VIDEO. Parodied in the GTA VI trailer, the “Joker from Florida” demands $2 million from Rockstar Games

2023-12-11 17:39:23

“GTA, we need to talk!” », Says a man with a completely tattooed face on his TikTok account. The image of Lawrence Sullivan, nicknamed the “Florida Joker” due to his resemblance to the fictional clown character, was parodied in the trailer for GTA VI. The latter then asks for “one or two” million from the video game publisher, whom he accuses of having stolen “his appearance, his life”.

And any resemblance to existing characters is absolutely not accidental, since the GTA VI trailer combines references to real events. More particularly images from Florida, since the next opus of the game will take place in Vice City, an imaginary city inspired by Miami. We therefore find the image of a character strongly resembling Lawrence Sullivan in an orange prison outfit, the Florida Joker having been arrested in 2017 for having taken out a firearm on the public highway.

But also an allusion to the “hammer woman”, a video that went viral of a woman hitting the car of a resident of her neighborhood with hammers, asking her to “go back to Mexico”.

As for Lawrence Sullivan’s expensive request, it has little chance of succeeding: the First Amendment of the American Constitution protects the right of expression, and therefore the right of parody. In 2013, it was American actress Lindsay Lohan who paid the price. She sued Rockstar Games after the release of the GTA V trailer, pointing out its resemblance to the character of Lacey Jonas. But Rockstar Games won the case, at first instance and on appeal in 2018.

The “Joker from Florida” also received wise advice from Roger Clark, actor and voice actor for the character of Arthur Morgan in another game developed by Rockstar Games, Red Dead Redemption 2. “People like you try to pursue them in court for decades, but they have an army of lawyers, he responds to Lawrence Sullivan in a TikTok video. If I were you, I would use the notoriety they gave me to my advantage. Capitalize on it! »

Although he should not get his million dollars, the “Florida Joker” has still created a little notoriety on the networks by posting regularly about this affair.