What were the Niko Bellic Easter eggs in GTA V?

Over the years, there have been many protagonists in the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and one of the most memorable ones is Niko Bellic. Niko is best remembered for his love towards his family at Liberty City, and for his wild misadventures.

The last Grand Theft Auto game to come out was none other than GTA V in the year 2013. Sure, there have been re-releases of the old games such as the GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition or the immense amount of content that the world of GTA Online brought, but with GTA VI on the line, why not visit the classic characters once more?

With that, here are all the Easter Eggs related to Niko Bellic in GTA V.

With the last release of GTA V, Rockstar Games certainly didn’t forget their favorite, Niko Bellic from being included in the game in the most minute yet obvious ways to remind the players of one of the most beloved characters in the franchise.

Related : Leaked GTA 6 Details: Map, Release Date, and More

All the Niko Bellic Easter Eggs in GTA V

1. Niko’s LifeInvader Profile on Jimmy’s Laptop

LifeInvader is the equivalent of an invasive social media website from the real world in the world of GTA V. Literally everyone is heard talking about it if you walk around in the city of Los Santos and one of the first few missions even included blowing up the head of the founder of LifeInvader!

Needless to say, we can see the social media website literally everywhere in the game and it serves as no surprise that Niko Bellic himself has a profile on the website too!

This can be confirmed by going into Michael’s house as himself while his family is still living with him and going to the dining table where his two kids are hanging out and talking about random things.

At this point, if you were to closely look into Jimmy’s laptop, you would see that he was logged into his LifeInvader account and was viewing the profile of one of Liberty City’s most notorious criminals, Niko Bellic.

2. Wanted Poster at Abandoned House

The Police Force has always resorted to spreading information about its wanted criminals through posters and other forms of media, there are numerous posters that can be found throughout the city of Los Santos but there is one poster in particular that carries a familiar face.

In the North Western Region of the map, there lies an abandoned house that has no occupants but still has furniture lying outside which points to it being inhabited frequently.

If you go closer to the house and out on the porch, you will see a table on which there is a deck of playing cards having been distributed into 4 hands. And lo and behold, there lies the poster in question – the one with Niko Bellic’s face on it.

Upon closer examination, it can be seen that the poster is from the Police Department of Liberty City – The place where GTA IV took place and Niko had most of his misadventures and tried to live the American Dream.

3. Lester mentions Niko as a potential crew member

Early on in the game, when Michael needs to get money to pay back Martin Madrazzo and approaches Lester for a job they could pull, Lester suggests they rob a jewelry store and while they are headed to the place, Michael suggests taking some of his old accomplices into play.

While telling him about all of his old accomplices and how none of them are about the life of crime anymore, Lester talks about an “Eastern European guy making moves in Liberty City”.

This is of course a nod towards Niko Bellic who was one of the biggest criminals that Liberty City had seen after Claude, the protagonist of GTA III. It also means that Lester had been keeping tabs on the up-and-coming people in the criminal world in the world of GTA.

Could Niko have been a part of the plan for the development of GTA V early on in development but then be scrapped as it would make way too many plotholes? The developers have not said anything about it but for now, all we can do is treat this like an easter egg and move on!

4. Getting to keep Niko Bellic as your father in GTA Online

When you start your journey into the online world of Grand Theft Auto where you can take part in heists with your friends and commit atrocities against everyone on a global scale, you get to design your own character.

While you are designing your character, you get to choose the characteristics of your character, one of which is getting to choose the appearance of your character’s mother and father.

You can choose among numerous different presets for your character’s mother and father which are given by Rockstar Games itself and one of those presets is none other than our beloved character from GTA IV, Niko Bellic

You can choose him to be the father of your character and carry on his major characteristics such as his balding hair and his Eastern European face shape. Rockstar paid a good tribute to Niko’s legacy by letting him be such a big part of GTA Online.

4. Niko Bellic License Plate

While we are driving one of Franklin’s private taxi fares to their location, the Shipyard, the rider hands us a gun and tells us that we’d have to help him if things get ugly and Franklin agrees.

