On June 7, 2000, legendary ‘90s porn star Jake Steed was arrested. The charges he faced were serious: corporal injury to a spouse and false imprisonment. Instead of facing trial, Steed fled the country, reportedly crossing the border into South America.
For the past decade, nobody has heard from Jake Steed. Generic messages are posted on his website, signed by Steed, but they’re presumably authored by an administrator of the site who sells niche “shemale” pornography.
But in the past week, hundreds of Internet users have spent hours investigating every detail of Steed’s career. This isn’t due to a new porn film or his emergence from hiding. Instead, it’s a cryptic reference in Grand Theft Auto V—and some are convinced it contains the answer to one of the game’s biggest mysteries.
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Ever since the first trailers were released for Grand Theft Auto V, eager fans of the series have delved into the game’s details in search of a conspiracy. From the sasquatch on the fictional city of Los Santos’s police crest, to the mysterious murals on the game’s tallest mountain, the game’s developers left a trail of clues hinting at paranormal secrets waiting to be found.
Sasquatch can been seen in the corner of the Los Santos police crest.
Screenshot via RockstarGames/YouTube
When players finish every objective in the game, it’s possible for them to discover mysterious UFOs floating high above the city. For most players, that’s evidence enough of a paranormal conspiracy. But a small community of Grand Theft Auto V players believes that there is one object yet to be found: the elusive jetpack.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, seen by many as the creative highpoint of the series, features a functioning jetpack hidden deep within the game’s military base. With Grand Theft Auto V set in the same fictional American state, and with similar paranormal clues, many video game conspiracy theorists consider the existence of a jetpack to be highly likely.
It’s been five months since Grand Theft Auto V’s release, and the mythical jetpack remains just that. A community has formed on Reddit to pool resources and focus the hunt. The “Chiliad Mystery” community, named after the game’s tallest mountain, has turned to increasingly unlikely methods to seek answers: spectral analysis of in-game car horns, combing through the game’s files, even attempting to use glitches to travel under the sea.
When Reddit user ddduckkk discovered one of Jake Steed’s porn names appears on the side of an aircraft hangar in Grand Theft Auto V, it seemed to be the break the community was looking for. The original post has become one of the subreddit’s most-upvoted submissions, with many quick to point out why the “Jack Sheepe” theory makes sense.
Grand Theft Auto V screenshot via ddduckkk/Imgur
This aircraft hangar that the advertisement appears on belongs to Trevor, one of the three main characters. If you combine all of the letters together into “JACKSHEEPESERVICINGTRIMANIFOLD,” and run it through an anagram solver, one of the results is “JETPACK CONFIRMED.” For some, that’s enough.
Skeptics claim, however, that the anagram is mere coincidence. After all, it doesn’t use all of the letters. They’re also quick to point out that “Jack Sheepe” is the in-game parody of John Deere, the American tractor company; even the logo is similar.
But the Grand Theft Auto conspiracy theorists remain convinced. You see, Jake Steed only ever used his “Jack Sheepe” alias once, and it’s that use of the name that has lead to further speculation regarding the meaning of the Jack Sheepe sign.
The opening credits of The Cockateer.
Jake Steed took a break from his career in hardcore pornography to star in the 1991 porn remake of the Disney superhero movie The Rocketeer. Under the name “Jack Sheepe,” Steed had a minor role as “B.O. Henchman #1” in The Cockateer.
“Jack Sheepe” (left) in The Cockateer.
Screengrab via YouTube
So why is this film significant? There are several reasons: The first is that both The Rockateer and its porn parody feature a jetpack as a central plot device. They’re also both set in Los Angeles, the basis for Grand Theft Auto V’s fictional city of Los Santos.
Another piece of evidence that is claimed points toward the jetpack’s existence is the “R-108” shown beneath the advertisement. The runtime of The Rockateer is 108 minutes. The number 108 also appears throughout the TV series Lost, as it’s the sum of all the recurring numbers in the series. And eagle-eyed Grand Theft Auto V players have spotted “R-108” appearing throughout the game, most notably on angry hillbilly Cletus’s vest.
Screenshot via biffboy6000/Imgur
So is it plausible that Rockstar Games used the name of a pornographic actor as a hint that the jetpack is out there waiting to be found? At the very least, it’s an entertaining theory. As Reddit users scramble to link Jack Sheepe and Grand Theft Auto V together, they’ve theorized that Rockstar would have known of Sheepe long before the creation of the game
When he wasn’t performing in porn films, Jake Steed also attempted to create a career for himself in the rap industry. His website features a self-penned rap about his “hoes,” and other tracks from his mixtape have surfaced online. The Houser brothers, the pair behind the Grand Theft Auto series, have long shared a love of rap music, taking influence from Def Jam records and Los Angeles’ rap scene in the 1990s.
After spending a week researching ‘90s porn star Jake Steed, it seems that the Chiliad Mystery community has finished its investigation. The Jack Sheepe sign seems set to join the elevator doors, the sand glyphs, and the hippy camp as in-game items that are considered by some on the Internet to be evidence of an alien conspiracy.
Until the next breakthrough, the jetpack remains hidden, and Jake Steed is presumably still hiding out in South America.
Photo via Rockstar Games