Rockstar Games certainly didn’t need to do much to stoke controversy as soon as it released the official Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer in December. As a matter of fact, it’s already staring at a potential 7-digit lawsuit – although if you ask the accuser, he’s no longer thinking of pushing through with it.
Lawrence Sullivan, better known on the internet as “The Florida Joker”, is making headlines once again after telling everyone that he no longer wants to sue Rockstar. Instead, he’s now asking Rockstar to let him voice the character.
This comes a little over a month after Sullivan first went viral for basically telling everyone that his likeness is the only reason why GTA 6’s trailer is putting up record numbers.
After years of speculation, Rockstar finally confirmed the setting of GTA 6 with the official trailer. The studio’s take on the state of Florida, Leonida, is every bit as looney and as absurd as the real one, which is saying a lot.
But in satirizing The Sunshine State, Rockstar appears to have come up with a character somewhat similar to the likeness of Sullivan, a tattoo model who gained notoriety for his arrest and subsequent mugshot in 2017. The internet has since started referring to him as the “Florida Joker” because he shares a similar likeness with the Crown Prince of Gotham.
However, GTA 6’s take on the character, which was shown briefly as part of a reel of footages from the trailer, looks slightly different: the captured criminal in-game has purple hair with a bunch of slightly different face tattoos. Still, it’s impossible to ignore the similarities, which Sullivan has repeatedly pointed out.
Time, as they say, heals all wounds. In the case of Sullivan, “two whole months” of no response from Rockstar was enough to make him change his mind and drop his pursuit of a payday lawsuit to do something else. He’s now asking Rockstar to let him voice the character, offering Rockstar the chance to “make worldwide news”, saying that “everyone knows who I am” before ending his tirade by telling Rockstar that he’s “the reason the game is so hype right now.”
Rockstar didn’t respond to Sullivan before and it’s highly improbable they will right now either. After all, if the earlier GTA 6 trailer leak wasn’t enough to faze Take-Two Interactive, Rockstar’s parent company, we doubt one TikToker will either.
As of the moment, Rockstar has its hands full hunkering down and perfecting GTA 6 ahead of its release, presumably in late 2025.
