The best secret locations and Easter eggs in The Last of Us Part I PC are tucked into optional rooms, missable conversations, collectible comic issues, and environmental callbacks rather than giant hidden treasure chests. Search the museum, Bill’s Town, Pittsburgh’s hotel, the University of Eastern Colorado, and the Salt Lake City hospital carefully, and you’ll uncover Savage Starlight references, Naughty Dog nods, Joel and Ellie character moments, and world-building details that never appear in the critical path.
This is the 2022 remake, not the original PlayStation 3 release, so the PC version gives these discoveries an extra advantage: higher-resolution textures, Photo Mode, model inspection, and adjustable camera controls make small clues far easier to examine. If you’re also chasing smoother performance, our PC crash and FPS fixes are useful background reading, but this guide is about what to look for once the game is running properly.
Start Here: The Most Missable Secrets Ranked
Not every secret carries the same value. Some unlock a trophy or collectible entry, while others exist purely to deepen the relationship between Joel, Ellie, Bill, Sam, and Henry. The table below prioritizes discoveries that are both genuinely hidden and worth the detour.
| Secret | Chapter | Why It Matters | Missable? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Robotics lab monkey release | The University | A quiet Firefly research detail and memorable environmental moment | Yes |
| Ellie’s Savage Starlight comic | Pittsburgh | Connects Ellie’s favorite fiction to the ruined world around her | Yes |
| Bill’s Town optional conversations | Bill’s Town | Reveals Bill’s defensive personality and Joel’s history with him | Yes |
| Hotel basement bloater encounter | Pittsburgh | A hidden combat route with unique tension and valuable supplies | Yes |
| Uncharted and Naughty Dog references | Multiple chapters | Fun developer callbacks hidden in props and signage | Usually |
| Hospital environmental clues | The Firefly Lab | Foreshadows the final moral conflict through documents and spaces | Partly |
Play on a first run with Listen Mode if you want the story to breathe, then revisit chapters through Chapter Select on a second pass. Grounded difficulty makes exploration more dangerous because a detour can cost ammunition, but it doesn’t make the collectibles themselves more rewarding. For pure discovery, Normal or Moderate with Listen Mode is the sensible sweet spot.
🎮 The Last of Us Part I
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View on Steammoz Store →The Museum Has More Than a Dinosaur Joke
The museum sequence in The Last of Us Part I is remembered for Ellie’s dinosaur-and-space obsession, but the real secret is how much the area communicates without dialogue. During the “The Descent” portion of the Pittsburgh chapter, Joel, Ellie, and Bill move through a museum-like building filled with animal displays, collapsed exhibits, and side rooms. Don’t sprint from one encounter to the next. Check display cases, dead-end corridors, and rooms behind partially blocked doors before triggering the next story beat.
Ellie’s reaction to the dinosaur exhibits is more than a cute pause. It shows her using pre-outbreak history as a form of escapism. Joel, meanwhile, treats the building as a tactical space first and a museum second. That contrast is the point: Ellie sees a world worth wondering about, while Joel sees cover, entrances, and infected routes.
The PC remake makes this area especially good for Photo Mode. Pause after the scripted conversation and inspect the exhibit labels, dust, broken glass, and mold growth around the ceiling. These aren’t random assets. The visual design repeatedly shows nature reclaiming a public space, which mirrors the game’s larger argument that civilization has not vanished cleanly; it has decayed in place.
What to check before leaving
- Walk back through the previous exhibit after the dialogue finishes. Some players assume the interaction has ended and immediately follow the objective marker.
- Search side rooms for supplements, parts, and ammunition before entering the next combat arena.
- Use Listen Mode to separate collectible silhouettes from ordinary display clutter.
- Try Photo Mode with Depth of Field reduced. Small plaques and texture details become easier to read.
