The Steam release of The Last of Us Part I is far more than a visual overhaul; its uncompressed texture assets, expanded field of view, and unconstrained camera tools expose a dense web of hidden rooms, developer inside jokes, and tragic environmental narratives that console players routinely walked right past. Missing these locations does not just rob you of rich world-building—it starves your inventory of vital weapon parts, supplement pills, and training manuals required to survive higher difficulties like Survivor and Grounded.
Whether you are tracking down obscure relics honoring Naughty Dog's golden platforming era, hunting down every high-yield shiv door, or deciphering the tragic notes left behind in the flooded depths of Pittsburgh, this breakdown details the best secret locations and Easter eggs you completely missed on your first PC playthrough.
Uncharted and Jak Relics: High-Res Artifacts You Never Noticed
Naughty Dog has a long, storied tradition of cross-pollinating its franchises, but the ultra-high-resolution textures on PC turn these former background blurs into pristine, inspectable 3D assets. Much like hunting for hidden loot caches in our Everspace 2 secret locations and hidden rewards guide, finding these items requires straying far off the critical progression path.
The most famous nod is the Precursor Orb from the Jak and Daxter series. Located in Chapter 6 (The Suburbs), after escaping the pitch-black sewer tunnels with Henry and Sam, you will enter a flooded neighborhood. Duck into the two-story brick home on the left, head up to the second-floor bedroom, and check the toy box tucked beside the dresser. Resting casually among plastic dinosaurs is the distinctive golden egg adorned with ancient Precursor carvings. In original releases, the low polygon count made it easy to overlook, but the PC remake showcases crisp geometric engravings and metallic surface sheen.
Then comes Nathan Drake's trademark Strange Relic from the Uncharted series. Deep in the Pittsburgh chapter, during your traversal through the devastated financial district, Joel and Ellie navigate an abandoned, mold-covered souvenir shop. If you scramble over the debris behind the service counter and hop into the ruined mezzanine above, you will spot Drake’s signature golden Oring artifact resting on an overturned display table. Inspecting it triggers unique artifact dialogue, and PC players can zoom in via Photo Mode to read the micro-etched script along its perimeter.
Other brilliant Naughty Dog crossover details scattered across the campaign include:
- O'Sullivan's Pub: In the flooded street sector of Pittsburgh, check the commercial storefronts before entering the hotel. You will spot O'Sullivan's Pub, a direct tribute to Nathan Drake's veteran mentor, Victor "Sully" Sullivan. Inside, the tavern layout mirrors Sully’s favored drinking dens from Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception.
- Uncharted Board Game: In the abandoned toy store in Pittsburgh, inspect the fallen shelving units near the back register. You will find an unopened boxed board game titled Uncharted: The Board Game, complete with vintage cover art of Nathan Drake dodging gunfire.
- Jak X: Combat Racing Arcade Cabinet: Featured prominently in Raja's Arcade during the Left Behind DLC section, this broken arcade chassis sits in the corner, offering an interactive prompt where Ellie imagines herself tearing up the post-apocalyptic asphalt.
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View on Steammoz Store →The Hidden Left Behind Teasers Tucked Inside Bill's Town and Boston
Before Left Behind was even conceived as a standalone prequel chapter, the narrative architecture was quietly baked into the environmental props of the main campaign. When exploring the Boston Quarantine Zone and Bill's Town on PC, running modern texture resolutions allows you to read discarded flyers, bulletin board notices, and graffiti that directly foreshadow Ellie and Riley’s tragic night at the Liberty Gardens mall.
Inside the rundown music shop in Bill's Town, where Joel can scavenge for essential crafting materials, turn your flashlight toward the employee breakroom pin-board. Tacked beside the yellowed utility bills is a promotional flyer for the very same Halloween boutique—American Dreams—where Ellie and Riley try on monster masks. If you take the time to explore secret areas and high-value rewards in world-class narrative games, finding these structural puzzle pieces makes the overarching world feel genuinely lived-in.
Furthermore, right outside Bill's booby-trapped safehouse, there is a small alleyway barricaded by razor wire. Using the PC's expanded field of view and free-cam tools reveals a discarded military walkie-talkie tuned to the exact Firefly radio frequency Riley mentions using during her recruitment. Bill himself has an untouched secret stash room behind his church armory: hop onto the baptismal font, climb over the decorative screen, and you will uncover 50 Supplement Pills and 25 Weapon Parts that standard navigational routes bypass completely.
