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For The Taken King expansion, Bungie replaced Dinklage with veteran voice actor Nolan North, best known for Nathan Drake in Uncharted. Remarkably, North didn't just voice new lines, he re-recorded every single piece of Ghost dialogue from the original base game so the whole experience would feel consistent.
Scattered copies of a fictional newspaper called The Daily Metro pop up across the game, and if you stop to actually read the headlines, one of them is a proper gem: 'Uncharted 13: A Lush Movie — Justin Bieber as Drake.' Naughty Dog poking a bit of fun at their own flagship franchise.
In Serenity Apartments, right after you meet Henry and Sam, take a look around the bedroom - there's a Jak & Daxter plush on the dresser and a Nathan Drake plushie on the bed. The remake even throws in a second Drake plush for good measure.
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.
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.
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.
Once Naughty Dog wrapped up Jak 3, they pulled their most technically skilled staff together and quietly started working on something new under the internal codename 'Big'. Rather than just building another PS3 Jak and Daxter game, they wanted a fresh IP built around realistic human characters, which is how Drake and his adventures were born.
Over in Japan the game didn't even carry the Uncharted name. It was released as 'Uncharted: The Secret Treasure of El Dorado', dropping the Drake's Fortune subtitle entirely in favour of something a bit more literal.
Tucked away near the start of the Fortress chapter is the Strange Relic, an egg-shaped treasure covered in odd symbols. Translate the markings and they actually spell out 'Naughty Dog' and 'Madman', and the whole thing is really a sly nod to the Precursor Orbs from the studio's earlier Jak and Daxter games.
Whenever Drake or Elena suit up in wetsuits, the brand stitched on is 'Ottsel'. That's not a made-up label either, it's a wink at Jak from Jak and Daxter, who happens to be part of the ottsel species.