The dinosaur scene itself isn’t an Easter egg from another franchise, but Ellie’s enthusiasm connects directly to her later obsession with Left Behind material and the Savage Starlight comics. It’s one of the clearest examples of a secret feeling hidden in plain sight: the game rewards you for slowing down, not for finding a developer logo.
Bill’s Town Rewards Players Who Stop Following Joel
Bill’s Town is packed with optional exploration because its streets are built like a compact sandbox. The critical route takes Joel and Ellie toward Bill’s safehouse, but the surrounding houses, church grounds, and barricaded streets contain supplies, notes, and optional conversations that sharpen Bill’s character.
Look around the church and graveyard area before moving into the next encounter. Bill’s preparations tell a story through tripwires, warning signs, boarded windows, and improvised defenses. The town isn’t merely “infected territory”; it’s a place Bill has continuously reshaped to keep people out. His paranoia is visible before he explains it.
One of the most important optional interactions involves Ellie and Bill’s relationship. She challenges him in a way Joel generally avoids, and the exchange lands differently if you’ve already inspected Bill’s belongings and survival setup. The remake’s facial animation makes these pauses more expressive, but you can still miss them by pushing through the objective marker.
How to explore without wasting resources
Bill’s Town has a practical exploration rhythm. First, sweep the exterior for supplements and parts. Second, identify tripwire lanes and infected entry points. Third, return to any building that looked inaccessible before the next scripted transition. Avoid spending a shiv on every locked door if you’re playing a high difficulty; save at least one for a clicker-heavy section unless you’re specifically hunting the Shiv Doors trophy.
| Area | What to Search | Threat | Best Approach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Church and graveyard | Side paths, notes, supply corners | Runners and clickers | Use bottles to separate patrols before looting |
| Residential streets | Open houses and garages | Tripwires and hidden infected | Crouch, scan doorways, and mark wire locations |
| Bill’s safehouse | Notes, workbench area, optional dialogue | Limited immediate danger | Explore fully before advancing the conversation |
| Locked shiv doors | Parts, supplements, ammunition, collectibles | Resource cost | Prioritize doors with high-value loot on harder modes |
There’s also a small but important bit of character continuity here. Joel and Bill clearly share history, yet neither man explains it cleanly. The game lets props and clipped exchanges do the work. That restraint is why Bill’s Town remains one of the best secret-rich chapters in the entire campaign.
Pittsburgh’s Hotel Hides the Game’s Nastiest Detour
The flooded hotel basement in Pittsburgh is one of the most memorable secret locations in The Last of Us Part I PC because it feels like a place the developers could have omitted entirely. After Joel enters the abandoned hotel and the elevator sequence goes wrong, you’ll eventually reach a submerged lower area. The straightforward solution is to restore power and continue, but the route is full of optional corners, supply caches, and a dangerous bloater encounter.
The bloater is the headline threat. Unlike runners, it doesn’t reward frantic shooting. Its fungal armor absorbs punishment, and its thrown spore bombs punish players who stay in one lane. Keep moving around obstacles, use the environment to break line of sight, and reserve high-damage tools such as the shotgun, Molotov, or nail bomb for moments when the bloater is committed to an attack animation.
Listen Mode is valuable here, but don’t treat it as a radar substitute. Water, darkness, and narrow corridors can make the basement feel visually noisy. Track the power objective, then sweep side rooms before leaving. The remake’s lighting can make an item glint look like reflected water, so rotate the camera slowly rather than relying only on the white outline.
The hotel’s collectible trail
Pittsburgh also contains multiple comic-book pickups from the Savage Starlight series, Ellie’s favorite science-fiction reading. These issues aren’t just generic collectibles. Their titles and cover art echo the campaign’s themes of survival, sacrifice, and people trying to preserve a future after catastrophe. If you find one, inspect Ellie’s comments and the collectible menu rather than immediately closing the screen.