Every Secret Shiv Door and Hidden Safe Stash Breakdown
Finding hidden Easter eggs is rewarding for lore junkies, but uncovering high-security stash rooms is essential if you want to keep Joel alive on Grounded difficulty. In The Last of Us Part I on PC, Shiv Doors hide the richest stockpiles of supplements, tool upgrade boxes, and weapon training manuals in the game. Shiv blades cost precious binding and blades to construct, so knowing exactly what sits behind each locked room prevents you from wasting crafted tools on mediocre loot.
Similarly, safes hold game-changing stat enhancements, such as holsters that let Joel cycle between long guns instantly without rummaging through his backpack under active fire. Below is the definitive directory of every high-priority safe and secret loot stash across the campaign, including exact combinations and strategic yields.
| Chapter & Location | Safe Code / Lock Type | Key Items & Loot Yield | Strategic Value |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Outskirts (Downtown Subway) | 03-43-78 | 50 Weapon Parts, Scavenged Ammo | Critical for securing early Shotgun/Revolver damage upgrades. |
| Bill's Town (Main Street) | 05-17-49 | 50 Supplements, 50 Parts, Shotgun Shells | Unlocks early Listen Mode distance or Maximum Health buffs. |
| Pittsburgh (Flooded Hotel Lobby) | 22-57-33 | Training Manual (Reinforced Shivs), 50 Parts | Essential. Lets shivs survive two uses instead of breaking instantly. |
| The Suburbs (Escape Escape House) | 08-21-36 | Shorty Shotgun Shells, 10 Supplements, 50 Parts | Gives vital close-range ammunition before the sniper ambush. |
| The University (Dormitory Shiv Door) | Level 3 Shiv Lock | Tool Level 4, 50 Supplements, Flamethrower Fuel | Required to unlock Level 4 weapon upgrades at the science bench. |
| Bus Depot (Triage Medical Tent) | Level 4 Shiv Lock | 100 Supplements, 50 Weapon Parts, Medkit | The largest single collection of character upgrade points in the run. |
To maximize these hauls on PC, ensure your hardware maintains steady framerates; micro-stuttering during stealth encounters can cause you to alert Clickers guarding these doorways. If you run into technical hitches while navigating dense indoor environments, check out our guide on optimizing frame stability and tackling crashes to ensure your scavenge runs stay silky-smooth.
The Dark Story of Ish: The Sewers' Tragic Environmental Lore
No environmental subplot in gaming matches the devastating slow burn of Ish, a fisherman who sought refuge in the sewer drainage systems below the Pittsburgh suburbs following the Cordyceps brain infection outbreak. While most players pick up two or three of Ish's letters, few discover all his hidden encampments, domestic rooms, and horrifying final graves.
The saga begins right after the beach shipwreck. Check the rusted fishing trawler washed ashore: inside the pilot cabin lies Ish's first log entry, revealing how he lived at sea for months before dwindling supplies forced him back to the mainland. Once inside the sewer network, the narrative branches across several hidden side alcoves that most players sprint past in fear of lurking Stalkers.
Take the time to explore these specific, easily missed sewer hubs:
- The Submerged Pump Room: Swim through the flooded sluice gate to the right of the main conveyor contraption. Surface inside an unmapped utility closet to find a workbench, 15 parts, and a note explaining how Ish engineered a freshwater filtration grid.
- The Makeshift Classroom: In the heart of the underground settlement, look for an open doorway painted with crude rainbows and suns. Inside is a miniature schoolhouse with children's desks, educational flashcards, and drawing paper. PC players who zoom in on the floor drawings will spot depictions of Ish as a caped superhero protecting smiling children from mushroom-headed monsters.
- The Sealed Nursery: The darkest room in the entire campaign. Off the primary corridor behind an unlocked wire gate, you will find a small storage nook with two covered blankets on the floor and blood scrawled across the plaster wall: "They didn't suffer." A wandering survivor forgot to latch an exterior entry door, letting Infected overrun the refuge in minutes. Ish and a companion named Susan escaped with a few kids, but the rest were mercifully terminated by their caregivers to prevent violent transformation.