As they get to the shipyard and the rider is talking it out with the bikers who had apparently kidnapped his niece and were having their way with her, the rider loses his cool and starts to shoot.

Franklin gets out of the car and helps the rider out as promised and helps him get rid of his troubles with the bikers. At this point, if you go over to one of the cars parked there and look at the license plate, you’ll see the initials of Niko Bellic on it.

This seems to be a slight nod in the direction of Niko’s connection with the bikers and the gangs as he was also a supporting character in “The Lost and the Damned” which followed the storyline around the Bikers themselves.

5. Jacket and Picture at the Yellow Jack Inn

At the Yellow Jacket Inn out in Sandy Shores, the place where Trevor met the Chinese Mafia and put them in the Ice Machine out back, are a couple of artifacts that point out to the one and only, Niko.

As you enter the pub, you can spot a few certain things around the environment that point to the possibility of Niko Bellic having been to the same pub your character is standing in.

As soon as you enter, if you look behind the gate to the pub, you will spot a jacket hanging there which is resoundingly similar to the one that Niko used to wear in GTA IV and points to the possibility that Niko had probably been there and forgotten his jacket.

Inside the pub, there is also a picture of a pickup truck that seems to be driven by an individual that looks extremely similar to Niko himself. The bald head and the jacket make it look like it is none other than Bellic driving the truck.

Not to mention the name of the pub itself is the Yellow Jacket Inn. Niko himself also used to wear a yellow jacket! So having a few artifacts based on him at the pub would make total sense.

6. Patrick McReary mentions Niko

While the crew is headed to do the Paleto Bay Bank score, Trevor asks Patrick McReary in the van about his first score while saying ” You! Generic Goon! What was your first bank score?”

McReary responds by telling the group that his first job wasn’t that interesting and that he had been spotting for his brothers back when he was in junior high however, but what he thought the guys would find interesting was his biggest job, the bank of Liberty City.

He talks about himself and lists out all his crew members while also saying who was dead, who wasn’t, and who he speculated to be dead. He talked about his brother Derrick who had passed away, his friend Michael who had been a part of the job and had also passed away, and of course, our very own Niko who he wasn’t sure about.

This seemed to be yet another nod at Niko still being around and an attempt at keeping him as an available character for future games and maybe even making a Stories game based around his life.

7. Michael finds Niko at Trevor’s Secret Base

In the game’s story mode, if you choose to kill Trevor in the end and go to the place where he was killed the next morning, you will be able to retrieve a bunch of keys from his body. Once you pick up those keys, you will be able to access Trevor’s Secret Base in the game which is a truly undiscovered location in the game. It lies in the same location where we discovered Niko’s jacket, i.e. The Yellow Jacket Inn.

Now, once you have the keys, if you were to open your map you will be able to see on the legend that an option labeled, “Trevor’s Secret Base” is available to you and if you were to head on over there, you’d see a whole bunch of stuff.

If you were to follow the trail of things in the game, you’d soon find out that Trevor had recently been in a bar fight with a very familiar face for players who have played GTA IV, none other than Niko! After following the trail, you’ll be able to see Niko standing in front of you in the flesh but behind an invisible wall and a locked door whose key you will not possess. And once you try to break into the barrier, a set of flamethrowers turn on and burn Niko alive.

After a few seconds, you will also start being burned alive in the same chamber and there will be no escape as you watch Ron from outside the door watching you burn alive with the eyes of revenge for taking out one of his closest friends and his boss, Trevor.

Conclusion

With that being said, we come to the end of the list of Easter Eggs for Niko Bellic in GTA V! Whether or not will Niko return to the game franchise, later on, is still a mystery as a lot of things in GTA V depend on the choices that the player makes!

In case you missed it :

• Leaked GTA 6 Details: Map, Release Date, and More
• “He’s embarrasing,” Trainwrecks takes a hilarious dig at recent Adin Ross “Kill/Them” drama