Search hotel rooms, conference spaces, and the upper lobby for notes and artifacts before the story pushes Joel toward the elevator. The safest pattern is to clear human enemies first, mark locked doors, then loot after the encounter. Pittsburgh’s hunters can flank aggressively, and opening the menu in the wrong moment won’t stop every danger on higher difficulty.
The University’s Monkeys Are a Tiny Firefly Time Capsule
At the University of Eastern Colorado, Joel and Ellie pass through Firefly research facilities where escaped laboratory monkeys scatter across the grounds. This moment is easy to miss because it’s quiet, lasts only a few seconds, and sits between major combat spaces. Approach the science building and pay attention to the movement beyond the windows and fences instead of charging straight toward the objective.
The monkeys are a subtle piece of environmental storytelling. They suggest that the Fireflies were conducting real biomedical work before the university fell apart, but they also reinforce the unsettling ethics of the world. The animals are alive, free, and visibly out of place inside a failed research complex. That tension becomes more important when the final hospital reveals what the Fireflies plan to do with Ellie.
Before entering the next combat section, search the university buildings for Firefly notes, supplements, parts, and the workbench. Workbenches matter more on harder settings because weapon upgrades permanently shape your resource economy. The Shorty, for example, benefits heavily from capacity and reload improvements when you use it as a panic weapon against close-range infected, while the hunting rifle rewards players who invest in stability and armor-piercing potential.
| Weapon | Best Exploration Role | Useful Upgrade Priority | Why It Helps |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9mm Pistol | Quiet human-enemy cleanup | Reload speed, capacity | Reliable backup when long-gun ammunition is scarce |
| Hunting Rifle | Long sightlines and armored targets | Power, armor piercing | Converts careful headshots into efficient kills |
| Shotgun | Clickers, bloaters, emergency defense | Range, capacity | Creates breathing room when stealth collapses |
| Bow | Stealth exploration | Draw speed, range | Preserves ammunition when arrows are recovered |
| Shorty | Close-quarters panic tool | Capacity, reload speed | Strong insurance in cramped rooms |
The University chapter also has one of the campaign’s sharpest tonal turns. The peaceful monkey moment sits close to evidence of violence and Firefly retreat. That contrast is deliberate, and it’s exactly why a fast playthrough can feel like it skipped half the chapter.
Look for Naughty Dog References Beyond the Obvious
The Last of Us Part I contains several developer callbacks, but the strongest ones work because they fit naturally into the world. Keep an eye out for Uncharted-related imagery, arcade and toy details, product labels, and background signage. Not every apparent reference is a confirmed Easter egg, so the best approach is to separate documented callbacks from visual coincidences.
The most reliable place to hunt is through Photo Mode and the game’s model viewer. Naughty Dog’s character and prop work is extremely dense, and the PC version lets you inspect assets at a resolution the original release could never match. Rotate Joel’s backpack, Ellie’s collected items, and environmental objects whenever the menu makes them available. Some details are purely functional, while others nod toward the studio’s earlier games or the broader PlayStation catalog.
Ellie’s Savage Starlight comics deserve special attention. They appear across chapters, including Pittsburgh and later areas, and their fictional science-fiction premise gives Ellie something to believe in that isn’t tied to military checkpoints or Firefly politics. Treat the comics as a parallel narrative. Their names, covers, and placement often sit beside moments where Ellie is forced to grow up.
PC settings that make secrets easier to see
The PC release can make environmental hunting more comfortable, but maxing every option isn’t automatically the best choice. The game is demanding, especially with high textures, volumetric effects, and real-time reflections. A stable frame rate helps more than a dramatic screenshot if you’re searching through hostile spaces.
