History Recap / TheLastOfUs2023S1E3LongLongTime

-> "This isn't the tragic suicide at the end of the play. I'm old. I'm satisfied. And you were my purpose."

* MeaningfulName: The meaning of Bill (or William, which Bill is a nickname for) is "resolute protector", while Frank means "free" and to be upfront about one's feelings. Bill sets up elaborate defences around a whole small town during the apocalypse, and later becomes very protective of Frank. Frank meanwhile is a more free-spirited person and much more willing to express his feelings to Bill.

* PowerOutagePlot: The power goes out while Bill is collecting supplies in a hardware store. Downplayed, as Bill proceeds to break into a nearby gas power plant and turns the power on.

* TookALevelInIdealism: Bill becomes more optimistic and willing to be vulnerable due to his love for Frank.

* ConspiracyTheorist: Among others, Bill believes that 9/11 was an inside job and that the leaders of the pre-collapse government were all secretly Nazis.

* CrazySurvivalist: Before Outbreak Day, Bill was a heavily-armed prepper with a distrust of government. When FEDRA comes to take the people in his town, Bill hides from them in his survival shelter hidden under his house. He has a whole arsenal of weapons in his basement, as well as a gas generator in his backyard. By 2007, he has a barbed wire fence perimeter and a series of traps surrounding the town to kill or capture any infected or raiders who wander too close. A few years later and his defenses have been upgraded with a wall of stacked car wrecks, as well.
* CynicIdealistDuo: Bill starts out as a mistrustful loner. Frank on the other hand is idealistic, is able to find positivity in small things in this nightmarish world, and wants to clean up their neighborhood and make new friends. With Frank's positive influence Bill eventually manages to open up a bit.

* DeathByAdaptation: Bill commits suicide along with Frank when the latter's condition grew too much to bear. In the game, Bill is still alive when Joel arrives at his town as well as when Joel leaves.

* WhatASenselessWasteOfHumanLife: When Ellie wonders aloud why FEDRA had to kill the excess evacuees and why they couldn't just have let them be, Joel glumly tells her that "Dead people can't be infected." Ellie can only shake her head in sorrow and disgust.

* ATeamMontage: A lengthy montage of Bill stocking up on items and securing his home against raiders.

* DancingInTheRuins: From the first day after the town is evacuated by FEDRA, it is clear that Bill is ''ecstatic'' about finally getting to live out his doomsday prepper fantasies, and we get to see that he takes great joy in having fancy dinners with fine wine while watching infected [[BlackComedy trip his shotgun traps]]. He says as much in his [[spoiler: suicide note]] to Joel, saying he hated the world before the collapse and was happy to see it gone. Downplayed a bit in that before he ''can'' enjoy the apocalypse he spends quite some time stockpiling, barricading and farming, and he doesn't let up on this for the rest of his life.

* ExtremelyDustyHome: Bill and Frank's home is quite dusty by the time Joel and Ellie arrive, indicating that they passed on quite some time ago.

* IdiotBall: Bill engages with the Raiders attacking his home by standing still in the middle of the street without cover. Naturally, he's shot, allowing for Frank to tend to him, some foreshadowing for his last letter to Joel, and a brief fake-out death.

* ATeamMontage: A lengthy montage of Bill stocking up on items and securing his home against raiders.

* MetaTwist:
** After spending a few years living a CozyCatastrophe, Joel warns that raiders will soon come and the defenses won't hold up either to them or nature. Players of the game fully expect at some point this happening and leave the town overgrown, full of traps and Infected like from the game. Nope, the defenses hold for over a decade and things only fall apart in the weeks after Bill and Frank have both committed suicide.
** In the game, Frank ran off with a battery that Bill was hoarding and admitted to hating Bill in a suicide note after he was bitten by an infected. People who know the game's story might be expecting Frank to betray Bill in some way at some point. That doesn't happen; they live (and die) happily as a couple.

* MetaTwist: In the game, Frank ran off with a battery that Bill was hoarding and admitted to hating Bill in a suicide note after he was bitten by an infected. People who know the game's story might be expecting Frank to betray Bill in some way at some point. That doesn't happen; they live (and die) happily as a couple.

* {{Deconstruction}} : The episode briefly explores what happens when TheCalvary, in the form of FEDRA, shows up to evacuate everyone to safety -- ''but'' there isn't nearly enough room or supplies to support everyone, and a choice has to be made about what to do with so many excess people...

* TheReveal: We finally learn that it was Frank and Tess who came up with the radio code system using classic songs to communicate with each other, highly suggesting that the 80's song that nobody gets to hear that played at the ending of Episode 1 came from either Bill or Frank - on their last night alive.

* BuryYourGays: The show's only gay couple ends their first episode in a murder-suicide that they find quite romantic. Bill may have lived in the game, but the last we see of him is him getting dropped off before Joel and Ellie drive away.

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: At the beginning of the episode, Joel and Ellie are camping in a mountainous wooden landscape that appears to be located [[UsefulNotes/TheOtherRainforest further west than]] [[TitleIn 10 miles from Boston.]]

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: At the beginning of the episode, Joel and Ellie are camping in a mountainous wooden landscape that appears to be located [[TheOtherRainforest further west than]] [[TitleIn 10 miles from Boston.]]

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: At the beginning of the episode, Joel and Ellie are camping in a mountainous wooden landscape that appears to be located further west [[TitleIn than 10 miles from Boston.]]

* BuryYourGays: The show's only gay couple ends their first episode in a murder-suicide that they find quite romantic. Bill may have lived in the game, but the last hint we get of him is a shot of the room where his corpse is rotting.

* ArtisticLicenseGeography: At the beginning of the episode, Joel and Ellie are camping in a mountainous wooden landscape that appears to be located far more than 10 miles west of Boston.