A Grand Theft Auto 5 content creator believes he has finally solved the infamous Mount Chiliad mystery after 12 years of sleuthing, but some members of the community aren’t convinced.
If you’ve played GTA 5 – and there’s a good chance you have – you’ve also likely heard about Mount Chiliad and the notorious UFO Easter Egg associated with it. In September 2013, almost exactly 12 years ago, eager GTA fans booted up Rockstar Games’ latest sandbox to find a trio of main characters, new locations, and a smorgasbord of mysteries to uncover. Evidence of aliens could and still can be found strewn about the Los Santos map, with players able to discover everything from extraterrestrial remains to crashed UFO ships if they know where to look.
Aliens have been a hot topic for both GTA 5’s in-game citizens and its real-life players, but it’s the mystery atop Mount Chiliad that has sent heads spinning for more than a decade. Those who make the trek up Los Santos’ unmissable rocky mountain will notice a small cavern with a strange diagram that features a maze-like pattern and four distinct markings: a UFO, a cracked egg, a person wearing a jetpack, and an all-seeing eye looking down on Mount Chiliad.
After 12 years, most GTA 5 fans still aren’t sure what it all means, but content creator Gator Keys thinks the answer has been in front of us all along.
Signs
Gator Keys, a popular YouTuber who has put on their GTA detective hat to solve some of GTA 5’s greatest mysteries for the last year, dug into what is perhaps the series’ most infamous Easter Egg with their most recent upload, titled “This is The End of the Mount Chiliad Mystery.” It’s an eight-minute video with an unfortunately anticlimactic conclusion: GTA 5 players solved the mystery years ago.
As discovered more than a decade ago, players who return to the top of Mount Chiliad after achieving 100% completion will be met with a full-on flying saucer – laser beam noises, flashing lights, and all. As an added gag, this UFO, along with some of the others found in the game, features an FIB logo, representing the Grand Theft Auto universe’s parody version of the FBI.
The assumption since GTA 5 launched all the way back in 2013 has been that there must be more to the story than just another UFO appearing in the sky. There are, after all, other flying saucers to be discovered around the map, but Gator Key believes it all truly comes back to that FIB logo.
“The whole point of this mystery is to tell us a little more,” Gator Key says. “The reason they put a UFO at the top of Mount Chiliad is to show us the FIB logo spinning on the side of it. This means the FIB created these UFOs. They are the aliens. They are the all-seeing eye.”
It makes sense – Rockstar is known for using GTA to provide commentary on the real world, and conspiracy theories about aliens play a part in that, too. Just like the players who have obsessed over Mount Chiliad and its connections to life in space, there are those in Los Santos who worship the aliens and tell tales about UFO sightings.
There are also recent comments from former Rockstar designer Ben Hinchliffe to consider. When speaking with GTAVIoclock last year, he touched on the great Mount Chiliad mystery, and although he wasn’t directly involved with its creation, he admitted that some Easter Eggs are included “just to mess with people.”
“The Mount Chiliad mystery is a play on real life,” Gator Keys adds. “The fact that the government, the people in power, control the population, and we can hit 100% all we like. We can get to the top of the mountain, but the UFO is still out of reach because we alone are not the all-seeing eye.”
They Live
It would be disappointing to see 12 years of community effort come down to little more than a misunderstanding, but if Gator Keys is correct, then that’s exactly what happened. It’s an explanation that arrives as little as one year away from the launch of Grand Theft Auto 6, and it doesn’t even come close to convincing some of the die-hard GTA 5 fans who have combed over Mount Chiliad for years.
“Nonsense. The creator should stop making these types of videos,” one individual commented in a recent Reddit thread.
“He didn’t dig far enough. Itl happen someday. But hes wrong,” another user commented in an X/Twitter post.
The video is complete nonsense! We will not rest before GTA VI. we have a small year left to start, and hopefully, we will finish it#crackingChiliad #GTA5 https://t.co/FGJ15s0RVF
— Cracking Chiliad (@CrackingChiliad) August 13, 2025
Users on the chiliadmystery Sub Reddit, which contains more than 44,000 “hunters,” have posted as recently as just days ago as they continue to work out what may or may not be at the bottom of GTA 5’s Mount Chiliad mystery. Some believe the Easter Egg connections may continue to branch over into GTA 6, while others think there may be a connection to DLC that was canceled long ago. It is not clear how the Rockstar team may or may not continue to build on the Mount Chiliad mystery, but one thing is for sure – no one is saying anything.
For more on Rockstar and the Grand Theft Auto universe, you can check out what we know about GTA 6’s price. You can also learn about a recent National Gaming Expo event that left many attendees without an opportunity to meet stars from GTA, Red Dead Redemption, and more.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
