Characters / The Last of Us: Joel

Main Character Index | Joel | Ellie | The Fireflies | Residents of Jackson, Wyoming | Washington Liberation Front (WLF) a.k.a. the Wolves

Joel Miller

I've been on both sides.

^{Click here to see Joel as he appears in the The Last of Us: Part II.}

Voiced by: Troy Baker (English)^note Other languages: Kōichi Yamadera (Japanese), Adrián Wowczuk (Latin American Spanish), Lorenzo Beteta (European Spanish), Vsevolod Kuznetsov (Russian), Krzysztof Banaszyk (Polish)

Year of birth: 1981
Year of death: 2038

"I've struggled a long time with survivin', but no matter what, you keep finding something to fight for."

Joel is the main protagonist in The Last of Us. A man in his early 50s, hardened by the atrocities and devastation left by the fungal infection, Joel works as a black market dealer within the quarantine zone, selling drugs and weapons of all sorts. He's given the job to smuggle Ellie out of Boston to the Fireflies.

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A-J

• Absurdly Youthful Father: Joel eventually explains to Ellie that he was very young when he had Sarah. He even implies it was before he could go to college, so Teen Pregnancy was most likely involved.
• Action Dad: Was the father to a young girl named Sarah, who passed away 20 years ago when the apocalypse started, and by the end of the game becomes a surrogate father figure to Ellie.
• Action Survivor: Only in the prologue when he's still just an average single father celebrating his birthday with his daughter until the outbreak begins and he has to evade all opposition from the early infected.
• Actually Pretty Funny: He finds most of Ellie's jokes pretty groan-worthy, but there is one ("I used to be addicted to soap, but I'm clean now") he does laugh at.
• Alas, Poor Villain: His fate in Part 2 in a nutshell. Joel was on the verge of mending his father-daughter bond with Ellie, only for his time to be cut short by Abby and the WLF, on account of a brutal beating with a golf club. Many of Jackson knew Joel used to be ruthless, but everyone was sad when he was brutally murdered.
• Always Save the Girl: The ending has Joel save Ellie at the cost of a potential vaccine being made, dooming many. It's also deconstructed as this act causes Ellie to grow resentful of Joel and no longer trust him.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: Seeing as how he was only 32 when the outbreak happened, you’d expect at least one of his parents to be around but they’re not. Neither he nor Tommy ever bring them up or explain what happened to them. It’s also implied that he was the one who pretty much raised Tommy. Also the case with Sarah's mother.
• Ambiguously Evil: Much of Joel's past prior to meeting Ellie is shrouded in mystery, but it's implied that he may have harmed or even killed innocent people, and not in self-defense. When Ellie questions him about this, he neither confirms nor denies it, and only replies with a simple "Hmm."
• An Arm and a Leg: Downplayed as his right leg didn't get blown off from the shotgun blast by Abby in Part II, but the kneecap was destroyed, thus losing his ability to walk.
• Animal Motifs: Moths, in The Last of Us Part II. Moths are nocturnal insects but they seek light no matter how dark it is.
• Anti-Hero: Of the nominal kind. Most, if not all, of his motivations are pretty selfish, he's not very friendly and is very much able to shoot the dog if you piss him off enough. He also kills and injures with zero hesitation.
• Anti-Villain: By the end of the game, Joel's motivations conflict with the only potential cure for humanity. Sadly, he's well-intentioned, but also quite possibly doomed the last hope of the human race (however faint it may be).
• At Least I Admit It: Joel makes no effort to pretend what he does is anything beyond survival and acknowledges the Moral Myopia.
• Badass and Child Duo: He eventually forms one with Ellie. Not only does he save her life multiple times, the reverse also holds true. She nurses him back to health when he's impaled, for one.
• Badass in Distress:
  • He's incapacitated for most of the Winter stage, in which Ellie has to care for him as he recovers his strength.
  • He has a brief case of this in Pittsburgh as well where a hunter ambushes and nearly succeeds in drowning him until Ellie arrives to shoot him.
• Baritone of Strength: Troy Baker's take on Joel is a very low voice with a distinct Texan drawl, highlighting his status as an experienced and unscrupulous survivor.
• Beard of Sorrow:
  • After the bad times keep getting worse, Joel just stops shaving. By game's end, he's sporting a full beard because he's stopped caring how he looks.
  • His hair is noticeably longer in Part II. Flashbacks show that Joel's hair remained the same length that it was in the first game up until Ellie found out the truth about the Fireflies and cut ties with him. Joel's longer hair likely represents how miserable he was during the two years spent without Ellie.
