Follow TV Tropes

Following

The Last Of Us / Tropes E to J

Go To

Main Page | Tropes A to D | Tropes E To J | Tropes K to N | O to Z


    open/close all folders 

    E 
  • Early Game Hell: The beginning of the game can be rather rough, especially against infected. At the start, you only have 1 (soon 2) pistols, your aim is rather shaky, zombies tend to jerk around a lot (which combined with the previous points make headshots a tricky proposition, especially against clickers), and clickers will instantly kill you if they get within grabbing range. However, the infected become much easier to manage once you get the shotgun, you can upgrade Joel with pills to have steadier aim and the ability to shank clickers that grab you, making them no longer instant killers, and with more weapons to use, you'll also have more ammo to make use of.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Joel and Ellie go through hell and back to ensure that they both survive. Meanwhile, Tommy sets up a small community that actually tries to be self-sufficient rather than relying on scavenging to survive, which sets them apart from other survivors and the military.
  • Easter Egg:
    • In the toy store in Pittsburgh, you can find board game adaptations of Jak and Daxter and Uncharted. Later in the game you can also find a newspaper ad for Uncharted 13...with Justin Bieber as Drake.
    • While playing as Ellie you can find a PlayStation left on a shelf.
  • Elemental Zombie: The game takes place in the aftermath of a Zombie Apocalypse. The Infected are essentially people who have been exposed to a Festering Fungus, making them prime examples of the plant-based zombie. Over time, the zombie starts to resemble a mushroom more and more, with scales and spore pods all over their body.
  • Elite Mooks: On the human side, there are roughly three tiers: The standard bandits, their more experienced and well-armoured colleagues and the military, and finally the Fireflies you fight in the last chapter - professionally trained paramilitary soldiers with full body armor and assault rifles.
  • Elite Zombie: As it grows older the Cordyceps matures within the Infected, making them tougher, stronger, and granting them new abilities.
  • Empty Room Psych:
    • While there's cover almost everywhere in the game, there's also a lot of instances where you never need to use it. Justified, since after 20 years of martial law there's probably been a lot of fighting in the past.
    • The university has only two isolated encounters with infected and a massive battle against Hunters at the very end spread out across a huge open area you can explore. Depending on how well you know the layout, you can easily spend 10-15 minutes without hostile contacts in a level that seems just perfect for large-scale fights. Try getting through this on your first playthrough without sweating bullets after a few minutes of nothing happening.
  • Empty Shell: Joel after the intro. The conclusion even has him admitting that he only keeps going because he forces himself to find a reason.
  • Enemy Chatter: Enemies can be heard having conversations with each other before you encounter them, and they talk to each other and you during fights. They'll call out instructions, make note of where they last saw you, and get suspicious/nervous if they suddenly don't get replies from their comrades.
  • Enemy-Detecting Radar: Listen Mode allows Joel to see the outlines of enemies through walls. But you have to crouch while using it. The twist is, however, that you can only do so if they produce sound - if they're sitting still, they won't register. Or at least that's the idea. In practice, even enemies that are standing completely still and not making a sound will usually show up.
  • Escort Mission: The negatives associated with this trope are averted. Ellie is highly competent and will seek cover when enemies are around, and if Joel is pinned down by one, she will do what she can to distract his attacker, including throwing things at him or directly attacking with her own weapons. It is also directly inverted when Joel is badly injured after falling onto a spike, and Ellie must escort him (with the player controlling Joel) to safety.
  • Establishing Character Moment: The first time the player sees Joel is in the opening scene with Sarah, joking around with her, carrying her to bed, and overall being a normal, loving father. However, it's the following sequence of the outbreak that portray what his character will truly be like. First he shoots down an infected neighbor with his gun, showing that even if he takes no joy in it, Joel is prepared to kill at a moment's notice if it comes down to it. Soon after, as he, Sarah, and Tommy are in the truck, he pushes Tommy to drive past a family on the side of the road, despite Tommy's insistence that they help them. This cements that Joel will protect his family first and foremost.
