Red Dead Redemption 2 was released in October 2018 and since then players have spent hours poring over the immense detail of the game’s sprawling landscape. The open-world of Rockstar’s award-winning Western contains so many Easter eggs and hidden secrets that some of Red Dead 2’s mysteries may never be solved.
Some players have even been able to find strangely interconnected mysteries hidden throughout the world, all regarding the deaths of different famous people in the Red Dead universe. Here are Red Dead Redemption 2’s famous dead people explained.
RDR2: Felix Hawley
The world of Read Dead 2 feels alive, even when all it has to offer is death. If the player takes Arthur or John to Barrow Lagoon, to the north east of Mount Hagen, they will find a horse abandoned outside of a small wooden shack. To the right of the shack is the open grave of a one-legged war veteran. The writing on the gravestone is mostly covered by red paint graffiti which reads “NO ICE IN HELL.”
If the player goes inside of the shack to explore, they will find a few key pieces of evidence that help explain some of this mystery. First, they will find a cigarette card with a caricature of a man ice skating on it. The name on the card identifies the skater as “Felix Hawley,” which matches what fan can make out on the grave, one of many cases of environmental storytelling in Red Dead 2's map.
An old pair of ice skates left on the table seems to confirm Felix’s identity, and a newspaper clipping left in the shack helps clarify his story. The clipping, dated 1874, 25 years before the start of the game’s story, reports of a “dreadful incident – talented ice skater career cut short in terrible accident.” This is likely the cause of Felix’s missing leg, though the fact that his grave identifies him as a war veteran also makes it possible that he lost his leg after the fact, though if he did it seems to remain one of Red Dead 2's secrets.
The biggest remaining mystery is why anyone would want to exhume Felix’s body and vandalize his grave. It would seem to be someone who specifically has ice-skating related issues with Felix, with the whole mystery possibly being a partial reference to the infamous 1994 attack on figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, brought back into the popular consciousness the year before Red Dead 2’s release due to the film I, Tonya.
Robert Elliot Patchen
Felix isn’t the only star to have taken a fall from grace. Players can travel East of Barrow’s Lagoon to find the waterfall at Granite Pass. If the player goes behind the waterfall, they will find the Nevada Hat, and when they pick it up a suicide note will be revealed underneath. The note is signed by Robert Elliot Patchen, an actor who has performed all over the US from San Francisco to Chicago to New York to Red Dead's own Saint Denis. He speaks of his fame, being featured on a card for Millicent Cigarette’s The Stars of the Stage pack.
Nonetheless, Robert turned to despair upon “looking in the mirror, at the gray receding hairline, being called upon to play roles of fathers and old men rather than the dashing hero, the romantic lead. I can suffer these indignities no longer. I am a lover, a poet, not a grandfather, a gardener.” Robert’s body is nowhere to be found, but his Red Dead 2 cigarette card can be found by the fence in Rhodes, depicting him in-costume as a Shakespearean king.
Desiree LaFlamme
East of Granite Pass is another waterfall, Donner Falls. At the bottom of the falls, the player can find the body of a woman in a damaged barrel on the shore. Upon finding her corpse Arthur Morgan writes: “Found the remains of some poor bastard woman tried to go over a waterfall in a barrel. Found it interesting, sad, I guess. An even more ridiculous life than the one I lead.” If John Marston discovers her he writes: “Found a dead body in a barrel. Some poor woman. Wonder why she did this. Glory? Love? Stupidity? All three?”
The identity of the woman can be found on a poster at Emerald Station, which depicts “Desiree LaFlamme, the Woman Without Fear.” Its tagline reads: “The world famous Desiree LaFlamme risking life and limb going over the terrifying Donner Falls in a barrel.” Whether Desiree did what she did out of glory, love, or stupidity, Desiree's abandoned body suggest she didn't have much of an audience, though it may be because she chose one of Red Dead's hidden areas. She is likely based on Annie Edson Taylor, the first woman to survive going over Niagra Falls in a barrel.
The difference between Arthur and John’s reflections on fame in this moment lends some insight into why all 3 of these mysteries might have been included in Red Dead Redemption 2. With the game set after the closing of the American frontier and Arthur Morgan and John Marston representing two sides of the same coin, both struggling to reconcile their identities with the slow march of industrialization through the American west, their reflections on Desiree are as much reflections on themselves.
In his journal, Arthur finds it ridiculous that someone would put themselves in unreasonable danger for fleeting wealth and glory, despite finding himself doing the same thing as an outlaw for increasingly diminishing returns. John’s entry is more reflective; the motives he ponders – glory, love, stupidity – could easily be asked of the Van Der Linde gang. In all three mysteries there is a fall – Felix’s fall from stardom after his accident, Robert’s relegation to older roles and descent into depression, and both Robert and Desiree’s literal falls to their deaths, Desiree seemingly having lost her audience.
As much as these mysteries may seem like Read Dead Easter eggs and throwaway details, the depiction of three people falling out of the spotlight of performative American heroism, and the fact that their fates are all discovered after the fact, reflects the dying and mythologized frontier world the Red Dead Redemption 2 player finds themselves in, and hints at the performative nature of the characters attempts to maintain their outlaw lifestyles in a changing world.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is available now for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.