• Behind the Black: The trope image for His Story Repeats Itself has one particular difference between the two scenarios: while he was carrying Ellie in his arms, his left hand had a gun pointed at Marlene the whole time.
• Berserk Button:
  • Mentioning his dead daughter is not a good idea.
  • By extension, harming Ellie in any capacity is a surefire way to feel the wrath of Joel.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Once you get to know Joel, he's a pretty well-adjusted adult. Even though he and Henry got off to a rocky start, they bonded over their fondness of Harleys. And it's endearing to see how he treats Ellie in the latter part of the game. It's rather jarring when you remember that he has a name in the criminal underworld. And even more so when he shows proficiency in interrogation. He makes sure to take two guys alive, so they can confirm each others' info, knows how to cause some serious non-lethal pain, and ruthlessly kills them both once he gets what he needs. He does an on-the-spot interrogation to a Firefly soldier at the end as well. He's quick to set these all up too, and it cements that he's likely done so many times in the past.
• Big Bad Slippage: His entire role in the first game is this in spades.
• Big Brother Instinct: Implied that he was the only reason Tommy survived. Tommy resented him for it, since he's done horrible things to do so.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: The outbreak began a few hours after his birthday.
• Book Dumb: He tells Ellie that he did visit universities - just never as a student. Being a young single dad doesn’t leave him much time for school.
• Book Ends: Joel's story in the first game began with him watching helplessly as his daughter died. His story ends with him dying while his surrogate daughter helplessly watches.
• Brains and Brawn: While not stupid, it's implied he's the muscle to Tess as far as their criminal activities go. While Tess is a good fighter she seems to handle most of the planning while Joel handles most of the heavy lifting.
• Break Her Heart to Save Her: In a sense. After all is said and done, he lies to Ellie, claiming the Fireflies had more immune but had given up the search for a cure, leaving Ellie dejected and lost after all the sacrifice and death she had seen on the journey. If she had known the truth, she may have pulled a Heroic Sacrifice and let herself be killed to find a cure, and Joel would rather lie than lose his 'baby girl' all over again. Played even more straight after Word of God stated that while Ellie loved Joel, she also hated him for taking away her choice. This gets directly addressed in the sequel, where Ellie becomes devastated upon learning the truth.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: In Part 2, Abby cripples him and demands to know if he remembers her, only for Joel to say "No" and tell her to get on with his execution. At this point, Joel has killed so many people he can't remember their names. Justified in that Abby gave him no indications as to why she wanted to kill him, and just assumed that he would know it was out of revenge for killing her dad.
• Catchphrase:
  • "We should move on," and variations on such, especially after something bad has happened. It reflects Joel's tendency to put all his bad experiences behind him and try to bottle them up.
  • He also has a tendency to mutter "That was too damn close" after escaping a sticky situation, reflecting his belief that his continued survival is due more to luck than anything.
• Character Death: Joel returns in the sequel where he ends up brutally bludgeoned to death by Abby after being helped by her. He's noticeably a softer person compared to the predecessor, making him a rather easy target for Abby and her crew.
• Character Development: Goes from being cold, resigned and utterly apathetic to being more sensitive and open. It's worth noting that towards the end of the game, Joel is the one who instigates the optional conversation bits, not Ellie. He also seems more capable of handling his trauma over the loss of Sarah by the end of the game. Once she dies, she's never brought up again until about 2/3 of the way through the story when you get to Tommy's town. Once they're in the university, he talks to Ellie about her and as they're headed into the hospital in Salt Lake City, he accepts the picture of her from Ellie. He had previously rejected it when Tommy tried to give it to him.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: He makes it clear to Ellie that she is not to bring up his personal life or past, particularly his lost loved ones. He slowly opens up to her as time goes on, however.
• Combat Pragmatist: Attacking people from behind, shooting them in the crotch... the list goes on.
• Conscience Makes You Go Back/Changed My Mind, Kid: When he decides to continue with Ellie, instead of leaving the task to Tommy.
• Cooldown Hug: After a totally broken Ellie kills David in the most gruesome way ever, she breaks down in tears in Joel's arms.
• Cool Old Guy:
  • Joel definitely qualifies. He may be graying in the hair and getting a little past his prime, but he certainly knows how to smash in teeth and take on hordes of infected.
  • In Part II, after living in Jackson for 4 years, the residents hold him in high esteem. He's the brother of one of the town's founders, a grizzled vet who kills infected real good, plays guitar, and looks after his surrogate daughter, Ellie. When Joel dies, the citizens of Jackson decorate his memorial with dozens of flowers. Jesse himself tells Ellie that he looked up to Joel.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Dies a slow and painful death at the hands of Abby, via having his head repeatedly beaten by a golf club wielded by the latter and ends up getting his skull caved in.