  • Evolving Title Screen: There are two title screens for the game, the standard one and it changes slightly post-completion. The first one is a battered house window starting to be taken over by nature with a vine starting to creep in and then it changes after you beat the game to include Ellie's switchblade on the window sill. The screens both indicate Joel's journey in the game as well as other characters and the setting; at first, Joel's a stoic, yet broken man doing his best to keep his guard up and is resistant to change. Other characters and the Fireflies in mirror this, as as the planet undergoes major change and each do their best to fight against it and/or shut themselves from it, despite the impossibility (the green vine creeping in representing how futile it is as it makes it's way in despite the barrier). Ellie's switchblade being on the inside after you complete the game could represent Joel finally opening up to at least one person (Ellie) and her blade is at rest, showing their journey is over and they're safe and done fighting. At least for now.
  • Exactly Exty Years Ago: Twenty years have passed since the outbreak.
  • Exact Words: Exploring the university where Joel and Ellie seek to meet up with the Fireflies drops Joel into an encounter with five clickers and a bloater, the latter of which drops a Firefly pendant if you kill it. Ellie later asks him if he thinks the clickers might've been Fireflies once, which Joel denies. He isn't lying - the clickers weren't Fireflies, but the bloater very likely was.
  • Excuse Plot: While the narrative of the game was heavily praised, and for good reasons, it's mainly due to the depth and development of the characters; the actual plot is essentially nothing more than "Get from point A to point B". Neil Druckmann, the game's head writer, says that his writing philosophy is "simple stories, complex characters".
  • Extreme Mêlée Revenge: After a tense cat-and-mouse between Ellie and David where he comes very close to killing her, she finally gets the better of him and hacks him to bits with a machete while screaming. She has to be pulled off by Joel and she's so blind with rage she nearly slices him up before she recognizes him and calms down.

    F 
  • Face–Heel Turn: One note you come across while in Pittsburgh is written by a Hunter, revealing how their group used to be a regular survival group with presumably decent people, until one day some of their teenage members had killed a family they came by. They had all expected them to be punished but instead their boss figured they had "provided [the group] with useful supplies" and thus made the decision they would chase down and kill any bypassers for food and clothes from then on. The writer of the note explains witnessing some of their members had protested and refused to be part of it, and not daring to speak up when the boss had them executed.
  • Fake Difficulty: There's literally not a single combat encounter in the game that doesn't have tons of bottles and bricks lying around with which you can distract or stun enemies... except the one battle where you would need them most: Ellie's completely unarmed cat-and-mouse game with David. Made worse by that fight taking place in a fuckin' restaurant. Setting the game to Easy averts this, but going from many throwables to none at all even on Normal difficulty is a fairly cheap trick to keep the battle challenging.
  • Fake Longevity: The numerous trophies that require playing at least one New Game Plusnote  can feel like this because, as great as the game's storytelling may be, its linearity and lack of gameplay diversity gives it little replayability on its own. At least the difficulty-related trophies also unlock the ones for any difficulty settings below the one you played on. Otherwise you would've needed to complete the game at least ten times for 100% Completion.
  • Fallen States of America: What's left of the US government (and America for that matter) as a whole. The traditional government has given way to universal martial law in the remaining quarantine zones which are crumbling one by one as supplies run out, and it's implied that the Boston QZ is on its last legs. In fact, there's the possibility that the Boston QZ might be the last one standing.
  • False Camera Effects: In keeping with the world's dirty and run-down state, looking more or less directly at bright light sources like the sun makes it look like the player is viewing the scene through a dusty camera lens.
  • Faux Affably Evil: David, until his Villainous Breakdown.
  • Festering Fungus: The source of the "zombie" outbreak.
  • Fingore: A watered-down, however humorous, example when Ellie breaks David's fucking finger.
  • Finishing Move: During multiplayer, you can finish off players that are crawling from damage for a bonus and to stop their allies from reviving them.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Joel and Ellie. A major part of their Character Development is Joel trusting Ellie enough to let her use weapons and cover him in combat.
