Leonida Keys

An island chain joined by a long bridge, with turquoise shallows, a reef worth diving, a beach bar with a crab festival banner and an iguana on the road.

What Rockstar says about the Keys

Rockstar’s page opens with the dress code: casual, and the bars are loaded. The description calls the Keys a tropical archipelago where life is not flashy but easy, and ends on the water: get your buzz on and pull up a deck chair, but look out, because you are on the doorstep of some of the most beautiful and dangerous waters in America.

Two other Rockstar pages put people here. Jason Duval found himself in the Keys working for local drug runners, and Brian Heder is a drug runner from the golden age of smuggling in the Keys, still moving product through his boat yard. Drug running is the side of the Keys that the six frames here do not show.

Rockstar’s own captions on its Leonida Keys page cover five of the six frames here: the seaplane over the bridge between two islands, the iguana in front of the mobility scooter, the beach bar, the divers on the reef and the boat party are each captioned as in the Leonida Keys. The press pack files all six under Places/Leonida Keys.

Source: Rockstar Games, rockstargames.com/VI, page for Leonida Keys, retrieved 16 September 2026.

Named places in the Keys

Each place below shares a frame with the Keys themselves, or Rockstar’s own text puts it here.

• Chip's Body Shop. CHIP’S in large capitals on a painted sign, with smaller lettering beside and under it below the reading floor, in the village frame with the iguana.
• The Rusty Anchor. A timber beach bar with a crab festival banner and a full deck; Rockstar’s caption calls it a beach bar in the Leonida Keys.
• The underwater pilings. A cluster of tall columns on the sea bed beside the reef, open at the top, with divers above and a sea turtle in front.
• Brian's Boat Works & Marina. Brian’s across the crown of Jason’s cap, part of the name along a seaplane fuselage, and the whole name on a sign at the water. Rockstar’s page for Brian Heder has him smuggling in the Keys and moving product through his boat yard.

What the frames show

The aerial is the defining image: a string of low green islands running out into pale blue water, a causeway linking them with traffic on it, boats scattered across the shallows and a seaplane banking low over it all. A city skyline stands on the horizon behind.

On the ground the Keys are a different register from the city. A village street where an iguana is out on the tarmac, up on its legs with one foreleg reaching forward, in front of a woman on a mobility scooter; a bus stands at the right with people beside its door, and behind them are a painted CHIP’S sign, a billboard and a giant painted whale with two people up on its back, with a dog and a cyclist at the left. A wooden beach bar under a sign reading THE RUSTY ANCHOR, with a crowd on the deck, a man slumped face down on a painted picnic table among bottles, and a banner on the rail reading CRAB FESTIVAL in orange outline capitals with a crab drawn between the words. A boat party out on the water, a man on a flamingo float, jet skis throwing up spray between the boats and a yacht beyond. And a close shot of an iguana on a rock above the shallows, a small island behind it.

Under the surface is a reef with a sea turtle, silver fish with yellow tails in shoals, orange sea fans and barrel sponges, two divers overhead, a long eel at the left, and a cluster of tall columns in the middle distance. They are open at the top like the barrel sponges around them; until 26 September 2026 this page called them timber pilings, the remains of a jetty, and nothing in the frame shows a jetty. Of the six screenshots, the reef and the boat party are about the water rather than the land, and the aerial is as much water as islands.

How to recognise it

• A chain of low islands joined by a long causeway
• Turquoise shallows with boats and a seaplane
• A green iguana on the road in the village, with a giant painted whale behind
• The Rusty Anchor, a wooden beach bar with a CRAB FESTIVAL banner on the rail
• A dive reef with a sea turtle, sea fans and a cluster of tall open-topped columns

The frame it comes from

The frame is a still from the official Press pack, which carries no timecode. It is 3840 by 2160, and the subject occupies 3840 by 2160 of it. Also in it: a single-engine floatplane.

How this was measured

These figures come from the dataset, not from the prose above. We measure everything and claim what counts. How we work

What we still do not know

• How far the chain runs, and whether you can drive the whole way
• Whether the reef and the columns on it are explorable
• Which of the businesses on the strip are enterable
• Whether the Keys have their own radio, missions or activities