  Abby: You stupid old man. You don't get to rush this.
• Cynicism Catalyst: Sarah's death. To a lesser extent, his falling out with Tommy.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Not only did he lose his daughter on the first night of the outbreak, but it's highly implied that Joel was neck-deep in some dirty, tragic business during the 20-year Timeskip. His response to one of Ellie's inquiries suggests that he was once a Hunter or at least did some of the same things they do in order to survive.
• Decoy Protagonist: The trailers make him look like the Deuteragonist of the second game and he’s the first playable character but he’s killed very early on by Abby.
• Defiant to the End: When Abby has him dead to rights and is ready to kill him, he just tells her to get it over with.
• Defrosting Ice King: Warms up considerably to Ellie throughout the game. Also to Henry, though that was unfortunately cut short.
• Determinator: Holy crap, this guy just doesn't quit. Even when he gets shot at, impaled through the stomach, and faced with all kinds of horrors on a daily basis, Joel is not one to lie down and die.
• Disney Death: One of the more convincing examples of this trope at the end of the Fall chapter, complete with a long time playing as Ellie where it isn't immediately clear if Joel is still alive. That is until she asks David and James for medicine.
• Distressed Dude: For the end of Fall and the first half of Winter, he's entirely dependent on Ellie after getting impaled, and it's hardly a question that he would have died without her.
• The Dreaded: If ambient conversations are anything to go by, Joel has this reputation back in Boston. The Cannibals in the Winter chapter also really don't want to fight him, to the point of running away from Joel.
• Establishing Character Moment: He has moments for each stage of the outbreak:
  • Before the outbreak, he is first shown worriedly talking about a job to keep him and Sarah from poverty, and we're also shown some heartwarming fatherly moments between him and Sarah.
  • After the outbreak begins, he and Tommy get a couple of concurrently contrasting moments that show both Tommy's general good-hearted nature and the darker side of Joel's familial protectiveness:
    • After coming across the family on the road, Tommy strongly insists they stop and pick them up while Joel strongly rebukes him.
      Tommy: They got a kid, Joel!
      Joel: So do we!
    • When they find themselves obstructed by a crowd of fleeing civilians, Tommy is clearly much more concerned about potentially running someone over than Joel is, who barks at him to hurry up and drive.
  • Post-outbreak, he ignores a military execution on the street, shrugs off a bombing that kills several people near him, and barely reacts to an injury from the bombing, seeming more annoyed than hurt, showing his adaptation and apathy to the atrocities around him since the start of the outbreak. At the same time, he shows that he's still retained a fair deal of his humanity by sharing banter with Tess and having the option of engaging in casual conversation with several bystanders.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • Hardened though Joel is, he's still openly horrified by some of what he witnesses in the game, most notably the fate of Ish's group and the cannibalism of David's community. It really says something about how nightmarish the setting is when it can still shock him after 20 years.
  • He’s also rather uncomfortable with children being harmed, noting a grave being too small. He’s also hesitant in hurting Henry knowing he has a much younger brother, and it’s implied Sam is one of the only reasons Joel didn’t kill Henry on either occasion.
• Experienced Protagonist: By the time the main game begins, Joel already has a name in the criminal underworld and shows expertise at recognizing ambushes and torturing for information. Even in the prologue he doesn't panic at the outbreak and knows exactly what to do.
• Extreme Mêlée Revenge:
  • In the first game, Joel is forced into several Quick Time Events in the story where his only response to completing them is a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to whatever caused it.
  • In the second game, he's on the receiving end of this instead, as Abby smashes in Joel's face with a golf club.
• Face Death with Dignity: When Abby's intentions are clear, he calmly asks her to say whatever she needs to say to him, and get on with it.
• Fatal Flaw: Selfishness. Sometimes it's used for good in terms of protecting himself and his own, but it's more often shown negatively in regards to put his and their needs above all else.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Joel goes from an average working-class single father pre-outbreak to a typical smuggler whose reputation for brutality is well-known post-outbreak, to a one-man army who is ready, willing, and able to plow through hordes of enemies, human or infected, to keep Ellie safe. Taken to extremes in the Winter chapter when he has just woken up from a serious case of Impaled with Extreme Prejudice and so terrifies David's men that they run away in terror from a single, injured, and relatively ill-equipped man.
