The best secret locations and Easter eggs in The Last of Us Part I on PC aren't buried behind obscure cheat codes. They're tucked into optional conversations, shiv doors, safe combinations, environmental storytelling, and Left Behind scenes that the campaign never forces you to see. Start with Bill's Town, Pittsburgh's hotel, the University, and the Colorado mall, then replay chapters with Listen Mode off so you can spot the details Joel and Ellie normally sprint past.
This is a guide to the discoveries that genuinely add context, not a recycled list of every ordinary collectible. Some entries below contain story spoilers, including major details from Left Behind. If you're playing for the first time, keep the spoiler warning in mind and use the chapter select menu after finishing a section. The PC release includes the full remake campaign and Left Behind, plus bonus galleries and gameplay modifiers; the official Steam page confirms the PC feature set.
Why these secrets are easy to miss on PC
The Last of Us Part I is unusually good at hiding optional content in plain sight. Its levels look semi-open, but most encounters are built around a forward route. A locked doorway, a narrow gap behind a truck, or a staircase branching away from the blue objective marker can lead to a safe, artifact, optional conversation, or a small animation that never appears in a mission checklist.
The remake also makes stealth a trap for completionists. Moving quickly through an encounter often feels smart, but doing so can prevent an optional conversation from triggering. The safest routine is simple: after each combat arena, sweep the edges before continuing. Check bathrooms, shop counters, upper floors, dead-end alleys, and every door marked with a white shiv icon.
| Discovery type | What to look for | Best approach | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Optional conversation | White speech-bubble prompt or character waiting nearby | Clear enemies, then pause instead of advancing | Adds character context and can count toward chapter completion |
| Shiv door | White blade symbol on a locked door | Save at least one shiv or craft one before exploring | Usually contains supplements, parts, ammo, or artifacts |
| Safe | Small wall safe near a document or desk | Search the surrounding room for the combination | Provides valuable early resources without a combat cost |
| Environmental detail | Graffiti, posters, toys, arcade machines, and notes | Use the camera and inspect side rooms | Builds the world without stopping the story |
On PC, higher resolution helps, but it also makes the game's dense foliage and dark interiors more distracting. If you miss visual prompts, raise brightness only slightly; over-brightening can wash out the contrast that makes blood trails, graffiti, and door markings readable. Naughty Dog's official game page is also worth checking for the remake's accessibility and exploration features.
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View on Steammoz Store →Bill’s Town hides more than its famous joke book
Bill's Town is the first chapter where the game openly rewards curiosity. After Joel and Ellie leave the church area and begin moving through the overgrown streets, don't treat the houses as scenery. Search their interiors for notes, supplements, weapon parts, and the safe combination written on a short note. The safe itself is in a boarded-up house along the residential route, and its combination is 05-17-21. You don't need to guess it if you inspect the nearby document, but entering the code manually is faster on a replay.
The real prize is the graveyard stretch. Let Ellie and Bill walk rather than rushing toward the next gate. Ellie can comment on the names and graves, and the exchange gives the hostile survivor community more weight than the combat arenas do. Bill's town isn't just a funhouse of traps; it's a place where somebody tried to impose order on a collapse that had already swallowed everyone around him.
Inside the church, inspect Bill's workbench and surrounding rooms before taking the obvious exit. You can find his “Pills” and supplements tracking thread through artifacts, while the town's barricades reveal how he has converted paranoia into architecture. If you leave the church too quickly, you can still revisit the chapter through Chapter Select, but collectible progress is easiest to manage on a single clean sweep.
The pun book is an actual gameplay reward
When Ellie discovers No Pun Intended: Volume Too, she doesn't merely make a joke and move on. Keep waiting during later quiet sections and she'll pull out the book for another pun. These moments are easy to interrupt by walking ahead, opening a door, or triggering the next objective. Her jokes are deliberately awkward, but they also show how Ellie uses humor to control fear and test whether Joel is willing to meet her halfway.
Bill's Town also contains one of the game's best “look closer” details: the tripwire network is not random decoration. Follow the wires with your eyes and you'll see how Bill controls movement through the streets. It explains why the infected are funnelled into kill zones and why the safest-looking shortcuts are often the worst choices.
