Page 1 of 3
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.
This one almost never existed as its own game. Naughty Dog originally pitched it as a piece of paid DLC for Uncharted 4, something in the vein of a smaller side story, before the team realised they had way more to say than a DLC pack could hold and turned it into a full standalone release instead.
For the first time in the series, you're not playing as Nathan Drake at all. Chloe Frazer, who'd only ever been a supporting character back in Uncharted 2 and 3, finally gets to run the show, with Nate nowhere to be found.
Chloe's trust issues have deep roots. In the game's own backstory, her father was an archaeologist who became fixated on a treasure hidden in India, abandoned his family and sent Chloe and her mum off to Australia, then died still chasing the very thing he gave everything up for.
Keep an ear out and you'll notice Chloe refers to Nadine as 'china' a few times through the game. It's not a random nickname, it's old South African slang for mate or buddy, tracing back to Cockney rhyming slang ('china plate' = 'mate') that made its way into South African English, which lines up neatly with Nadine's background.
Every mainline Uncharted game opens with a quote from a real historical explorer. This is the first one in the series to skip that tradition entirely, since the story doesn't really tie back to any single famous adventurer the way the others did.