• Genre Blind: Despite having been otherwise savvy in the original game and rightfully wary of the many strangers he came across, in Part 2, a logbook reveals that Jackson's inhabitants often helped strangers on patrol, including Joel and Tommy, that left Joel more trusting and accommodating over the years. He finally puts his trust in the wrong people when he saves Abby from infected who takes him and Tommy to the WLF, a group of people who traveled all the way from Seattle to kill him, which they succeed in.
• Gone Horribly Right: For the Fireflies. Ellie's attempts to have Joel accept and connect with her as a surrogate daughter eventually ends up putting Ellie - and by extension, Ellie's immunity - out of the hands of the Fireflies for good.
• Good is Not Nice: Joel may be the hero of the story, but his main goal is to survive, and that sometimes means doing less-than-moral things, including killing someone at a moment's notice. Even at the very beginning of the outbreak, his pressuring Tommy to leave a family on the side of the road shows that he focuses on himself and his family first. Some dialogue with Ellie implies that he may have been a Hunter at one point. Case in point, he kills many innocent doctors in the climax of the original game on his mission to save Ellie.
  Tess: We're shitty people, Joel.
  Joel: No, we are survivors.
• Handguns: He can carry four different sidearms, including a simple 9mm Colt Defender and a .357 revolver.
• Hand Cannon: He can wield two different Hand Cannons. One is the Serbu Super Shorty, a tiny shotgun. The other is "El Diablo", a scoped Taurus Model 66 with one round capacity (that can be upgraded to 3 rounds).
• Hates Being Alone: While he never says so outright, it can be inferred that this is as much the case for Joel as it is for Ellie. He's almost never seen without a companion of some sort (whether it's Tommy, Tess, or Ellie), and on the rare occasions when he is alone, the game makes sure the player feels his isolation, with the goal always being to reunite with whomever he was separated from.
• Heartbroken Badass: First his daughter, then Tess... No wonder he'll do anything to not lose Ellie, too.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Joel was starting to make amends with Ellie for preventing her sacrifice to be a cure for humanity, but he is killed by Abby the day after, denying him the opportunity to officially earn Ellie's forgiveness.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • He undergoes a major one in the prologue when his daughter is killed by a soldier ordered to take out any stragglers.
  • He later gets a minor one after leaving Tess behind to the point where he refuses to talk about her.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Part II shows that he's not only good at playing the guitar but also at building them. This being a highly specialized profession that requires advanced craftsmanship and years of training, it makes you wonder where he picked it up since his uncertain job situation before the outbreak is unlikely to have given him the resources and spare time to pursue it as a hobby.
  • Exploring his house in Part II reveals that Joel is an accomplished woodcarver. His upper floor contains a workshop filled with tools, reference books, materials, and several completed sculptures. His most recent project at the time of his death was of a cowboy bronc riding, suggesting he had some interest in rodeo as well.
• His Story Repeats Itself: Provides the trope image. Both at the night of the outbreak and 20 years later, he has to carry his "baby girl" to safety through a hostile environment with no means of defending himself.
• Hollywood Healing: With Ellie's help, he recovers from being impaled on rebar through his torso. Such an injury would actually have killed him within a few minutes in real life.
• 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.
• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • Survival justifies the means. He makes sure to remind Tommy of that once they reunite.
    Tess: We're shitty people, Joel. It's been that way for a long time.
    Joel: No, we are survivors!
  • By the end of Part I, Joel evolves to believe that unconditional love also justifies the means.
    Joel: If somehow the Lord gave me a second chance at that moment...I would do it all over again.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Falls from a walkway and onto a piece of rebar. Then struggles while bleeding out from the impalement and holding off an ambush at the same time, all the while the player controls everything. He's out of commission for most of the Winter stage as a result.
• Implacable Man: A bit of an understatement. Probably best illustrated when he fights his way through a hospital full of assault rifle-wielding Fireflies to save Ellie.
• Informed Judaism: Is shown wearing a menorah sweater while everyone else is in Christmas getups in an official (if, obviously, non-canonical) piece of art.
• I Regret Nothing: Joel knows that no matter how tough his choices are, he has to do it for the sake of his loved ones, even if it's selfish. While clearly saddened by this, Joel proudly states that he would do it all over again.
• It's All About Me:
  • Joel is a survivor. He will absolutely not hesitate to destroy a potential threat to him and his, even over the objections of his loved ones as he defends them. And that eventually includes Ellie. Which explains what he does in the finale.
  • During an argument, he also tells Ellie she has no idea about loss, even though she has obviously lost her parents and it's very likely that they're dead. Zig-zagged in that, later on, he expresses some sympathy that her friend turned right in front of her.
