Highlights
- Mount Chiliad in Grand Theft Auto 5 is a location filled with mystery and hidden symbols, including a UFO, jetpack, and alien egg.
- Despite some clues being solved, players are still searching for the deeper meaning behind these symbols, especially the existence of a jetpack.
- The ongoing investigation into the Mount Chiliad mystery has captivated the GTA community, even if a conclusive answer has yet to be found after a decade.
Away from the explosive main storyline of the title, Grand Theft Auto 5 possesses a wide range of engaging mysteries littered throughout Los Santos and San Andreas. These hidden elements of the game are great at aiding the title's sense of exploration and environmental storytelling, with players still unsure whether all the release's mysteries have been found to this day.
One of the most iconic and often discussed mysteries within Grand Theft Auto 5 concerns Mount Chiliad, with the location being a significantly recognizable landmark in the title. A spate of in-game hints point to Mount Chiliad as the source of a great supernatural mystery, with dedicated players working for a decade to try and solve it. The passionate community-wide effort that has been put into uncovering the mystery of Mount Chiliad has made it one of the biggest GTA myths of all time, with the answers still potentially being out there.
Grand Theft Auto 5: The Mystery of Mount Chiliad
Mount Chiliad is a location that many GTA 5 players will be familiar with, being the highest point on the map and offering a great view of Los Santos. Players usually frequent the mountain to push Grand Theft Auto 5's sandbox limits with things like races, yet many believe that Chiliad harbors a deep and sinister secret beneath the surface.
This stemmed from mysterious scrawlings that appear near the peak of Chiliad, which clearly depict the mountain itself alongside several symbols, including a UFO, a jetpack, and an alien-esque egg. The meaning behind some of these symbols has already been solved, with a UFO appearing above Mount Chiliad in the main story if the player visits it at night after attaining 100% completion. While this is a nice Easter egg for completionists, the GTA community is still in agreement that Chiliad's mystery runs much deeper.
The jetpack symbol in particular is what has driven a lot of the interest behind the mystery, as players are still none the wiser as to a jetpack's existence in GTA 5 to this day. Of course, the jetpack was a key vehicle in 2004's San Andreas, only stoking the fires of fan belief behind GTA 5 having its own counterpart. While jetpack-like vehicles have gone on to make appearances in GTA Online, the scrawlings on Chiliad appear to indicate that the game's single-player has an undiscovered jetpack waiting to be found.
The alien egg symbol is perhaps the most mysterious, with there being no real evidence of the egg's existence in GTA 5's story. Once more, an alien egg was later added to a GTA Online mission, but this seemed more like a nod to the Chiliad mystery as opposed to Rockstar finally giving fans a deserved pay-off. It still remains unclear whether the Chiliad symbols refer to underground structures within the mountain themselves or point toward other locations around the map, but players are still working hard to untangle the mystery.
Seeing how a decade has passed since Grand Theft Auto 5's release, some have lost hope that there is any deeper meaning behind the Mount Chiliad mystery. Even if the search remains fruitless, the debate and excitement around Chiliad has still benefited the GTA community, much like the older Bigfoot myth of San Andreas. Despite the growing skepticism around Chiliad actually hiding some big secret to uncover, many players will surely be investigating the famous mountain for years to come.
Grand Theft Auto 5 is available now for PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
