There was an easter egg in this week’s episode of The Last of Us that was so well concealed developer Naughty Dog had to point it out themselves.
One of the major scenes from this week’s episode, titled ‘Infected’ involves a scene in which Tess, played by Anna Torv, repeatedly flicks a Zippo lighter. It’s this lighter that is the easter egg, hidden in plain sight and apparently unobserved in the tumult of the scene in which it appeared.
UNCHARTED fans: Did Tess’s lighter from last night’s episode of #TheLastOfUs look familiar? 👀 It was modeled after Sam Drake’s lighter from UNCHARTED 4: A Thief’s End! pic.twitter.com/kAlAc8t94Z
— Naughty Dog (@Naughty_Dog) January 23, 2023
The scuffed metal lighter bears a five-pointed star and the number 76 on the outer casing. As Naughty Dog later pointed out on social media, that lighter comes from an entirely different universe. It belongs to the character Sam Drake, brother of Nathan Drake, in the Naughty Dog game Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. That game was co-directed by Neil Druckmann, who incidentally wrote and directed ‘Infected’, and also serves as executive producer on the show.
Like a lot of people, despite being placed right in front of me, I completely missed this easter egg. Maybe you did too. Now we know!
The nod to Uncharted 4 comes just days after former Naughty Dog director Bruce Straley expressed disappointment at not receiving a credit in the show for his significant creative input into the original game. Straley co-directed both Uncharted 4 and The Last of Us with Druckmann. Straley departed Naughty Dog in 2017 following the launch of Uncharted 4 to head up his own new studio, Wildflower Interactive.
The Last of Us is now streaming on Binge, with new episodes dropping Mondays at 1 pm AEDT.
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