• It Gets Easier: Zig-zagged; while Joel has clearly been hardened by 20 years in the apocalypse, and is quite willing to act ruthlessly to protect his own interests (the ending being one example of many), he's still horrified by some of what he witnesses in the game nonetheless, and some conversations with Ellie imply that he's more affected by killing than he lets on.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Pulls it off thrice. First time with Robert, whose arm he breaks. Once in the Winter levels with two Cannibals, where he kneecaps one and beats the other to death with a pipe. He pulls it again on a member of the Fireflies shooting him in the groin.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Joel is not a saint by any means, but he's capable of love and empathy for the people around him. He strikes up a fast friendship with Henry and Sam, has a strong bond with Tess, and eventually starts forming a pseudo-parental relationship with Ellie. Notably, it's this love that he uses to justify the terrible things he ends up doing throughout the story, so one could say that instead of Joel hiding his caring nature under a pragmatic and brutal exterior, he actually uses his caring nature to justify why he's doing the things he does.

K-Z

• Karmic Death: Five years after he slaughtered a number of Fireflies and gunned down their surgeon, Joel is hunted down and killed by the surgeon's daughter, ex-Firefly Abby.
• Kick the Dog: He has one moment where he coldly denies being Ellie's father. The look on her face screams that she seriously did start to view him as a fatherly figure, especially since her biological father is most likely dead.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: He apparently was one to Tommy in the intervening years between the game's prologue and the main events of the plot. As is often the case, when they reunite years later, Tommy's still not too happy about it.
• Knight Templar Parent:
  • Is clearly one in the main storyline (you don't get much more "knight templar" than potentially dooming humanity to save your surrogate daughter), but he even shows some telltale signs in the prologue, such as refusing to help some stranded motorists (even when they have children of their own) in order to avoid putting Sarah at risk.
  • In the E3 2018 trailer for Part II Jesse tells Ellie "your old man really laid into me", noting that he gets really involved when it's Ellie's turn to patrol the town.
• Like a Daughter to Me: How he eventually feels about Ellie, calling her "baby girl" the way he did with Sarah.
• Like an Old Married Couple: His constant bickering with Tess in the first two chapters. Word of God even states she's the one person Joel trusts in the world. Things take a bit of a tragic turn quite early on. They may actually be in some kind of relationship, as Bill refers to their "trouble in paradise".
• Locked Out of the Loop: Played for Laughs in Part II when it's revealed that Joel is literally the only one in the whole of Jackson who doesn't seem to know that his surrogate daughter Ellie is gay, which results in him shipping her with Jesse, much to her exasperation. With Joel normally being an extremely observant dude, it can make one wonder how he managed to overlook something both so obvious and important to her.
• Love Makes You Evil: Ultimately, it's his love for Ellie and fear of losing another "daughter" is what make him decide to save her and take away humanity's possibly last hope.
• Made of Iron: Over the course of the story, he gets shot by a heavily armed soldier, hit by shrapnel from a bombing, falls onto the top of an elevator from about ten feet up (followed by another long fall into a flooded elevator shaft), gets hit by a semi-truck while in a flimsy pickup truck, jumps from a bridge and nearly drowns afterward, thrown at a high speed from a horse, falls several feet onto a piece of rebar, nearly bleeds to death from the impalement, survives several weeks of a debilitating fever and a severe infection, goes out into a severe blizzard while dealing with the after-effects of the infection, falls through a bus as it crashes from a large height, and shrugs off an assault rifle butt to the back of the head... And this is only the mandatory injuries, not even any of the injuries he can take in combat! During his death scene in the sequel, Joel's kneecap is blown apart with a shotgun, but he's tough enough to remain defiant before Abby starts beating him to death with a golf club.
• Misanthrope Supreme: A possible reason why Joel chose to save Ellie rather than let the Fireflies kill her to extract the cure that might have saved the rest of humanity. Having suffered at the hands of humanity itself during their journey to find a cure, particularly David, causes Joel to decide that what is left of humanity might not be worth saving after all, especially at the cost of Ellie's life. Not to mention Sarah was killed by a person, not an Infected.
• Moral Myopia: For better or worse, Joel is motivated by protecting his family and friends and is more than willing to sacrifice anyone who gets in the way of that goal. This starts to emerge from the very beginning of the outbreak when he tells Tommy to keep driving and leave another family with a child to fend for themselves, gets more obvious from the things he's willing to do to others to keep Tommy and himself alive in the years after, and ultimately is the driving point of the entire end game. He won't abandon his surrogate daughter Ellie for anything, even if it may possibly mean the extinction of humanity in the long run.
