The Iguana Is Real, and It Comes With a Bestiary

There is an iguana in the second shot of the Extended Look, walking towards Jason's house, and it is large enough that it is difficult to watch anything else in the frame. It became the running joke of the reveal in Spanish-speaking corners of the internet, largely because ElRubius had spent months telling his stream that an iguana seen in earlier official material mattered and was being told he was reading too much into it.

He was right that it is in the game. The green iguana is a Leonida animal, a slow-moving reptile that basks on fences, rooftops and pavements across Vice City and the Leonida Keys, and drops out of trees onto pavements with no warning — which is, again, a thing that genuinely happens in Florida rather than something Rockstar invented.

The iguana is not alone in that shot, and the wider point of the reveal's wildlife is easy to miss. A raccoon appears twice going through a bin in the background. One of them is wearing a shirt, and turns up again in one of Jason's own screenshots, which makes it fairly likely to be his.

Here is the part that did not become a meme. The preview round describes a checklist: wildlife you come across in Leonida, or see in captivity, gets examined and recorded. ElRubius describes the same system from his session, using the word bestiary and comparing it to a Pokédex. Two independent accounts of the same mechanic, from people who were shown the game in different rooms.

A Grand Theft Auto that asks you to catalogue animals is a genuinely new idea for the series, and it recontextualises the density of the wildlife in the footage: bodega cats, a great white shark, dogs you can ask to pet, the raccoons, the iguana. That is not set dressing if there is a list attached to it.

What has not been said: what the checklist is called in game, whether completing it does anything, how many animals are on it, or whether it is a collectible in the traditional sense or just a record. Rockstar has published none of that.