| Setting | Recommended Value | FPS Impact | Visual Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texture Quality | High if VRAM allows | Medium to high | Improves readable props, posters, and comic covers |
| Volumetric Effects | Medium | High | Preserves atmosphere without crushing performance indoors |
| Shadow Quality | Medium or High | Medium | Important for visual depth, less important for collectible hunting |
| Screen-Space Reflections | Medium | Medium | Useful in flooded areas but easy to lower for smoother play |
| Ambient Occlusion | High | Low to medium | Makes corners and object placement easier to read |
| Upscaling | DLSS or FSR Quality | Lowers GPU load | Quality mode keeps text and fine detail relatively sharp |
On a 60Hz display, lock the frame rate to a number your system can hold consistently rather than chasing unstable peaks. On a 120Hz monitor, a clean 90 FPS experience often feels better than a fluctuating 110 FPS. If you’re fighting stutter, our guide to crashing and low-FPS fixes covers the same broad PC troubleshooting habits, including driver updates and background-process cleanup.
The Hospital’s Secret Is the Story It Refuses to Explain
The Firefly Lab in Salt Lake City doesn’t hide a conventional Easter egg. Its secret is the trail of evidence surrounding Ellie’s fate. Search offices, treatment areas, and corridors before following Marlene’s route. Firefly notes, medical equipment, body bags, and abandoned workspaces create a picture of a desperate organization attempting a breakthrough with limited resources.
Joel’s final rampage is mechanically straightforward compared with the hotel basement or university, but the environmental details alter how the scene reads. The game never gives you a clean laboratory presentation of the procedure. Instead, it shows fragments: a hospital under pressure, armed Fireflies, and a girl who is unconscious and unable to consent. The morality of Joel’s decision is embedded in the location long before the closing conversation.
On PC, Photo Mode is useful here for examining signage and the contrast between sterile medical rooms and ruined infrastructure. Don’t linger too long in active combat zones, though. The Fireflies use rifles and move through linked corridors, so stealth takedowns, the bow, and carefully placed distractions are safer than burning through your upgraded hunting-rifle ammunition.
If you want to compare this kind of environmental storytelling with other games built around hidden spaces, Steamoz’s guides to secret locations and hidden rewards and Everspace 2 discoveries take a more traditional treasure-hunting approach. The Last of Us is subtler: the reward is often a changed interpretation of a character.
How to Sweep Every Chapter Without Missing the Point
The most reliable way to find the best secret locations and Easter eggs in The Last of Us Part 1 PC is to explore in loops. When you enter a new space, identify the objective marker, then deliberately walk in the opposite direction first. Search rooms from left to right, check dead ends, listen for optional dialogue, and only advance after the environment stops offering new interactions.
Use Chapter Select for cleanup, but remember that collectibles and optional conversations don’t always behave like traditional inventory items. A comic pickup can be saved to your collection, while a spontaneous conversation may require replaying the encounter from an earlier checkpoint. If a trophy doesn’t pop immediately, check the chapter’s collectible menu and replay the section from the beginning rather than assuming the game has lost your progress.
- Search before combat. Supplies are easier to collect before enemies force you into cover.
- Search after combat. Return to the arena once it’s safe; enemy movement often distracts you from side rooms.
- Listen for Ellie and companions. Optional dialogue can trigger only when you pause near a prop or scenic point.
- Use the map geometry. Dead ends, blocked staircases, and half-open doors are often intentional signals.
- Keep a shiv available. Shiv Doors can contain supplements, parts, and collectibles, especially in Pittsburgh.
- Revisit with Photo Mode. A second pass exposes background references that are invisible during a tense first run.
For official technical information, check the The Last of Us Part I Steam page, the Naughty Dog website, and PlayStation’s official game page. For broader PC optimization, our graphics-settings guide has more practical advice on balancing image quality and frame rate.
The biggest secret in The Last of Us Part I is that its optional content rarely feels optional. A comic changes how Ellie sees the world. A monkey encounter quietly reframes the Fireflies. Bill’s defenses explain him before his words do, and the hospital turns scattered environmental clues into the game’s final moral pressure point. Slow down, search against the objective marker, and you’ll find that the PC remake’s most valuable rewards aren’t weapons at all—they’re the details that make its characters feel painfully real.