Davey, How You Doing?

About

Davey, How You Doing refers to a cutscene from the 2013 video game Grand Theft Auto V in which the character Michael De Santa greets David Norton, a corrupt FIB agent who works with him. The scene achieved meme popularity on YouTube after a speedrunning strategy involving getting Michael to trigger the cutscene in an unusual way was discovered, leading to a series of memes in which Michael arrives at the meeting in an eccentric fashion.

Origin

On September 17th, 2013, the action-adventure video game Grand Theft Auto V was released by Rockstar Games. In the mission "Dead Man Walking," the protagonist Michael De Santa meets with the character David Norton, a corrupt FIB agent who works with him, at the Galileo Observatory. As Michael approaches the starting point, a cutscene triggers in which he greets Norton and gets the assignment from him (seen below).^[1]

- Davey! How you doing?
- About as good as can be expected. But the news is not good.

On November 21st, 2017, YouTuber^[2] MoMozes posted the earliest found humorous video based on the cutscene in which a deer unexpectedly appears before Michael sees David. The upload (shown below) received over 251,000 views in six years.

On March 9th, 2019, Grand Theft Auto V speedrunner DarkViperAU posted a video titled "GTA 5 Facts and Glitches You Don't Know #3 (From Speedrunners)." In one part of the video, DarkViperAU presents the "Blimp Strat," a time-saving strategy that involves the player initiating the mission faster by getting to the observatory on a blimp and jumping out on it (shown below, segment starts at 2:49). The video accumulated over 1.3 million views on YouTube^[3] in four years.

On June 27th, 2019, YouTube^[4] user CrazyWeeMonkey posted a clip from the video in which Michael falls out of the exploding blimp, hits his head on a parapet and immediately proceeds to greet David as if nothing happened. The video (shown below) received over 1.3 million views in four years.

Spread

In the following years, more videos in which Michael arrived at the cutscene in extravagant ways were shared on YouTube. For example, on May 18th, 2019, YouTube^[5] user Archon Androgen Pharmacokinetics posted a video in which Michael falls from the sky and survives crashing into the observatory at a terminal speed, which received over 185,000 views in four years (shown below, left).

On August 14th, 2023, YouTube^[6] user RedLazer5000 posted a clip in which Michael jumps out of a jet and misses the jump but still triggers the cutscene, with the clip gaining over 48,000 views in three months (shown below, right).

The cutscene has also been a subject of memes and references in the Grand Theft Auto community.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References