- The Suburban Safehouse: After surfacing into the suburban daylight, head to the second house on the left. The front door is boarded up, but you can vault through an open laundry room window. In the master bedroom upstairs, you will find Ish's final despairing letter, confirming that while he escaped the underground bloodbath, his spirit was permanently shattered.
Pop Culture Nods and Dev In-Jokes Hidden in Plain Sight
Beyond tragic survivor journals and franchise tie-ins, Naughty Dog packed the environments of The Last of Us Part I with pop-culture satires, gaming homages, and cheeky developer self-portraits that require keen visual observation.
In the University of Eastern Colorado chapter, when Joel and Ellie are searching the dorms for the Firefly research team, step inside room 204. Tacked above the study desk is a movie poster for Dawn of the Wolf: Part 2. Ellie frequently comments on this throughout the journey, playfully teasing Joel about cheesy romantic werewolf films. The poster art is a clear, satirical swipe at the Twilight film craze that dominated popular culture when the game was originally in development.
In the same dormitory complex, check the student corkboards in the common lounge. The developers placed real-world portraits of Naughty Dog team members, disguised with early-2000s hairstyles, college IDs, and mock graduation certificates. Thanks to the crisp 4K rendering capabilities on modern gaming rigs, player-sleuths can read the actual humorous course descriptions printed on these registration forms.
| Easter Egg / Secret | Location | In-Game Interaction | Pop Culture Reference / Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Turning Arcade Cabinet | Pittsburgh (Mall / Hotel) | Ellie inspects the controls | Parody of classic 90s fighting games like Mortal Kombat, featuring the heroine Angel Knives. |
| Giant Giraffe Stuffed Plush | David's Town (Meat Locker) | Environmental scan via flashlight | Foreshadows the iconic live Giraffe encounter at the Salt Lake City Bus Depot. |
| PlayStation 3 Consoles | Suburbs & Pittsburgh Living Rooms | Inspect entertainment centers | Pristine original Fat PS3 models hooked up to crt televisions, frozen in September 2013. |
| Savage Starlight Comics | Scattered Nationwide (14 total) | Collect & inspect cover art | An elaborate, fictional 1950s sci-fi epic that mirrors Ellie's emotional journey. |
| Pet Acoustic Guitar | Tommy's Dam & Joel's House | Strum prompt & cutscene triggers | Foreshadows the pivotal musical mechanics and thematic core of The Last of Us Part II. |
If you enjoy discovering obscure secrets and optimizing your game experience from top to bottom, dialing in your performance is just as crucial. Just as we outlined in our custom settings guide for max framerates, tuning your shadow resolution and DLSS/FSR profiles ensures you can inspect these fine background jokes without tearing your rendering pipeline to shreds.
How PC Performance and Photo Mode Unlocked New Secrets
The PC version of The Last of Us Part I did not just translate existing assets into DirectX 12; it gave players unlocked camera tools that broke the game wide open. With the game's official Photo Mode decoupled from console camera tethers and supporting ultrawide aspect ratios (21:9 and 32:9), the community has exposed astonishing levels of detail that were formerly hidden beyond the player's view frustum.
For instance, in the opening prologue set in Austin, Texas, using Photo Mode to pan the camera through the window of Sarah's bedroom reveals that the family dog, Jimmy, is barking furiously at neighbors who are already running through the distant tree lines long before the first explosive car crash occurs. The distant horizon renders low-lod silhouettes of military humvees establishing roadblocks in real-time, proving that Naughty Dog scripted the entire town's systemic collapse across the background hills simultaneously.
Furthermore, when navigating the flooded hotel basement in Pittsburgh—infamous for the terrifying Bloater and generator battle—players can use the free camera to inspect the electrical junction boxes. Every single wire is accurately mapped to circuit breakers labeled with authentic commercial safety codes. If you run into severe frame dips while using the high-precision Photo Mode tools, applying targeted PC performance tweaks will keep your system responsive while you capture 4K desktop wallpapers.
Finally, inspect Ellie's backpack at any point after the Autumn chapter. Zooming in reveals the pins she has gathered throughout her journey: a Firefly insignia, an astronaut pin given to her during her childhood, and a miniature military emblem. These hyper-specific physical props reinforce her identity in ways casual dialogue never could, demonstrating the unrivaled environmental artistry that makes The Last of Us Part I on Steam a timeless masterpiece worth inspecting down to the very last pixel.