  • First World Problems: Ellie finds a diary written by a teenage girl from before the outbreak, and is astonished that all they had to worry about back then were fashion, boys, and movies.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing:
    • Trailers and the cover art clearly spoil Sarah's death at the start of the game. If you somehow aren't aware of any of those, you can still clearly see a blood spatter when the solider shoots at her and Joel, moments before her fatal gunshot is revealed.
    • In the cutscene after the Lincoln chapter, Joel drives by a sign that says "Pittsburgh 242 miles". Surely enough, Pittsburgh is where the next playable chapter of the game takes place.
  • Foreboding Architecture: Notably in the university. You're sauntering through the building when cover-height stacks of crates and equipment suddenly start turning up. The enemies which pop up later on your way out aren't much of a surprise.
  • Foreboding Fleeing Flock: In the basement of the hotel in Pittsburgh, Joel comes across a swarm of rats fleeing from something threatening, and has to contend with some Stalkers almost immediately afterwards.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • When we first see Joel, he's talking to Tommy on the phone. His daughter gives him a watch as a present to replace his old broken watch, and he tricks her by saying that it's broken, after which she lies down on the couch to watch TV and falls asleep, at which point Joel carries her to her bed and says goodnight. Her first sign something is wrong is Tommy calling her and asking to talk to Joel. She ends up carried by Joel through town when the zombie apocalypse breaks out, then is shot and dies (metaphorically "falling asleep"), and the watch does end up broken by the time he meets Ellie. He still keeps it.
    • Early on in the game, you can search a room with a Firefly symbol on the wall along with a map of Utah. Salt Lake City, Utah ends up being Joel's and Ellie's final destination in their search for the Fireflies and a potential cure.
    • The fact that the infection starts at the head alludes to the eventual reveal that to find a potential cure, Ellie's brain is required.
    • After Joel, Ellie and Tess have escaped the museum, Ellie and Joel share their first subtle moment talking about the view. When Ellie walks ahead, Joel briefly looks at his watch (hinting at him realizing already there that Ellie reminds him of Sarah).
    • After fighting off some of the Infected in the museum, if you look around for ammo, you can hear Tess yell out "Oh shit!" off-screen. A subtle foreshadowing that she's been bitten by the Infected during the fight.
    • Sam and Ellie talk about whether the Infected are still aware. Sam is talking about his own fate, but Ellie herself is technically infected.
    • After the Humvee battle, the infected suddenly ambush Ellie, Henry, and Sam. After saving them, Sam is seen hopping while running to safety. He's hopping because the infected has scratched his leg, thus dooming him to become one of them.
    • When you first encounter Marlene, she has a stomach wound, presumably from a gunshot. When you last encounter Marlene, after Joel rescues Ellie from surgery, he shoots Marlene in the stomach.
    • One conversation Joel and Bill have during a cutscene has Joel trying to tell Bill he's not looking after Ellie because he cares about her ("It's not like that"), to which Bill replies with "Bullshit. It is just like that." and "Keep babysitting long enough, eventually it'll blow up in your face." Turns out Bill knew well what he was talking about, seeing as Joel does end up caring for Ellie to the point he sees her as his surrogate daughter, ending with him putting his life at great risk for her and possibly dooming mankind from ever getting a vaccine in the process.
    • The background on Joel's phone from the opening sequence looks very similar to the forest where Ellie ends up hunting the deer in the Winter chapter.
    • A less-serious example: in the main game, Ellie steals a gay porn magazine from Bill but seems to only be amused by it and nothing else. The Left Behind DLC reveals that the one person we know she has kissed romantically is her 'friend' Riley, another girl.
    • The Left Behind DLC has Ellie run across a Brand X version of a Magic 8-Ball, in the form of a skull. The first thing she asks, if the player chooses, is "are we going to die today?" The skull says it's unlikely. The operative word being "we", since both of them get bit, but Ellie is immune.
