20 The Last of Us Facts You DIDN'T Know

20 The Last of Us Facts You Didn’t Know

Welcome to MojoPlays, and today we’re looking at hidden secrets in one of my favourite games of all time. Whether there’s an interesting fact about the development, or a hidden secret in the actual game, we’re talking about 20 The Last of Us Facts You Didn’t Know. Let’s do it.

Eye Chart

Right at the climax of the game, before the emotional damage is about to be delivered, “The Last of Us” slips in a tiny detail that’s easy to miss if you’re too busy sprinting, panicking, and having a menty-b. As Joel storms through the Firefly hospital in full “no time for ethics” mode, keen eyed players might notice a set of eye-test charts hanging around the level. One of them isn’t testing vision so much as motivation, spelling out: “RUN YOU’RE NEARLY THERE DON'T QUIT!!”. Depending on your mood, this message can read as surprisingly heartfelt, an accidental pep talk urging you onward during one of the story’s most intense moments, or as a cheeky bit of developer humour, quietly confirming that yes, you’re in the home stretch now, please stop searching every room for supplies.

Ends Where It Starts

While we’re talking about this section of the game, a popular reading of “The Last of Us” suggests the game is basically bookended like an emotional sandwich, except the filling is trauma, and tears, and more trauma. The opening hours establish the pattern: chaos erupts, Joel escapes by car, the world collapses outside the windows, and his daughter Sarah ends up cradled in his arms as gunfire brings everything to a crashing end. Fast-forward to the finale and the same ingredients are present, just rearranged. Joel is once again fleeing in a vehicle, the danger is once again human, and this time he’s carrying Ellie while he does the shooting instead of desperately hoping no one pulls the trigger. Even Marlene fills the role of the final obstacle, but this time, Joel gets his gun out first.

Note From Ellie’s Mom

People credited the show for acknowledging that Ellie had a Mom, outside of Marlene’s single line about promising Ellie’s Mom she’d watch over here, but proper fans of the game still have to fight to point out that we did get more from Ellie’s Mom than this single line. Poke around Ellie’s backpack when you play as her, and flip over to the artifact section and she’ll casually explain what she’s carrying, revealing a mix of items you expected and a few you don’t. The standout, and the one that tends to stop players in their tracks, is a letter from Ellie’s mother, something the game never forces you to read, but absolutely dares you to. It’s quietly devastating - pause the game and stare at the wall for a bit, it’s gonna be okay.

Gustavo Santaolalla’s Creative Freedom

Video game scoring is incredibly important to establish a game’s vibe. What would Metal Gear Solid be without its music? Or Final Fantasy? “The Last of Us” however, took an unusually hands-off approach to its music, and somehow didn’t regret it. In a behind-the-scenes video, fans discovered that the development team essentially told composer Gustavo Santaolalla what the story was about and then stepped out of the room backwards, leaving food, water, and a guitar. No temp tracks, no reference music, no “make it sound more epic but sad but hopeful but marketable.” Just vibes, trauma, and trust. Santaolalla built the score entirely from the game’s themes rather than its gameplay, which explains why it sounds less like a traditional video game soundtrack and more like a feeling you can’t shake. Side fun-fact, his guitar throughout most of the score is intentionally slightly out of tune, only a teenie tiny bit, enough to make the guitar sound as emotionally exhausted as us.

Real-Life Phone Numbers

Did you know that in Pittsburgh, a battered billboard advertises pest control, complete with a couple of reassuring “555”-style phone numbers, exactly the sort of fake contact info players are trained to ignore. Except these weren’t fake. The developers accidentally put in a real number. Please, please just be a dead landline, or a Pizza Hut or something - Oh god, it's a phone sex hotline. That’s right, Naughty Dog accidentally put the number for an adult hotline in their game. The studio owned up to the slip shortly after, with Neil Druckmann confirming that it was a genuine oversight rather than an extremely dirty Easter egg... An Easter plug? Whatever.

Bill’s Reaction

Bill’s sexuality is never announced with a flashing sign or a dramatic pause. Instead, it’s conveyed through environmental storytelling so subtle it feels almost conspiratorial. The debate on Bill’s sexuality continues to this day, with a fraction of Straight Bill fans apparently covering their ears and eyes and screaming “la la la la!”. So, here are all the hints you might have missed. A lone mattress where two might be expected, paired deck chairs sitting abandoned like a paused conversation, a chessboard mid-match that Bill snaps at Ellie for touching, and yes, that magazine Ellie steals like a tiny covert pervert. None of these moments shout, but together they paint a very deliberate picture. The most devastating confirmation, however, is optional, and cruel in that uniquely Naughty Dog way. If players stumble upon the hanging body of Frank, they can recover his note, a bitter farewell that makes it painfully clear their relationship ended in resentment.