Pittsburgh’s hotel has a safe, a basement nightmare, and hidden history
The Pittsburgh hotel lobby is a completionist minefield. After the opening hunter encounter, explore the lobby and upper levels before using the elevator. The safe combination is 22-10-56, and the safe sits behind the front desk area. Look for the combination document in the surrounding hotel rooms rather than assuming the combination is a random puzzle. The contents are modest on lower difficulties but can mean the difference between a fully upgraded weapon and a desperate reload on Survivor.
Don't skip the hotel's side rooms after the elevator sequence. The flooded basement is more than a scare corridor: it tests how you manage darkness, sound, and limited oxygen while Clickers and Runners pressure your route. Listen Mode can help locate enemies, but on Grounded or a custom high-difficulty run, the better tactic is to identify the generator and exit first, then grab resources only when the immediate path is safe.
The hotel also contains a deliberately cruel contrast between luxury and collapse. Read the guest notes, inspect the luggage, and look at the abandoned dining areas. The location tells a complete mini-story through room service remnants and survivor messages before the infected encounter even begins. Naughty Dog's environmental storytelling works best when you stop treating every room as an ammo container.
The hanging bodies are an optional character moment
After escaping the hotel and reaching the streets, look for the area where hunters have strung bodies above the road. Wait near Ellie and listen to the conversation instead of immediately moving toward the next combat space. The exchange reinforces how Pittsburgh's hunters use spectacle and intimidation, not just weapons, to control civilians.
There are also optional conversations around the bookstore and the resistance graffiti. They can be interrupted by pushing too far ahead, so clear the street, reload only when needed, and return to Ellie before crossing the next trigger line. On a first playthrough, this tiny bit of patience does more for the chapter than another handful of revolver rounds.
The University’s monkeys reveal the Fireflies’ real mission
At the University of Eastern Colorado, many players sprint through the snow toward the science building. That misses one of the chapter's most memorable environmental reveals. In the open university grounds, search the fenced and wooded edges for the Firefly research area. You can find signs that the monkeys were part of the experiments, including the infected-animal aftermath that turns a seemingly ordinary campus route into a preview of the hospital's grim science.
The most important detail is the message trail around the science building. Firefly recordings and notes explain that the group wasn't conducting clean, controlled research. They were desperate, short on time, and willing to keep testing even as conditions deteriorated. That context matters because the finale's moral argument isn't built from one miraculous lab scene; it's foreshadowed by a long series of compromised decisions.
Before entering the building, sweep the dormitories and classrooms for supplies and optional dialogue. The flamethrower becomes available in this chapter through Bill's earlier connection and remains one of the strongest panic-control tools against groups of infected. It has limited ammunition, but its damage-over-time effect can stagger enemies and deny a narrow corridor. Save it for clustered infected or a sudden Bloater pressure moment rather than spending fuel on isolated Runners.
| Location | Hidden discovery | Resource payoff | Best reason to revisit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bill's Town houses | Safe and survivor documents | Parts, supplements, ammo | Early upgrade momentum |
| Pittsburgh hotel | Lobby safe and guest history | Ammo and crafting materials | Easy to overlook before the elevator |
| University grounds | Monkey research evidence | Artifacts and environmental context | Foreshadows the Firefly hospital work |
| Suburbs | Safe and Ish's survivor story | Supplies plus narrative payoff | Turns a ruined neighborhood into a human story |
The Suburbs contain the game’s quietest tragedy
The Suburbs chapter has a famous sniper sequence, but its most effective secret is the story beneath the neighborhood. Search the abandoned houses and sewers for Ish's notes, drawings, and survivor records. The sewer documents reconstruct a community that tried to protect children and maintain rules after the outbreak. Then the notes gradually show how fear, infection, and one breach destroyed that fragile system.
The safe combination in the suburban houses is 08-21-36. As with the other safes, the combination is placed nearby, so don't burn time searching a guide unless you're on a speedrun. The better first-play tactic is to sweep every bedroom and garage, because the supplies are more valuable than the seconds saved by following Henry's route.