• Morality Chain Beyond the Grave: When about to kill Abby in their final fight in Part II, Ellie only restrains herself from doing so after thinking of the happier times she had with Joel when he was alive.
• Must Have Caffeine: In Part II, Ellie states that Joel would (and actually did) trade half of his stuff for a bag of coffee beans.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Even though he's ultimately resolute about it, even he seems momentarily shocked by his decision to shoot Marlene knowing that Marlene was right about what Ellie wanted.
• My Greatest Failure: His young daughter's death; shot by a soldier just as they made it out of their infected neighborhood, she died in his arms as he tearfully begged her not to leave him.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Because he failed to save his first daughter Sarah from being shot in the prologue, he wastes no time making sure Ellie survives unscathed from being harmed — twice. Even if it may doom humanity of a potential cure.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Killing the doctors at the end of the first game turned to out to be a major mistake as naturally they have living relatives, one of which would later track him down and kill him for it, setting up the events of Part II.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In Part II, Joel decides to rescue a stranger who had an Infected on top of her ends up with her realizing he's the one who killed her father in the first game and leading him to her group where she shoots through his leg and then slowly beats him to death with a golf club.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: His primary form of melee combat is a string of punches and kicks that may follow into absolutely brutal finishers, such as: bashing the opponent's head in the wall, kneeing him in the face or stomping him in the head. It's also how he meets his end in Part II when Abby beats him to death with a golf club.
• Nominal Hero:
  • 20 years of hardcore survival in a world long gone to Hell and the death of his young daughter Sarah have left him an extremely bitter and almost nihilistic middle-aged man who will cross any moral line to survive in a harsh world. However, he is given the task to escort Ellie, a young girl who may be the key to curing the plague, to a holdout on the other side of America. He's not at all doing it because he cares about the ongoing factional conflict, or because he cares about Ellie's well-being ^note (initially) or because his doing so could end up saving mankind from extinction; he's doing it to get his guns back.
  • His priorities do change eventually, but still remains as this. Ellie is ALL he cares about to the point that he slaughters the Fireflies when he learns they plan to dissect Ellie to learn how she's immune to the cordyceps. Marlene tells Joel that Ellie would want to give her life if it could save humanity, and that Joel even realizes that its what Ellie would want. Joel still shoots Marlene and then tells Ellie that the Fireflies gave up trying to cure the fungus, which Ellie seems to realize is a lie.
• Noodle Incident: Several, thanks to his preference not to elaborate on his past. Exactly how young did he have his daughter? What happened to Sarah’s mom? What did he do for Bill that was apparently enough to call in such a deadly favor? What did he mean when he said he's "been on both sides" when talking about the Hunters?
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Joel makes it clear that he doesn't give a shit about the Fireflies or their cause. He's just doing a job and expects to be paid for it.
• Not So Stoic: He blows his lid at least a few times - but he doesn't lose control when it happens. Apart from that one time when Ellie mentions his daughter. And when Marlene reveals Ellie is going to be killed - even then, his anger manifests more as Tranquil Fury.
• Offscreen Villainy: He's claimed to have "been on both sides," which is implied to have involved robbing and even killing innocent people.
• Old Soldier: He is the "only got to be so old because he's very good at surviving" type. At the start of the game he is roughly 32 (he was born September 26, 1981 according to his I.D. in the PS5 remake). After the timeskip, he's 51 in the Summer chapter and turned 52 during the Fall chapter. which would make him about 56 during the sequel, and he isn't slowing down.
• One-Man Army: By the end of the story, he will have killed a lot of people. In Winter, the Cannibals (who outnumber him) actually run away when he starts shooting.
• Open-Minded Parent: Open-Minded Parental Substitute to be exact. He defends Ellie after the homophobe Seth calls her a slur for kissing Dina and later encourages Ellie to go for it.
  Joel: I have no idea what that girl's intentions are, but I do know that she would be lucky to have you.
• Outliving One's Offspring: His biological daughter, Sarah, is gunned down at the start of the infection. This leads to him being fiercely protective of his surrogate daughter, Ellie.
• Parental Substitute: Eventually takes on Ellie as his adopted daughter. In Part II, everyone at Tommy's town thinks that Joel IS her dad. Though by then the trust between the two has been broken by Joel's lie at the end of the first game.
• Papa Wolf: His protection of Ellie causes him to bond with her, and they grow extremely close over the course of the journey. When Ellie is taken by the Fireflies, and Joel learns she'll die, he goes ballistic, and kills dozens of Fireflies.