Their Last Names Weren't Considered Canon

With one notable exception, Riley Abel, surnames are optional in the apocalypse, right up there with electricity and functional mental health. Even the game’s two leads go through the entire journey identified only by first names, as if last names were lost somewhere between society collapsing and everyone learning how to craft shivs. That mystery, however, quietly cracks if you look in the one place most players never think to check: the Japanese manual. In that version, the paperwork casually reveals that Joel is listed as “Miller,” while Ellie shows up as “Williams”. Officially though, these surnames (at the time) weren’t considered canon.

PS3 Consoles

Rather than slapping a logo on a menu screen, Naughty Dog chose a far more subtle way to show its undying allegiance to Sony: quietly sneaking PlayStation hardware into the apocalypse. And they don’t just hide one console in the game, or even two, turns out there are three PS3 consoles hidden in the world. The first sighting comes right at the beginning, when you’re playing as Sarah and the world hasn’t ended yet. Look under the TV in Joel’s living room and there it is. Later, as Joel, you can stumble across another PS3 deep inside the university, tucked away in a basement room that’s already hosting Clickers. The final appearance comes during Ellie’s escape from David, where you can spot yet another PS3 perched on a shop shelf, still intact, still recognisable, and somehow surviving the apocalypse better than most of humanity. My PS3 is harder to find than these ones.

The Infected Elephant

Concept art gives us some of the coolest alternate reality peaks, with games revealing things that could have gone different directions, or even things that were cut entirely. One of the wildest cuts was some infected animals, including an infected elephant. We can only assume this was going to show up in the same location we found the giraffe, with many of the zoo creatures having been infected. There’s even a newspaper found early in the game showing a headline about animals becoming more aggressive, with (you guessed it) a giant elephant taking the most real estate on that front page.

Elliot Page

Not long after “The Last of Us” stepped into the spotlight, a completely different conversation began running alongside the hype, one focused less on cordyceps and more on DNA. Players quickly noticed that Ellie bore a striking resemblance to Elliot Page, and once that comparison lodged itself online, it refused to leave. Page eventually addressed the situation publicly, making it clear he wasn’t thrilled with the resemblance and calling out Naughty Dog for what he felt was an uncomfortably close borrowing of his likeness. The controversy eventually cooled, Ellie’s design evolved over time, and the internet moved on to its next argument: Who was at fault? The little boy? Or Harambe?

The Last of Jak & Daxter

As it turns out, after wrapping up “Uncharted 2: Among Thieves”, Naughty Dog split its development team in two, and one half, led by Neil Druckmann, was assigned not to The Last of Us, but to the task of reviving “Jak and Daxter”. The pitch was to take a more grounded, realistic approach, inspired by the darker reboots happening in DC comics at the time, but we all know how those turned out. The concept during this period started drifting further and further away from what Jak and Daxter actually was, and killing Daxter at the start of the game just doesn’t feel right. Realising they’d wandered too far from the source, Druckmann took the rare and terrifying step of going upstairs to management and admitting the project had become something else entirely. Instead of shutting it down, the higher-ups gave them a creative green light: abandon the reboot and make whatever game they actually wanted. Thank! GOD!

Nathan Drake Is In The Game

During a PlayStation behind-the-scenes interview, fans discovered that the voice behind David, the unsettlingly polite survivor Ellie encounters, belonged to Nolan North. This revelation caught a lot of people off guard, mostly because North’s vocal résumé had conditioned audiences to expect charm, confidence, and light-hearted heroics, not quiet menace wrapped in a friendly tone that absolutely should not be trusted. North dials everything back, no bravado, no jokes, replacing them with soft-spoken manipulation and an unsettling calm that makes every conversation feel like a trap slowly closing. This antagonist is unforgettable... For reals, I still have nightmares about him, and any time I’m playing golf with my friends and they crack a real good drive, I’ll say “you’re a better shot with that thing than I am.”

Wolves and Giraffes

Before the game even lets you think about controlling Joel or Ellie, “The Last of Us” pulls a quiet bait-and-switch by putting you in the shoes of Sarah. At face value it’s just environmental flavour, but once you’ve finished the game, every object in that room radiates with intention (and cuteness). While navigating Pittsburgh later in the game, Joel casually mentions having seen a movie called “Dawn of the Wolf” before the outbreak, go back to Sarah’s room and there it is: a poster on her wall, quietly confirming who he saw it with. The same goes for the framed photo of Joel and Sarah that reappears later in the story, it’s been sitting there the whole time, waiting patiently to hurt you on your second playthrough. And then there’s the giraffe. Just a stuffed animal at first, easily dismissed as background clutter… until the game delivers that scene. You know the one. I’ll be right back, need to cry.

Too Much Swearing

Ellie is a BIT of a potty mouth. Over the course of the game, Ellie drops the f-word a grand total of 53 times, officially crowning her the undisputed heavyweight champion of swearing in the apocalypse. Some players found this endlessly amusing, treating each outburst like a collectible, while others quietly wondered if Naughty Dog had a bulk discount on profanity. These F-bombs come during cutscenes, and gameplay. The game takes 14 hours to beat, this is 3-4 f***s an hour. Nice work, El.

