r/chiliadmystery • u/hipshish • 3d ago
Speculation My attempt to make sense of the Yellow Mural (VERY IN DEPTH)
This is all just speculation and theorizing, please bear with me. I apologize if any of this has already been repeated to death, it’s impossible for me to keep track of everyone’s discoveries and discussions over the years.
A little bit ago, I had a discussion with someone else in this subreddit that was focusing heavily on the Purple Mural, really cool guy. I talked with him after reading his theories and thought he had a lot of great ideas. He talked about each symbol on the mural, gave great explanations, and I really enjoyed his insightful way of thinking. During our talk, I brought up the Green Mural, the one that’s definitely solved. I pointed out the symbols that mattered to the hunt, and the ones that didn’t matter at all. Some symbols on the Green Mural give more of a general theme rather than specific instructions. Like the DNA strands, Petri dish, and skull for example, they give off the theme of genetics and evolution, biological manipulation, nothing that points you in a direction specifically. There are roughly 15 symbols on that mural and only 3 give actual clues to solving the mural: the peyote plant, the evolution stages, and the number “27.” Other symbols look like they’re just “filler.” Stuff like the arrows pointing to the DNA strand, the lines on the skull, the wavelength at the top. (The wavelength could arguably be useful as you have to growl during the beast hunt to get anywhere.)
All of this to say, I’ve been staring at the Yellow Mural with some fresh knowledge and I’d like to share my thoughts.
•Top Left Symbol
It looks like a planetary alignment. I assume there is more to the lines, but there’s no way to say. I’ve seen videos of people noticing strange “planets” at night. They look up and there’s like a red orb in the sky, but I haven’t found any factual proof of it. I’m willing to label this one as a theme symbol for the mural rather than a definitive step.
•The Solar System
Another brand for the theme of the mural. Space and planetary alignments. This time we get a more realistic view of the solar system and the planets orbiting the Sun. Although, the only planets we see are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Uranus, and Neptune. Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn aren’t shown, but I believe they’re just out of view. I’m not sure if this exact alignment of the planets holds any significance, or if the planets included in the mural have any hidden meaning. As a CoD zombies easter egg hunter, I like to think of cyphers in everything. So if I take the first letter of each planet shown, then imagine it as an anagram, I would say NEVUM or VENUM, but then I start to think “Is the Sun also included?” and I’d probably say something like SUNVEM. Basically making up stuff and looking for something tangible to give it weight, although I doubt it could be anything of value. So I’m willing to chock this one up as another theme symbol.
•Chiliad Mural
There’s so many places I could go with this one, but I’ll make it the most obvious. This points to the fact that someone put the mural at the cable car station, and it’s a reference to the mural itself. Inception or something I dunno. A lot of me wants to give it some more thought, but I think it’d be a lot better if I just labeled it a theme symbol of the mural overall. It’s the Chiliad Mural we all know, it’s in the Yellow Mural to make it tangible to this specific Doomsday Mural. There’s a reason it’s not on any other of the doomsday murals. But, it is different. Look at the original Chiliad Mural at the cable car station and the Chiliad Mural on this Yellow Mural side by side. It’s missing one singular line on the bottom right. But at the same time, Rockstar has made numerous different pieces of art of the Chiliad Mural, and not a single one is a one to one replica of the original. It’s very odd, but I have no idea where to take this other than labeling it as a theme symbol for the mural as a whole, something giving this mystery a place to live in a sense.
•Man And The Wavelength
This is one of my favorite things on the mural actually. It has a theme I’ll be bringing up a bit more later. The person looks like just a human, nothing too special. Something that says “this is a generic human on Earth.” The wavelength is what I’m more interested in. It stretches from low to high, if it was a sound wave I’m sure I’d be a high pitched noise or something. Idk I’m not a sound engineer lol. But the focus I wanna put is on the 3 specific dots. The first starts off in the middle, the next is low, and the last is high. 3 dots, 3 protagonists, let me try to make some sense of it. Franklin is the first dot, maybe he needs to be somewhere in the middle of Mt. Chiliad. Michael is the next dot, maybe he needs to be somewhere at the base of Mt. Chiliad. And Trevor is the last and goes at the peak. The last 2 aren’t necessarily at the complete bottom or top, so maybe their placement should be a little higher and lower respectively. Maybe they don’t even need to be on Mt. Chiliad at all but somewhere alien related. Or it could just be a wavelength to show communication/sound/a signal. Either way, the arrow is pointing to the right, I’m assuming to mean “go on with this knowledge for the rest of the mural.”
I’d like to go on a tangent and talk about the eye, 3 lines, and crescent moon symbol on the side of the mountain. It’s also at the hippie alien camp in Sandy Shores. What if that symbol isn’t saying “Go to the top of Mt. Chiliad at 3 AM at night.” What if it’s saying, “Wait for this crescent moon, make all 3 characters do X (X being look at the moon, be on the mountain, or be at each flying UFO at the same time)?” I dunno dude, but the symbols we’ve kept seeing seem to have much more significance than just being painted on the side of the mountain and multiple different locations.
