Some people might not know this since it can be somewhat rare to come across

Every now and then you can hear this ad on the in-game Radio, referencing Panau from Just Cause 2. Both games were published by Square Enix, with JC2 launching 2 years before Sleeping Dogs. This was before Square Enix acquired the game from Activision (when it was called True Crime: Hong Kong), so there are no direct references to Sleeping Dogs in JC2

The named locations, Panau Falls Casino and Three Kings Hotel, are both mission locations from JC2

This has me wondering of what other references to Activision IP's they might have had planned when the game was still under their publishing. The Guitar Hero reference, along with the Game Guitar weapon, had to be removed once the game was transferred to Square (see this post for details), but apart from this I haven't managed to find any other removed direct references to other Activision IP's from the game files

Hopefully the text here doesn't get too compressed, but if it does I uploaded the images to Internet Archive here.

A few of these screenshots, particularly the ones from The Funeral, are more rare to come across. You can see Wei fighting against the old 18k Striker enemy model there too.

(this is mostly for the few people I know who follow what I post here)

Unsure of when I'll get to fully posting cut content related videos as my partner in investigating it is sadly ill. Showing these was something that barely crossed my mind but still quite a lot of people interested in the game won't have seen them before

Be sure to check out The Cutting Room Floor page for Sleeping Dogs, its a place showcasing images and videos of True Crime: Hong Kong and will be updated to feature early Sleeping Dogs era material. My friend runs it and has all of these screenshots on there, as well as other developer portfolios. If you have found any pre-release images from portfolios or other advertisements (some unique ones were shown in game magazines at the time), please do respond here so I can try get his attention to it

When someone tests my method of install actually works then ill upload it to Nexus or something if people want it

Might try make an alternate version with the lighter Red used in Kiryu's older looks, just went for the common Dragon Engine era look with this one

One of the earlier counter indicators is the icon for the auto unlocked 'Counters' skill in the Triad tree

To my knowledge, this is the latest one before the final red outlines we got in final game. The first/third image is one of the first looks at the game as 'Sleeping Dogs', not True Crime: HK, so even though that we still eagerly await a TC:HK build, builds from this point in time would be awesome too since none of these exist either. Most of the changes at this point were HUD based and you can clearly see its more 'GTA-esque' here, but a lot closer to the final game especially with the minimap

By changing the localization settings to one of the debug options in the debug build, I found a lot of things that were named differently internally in areas I didn't know about before. When investigating what had changed, I noticed the guns in the statistics screen showed TC:HK era, and older in general, weaponry names.

Important to note that some of these are old/internal names of existing guns, I will put their in-game names beside in brackets.

Here's the complete list:

- Beretta (9mm Pistol)

- Desert Eagle Gold (.50 Cal Pistol)

- Desert Eagle Silver (.50 Cal Pistol)

- USP (.45 Cal Pistol)

- USP Red Dot (.45 Cal Pistol w/ Taclight)

- QBZ95 (Assault Rifle w/ Taclight)

- QBZ95 no light (Assault Rifle)

- SA80 (Assault Rifle w/ Grenade Launcher)

- Anti-Riot (Anti-Riot Shotgun w/ Taclight)

- Anti-Riot no light (Anti-Riot Shotgun)

- M500 (Pump Shotgun)

- MP7 (Machine Pistol)

- UMP (.45 Cal SMG w/ Taclight)

- UMP Gold (Gold .45 Cal SMG)

- UMP Red Dot (.45 Cal SMG)

Some key notes:

The Beretta seemed to be the default pistol at the time, being replaced by the 9mm Pistol. It was most featured in TC:HK promotional material, including gameplay of the 'Payback' mission.

All 'Red Dot' variations were removed and replaced by Taclight versions. There seems to be an error or just some changes done to where for some reason the 'UMP Red Dot' is the regular version, but the 'USP Red Dot' is the Taclight version.

The cut Sniper Rifle was removed before this build was created, otherwise it would be on here as well, as I found the localization writing for the statistic in one of the debug builds game files. (I made a post about the cut Sniper Rifle a while ago, explaining the missions it was to be used in and showing its model in Blender)

Few vehicles had their names changed, the most notable ones are the Panzer and Executive. The Panzer used to be called the 'Lowin/Lowe' (not the same, they changed name 3 times with this one), and the Executive was the 'Lowe-E', this is why they look similar from the front, as they were initially a part of the same car brand, called 'Silberlöwe', before they scrapped having actual brands and making separate individual vehicles.

Here's some more TC:HK footage since I saw DrVom posted a video and some images in the comments. These and more are available to view on The Cutting Room Floor page for Sleeping Dogs.

The video Vom showed was by Seth Powell, a developer who was only working on the game during the True Crime: Hong Kong era, not when it transitioned into Sleeping Dogs, so a lot of his stuff is unused. He did create some icons that would actually be edited slightly and reused in Triad Wars, which I will post below.

This was the pause screen design, which looks pretty cool. I don't know if it was ever implemented into a proper build since we have never had a TC:HK leak.

I have posted about cut content and some TC:HK era stuff before, and I have more to share so I will do in the future

Idk how many people knew this, or looked up the full image either, but many of these images in the background are concept arts of characters. some of these can also be found in the Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition Artbook, which I uploaded the digital version pre-orders got to Internet Archive.

Image 1: Vivienne. This is from when she had red hair at one point

Image 2: Sandra.

Image 3: Two-Chin. This one is interesting because it shows him in a completely different outfit than he's ever been shown in. There is some cut content with him being removed from 'The Funeral', as there is an empty character model file for his Funeral attire, named 'TwoChinTsaoFuneral.perm.bin', but his use of shades there makes me think its possibly just an older version of his original attire, but I don't know for sure.

I also don't know why there's a guy like Kazuma Kiryu, specifically from Yakuza Kiwami when he infiltrates Tojo HQ, stood next to him. It seems to be a part of the same image, so I'm unsure if this really is just a bodyguard or someone else that was cut.

Image 4: No idea who this is. Could be a different design of Uncle Po, but there is a different one in the Artbook and all previous images can be found there.

Recorded this from the debug build of the original game that leaked last year, but didn't notice I didn't upload it here.

This small cutscene would have played just before the main shootout cutscene in 'The Funeral'.

Its possible its from the time before the mission was reworked, with Conroy being removed despite the final objective being to protect him with the cut Sniper Rifle, Sniper enemies being present (possibly replaced by the one Grenade Launcher guy), Aunt Jiang being present in combat and Duke being present in the mission as well (combat voice lines for Conroy and Jiang exist for this mission, with Conroy's mentioning Duke).

I made a post a while ago about the cut Sniper Rifle and what missions it was involved in.

If you're wondering why the game looks so low quality, its due to the debug build. It's a build used to test things like complex physics and stress testing demanding game elements. To my knowledge from using it, that's as good as you can make the game look graphically.