Shout Out / The Last of Us

Part 1

• A college student's journal you can pick up makes reference to his/her friends Cheryl and Heather.
• The Shorty would be an otherwise unremarkable Sawed-Off Shotgun if it wasn't treated as a pistol. Similarly, El Diablo is very similar to the Tau Sniper from Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception.
• Ish is confirmed via Word of God to be named after the main character in Earth Abides, a 1949 novel about a man trying to survive in a world where more than 90% of people have been killed by a plague but darn if he also doesn't work as a Moby-Dick reference.
• The robot that Henry refuses Sam to take resembles a Transformers toy.
• In the toy store, there are a couple of Uncharted and Jak and Daxter board games.
• One recording features a Firefly scientist who foolishly decided to release some Cordyceps-infected monkeys instead of exterminating them, getting himself bitten and infected for his trouble.
• The unlockable outfits include a Jak and Daxter T-shirt and a pair of Jak's goggles for Ellie. If you can clear the game on Survivor difficulty, you can unlock a bright yellow jumpsuit for her that's reminiscent of the Bride's, or possibly of Chigusa's from the live-action Battle Royale.
• When escaping the sewers, Sam points out how the outside walls have the warning "Infected inside, do not open" on them, a reference to the first episode of The Walking Dead, where the main character Rick attempts to escape a hospital and runs into a door with the words "Don't open, dead inside" written on it; Wiltshire Estates, a gated community that was the survivors' first attempt at a post-Atlanta settlement was marked with a similar warning.
• The part where Joel and Ellie meets and pats a giraffe is a nod to the scene in the first Jurassic Park movie where the main characters encounters a Brachiosaurus, and the young girl of the group, Lex, stretches out to pet it. It doubles as Fridge Brilliance in that while the giraffe isn't an extinct species, it's the first time Ellie has ever seen one for real, perhaps even at all, making her fascination with it just as strong.
• The "tag" for unlocking every shiv door in the game is called Master of Unlocking.
• The scene where Joel and Ellie realize Tess is infected, along with her sacrifice by deliberately drawing fire from government forces long enough for two people to get away and to avoid becoming one of the infected, is a nod to The Crazies (2010).
• A food vendor in the slums at the beginning of the game says that she'll only take ration cards as currency, and that she isn't interested in "bartering for bullets".
• We've seen a protagonist wielding a Colt Defender handgun in another Naughty Dog production before this one.
• When Ellie and Joel are driving and end up ambushed by Hunters in the Pittsburgh chapter, the radio in the car plays Hank Williams' "Alone and Forsaken", which is also the name given the chapter.
• During the winter chapter, Ellie can sneak through an old arcade featuring expy versions of Donkey Kong, After Burner, Street Fighter, Tekken, Metal Slug, and Pac-Man. These machines all reappear in Left Behind, along with a Mortal Kombat pastiche that Ellie gets to play (or rather, imagine playing, since the cabinet is broken), and a machine of Jak X: Combat Racing.
• The "American Princess" store Ellie ventures into to retrieve a note in "Left Behind" is a thinly-veiled parody of the American Girl doll franchise, down to the boxes and store displays.

Part 2

• Ellie sings a cover of Shawn James' "Through the Valley" in the PSX 2016 trailer.
• Ellie can easily sneak up on a non-Mook enemy – whom Abby can meet later in the game – because she is plugged into her PS Vita playing Hotline Miami.
• When at the Westlake Bank in Seattle, Dina compares the robbery that took place there to "that movie" with "surfer bank robbers"
• Joel seems to have gotten his knowledge of dinosaurs from watching Jurassic Park and notes that the sequel wasn’t as good.
• During the bow tutorial (after Ellie fights the stalker), one unfortunate mannequin's adventuring days seem to be behind him.
• One of the superhero trading cards is for one who’s a lawyer by day and vigilante by night like Daredevil.
• When Abby wakes up from her nightmare, she's holding onto a copy of City of Thieves, which was one of the first game's story inspirations. Lev is also named after the protagonist of the book.
• Manny mentions that he likes anime and then says that he’s going home to watch a movie about “a girl who rides a wolf” with the implication that he’s talking about Princess Mononoke.
• One of the collectible notes that Ellie can pick up is found in the children’s section of a bookstore. It’s a conversation between a mother and a child, scrawled on the back of a page torn from The Velveteen Rabbit. There’s also a scene from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland painted on the wall.
• The man who camped and died in the theatre before Ellie and Dina arrived kept a small stack of books at his tent that contains many canonical novels, such as The Picture of Dorian Gray.
• The music store that can be found during Ellie's first day in Seattle has a Pearl Jam poster in it, and Ellie can find a guitar with which she plays a soft acoustic cover of "Take On Me".
• Early in the game, Seattle Day 1, you can find a shop whose bathroom is graffitied with, among other things, the phrases "Hail yourself" and "Hail me!!". These, along with "Hail Satan", "Hail Gein", and "Megustalations", make up the Signing-Off Catchphrase of The Last Podcast on the Left. Host Marcus Parks discovered the Easter Egg during his playthrough of the game and was elated by it.
• When sneaking up on Nora in the Seattle hospital, Ellie overhears her playing Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day" on a small radio.
• According to his trophy, the archer in Seattle’s name was Boris Legasov. The two main characters in Chernobyl are Boris (Shcherbina) and (Valery) Legasov. Even better when you remember that the creator of Chernobyl would later work with Neil Druckmann on The Last Of Us tv series.
• Abby and a WLF soldier have an optional dialogue where Abby asks the soldier if she's finished with The Count of Monte Cristo yet. Abby probably would have benefited from reading it, as it's one of the most famous revenge stories of all time, particularly for how hollow and wasteful the revenge ends up being.
• In the bank vault in Seattle, Ellie may find a ring with the inscription “Sic Parvis Magna”.
• In the stadium cafeteria, two WLF members can be heard discussing a fantasy series of seven books that become progressively darker.
• In the scene in Eugene's basement, Ellie and Dina can find his tapes of porn movies including Smash Brandi's Cooch.
• While venturing through Seattle's Chinatown, Abby can find a Precursor Orb.
• While infiltrating the Rattler compound during the final level, the player can find several chained infected, like in 28 Days Later. Just like Jim, Ellie can use them to her advantage by shooting their chains off, causing them to rampage around the area killing any Rattlers they find.

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