• Parents as People: Joel's choice to kill the Fireflies who wanted to harvest Ellie's immunity is one that many parents can respect, even if they don't condone it. Ellie herself is horrified to learn the truth and swears off their relationship. Joel respects Ellie's wishes and keeps his distance, but he continues to worry about her, covertly overseeing her patrol schedule and overtly defending her from a bigoted townsperson. It's that last event, seeing Joel once again defend her, that prompts Ellie to attempt reconciling with him.
• Perpetual Frowner: Barring the photograph of him and Sarah, Joel never cracks a single smile. He does smile more frequently during the flashback sequences in Part II.
• Pet the Dog: Joel might have had a rocky start with Henry, and even with Ellie at first. But he’s noticeably kinder and more reassuring to Sam, Henry’s younger brother, even from the beginning.
• Posthumous Character: He's killed by Abby early on in Part II, with the majority of his scenes taking place during flashbacks.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: After Sarah gets fatally shot by the soldier in the prologue, Joel tearfully tells her "Stay with me!" She dies in his arms moments later.
• Pipe Pain: He can use steel pipes as melee weapons to fight and beats one of David's men to death with one after torturing another for information.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Joel gets murdered by Abby and the WLF in the first two hours of Part II and this kickstarts Ellie's character arc in the game.
• Pragmatic Hero: He'll do whatever it takes to survive, even if he has to fight other humans.
• Present Absence: After his death near the start of the game, Joel's influence is heavily felt throughout Part II; Ellie is haunted by both Joel's death and the reconciliation they will now never have and both she and Tommy seek to avenge him, slowly destroying themselves in the process, while Abby, Joel's killer, is weighed down by the absence of closure and is strongly implied to have suppressed guilt over what she did to him, which motivates her attempts at atonement. It's the memory of Joel that both begins and ends Ellie's final fight with Abby, with his bloody death pushing her to pick a fight that neither combatant is in good shape for, and the memory of their last, hopeful conversation that convinces Ellie to let go of her anger and spare Abby's life. Joel is only in the game for a few scenes, but he's the reason that everything is happening.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: He can use a snub-nosed Taurus six-shot revolver, which is the second sidearm he collects in the game. Inspecting it in Part II reveals that it’s a Gator Int’l Mfg Model 924, serial number JF11863, made in MI.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: At the end of Part I, he slaughters his way through the Fireflies in order to rescue Ellie from having fatal brain surgery performed on her.
• Sacrificial Lion: No better way to show just how revenge-fueled and bitter Abby is than having her murder the previous game's protagonist in cold blood.
• Sadistic Choice: He's faced with one after he finally gets Ellie to the Fireflies. The only way for them to make a vaccine is to perform a brain surgery that will undoubtedly kill her. So, Joel has two options: possibly save the future of all humanity at the cost of his surrogate daughter's life, or save her, and possibly ruin the only chance of ever getting a vaccine/cure for the infection. Ultimately he chooses to save Ellie, and in their flashback dialogue at the end of Part II, he says point-blank he would do it again even with the same consequences.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Tries multiple times to stop his involvement with the mission, but nobody ever listens to him. Joel knows that little girls won't stay alive too long outside the quarantine zone and probably fears seeing another girl killed in front of him, but Tess and Ellie make sure he finishes the job by himself. Or so they thought.
• Shadow Archetype: A rare example of the protagonist, Joel, being one for the antagonist, Marlene. Both are Harden survivors living in a Post-Apocalyptic world, seen the atrocities humans are capable of committing, and come to view Ellie as a surrogate daughter.. However, Marlene, despite witnessing the worst in humanity still believes it's still worth saving and will go to any lengths to ensure its survival even if it means having to kill her surrogate daughter to extract the cure for humanity. Joel on the other hand has grown to detest humanity because of how much he'd lost at its hands and is willing to doom it, rather than lose his surrogate daughter. Basically, Joel is Marlene if she chose to put her feelings and self-interests above the greater good.
• Shipper on Deck: He apparently tried to get Ellie and Jesse together at one point, not realizing that Ellie is a lesbian.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: As Joel puts it, he saw the world one way and Tommy saw it another. This is what made them split apart and find trouble in reconnecting. Joel is selfish and lives solely on the moment, concerned with surviving another day. Tommy, on the other hand, is more selfless and lives for a long term goal of building a self-sustainable community. He is also quite the idealist, persisting on building his community even when told it wouldn't work, in clear contrast with Joel's cynicism. These differences were first established in the prologue, where Tommy wanted to help a family during the outbreak while Joel insisted on keeping Sarah safe at all costs and ignores them.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: At the start of the game, to Ellie. He slowly grows out of it... sort of.
