Rockstar Games has a long reputation for inserting clever references for its keen fanbase to chuckle at throughout its many franchises. The Red Dead Redemption series is no different, with the series containing easter eggs referencing classic Western movies, urban legends, and even its own games like GTA Online and Red Dead Revolver. One perceptive fan noticed a particular reference to the Dollars trilogy of Clint Eastwood movies that fans of spaghetti Western films should find particularly noteworthy.
References within Red Dead Redemption 2 have come in many different forms, like explorative fans discovering the house of Red Dead Revolver protagonist Red Harlow and the spooky ghost buck that players can coax out at night. One fan on TikTok discovered a particular gravestone in both Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2 that makes reference to the star character of the movie trilogy.
TikTok user rdr2momentsofficial discovered a gravestone that players can find in Coot's Chapel that lists the deceased as "Cowboy of No Name." The character is listed as dying on September 16th, 1897 and the unnamed cowboy's gravesite can be found at the same location in Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2. The "Cowboy of No Name" is a reference to the Dollars trilogy of Clint Eastwood films, starring the cowboy western legend as the similarly-titled "Man with No Name."
The full video, seen here, references the classic trilogy of Western films. Clint Eastwood plays the mysterious "Man with No Name," a cowboy in the old American West who finds himself pulled into situations like a conflict between rivaling smuggler families in the first film, A Fistful of Dollars, and working as a bounty hunter during the second film, For A Few Dollars More. The film trilogy propelled Eastwood to International fame and are often credited as the birth of the spaghetti Western genre of cowboy films. This would not mark the first time Rockstar has directly referenced the name of a notable character as players had previously discovered a wanted poster for Meredith Hopkins, believed to be a reference to Rockstar's Bully franchise.
Clint Eastwood is a staple of early cowboy films, so it's fitting for his rough-and-tumble roots to be immortalized in a franchise with similar themes. Many fans of the western genre consider films like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and the 1992 film Unforgiven to be among the all-time greats of the genre's formative years. The gravestone would not be the only time Rockstar has referenced the film trilogy either, as Red Dead Online's bounty hunting features a similarly named character referred to as "The Woman With No Name." The Red Dead Redemption franchise wears its love for the films that built its genre on its sleeve and references for these show how deep the developer's love for the genre runs.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.