Uncharted 4: A Thief's End was released way back in 2016, but it seems that the action-adventure game has been hiding one or two secrets. Unknown to everybody (or at least most of us), Nathan Drake's final adventure contains one particularly gruesome reference to The Last Of Us.
As shared by GermanStrands on Twitter, the remains of a Clicker lurks in an incredibly easy-to-miss moment in Uncharted 4. For those of you that never played The Last Of Us, Clickers are the zombified humans that have been completely taken over by the fungal Cordyceps virus. They're basically mushroom-headed killers, but way scarier than I've just made that sound.
Anyway, the Clicker's corpse can be found in Chapter 12 of the game, tucked away underwater in a cave. It manages to blend in with the rest of the enviroment to the point that I would never have noticed it had it not been pointed out... but sure enough, as you can see below, there's a skeleton with that unmistakable fungal face.
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Pretty creepy, right? I think the most unsettling part for me is the fact that this particular Clicker is clearly the remains of an old pirate or adventurer from many hundreds of years ago, suggesting that the Cordyceps virus has existed for a lot longer than we'd assumed.
It could also be taken as further proof that Uncharted and The Last Of Us take place in the same universe. You might remember the newspaper headline in Uncharted 3 that specifically references the start of the outbreak that ravaged the world in The Last Of Us.
Of course, if you'd rather not imagine Nathan Drake having to endure the same horrors as Ellie and Joel, we could also take the Clicker Easter Egg as just that - a throwaway references for fans. Naughty Dog is no stranger to slipping references to its past into new games, after all. Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter both get referenced in the Uncharted games at various points.
Will The Last Of Us Part II contain any fun references to previous Naughty Dog work? As it happens, we already know at least one. As discovered during a preview session earlier this year, there's one particularly salacious throwaway gag that references Crash. I can't imagine it's the only Easter egg hiding in the game, but we'll have to wait and see.
Featured Image Credit: SonyTopics: PlayStation, Naughty Dog, The Last Of Us
