'We Got ___ Before GTA 6': The Meme That Became a Unit of Time

At some point during the long wait for Grand Theft Auto 6, the internet stopped treating the game as a product and started treating it as a unit of time. Every time something big happened in the real world, the same five words appeared underneath it: "we got ___ before GTA 6." A new Pope. A second moon. A whole console generation. The joke is simple, affectionate, and weirdly profound: the gap between Rockstar games got so long that actual history became the punchline. Here is where the meme came from, and a catalogue of the real, verifiable things that genuinely arrived before GTA 6.

Where the meme actually started

Per Know Your Meme, scattered "before GTA 6" jokes existed on Twitter and Reddit as far back as 2019, but the format crystallised in summer 2023. The trope-codifying instance was a TikTok by @jadendunn on July 27, 2023 joking that "we got aliens before GTA 6," posted the day after whistleblower David Grusch testified to the House Oversight Committee about alleged non-human craft. A "cure for cancer before GTA 6" video followed days later, and the format was off.

The premise is the franchise's own history: GTA 5 launched in September 2013, and as the years stacked up with no sequel, the wait itself became the joke. When Trailer 1 dropped on December 4, 2023 and confirmed a still-distant release, the meme exploded, then got fresh fuel from every delay since. The punchline writes itself with each passing month.

The real world that arrived first

These all genuinely happened between Trailer 1 (December 2023) and now, while GTA 6 stayed in development:

• A new Pope. Pope Francis died on April 21, 2025, and the conclave elected Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, on May 8, 2025. "We got a new Pope before GTA 6" became the single most viral instance of the meme.
• A second moon. Asteroid 2024 PT5 was briefly captured by Earth's gravity and acted as a "mini-moon" from late September to November 2024. Earth literally got a second moon before GTA 6.
• A total solar eclipse. The Great North American Eclipse crossed Mexico, the US and Canada on April 8, 2024, the most-watched eclipse in history.
• A US election and a whole presidency. Donald Trump won the election on November 5, 2024 and was inaugurated as the 47th president on January 20, 2025.
• Notre-Dame, rebuilt. The Paris cathedral reopened on December 7, 2024 after five years of restoration following the 2019 fire.

The games that came out before the game

This is the most painful category for fans, because these are full titles that were sometimes announced and finished inside the GTA 6 wait:

• Concord launched and died before GTA 6. Sony's hero shooter released on August 23, 2024 and had its servers permanently shut down 11 days later. An entire game lived and died in the gap.
• A Game of the Year that wasn't GTA 6. Sandfall's Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was revealed in mid-2024, released in April 2025, and won 2025's top awards, while GTA 6 collected "Most Anticipated."
• Astro Bot (announced May 2024, released September 2024) won Game of the Year 2024, start to finish, inside the wait.
• Oblivion Remastered was confirmed and then shadow-dropped the very next day in April 2025.
• Hollow Knight: Silksong, the other patron saint of long waits, finally released in September 2025.
• Black Myth: Wukong (August 2024), Monster Hunter Wilds (February 2025) and Death Stranding 2 (June 2025) all shipped too.

The tech and space that beat it

• An entire new console. The Nintendo Switch 2 launched on June 5, 2025 and became Nintendo's fastest-selling console ever.
• Multiple generations of AI. OpenAI shipped GPT-4o (May 2024), the Sora video generator (December 2024) and eventually GPT-5 (August 2025), several model leaps, all before GTA 6.
• Apple's Vision Pro went on sale in February 2024.
• SpaceX caught a rocket booster out of the sky with the "Mechazilla" tower's chopstick arms in October 2024.
• Two NASA astronauts launched on Boeing's Starliner in June 2024, got stranded, and came home before GTA 6.

The culture that beat it

• The Paris 2024 Olympics came and went (and gave the internet the viral Olympic Village chocolate muffins).
• Mike Tyson returned to the ring against Jake Paul in November 2024, in the most-streamed sporting event ever.
• Deadpool & Wolverine released in July 2024 and grossed over $1.3 billion.
• Kendrick Lamar headlined the Super Bowl halftime show in February 2025, across two Super Bowls played during the wait.
• Oasis reunited after 15 years apart.

The meme eating itself

The best part is that GTA 6 became a "before GTA 6" joke about itself. Rockstar released a whole second trailer (May 6, 2025) and two separate release-date delays before the game came out. We got more GTA 6 marketing before GTA 6 than some franchises get in a lifetime, and still no game.

The honest read

The "we got X before GTA 6" meme looks like mockery, but it is really a backhanded compliment. Nobody makes a unit of time out of a game they do not care about. The joke only works because the anticipation is genuinely historic, the wait genuinely long, and the payoff genuinely worth measuring the world against. The good news for the format: the clock finally runs out on November 19, 2026. After that, the world will have to find a new way to tell time.

For everything Rockstar has actually confirmed about the launch, see our GTA 6 master guide, and the Launch Desk tracks the countdown.

Sources

• We Got X Before GTA 6 (Know Your Meme). The meme's origin, the July 2023 "aliens before GTA 6" TikTok, and its spread.
• Robert Prevost elected as first American pope, Leo XIV (CNN). The new-Pope instance.
• Earth has caught a "second moon" (Space.com). Asteroid 2024 PT5.
• Concord (video game) (Wikipedia). The game that launched and shut down in 11 days.
• Nintendo Switch 2 fastest-selling console (Nintendo). The new console that beat GTA 6.
• Grand Theft Auto VI (Wikipedia). Trailer dates and the November 19, 2026 launch.