Place
Vice-Dale County
A county named twice, in two different trailers: VICE and COUNTY around a corrections deputy's star with DALE on the banner, and VICE-DALE lettered along the flank of a police helicopter.
Why this page changed its name
Until 20 September 2026 this page was called Dale County, because that is what the horizontal lines on the corrections badge give you: CORRECTIONS, SHERIFF’S OFFICE, DEPUTY, and DALE on the banner. The word VICE is there too, but it reads downwards along the left of the star, with COUNTY mirroring it upwards on the right, and we had not looked at it that way round.
What made us look again was the police helicopter in Trailer 2, where VICE-DALE is lettered along the flank in a single line. The old address, /gta6/locations/dale-county/, redirects here.
What the badge and the helicopter show
The first reading is a gold badge in Trailer 1, large enough to fill the crop. CORRECTIONS runs across the top, SHERIFF’S OFFICE and DEPUTY sit in the rings around a state seal, and around the star VICE reads down the left side while COUNTY reads up the right, with DALE on a banner at the foot. SHERIFF runs along the lower edge of the seal, between the star’s two lower points. The badge is the backdrop to a Mega Noticias item, with an inmate in an orange jumpsuit in front of it and the channel’s bug in the corner; until 26 September 2026 this page had the badge photographed on its own and filling the frame.
The second is in Trailer 2, at 2:27, on a police helicopter over water. VICE-DALE is lettered in dark green capitals along the flank, below the cabin windows, with a short mark between the two words. A gold badge, a shield with an eagle over a round seal, sits on the fuselage just above it, and POLICE runs across the engine deck further aft. The badge on the helicopter carries no legible name; the name is in the lettering.
One badge and one helicopter, two trailers, and the same name. That is a stronger footing than most names on this site have: our usual bar is one legible instance.
It also settles a misreading of our own. This page stood as Dale County until 20 September 2026, because the VICE on the corrections badge reads vertically and we had only looked at the horizontal lines.
How to recognise it
- VICE down one side of the corrections badge and COUNTY up the other, DALE on the banner between
- VICE-DALE in dark green capitals along the flank of the police helicopter, a short mark between the two words
- A gold badge on both: a star in a wreath behind an inmate on a news screen, a shield with an eagle over a seal on the airframe
- CORRECTIONS, SHERIFF'S OFFICE and DEPUTY on the badge; POLICE on the helicopter
The frame it comes from
The frame is Trailer 1 at 1:04.57. It is 3840 by 2160, and the subject occupies 2035 by 2155 of it. Also in it: Mega Noticias.
How this was measured
| Source | Trailer 1, 1:04.57 |
|---|---|
| Frame | 3840 × 2160 |
| Crop | 2035 × 2155 — most of the frame |
| Image check | 26 September 2026 — checked |
| Text check | 28 September 2026 — 44 claims read against the image, 15 corrected |
| Read at | the true pixel grid, 1:1 |
| Lettering | Letter height | Contrast | Reads |
|---|---|---|---|
| CORRECTIONS | 95 px | — | every character |
| SHERIFF'S OFFICE | 93 px | — | every character |
| DEPUTY | 48 px | — | every character |
| SHERIFF | 55 px | — | every character |
| VICE | 88 px | — | every character |
| COUNTY | 97 px | — | every character |
| DALE | 97 px | — | every character |
| VICE-DALE | 28 px | — | every character |
| POLICE | 52 px | — | every character |
| the gold badge above VICE-DALE, a shield with an eagle over a round seal | 150 px | — | no |
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
- Whether Vice City is in Vice-Dale County. The name points that way and nothing in the frames we have says so.
- How the county sits inside Leonida. Where its counties begin and end, Rockstar has not published.
- How Vice-Dale relates to VICEBEACH POLICE, which is on a city patrol car. One force is a county sheriff’s office, the other reads as a city department.
- How many counties there are. We have three names: Vice-Dale, Ambrosia and Kelly.
- The mark between VICE and DALE on the helicopter. It is an elongated dash, about three times as long as it is thick, so a hyphen rather than a dot; the measurement is on the sighting.
What we looked for and did not find
We went through the frames we have for anything else carrying a county name. What is there: a road sign for the Ambrosia County Sheriffs Office in the press pack, Kelly County on a gantry sign over the motorway in Trailer 1, and the badge and the helicopter on this page. Nothing else in those frames names a county at a size we can read.
The patrol cars do not help. The black one outside the Ocean View Hotel carries VICEBEACH POLICE on the boot and the bumper and 911 on the flank, and no county name that we can read. The sheriff’s airboat in the marsh carries SHERIFF on its bow and no county name anywhere the frame shows it. Nor do the number plates: on the Leonida plates the band where a US plate carries its state is too small to read, and the one plate on which that band does read carries GLORIANA, which this site files as a second state.
So, as far as the frames we have can be read, the county layer of this world comes down to three names. Rockstar’s own site describes six regions and no counties at all; the map question sets out what does and does not exist.
Every frame we have
Also in these frames
Measured in the same frames as the images above, but without a page of their own. Same rule as everywhere else: what the crop carries, with the source and the timecode. The ones whose frame no page shows are collected in the frame.
