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Early on, the working names for the leads were Joel 'Miller' and Ellie 'Williams,' but Naughty Dog dropped surnames entirely for the finished 2013 game. Fans kept using the old names anyway, and eventually the studio made it official - 'Miller' was confirmed as canon in Part II, and Neil Druckmann later confirmed 'Williams' for Ellie himself.
Poke around the vault in the Seattle bank during Day 1 downtown and you'll find a drawer with an engraved ring sitting inside it. It's the same ring Nathan Drake wears throughout the Uncharted series, a nice little wink from Naughty Dog to their other flagship franchise.
Tucked away among the debris in one of the exploration-heavy Seattle areas is a glowing orb that looks suspiciously familiar to anyone who grew up with Naughty Dog's earlier platformer series. It's a straight-up reference to the Precursor Orbs collected throughout the Jak and Daxter games.
One of the more surprising finds scattered through Part 2's abandoned buildings is a battered handheld console displaying Hotline Miami's neon-drenched box art. It's a small crossover nod to Dennaton Games' brutal top-down shooter, hiding in a game that's just as violent in its own way.
Among the various costumes and outfits players can dig up during their scavenging runs is a full Nathan Drake Halloween getup. It's become one of the most talked-about crossover finds in the whole game, mostly because it looks ridiculous on Ellie.
The code to unlock Gate West 2 during the Seattle sections is 0451, a number that's basically folklore among PC gaming veterans. It traces back to a door code at Looking Glass Studios' old Cambridge office and has been quietly slipped into games like System Shock and Thief ever since.
Wander into the Seattle bookshop and you can spot a worn copy of the 1922 children's classic The Velveteen Rabbit sitting on a shelf. It's an odd little detail to include in a game this grim, and fans reckon it's a personal touch from someone on the dev team rather than a storyline nod.
During the same scene where Ellie picks up a ring engraved with 'Sic Parvis Magna,' another Uncharted callback, she and Dina end up chatting about Point Break, the 1991 bank-heist movie with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze. Two references stacked into one quiet conversation.
Anyone who played the original game remembers the running gag that Ellie couldn't swim, which led to some clunky pallet-pushing puzzles. Naughty Dog leaned right into it here: swim over to a pallet by the museum and Ellie cracks a joke about Joel once having to shove her across the water like that.
Fans of the first game still think fondly of Sam and Henry, the brothers Joel and Ellie travel with for a stretch. In a quiet moment in Part 2, Ellie comes across Sam's old toy robot and picks it up, a small gesture that carries a surprising amount of weight if you remember how their story ended.