    • If you finish the game before playing Left Behind, Ellie says that Riley suggested they just "be all poetic and lose their minds together" after getting bit. The DLC then reveals that the "poem" she's referring to is more of a play; Romeo and Juliet.
    • In Pittsburgh, you can overhear two hunters discussing how much trouble they had recently in killing an unusually resilient young tourist girl. One of the hunters wonders if they should've recruited her, but his partner shoots down the idea, saying she would've killed them at the first opportunity. This is more or less what happens to David (and his group) much later in the story when he attempts to take Ellie in even after she and Joel have killed many of his men.
    • After traveling for short while in the Spring chapter, you can actually find a poster with giraffes on it with the headline announcing the "new arrival to the zoo" before Joel and Ellie encounter the animals.
    • In "Winter", David turns over his rifle, but later reveals he has another gun. This is the first hint, despite his superficial thematic resemblance to Joel, that he's not really trustworthy at all.
    • In the abandoned subway line behind the Boston capitol building, you can find a note left behind by a smuggler who was waiting for someone named Frank to show up so he could be brought into the QZ. It's not until the next chapter that you find out who Frank was, why he wanted into Boston, and why he never made it.
    • Some possibly unintentional foreshadowing for The Last of Us Part II: In the final cutscene of the game, Ellie grabs two of her fingers as she tells Joel to wait so they can talk. She loses those same fingers to Abby in the final fight of Part II.
  • "Friends" Rent Control: Joel's house in the prologue is a bit too much for a single blue collar worker's salary. He and his former wife likely bought it together when they were still married, and Joel implies that he's on the verge of losing it.
  • Full-Frontal Assault: Bloaters are always naked, due to their bodies becoming too big for clothing.

    G 
  • Game-Breaking Bug: On release day, there was a problem with the auto-save not working correctly that erased hours worth of played time for people.
  • Gameplay Ally Immortality: Downplayed Trope. Allies are generally immune to gunfire, but not to grapple attacks of bandits and zombies. If they are attacked in melee, you generally have a short while to kill their aggressors - otherwise, it's back to the last checkpoint. The whole thing is pretty forgiving, though. Despite almost the whole game being an Escort Mission, one hardly ever gets the feeling that Joel's allies are more trouble than they are worth.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: When you play as Ellie during winter, you can go into her backpack and discover that she stole the photo of Joel and Sarah long before she gives it to him in the story.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • One of the big mechanics of the game is your limited ammo and the need to conserve it. However, there are some particular sequences where Joel will suddenly have unlimited ammo.
    • Outside Pittsburgh, you'll encounter a couple dogs tussling in the street, barking loudly enough that the characters comment on it. They can't be detected in listen mode.
  • Gang Up on the Human: During stealth portions, allies aren't flagged as being targets, preventing them from drawing Infected attention; only Joel can do that.
  • Gas Mask Mooks: Most of the military and the red-shirted Molotov cocktail throwing hunters. Justified since the Cordyceps spores can infect people through the air. Though, in true tradition of this trope, it doesn't affect their ability to talk.
  • Gasoline Lasts Forever: Bill gives Joel some siphoning equipment to get gasoline out of cars for his truck he just gave him. Since the game takes place 20 years after the end of civilization, the gasoline in those cars should be too old to be usable.
  • Genre-Busting: Is it stealth? Is it a shooter? Is it survival horror? Hell, multiplayer takes it even further, mixing the base sneak-fight-craft gameplay with team deathmatch and managing an off-screen community of survivors.
  • Genre Shift: Once Ellie and Joel reach Pittsburgh, other survivors become the primary antagonists, and the infected take a step back- it becomes less of a "zombie game" and more a fairly standard stealth-and-cover-based-shooter game with zombies thrown in for spice.
  • The Ghost:
    • The hunters in Pittsburgh keep talking about their boss, but Joel and Ellie never actually get to see or fight him/her.
    • Ish. You read several notes by him and his allies, and even see his handiwork, but the man himself is never encountered.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Despite the explicit gore and violence throughout, you don't see the result of Ellie finally overpowering David and desperately hacking his head to pieces with a machete.
