What Is Carcer City Based On? - YouTube

Carcer City has been an intriguing part of the GTA franchise for a long time.

Even though it was the setting of Rockstar's survival/horror title "Manhunt,"

it still gets mentioned in basically every GTA, as both a reference to Manhunt,

and as a way of connecting the two franchises into one shared universe.

But in the 16 years that Manhunt has been out for, has anyone ever truly figured

out exactly what city Carcer is based on? We all know that in the GTA world,

both in the 3D and HD timeline, Rockstar takes real places and creates parodies

of them, adding their own creative spin to locations.

New York City is "Liberty City," Miami is "Vice City," North Dakota is "North Yankton,"

and Carcer City is... well, we really don't know. But let's examine what we do know

about Carcer City and try to find out! Now keep in mind, Manhunt was released

while GTA was still in its 3D universe timeline. GTA IV and V are both in a

separate universe from GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas, and the stories games.

because we've never had an HD Manhunt, we don't know if Carcer City would look

the same or not. A lot of stuff still gets shared between the universes,

so there isn't anything that says it couldn't be the same exact place.

Carcer City is said to be a Rust Belt city. The Rust Belt in the United States refers to

a group of locations in the Midwest and Northeast running from Wisconsin to New Jersey,

or Wisconsin to Pennsylvania depending on what map you refer to,

that were manufacturing centers in the 20th century before places like the steel mills

and car manufacturing plants began shutting down. This left many cities and

towns in this region economically broken. In some cases, some areas are in a severe

state of disrepair to this day. So with this Rust Belt reference, we can

narrow it down to this part the country: Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio,

Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, maybe a little bit of Kentucky, and

probably New Jersey are all the states that it could likely be located in.

Now let's take a look at the very first reference to Carcer City in GTA,

a whole two years before Manhunt even came out! If you listen to Lips 106 in GTA III,

the DJ talks about a newspaper article she was reading:

"So I'm sitting here reading the Liberty Tree, and it says in nearby Carcer City, a

good day for law and order as Police Chief Gary Schaefer was cleared of

corruption charges in a controversial decision by the courts! Let's hope those

missing witnesses turn up safe and sound!" Liberty City in GTA III was located in the

Northeast, but we don't exactly know where in relation to the rest of the

country. Even though Rockstar said that it's based on multiple locations, its

primary basis was obviously New York. So let's just assume that it's located in

the same spot that New York City is located at in real life. The DJ doesn't

really give us any indication as to how nearby Carcer City is to Liberty City either,

and I honestly don't think that Rockstar gave it much thought when this

reference was written. Someone was probably just hyped about Manhunt being

in development and wanted to throw in an Easter Egg while the game was still

being made. Moving on from that, San Andreas gave us a bit of a bigger clue

as to what Carcer might be based on. One of the in-game radio ads is a travel

advertisement suggesting that people visit Carcer City. And from what we've

seen of it, I'm sure it's a fantastic place to visit! Remember how I mentioned

that the Rust Belt was made up of places that once had steel manufacturers before

they began shutting down? San Andreas is set in 1992, eleven years before Manhunt

takes place. So the time period does match up for when the city would start

to experience a rapid economic decline. In real life, the steel mills that were

shutting down around this time were mostly in the Midwest. The voice-over for

the radio commercial does refer to it as being in the "heartland." The heartland, of

course, is another term for the Midwest. And then she mentions a "flaming River."

As crazy as that might sound, this was something that was actually happening in

real life in Cleveland, Ohio. The Cuyahoga River, which runs through Cleveland, was

so polluted that it would literally catch on fire. It did this at least 13

times, until around 1969 when it caught on fire again and this time managed to

catch people's attention. Really though, how badly polluted does your river have to

be to just catch on fire from a single spark from a train wheel? By the way, only

in March of this year did the EPA rule that fish caught from the Cuyahoga River

are safe to eat. And yet thousands of them were still found dead... Okay, so we've

got Cleveland down as a possible basis, since that reference in San Andreas is a

pretty big reference to something that was part of the city's history in real

life. In GTA IV's stats menu, you have a statistic called "miles traveled," and it

compares the distance between Liberty City and various other places.