Tess Was Originally a Villain

In the finished version of “The Last of Us”, Tess is introduced as the kind of ally you immediately trust. She helps move the plot forward, keeps Joel grounded, and ultimately bows out in a blaze of glory. But as it turns out, Tess almost became something entirely different. Early drafts of the story painted her not as a fallen companion, but as the game’s primary antagonist, someone Joel had wronged before the story even began... Doesn’t sound like Joel. In that version, the narrative would’ve built toward a direct confrontation between the two, ending with Ellie killing Tess to save Joel. Not metaphorically, not accidentally, her first human kill, front and centre, delivered against someone the player once trusted. It’s effective on paper, but also very loud about what kind of story it wants to be.

Ellie Saves a Plot Hole

One of the sneakier bits of character work in “The Last of Us” happens when the game assumes you aren’t looking, and Ellie takes full advantage of that trust. Scattered throughout the game are moments where she quietly helps herself to items she absolutely has not been given permission to touch. You’ve already got the infamous example of Bill’s “definitely not for minors” magazine, but she doesn’t stop there. Later on, when Henry tells Sam to leave a toy behind, Ellie very politely ignores that rule and pockets it for him anyway. She later whips it out in a cutscene making us say “wait, when did she get that? We saw him put it down, and we had eyes on her the whole time! Right?” As it turns out, Ellie’s AI is deliberately coded so she won’t grab these items while the player is watching her. She waits until your camera shifts away, then makes her move. Most players never catch it, because the game assumes you’re too busy surviving the apocalypse to micromanage teenage side quests. But if you’re quick, and a little suspicious, you can snap the camera back at just the right moment and actually see her in the act. GOT YA! NOW GIVE ME THE ROBOT IT LOOKS FUN!

Clementine's House Debate

I wish this entry would give a definitive answer, but instead I’m just telling ya’ll about an online debate in case you’ve missed it. Tucked away in the quiet ruins of “The Last of Us” is a house that feels oddly… familiar. It has all the suspicious ingredients: a backyard swimming pool, a treehouse perched nearby, and enough environmental hints to suggest a child once lived there before the apocalypse did what it does best. For some players, this immediately rang alarm bells, because if you’ve played Telltale's “The Walking Dead”, you might recognise the layout as eerily similar to Clementine’s home from that game’s opening moments. This resemblance has quietly split the fanbase into two camps. One side argues the similarities are far too specific to be accidental, and the other side insists it’s a coincidence, chalking it up to the limited number of ways you can design a suburban house before they all start looking the same. I however think it’s the backyard from The Simpsons. Cause I think that would be hilarious.

Same Bar

Jumping over to Naughty Dog’s other single player gem, “Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception” kicks things off with Nathan Drake throwing hands in a bar after a deal goes south. Classic Drake. Sharp-eyed players noticed something curious: that bar looks suspiciously like a location you’ll later trudge through in “The Last of Us”. The similarities aren’t subtle-set-dressing vibes, they’re “wait, haven’t I been punched here before?” levels of familiar. The overlap gets juicier. In “The Last of Us,” that same bar, named O’Sullivan’s Irish Pub, feels like a wink: O’Sullivan reads like a direct nod to Victor Sullivan, aka Sully. I mean, come on? Surely!

The Newspaper

I could have included this in the last entry, but it’s so infamous it deserves its own spot. Remember earlier in the list when I said Naughty Dog split into two groups, with one group working on relaunching Jak and Daxter to instead make The Last of Us? Well, the other group pushed ahead with “Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception”. The plan was to keep The Last of Us under wraps until the timing was right, but timing, much like surviving Cordyceps, did not fully cooperate. As it turns out, a small slip made its way into Uncharted 3 before The Last of Us had even been officially revealed. Sitting innocently on the bar counter, is a newspaper whose headline reads: “Scientists are still struggling to understand deadly fungus.” At the time, this was just a piece of environmental flavour… or so it seemed. In hindsight, it’s a neat little “The Last of Us” easter egg, casually hanging out in a game about treasure hunting and bad bar fights. Funnily enough, this newspaper didn’t do anything, in fact: It being there, and the realisation that it was there well before the game was announced, came years later.

The Cordyceps Brain Infections

The infection at the heart of “The Last of Us” feels wildly imaginative at first glance - fungus turns people into monsters, cities collapse, fungus hats become fashion - but the idea didn’t come from thin air or a particularly dark writer’s room. Nature had already done the concept art. Neil Druckmann has explained that the spark came from an episode of the BBC documentary “Planet Earth”, which showed an ant infected by Cordyceps fungus, its movements hijacked, its fate sealed, its dignity completely gone. The phrase “zombie ant” came up, and apparently that was all it took. Once that mental image lodged itself in the team’s collective brain, the next step was inevitable: ask the worst possible question. What if this didn’t stop at insects? Gross.