    • Likewise, death animations from infected have the screen cut to black just when things get bloody.
  • Gotta Catch 'Em All: The game keeps track of any artifacts, Firefly pendants, comic books, training manuals, shiv doors and optional conversations you've found or triggered, plus the number of jokes Ellie told you. Each set of collectibles has its own milestones and trophy attached. Hitting said milestones earns you in-game cash that you can spend to unlock concept art, alternative outfits for Joel and Ellie, and even three ambient render modes that turn the game's visuals black-and-white or sepia.
  • Government Agency of Fiction: The Federal Disaster Response Agency, or FEDRA, which is responsible for governing the quarantine zones.
  • Government-Exploited Crisis: Demonstrated by FEDRA, which governs quarantine zones within large cities across the post-apocalyptic United States. After the collapse of most other centralized authority due to the Cordyceps fungus, FEDRA turned most of these quarantine zones into Police States, containing civilians against their will and executing any suspected infectees.
  • Graffiti of the Resistance: The symbol of the Fireflies and the phrase, "Look for the light" can be found graffitied around the game, even in the heavily military-controlled Boston.
  • Grey-and-Gray Morality: Almost everyone.
    • Joel is a brutal smuggler and gun runner, and so is Tess. Even after he defrosts, he's still extremely ruthless and makes bone-crunchingly efficient use of violence when necessary.
    • The military regime is brutal and bad at governing people, but they can't afford any risks considering that there are people smuggling pre-transformed infected into zones.
    • The Fireflies are Well Intentioned Extremists - they have valid reasons to fight against the military and are the only ones actively looking for a vaccine, but they are also quite ineffective at it and their attacks and uprisings only really make it worse for people inside the zones. They also won't waste a chance to create a cure, whatever means it takes, and don't like people standing in the way of that.
    • Multiplayer focuses on this in the intro. Do you become a Hunter, and raid and kill a large number of people to guarantee the survival of the even more in your group? Or do you join the Fireflies, risking the safety of your group to go out of your way and combat the Hunters, and to focus on getting supplies for a cause that you have no idea of knowing will succeed?
    • David is quite the monster, but the cannibals endure and have created a somewhat stable community. They have a close community, were rather displeased that Joel and Ellie killed some of them at the university, and seem to be a democracy (as they discuss holding a meeting and voting David out of his leadership position). They also evacuate the unarmed and children when word gets out that Ellie's escaped and infected, while hunting her down at the same time.
  • Grievous Bottley Harm: Empty bottles, like bricks, can be picked up and thrown to either distract enemies, or thrown directly at them to stagger them and set them up for a grapple or melee-kill. In a pinch, they make a good melee weapon, but unlike the brick they break after the first hit on a human enemy.
  • Groin Attack: The Firefly that Joel briefly interrogates is subjected to this, getting two shots in the groin before a headshot.
  • Guide Dang It!:
    • If you bump into a clicker it'll kill you immediately even if it was stunned at the time. The fact that the game never tells you that is a big problem, because stunning clickers so you can hit them with a running melee attack is a common tactic.
    • Collectibles can suffer from this. Most aren't too difficult to find if you take care to check every nook and cranny (which you'll probably be doing for the resources anyway), but some are very easy to overlook. Special mention must be made of the Firefly tags hanging from tree branches, which are spots the player has no sensible reason to pay attention to in normal gameplay. You also need to open Ellie's backpack during the Winter chapter to inspect (from both sides if available) all nine non-comic items she's carrying with her if you're shooting for the artifacts and pendant trophies.
    • Starting in Pittsburgh, there are five opportunities to witness Ellie whip out her joke book and crack some more or less hilarious puns. These events only trigger in very specific areas that aren't marked in any way, and most require you to wait in this specific area for several minutes without moving or doing anything else before they happen. Move too far ahead at any point and the chance is gone, forcing you to reload the segment to try again. At least one joke trigger also depends on another, unrelated optional conversation with Ellie that happened earlier. Good luck finding them all (and getting the related trophy) without a guide.