Interestingly, Carcer City is listed as being quite close to Liberty, possibly

within a hundred miles, which would imply that it's probably not in the Midwest,

even with the previous references that could have placed it in the Midwest.

GTA V also mentions Carcer City, and for the first time, we have a protagonist who's

actually been there! Michael, back in the old days, apparently robbed his first

bank on the outskirts of Carcer City.

Trevor: "MiKEy, bRaH, what was your first bank score?"

Michael: 88, outskirts of Carcer City! Took a small

franchise for 10 g. Eh, things were easier back then."

I found this to be interesting, since Michael is from the Midwest. It's never said exactly where, although most

would assume North Yankton, which is based on North Dakota, but would he

travel all the way to the East Coast just to rob a bank? I would have figured

he was mostly gonna be around the Midwest robbing places. I also wondered

whether Michael was originally from Carcer City or someplace close to it,

just because he was younger and I figured he would have stuck to someplace

close to home for his first robbery. Of course, we don't know that

much about Michael's past, so it's all just a guessing game at this point.

Now let's take a look at what Manhunt gives us when it comes to Carcer City.

One thing we can gather from looking at the subway map is that the city is probably

located on a large body of water. There's an area called "Rocksnorth Bay." That's a nice

little Rockstar North reference there, by the way. Then it's got a lot of things

that most cities would have: the shopping mall, the junkyard, warehouses

cemeteries, bad neighborhoods, good neighborhoods. There's really nothing

distinct about it, besides maybe the subway system. I found this to be pretty

funny, since Rust Belt cities don't really have subway systems. The only

cities in this general area with subways are Chicago and Philadelphia.

Detroit doesn't have a subway, Camden doesn't have subway and it's also way too small

of a city to have a subway, Cleveland hasn't got a subway, but Carcer City

has one. By the way, one of the promotional websites for Manhunt was a

fictional message board with a bunch of creeps for members, most of whom are

likely residents of Carcer City. It's an interesting, bizarre, and humorously

disturbing read, and one of the signatures of a member mentions a

newspaper in Dayton, Ohio. It's probably just a throwaway reference, especially in a

place as random as this, but it's nonetheless part of the games viral

marketing, and it's meant to portray an in-universe website, so I felt like I would

include it for good measure. So, what real-life city is Carcer City

based on? Who the hell knows. To tell you the truth, I think it's based on multiple

locations, but not any one city in particular. This wouldn't be the first,

nor the last time that Rockstar's done something like this.

While the main basis for GTA III's version of Liberty City was obviously New York,

Rockstar themselves said that it was based on mix of Northeast and Midwest

cities in the US, including Baltimore, Detroit, and Philadelphia. And then

there's the city from Manhunt 2 known as "Cottonmouth," even though they never

mentioned the city's name in the game. According to the folks at Rockstar,

Cottonmouth is based on multiple cities in the south,

mainly New Orleans, Atlanta, and Charleston. So that's it. In my opinion,

Carcer City takes elements from multiple cities, but it isn't based on

any one city in particular. Even if you go by the very specific elements that

the city shares with other cities, it still manages to be vague and completely

useless information. Is it Cleveland or Philadelphia? Or a smaller city like Gary, Indiana

or Camden, New Jersey? Who knows. It's like trying to guess which state

Springfield is in. But the nice thing is that this vagueness at least leaves it

open to the possibility of a complete retooling if they ever made a GTA set

there. If they wanted it to, it could be Detroit, Philadelphia, or someplace like Chicago,

or set in the same map as a game based in one of those cities but as a

secondary city. Maybe based on Camden if it's Philadelphia, or Gary if it's

Chicago. But for now, I definitely wouldn't say it's based on any single

one of these places. There just isn't enough information to go by right now.

The best thing to consider it as now is just a generic Rust Belt city. Anyway,

that's all for now. Happy Halloween, and thanks for watching! :)