One Hidden Easter Egg Reveals More About Red Dead Redemption's Most Notorious Outlaw

One tiny detail in reveals a lot more about its most infamous villain. Both games are set at the tail end of the Wild West era. By the time of, Pinkertons are rounding up the last remaining outlaws, horses are being replaced by cars, and the most storied gunslingers are either retired or dead. For the most part, cowboy heroism is the stuff of legends. Few cling to their memories of it, while the rest are content to read about it in storybooks and wonder what it might've been like way back when.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2.]

Even so, the outlaw lifestyle isn't totally dead. Mixed in with real-life history that inspires , there's a coterie of fictional heroes and villains, a regular Wild West pantheon of outlaws and lawmen. They may not be all the legends promised they'd be — Honor is rarely so simple in — but they do exist, and at least part of the stories about them must be true, right? As it turns out, even myth has a basis in fact, and some of these semi-mythical figures are still able to make history.

As shared by Reddit user Illustrious_Monk_607, players can buy and read an issue of the reporting on the collapse and public perception of Dutch van der Linde's gang. Issue 73 of the paper, which is of course only available near the end of the game, contains an article titled "." It goes on to detail the destruction of the gang in 1899 at the climax of .

The article gets a couple of details wrong. It lists Arthur's cause of death not as tuberculosis, but as a Pinkerton raid. It also uses a less-common moniker for the gang itself, referring to them as Dutch's Boys instead of the Van der Linde gang. However, it does contain several interesting facts, rumors, and opinions. It reports on Micah's return to retrieve the Blackwater stash, and states that the stolen money has never been recovered. That remains true, and later, John, Sadie, and Charles go after it in the final mission "."

The article also discusses Dutch's flight to