    • One section of the Suburbs chapter forces you dig out an entrenched sniper on the far end of a cul-de-sac. There are numerous ways to approach his position, but only one very specific route allows you to reach him without being shot by the sniper or spawning a small army of hunters. If you don't know this route by heart when you tackle the encounter on Survivor or Grounded difficulty, the sniper's One-Hit Kill shots will stop your game dead in its tracks.
  • Gun Accessories: You can upgrade your weapons at workbenches, though the hunting rifle is the only weapon that has any physical modification during its upgrade process (when you upgrade it to have the scope). Part I, however, actually lets you see in detail the modifications Joel applies to his weapons as in Part II. Unlike Part II, however, the remake retains the level system from the original, so modifying your weapons can range from actually disassembling them and/or attaching new parts to just simply wiping your weapons down with a rag.
  • Guy on Guy Is Hot: Ellie steals a gay porn magazine from Bill's collection. Of all the things to take, this is one of the things she had to have. However, she throws it out of the window after reading it.

    H 
  • Hand Cannon:
    • El Diablo, a scoped single-shot magnum revolver. Capable of downing a Bloater in two shots.
    • There's also Shorty, which is basically a Sawed-Off Shotgun with a pistol grip attached.
  • Hard Mode Perks: Some of the optional skins for Joel and Ellie only unlock once you've completed the game at least once on Hard or Survivor. None of them affect the gameplay in any way, so they also double as a Bragging Rights Reward.
  • Hearts Are Health: Mostly averted, but the supplemental upgrade screen shows health upgrades with a heart & a cross on it.
  • Hell Is That Noise: The sounds of the Clickers. To make things more terrifying, not only is the first time you encounter them in a dark, abandoned subway station, a little bit of Fridge Horror is added once you acknowledge the fact those things used to be people.
  • Heroic Antagonist: Marlene can be considered this, since she needs Ellie to develop a cure.
  • Heroic Sacrifice:
    • Kind of subverted in the prologue, but not in a bad way. After Joel and co. escape through a doorway with the infected in hot pursuit, Tommy presses himself against the door and tells Joel and Sarah to keep moving, reassuring them that he'll be able to outrun them. A little while later, it turns out he was right, and he shows up just in time for a Big Damn Heroes moment.
    • After revealing that she's infected, Tess holds off a group of soldiers to buy Joel and Ellie some time to escape.
  • Hero of Another Story:
    • Ish, the leader of the sewer community.
    • The "crazy chick" mentioned in a Hunter collectible in Philadelphia, who was apparently a real thorn in their side because it mentions they pulled everyone off hunting duty to find her.
  • Hey, You!:
    • It takes a while for Joel and Ellie to address each other by name, not doing so until after Tess is bitten and sacrifices herself. Joel also never addresses Sam by name, referring to him as "kid" or "son", (due to Sam getting infected and killed by Henry, he never got the chance to bond with Joel the way Ellie did). Sarah's death likely resulted in Joel being reluctant to get attached to children.
    • Bill never addresses Ellie by name, calling her "kid", "brat", "punk", etc. Ellie only directly addresses Bill by name once, but says his name quite often when discussing him to Joel.
  • Hide Your Children: A zig-zagged trope as the very beginning of the game sees the death of the protagonist's 12-year old daughter, while two other important child characters, Sam and Riley, end up becoming infected and dying (the latter off-screen). When it comes to gameplay however, Joel and Ellie will never encounter Child Soldiers or least of all, infected children.
  • Hoist by Their Own Petard: The annoying sniper that the protagonists stumble across in the Suburbs chapter gets stabbed to death with his own shiv after trying and failing to ambush Joel with it.
  • Hollywood Healing: Joel suffers a catastrophic injury at the university, and he very realistically isn't fully recovered after months of convalescence. But the trope is played straight when a single shot of antibiotics returns him to full fighting shape within a few hours.