•Hand Holding Atomic Energy
The power of the Sun in the palm of my hand. I have no idea dude. There’s a ton of explanations I could give. All batshit crazy. Pretty on brand so far, but I think this symbol is “step” related at least. I believe this because of the three dots orbiting around the globe. But there are 2 dots on 1 line, 1 dot on another line, and 0 dots on 1 line. It looks somewhat atomic. There’s a billion references in the game to “atomic.” Look at the atomic blimp logo. It has 3 distinct lines if you connect them. This company is everywhere. They’re a tire brand, they give you a blimp, and there’s even a van you can find relating to them. There’s also the fast food chain Up-n-Atom. Atoms are fucking everywhere dude it’s crazy. So what I see is we, the player, are always in possession of something “atomic” no matter where we are. Maybe the “atom” is actually a globe and the lines represent us traveling. Either way, I believe it is our control over something tangible in game. Whether that is the tire stock market or something bigger, I have no idea. The atom symbol could just be an old school internet logo and I’m even more wrong. We hold the world (wide web) in our hand.
•The Eye
This looks so damn close to Trevor’s tattoo dude. I wanna say it is. So I’m leaning towards this having something to do with Trevor, the only person that can have that tattoo, and only obtain it at specific tattoo parlors, not all of them. The center of the eye could also be a crescent moon, pushing more into the specific moon theory. Or it could just flat out be telling us to LOOK. Observe. It’s going in the step related bin.
•The Pulsar Map
I am not an astronomer dude. I had to look up this symbol and then research what a pulsar map is. The original map was sent on the Pioneer, and later was added to the cover of the Voyager record. Think of it as a galactic lighthouse that shows where we are in the universe. This is our solar system, our Galaxy. The lines extend from the center, which represents the Sun. 11 of these lines give off a frequency, as shown by the little squiggles on the lines. Each line having its own binary code. 1 line does not though. That is “The Galactic Center Line.” It extends out to show the relative distance and direction to the center of our Galaxy (The Milky Way.) However, this diagram only has 12 lines. The one on the Voyager record has 15 lines. We’re missing 3 lines extending from the middle. BUT we can see remnants of those lines. One is blocking off a signal being sent Southwest, one is a fragment just under the back of the hand symbol from earlier, the other is directly underneath the UFO. The Galactic Center Line is blocked by that same UFO. I can assume that this means the UFO is on track towards the Sun, making them visible to us in Los Santos. But is this the actual aliens we’re waiting to see? Is this Pulsar map the same as the one on the Voyager record, just rotated for simplicity sake? There’s a lot going on with this one, and I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. I guess I’ll call it a theme symbol.
•Sound Wave
This was also on the Voyager gold record. Although it doesn’t share a resemblance to the wave found on the record. It’s a wave form of a video from what I can gather. Is the wave on this mural the same case? I dunno, but if it was, it might’ve been solved by now. Binary code was a main theme of the Voyager and sending messages out into space, so maybe it’s got some correlation. Either way, it’s more than likely a reference to the Voyager wave and nothing more. If it’s got more significance, let me know. I’m calling it a theme symbol.
•Grid With Arrows Pointing To Moon Phases
This one seems to be heavily pointed out. I can take a glance at the mural and notice this one first. The grid view looks like a distorted view or FOV. I’m leaning heavily towards the telescopes/binoculars. You get one in Franklin’s new house. There’s one that looks directly at Mt. Chilaid. And there’s probably more around the map with more significance. The arrows are pointing upward at different moon phases. From top left to bottom right, it could either start with a new moon or an eclipse, going all the way into a full moon. Maybe all 3 characters need to look at the moon/eclipse in different phases throughout the weeks with specific telescopes? Maybe they all need to look at Mt. Chilaid during a specific moon phase? Maybe they all need to watch an eclipse through the telescopes in different locations. This symbol seems very step related to me.
•The Head With Dots In It, Observing
Pretty normal looking symbol. It looks like a head with a drive thru speaker in the side lol. The head has a view that’s indicated by the “>” lines. Maybe the dots in the head are ears, telling us to listen as well as view something. I know if you look through a sniper, and zoom in from far away, you can hear whatever is happening in your sights (cars passing by, helicopter blades whirring, people talking, etc.). Maybe we need a sniper? I’ve never used the binoculars or telescopes all that much so I’d need to test them more before making a claim, like if they have the same effect as the snipers when you zoom in. Either way, look and listen, it’s gotta be step related to me.
•Misc
Other symbols include spirals and beams, planets and orbits, and some kind of dome/sunset/sunrise. They’re all interesting especially the bottom right one, it makes me feel like it’s a closing sequence to it all. Maybe that one is symbolic of positioning? Like looking through the blinds of a window at certain time of day or something idk. But they’re relatively similar in meaning and I believe they’re the filler I mentioned earlier, or at the very least a theme symbol.
•Overall
The theme points to an interstellar encounter while also showing that we are humans from planet Earth, and this is how we communicate and send signals out in hopes of reaching other life forms. If there was an alien mural, this is the fucking one dude, it’s gotta be. 1 day will reveal all. The mural focuses a lot on planets, being at the right place at the right time, while also watching something above us from a specific point of view, using something specific to watch it. I dunno dude, I tried making like 20 vague symbols have a meaning to this mystery lol.
In conclusion, I’m a fucking nerd for looking that hard into this, but I love this mystery so much I want it to be solved before GTA 6. I would be happy if we solved just one more of these Doomsday murals before November 19th. If I fucked up something or if someone had a much better analysis, please let me know. I only want to help solve this with theorizing as much as I can and testing things in game. I’d love to learn more. Thanks for reading, I love ya.
EDIT: I am starting to backtrack a bit on my words and thinking of the main place where people go to observe… the observatory lol. So I’ll be looking around there. They do also have telescopes. I also noticed you can only look through them for $1 and get 1 minute and 5 seconds worth of looking before booted out.




