After the sniper encounter, inspect the surrounding houses before leaving the area. Several details point to how ordinary families experienced the same collapse that Joel and Ellie have been surviving. The game never pauses for a flashback here; the story is carried by children's drawings, food containers, and hurried notes. That restraint is exactly why Ish's subplot lands so hard.
Left Behind’s arcade and photo booth scenes are easy to rush
Left Behind contains the densest collection of playful Easter eggs in the PC package. In the mall, Ellie and Riley find the arcade machine for The Turning, a fictional fighting game. The sequence is presented as a playful contest, but its real purpose is to show Ellie briefly escaping the world outside. Let the scene play out, inspect the arcade cabinets, and don't treat the interaction as a disposable minigame.
The photo booth is another easy miss. Explore the mall's side areas and follow Riley's prompts instead of pushing straight to the next objective. The booth lets Ellie and Riley pose for photographs, creating a rare moment where the characters control how they are seen. It also makes the later emotional turn more painful: this isn't just a scavenger hunt through a ruined mall, but a final attempt to manufacture a normal night.
Other interactive attractions, including the water-gun sequence and Halloween displays, reward patience. Follow Riley's lead, inspect the props, and wait for Ellie to finish her reactions before moving on. The best Easter eggs here aren't references to another franchise; they're tiny pieces of character animation that make the relationship believable.
Listen to the optional jokes, then replay with modifiers
After finishing the story, the PC version's bonus menus make a second run worthwhile. Model Viewer lets you inspect Joel, Ellie, infected types, and weapons from angles the campaign never provides. Concept Art and render galleries also reveal how Naughty Dog designed the game's ruined interiors and enemy silhouettes. The official Naughty Dog site is the safest source for development material and announcements.
Gameplay modifiers can change how you hunt secrets. Unlimited crafting removes the pressure of saving supplies, while infinite ammo makes it easier to test weapon animations and revisit encounters. Permadeath is a different beast: it makes every optional detour a risk, so use Chapter Select or a separate save rather than mixing completionist exploration with a serious permadeath run.
| Replay profile | Recommended setting | What it improves | Main drawback |
|---|---|---|---|
| First exploration run | Moderate difficulty, Listen Mode enabled | Lets you find rooms and conversations without starving resources | Enemy awareness is less demanding |
| Completionist sweep | Chapter Select with Collectibles view | Targets missed artifacts, safes, and optional conversations | Some dialogue triggers need a fresh chapter start |
| Combat testing | Unlimited ammo and crafting modifiers | Shows weapon handling and encounter solutions | Removes scarcity and stealth tension |
| Hardcore replay | Grounded or Permadeath | Turns route planning and enemy telegraphs into the main challenge | Optional exploration can cost an entire run |
How to find what you missed without replaying blindly
Use Chapter Select after completing the campaign, then pair it with the game's Collectibles menu. The menu shows categories such as artifacts, Firefly pendants, comics, training manuals, and optional conversations, but it doesn't replace a physical sweep of the level. If a chapter shows an incomplete category, restart from the earliest listed checkpoint rather than the nearest one; some conversations only trigger when characters enter the area together.
For a clean collectible run, keep three habits: save shivs for clearly marked doors, inspect every document before entering the next arena, and turn around after a cutscene because characters sometimes walk away from the objective. In darker rooms, use a flashlight and rotate the camera slowly instead of relying entirely on Listen Mode. On PC, a controller's vibration can also help with nearby interactive objects, though mouse-and-keyboard players may prefer raising the interaction prompt size in Accessibility.
If performance is distracting you from exploration, our PC crash and FPS troubleshooting advice covers general stability habits, while the low-FPS fixes guide explains shader-compilation and background-process checks that apply broadly to demanding PC games. You can also compare how we approach hidden-location guides and secret reward routes in other games.
The smartest way to experience these secrets is not to hunt them like checklist items. Let Bill finish a joke, read the note beside the safe, wait for Ellie to look at the graves, and explore the mall with Riley at her pace. The Last of Us Part I hides its strongest rewards in the seconds between objectives. On PC, those quiet detours are still the best reason to return.