  • Homemade Flamethrower: Joel can acquire a flamethrower made out of pipes, a bicycle brake lever as a trigger, some kind of soda can as the nozzle, and other miscellaneous parts. With the source of its fuel being a small red propane tank hooked to the bottom. Joel first finds the flamethrower in what appears to be a garage or loading dock, at the University of Eastern Colorado. Suggesting that it may have been made by a student or a survivor that used to reside there.
  • Humans Are Flawed: Different parts of humanity are taking different approaches to handling the outbreak, with varying degrees of success & monstrosity.
    • Humans Are the Real Monsters: Bill notes that he's more afraid of regular humans than Infected, since Infected are actually predictable. Most of the survivor groups Joel and Ellie come across do nothing to disprove this, being ready and willing to shoot first and ask questions later.
    • Humans Are Special: The biggest exception to this is Tommy's group. Not only do they actually not immediately shoot Joel & Ellie (they do demand an explanation at gunpoint first, but that's still asking questions before shooting), but they actually have crops & livestock, and are essentially giving people a chance to live life how it was before the outbreak. Similarly, Ish's sewer group. Although it didn't last, it's clear that they at least tried to make the best out of what they had.
  • Hurricane of Puns: Should you activate certain interactions with Ellie around Chapter 5, she will find a joke book and start firing off puns every now and then.
    Joel: That's awful.
    Ellie: You're awful.
    Joel: Do you even understand [the joke]?
    Ellie: Nope. Doesn't matter.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: A trope that originally fell away in favor of the more realistic two weapon limit here is reconstructed with Joel's backpack providing a level of risk, as he actually has to sit and open it to pull out a weapon, while the arsenal is only just past large enough to fit inside.

    I 
  • Idiot Ball:
    • In the intro, Tommy, Joel and Sarah eventually encounter people desperately running from something. Tommy, encouraged by Joel, decides to drive towards the direction they're running from. Things go downhill pretty fast from there.
    • The PS5 remake gives Joel a minor case of this in Sam and Henry's final scene. In the original, Joel was visibly disarmed after Henry shoots at him, forcing him to crawl for his dropped gun. In the remake, Joel has another gun still in his holster, but he doesn't think to use that one instead of trying to retrieve his fallen weapon.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: David, James, and the group of cannibals in the Rockies.
  • The Immune: Ellie, who was infected three weeks before the start of the main plot and holds the key to a potential vaccine.
  • Immunity Disability: Ellie's immunity to the fungus means that she won't become a zombie, but the Fireflies' plan to use her to develop a vaccine would have resulted in her death.
  • Improvised Lockpick: Joel uses shivs to unlock doors to supply rooms.
  • Improbable Infant Survival: If Joel gets caught by a Bloater you witness a rather awful death animation of the Bloater starting to rip his jaw open. If you get caught by one while playing as Ellie however, its terrible death grip is switched to merely smacking her to the ground.
  • Improvised Weapon: Since you are scrounging all your supplies, you have to make use of whatever you can get your hands on. Various items can be utilized as weapons, including baseball bats, bricks and wooden planks.
  • Incompatible Orientation: Sam, who is straight, falls for Ellie, who is a lesbian.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: The Flamethrower, as an excellent aversion to Videogame Flamethrowers Suck. The flamethrower is a 1 hit-kill to human enemies, as minor exposure to the flame will incinerate them, rendering them unable to attack. It is also highly effective against Infected and can easily kill a bloater in a matter of seconds.
  • Injured Player Character Stage: The second half of the Science Center at the University of Eastern Colorado is heavily restricted due to Joel getting impaled. Although there are only a handful of enemies to deal with, the player is reduced to stumbling around and shooting their pistol. No switching guns, no crafting, no using items, nothing. The HUD is removed as well, and the screen will fade in and out of darkness representing Joel being on the verge of passing out from blood loss.
  • Insistent Terminology: They are Infected, not zombies. Justified, since they aren't dead like conventional zombies.
