas, about 70 miles west of Key West.

"The bars are loaded"

Rockstar's beach bar screenshot is pure Keys: "a man sits at a picnic table passed out surrounded by empty bottles, a couple is kissing, people are walking into the entrance, and others are hanging out on the front porch." The sign above the porch reads The Rusty Anchor.

GTA VIGTA VI: official Rockstar screenshot of The Rusty Anchor beach bar in the Leonida Keys.
GTA VI: official Rockstar screenshot of The Rusty Anchor beach bar in the Leonida Keys.
Real worldReal Key West: Sloppy Joe's Bar on Duval Street, photographed by Bubba73, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Real Key West: Sloppy Joe's Bar on Duval Street, photographed by Bubba73, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Key West built a whole identity on that energy. Duval Street runs 14 blocks between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, and Sloppy Joe's, a Hemingway favourite, has served drinks since the day Prohibition ended in 1933. The Rusty Anchor is not Sloppy Joe's. It is a smaller, scruffier bar, which suits Rockstar's line that life here "isn't flashy but it's easy."

Sunsets and smugglers

Brian Heder, one of the named characters, gets the best Keys line in Rockstar's material: "Nothing better than a Mudslide at sunset." His profile then explains what he actually does: "a classic drug runner from the golden age of smuggling in the Keys. Still moving product through his boat yard with his third wife, Lori, Brian's been around long enough to let others do his dirty work."

Real Key West: sunset from Mallory Pier, photographed by L4librarian, CC BY-SA 3.0.

The sunset and the smuggling both have real history behind them. Key West's sunset celebration at Mallory Square started in the late 1960s and is still a nightly ritual. The smuggling is history too. By the late 1970s Key West had the nickname "Smuggler's Island," and in 1983 UPI described one ring that grossed more than $300 million in three years until Operation Sunburn broke it up. Jason's own backstory lands in the same world: after the Army, Rockstar says, "he found himself in the Keys doing what he knows best, working for local drug runners."

Iguanas, reefs and boat parties

The other three official Keys screenshots fill in daily life:

  • An iguana walks in front of a mobility scooter. Green iguanas are not native to Florida, but the state wildlife agency lists established populations in Monroe County, which covers the Keys.
  • Two scuba divers swim among coral, fish, an eel and a sea turtle. The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary protects the only coral barrier reef in the continental United States and more than 6,000 animal species. That is what Rockstar's "beautiful and dangerous waters" is pointing at.
  • A boat party with a flamingo float and jet skis. Weekend sandbar gatherings are a familiar Keys scene, although this is a cultural parallel rather than one we can tie to a single source.
GTA VIGTA VI: official Rockstar screenshot of an iguana crossing in front of a mobility scooter in the Leonida Keys.
GTA VI: official Rockstar screenshot of an iguana crossing in front of a mobility scooter in the Leonida Keys.
Real worldGTA VI: official Rockstar screenshot of scuba divers over a reef with a sea turtle in the Leonida Keys.
GTA VI: official Rockstar screenshot of scuba divers over a reef with a sea turtle in the Leonida Keys.

What is still a fan theory

Rockstar has never named a real place as the model for the Leonida Keys. These are popular fan readings, not confirmed facts:

  • that a specific bridge in the game is the Seven Mile Bridge;
  • that one of the islands stands in for Key West or Duval Street;
  • that any in-game bar is based on a real one;
  • nods to the 1982 "Conch Republic" protest, when Key West staged a mock secession after a Border Patrol roadblock.

We will update this page when the game is out and the Keys can be driven end to end. For the places Rockstar has confirmed so far, see the Leonida Keys wiki page, Brian Heder's boat yard and the map.