• The Stoic: One of his defining traits. He's rarely surprised and even when really angry, he doesn't lose his cool.
• Struggling Single Mother: Gender-Inverted. Joel begins the game clearly struggling to support Sarah. He talks to Tommy on the phone about how he needs a certain job and jokingly suggests that his daughter help him pay the mortgage. And then it's stated that he wasn't married to Sarah's mom for long.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: He barely makes it past the first chapter before he has his brains bashed in by a vengeful Abby over the death of the surgeon he killed at the end of the last game.
• Supporting Protagonist: He was the playable character but the story revolves around Ellie.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Despite his justifiable reasons to do so, his past comes to bite him back. In addition, after spending years in Jackson, a safe settlement, he became less cautious of others.
• Took a Level in Kindness:
  • Only towards Ellie. And towards Henry, a little. Look at his face when Sam is killed. He looks so crushed as he tries to talk Henry down, knowing he's going to do something after that. He also is a lot warmer towards his brother Tommy than most people.
  • Part II takes this further. Among the residents of Jackson, Joel is considered a Cool Old Guy who kills infected real good, plays guitar, and looks after his surrogate daughter, Ellie. When Joel dies, his memorial is decorated with dozens of flowers. Jesse himself tells Ellie that he looked up to Joel.
• Tragic Keepsake: The watch he got on his birthday from his daughter hours before the infection broke out. It's the only thing he kept of her and the only sign that he might not have "moved on" as he claims. Initially subverted by his photo with Sarah until his time with Ellie allows him to accept it.
  Ellie: Your watch is broken.
• Tsundere: It's a subtle, non-romantic example, but when Bill accuses him of caring too much for Ellie and potentially dooming himself for this, Joel replies it's not like that. Throughout the game, Bill is proven right and Joel is eventually shown to care about Ellie.
• The Unfettered: Joel has one goal - protect Ellie. His moral guidelines extend solely to her and this goal - his only hiccups in this regard come from practical reasons.
• Ungrateful Bastard: He can't bring himself to say "thank you" or offer any emotional support after Ellie kills a man for the first time to save Joel's life; instead he berates her for not staying put like he asked her to. A little while later, Joel tries to suck it up and reconcile with her, but even then he struggles with saying a direct thank you. "Just so we're clear about back there...it was either him or me." Ellie at least seems to appreciate the effort.
• Verbal Tic: He says "goddamn(it)" a lot.
• Villain Protagonist: Becomes one by the end of the game, when he decides to doom humanity's potential hope for a vaccine to Cordyceps to save Ellie's life.
• Walking Armory: By the very end of the game, Joel is packing three long guns, four handguns, a bow, a flamethrower, a heavy melee weapon, and a selection of IEDs, most of it folded away in his Hyperspace Arsenal of a backpack. If he's lucky, he might even have some ammo for all this artillery.
• Walking Spoiler: Knowing too much about his role in a predecessor gives away that he's Killed Off for Real by Abby not five minutes after he's re-introduced.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Inevitably, Ellie finds out about the lie he told her at the end of the first game and this drives a wedge in between them for a long while where they barely talk. Eventually they do hash it out, but she's less then pleased Joel wouldn't allow her to go through with the operation despite knowing the lives it could've saved.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Given that he had suffered many hardships in this world, including losing his own daughter, it comes off as no a surprise that he becomes a ruthless and callous killer who decides to possibly doom the entire human race just so he won't lose another daughter.
• Worst Aid: When he falls on a piece of rebar during the climax of the Autumn chapter, he insists to Ellie that she help pull him off and nearly bleeds to death as a result. However, it's justified as enemies are on their tail and it wasn't safe to stay.
• Would Hurt a Child: Implied. When Joel shoves Henry to the ground and has him at gunpoint, he briefly points his gun at Sam and yells "Get back, son!" when Sam tries to get between him and Henry. Then, when Sam becomes Infected and attacks Ellie, Joel immediately goes for his gun, ready to shoot him without a second thought. Though considering the world they live in goes by "kill or be killed", he can't really afford to hesitate.
• Would Hit a Girl: Gender is no object in his fighting style. He kills female Infected and shoots Marlene to death at the end.
• You're Not My Father: Inverted at the end of his argument with Ellie during the Fall chapter. Fortunately, he changes his mind soon after.

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"If somehow the lord gave me a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again."