  • "Instant Death" Radius: Clickers and bloaters will kill Joel instantly if they come within arm's reach of him. An expensive skill can be learned that allows him to fend off clickers with a shiv (provided he has one available), but getting too close to a bloater means certain death, no questions asked. Since Ellie doesn't have Joel's raw physical strength, she's as helpless against clickers as she is against bloaters, unless she gets the jump on the former.
  • Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Justified in that you're not unlocking the doors but breaking the locks with shivs (hence interchangeable), and since the latter amount to a few bits of scrap taped together, they are very fragile (hence antimatter).
  • Interface Screw:
    • When Joel gets impaled, the screen will fade in and out of black and bounce a little, reducing players' visibility. Although at that point, you're not doing much more than walking.
    • When enemies are highlighted, it's in a white outline. That doesn't do much good during a whiteout in a blizzard.
  • Interface Spoiler: Zigzagged. The menu at crafting benches shows the player how many weapons there are in the game, hiding those not yet discovered with a "locked" screen. Subverted in that the last weapon in the game, the Assault Rifle, is only available after passing the last crafting bench and thus isn't listed.
  • Intergenerational Friendship: Joel is a grizzled survivor in his 50s, and Ellie is 14. This also applies to Joel and Henry, who's 25.
  • Intro-Only Point of View: Sarah, Joel's daughter.
  • Irony:
    • As mentioned on the Fridge page, just like Joel eventually becomes a father figure to Ellie, Marlene would equally count as her mother figure, having known her since she was born and watched over her per her real mother's request (notice Ellie's reluctance when Marlene tells her to go with Joel is similar to her reluctance later when Joel tells her to stay with Tommy's wife), and thus both of Ellie's parental figures "argue" over her fate at the end, with both of them taking her choice away through their actions.
    • Tess at one point asks Ellie how she got bitten. Merely a few minutes afterwards she gets bitten herself.
    • After trekking through the sewers and attracting what must have been every infected within the abandoned city, Sam finds a message on the outside wall warning people of the infected within the abandoned city.
      Ellie: Thanks for the warning on the other side, guys.
  • I Surrender, Suckers: Enemies sometimes try to pull this in gameplay. It just makes it easier to line up the killing shot. Also, Joel tricks the Fireflies into thinking he's given up on saving Ellie so they let their guard down at the end.
  • Item Crafting: Joel can improve his melee and ranged weapons, consumables (health kits) and Molotov cocktails using equipment gathered on his journey to use at a moment's notice. Certain upgrades can only be done at crafting tables, however.
  • It's the Only Way to Be Sure: The military bombed areas outside the quarantine zones to push the Cordyceps back. It worked... for a while. There's also the end of the prologue, when the military orders that anyone attempting to get past the military quarantine be shot regardless of status, because at the moment they know nothing about the virus. This results in Joel's daughter Sarah being killed.

    J 
  • Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Joel has a way of making people talk, when he's of a mind to. Especially if you're part of the group of mooks that almost killed him and happen to have Ellie as a captive. It doesn't end well even if you are telling the truth.
    Mook 1: I ain't lyin'. I ain't lyin'!
    [Joel breaks his neck]
    Mook 2: Fuck you, man. He told you what you wanted. I ain't tellin' you shit.
    Joel: That's all right. I believe him.
  • Jerkass: Robert pays his men in blank checks, tries to get Tess killed, refuses to be held accountable for ripping off her and Joel and has his men try to kill them when they force their way in as well as trying to kill them himself. He is promptly tortured and executed by Tess without fanfare.
  • Just Before the End: The prologue depicts this with regard to the Zombie Apocalypse. More subtly, it's also suggested that during the main story, the last dregs of humanity are being slowly destroyed, as more and more people are being infected, there's less and less food to go around, civil unrest is rife in the quarantine zones, and the rebels or separatists who succeed, such as Pittsburgh's, turn into ruthless gangs that kill and rob people or, like David's group, turn to cannibalism. If something doesn't happen soon, all of humanity is doomed.

Top