“We made a mistake,” a reference to The Last of Us slipped into this other Naughty Dog game, but the studio would have preferred that players never see it.

Video games are often sprinkled with Easter Eggs, these little hidden winks that developers hide for the greatest delight of even the most observant players. However, sometimes such addition can take unexpected turns and cause unexpected problems. This is precisely what happened with the Easter Egg Unknown 3Which almost stole the show from the highly anticipated announcement The Last of Us.

A teaser in Uncharted 3

At the beginning of Uncharted 3, after the scene in which the player takes part in a bar fight, a newspaper can be seen in the establishment, near the dartboard. On it, we can read the following headline: “Scientists are still struggling to understand the deadly fungus.

Of course, this is a reference to the story of The Last of Us, which sees its characters evolve in a world ravaged by a Cordyceps epidemic that turns infected people into zombies.

The Last of Us was officially announced at the Spike Video Game Awards in December 2011. Neil Druckman, Creative Director and Bruce Straley, Game DirectorKotaku explained that The Last of Us, which Naughty Dog secretly worked on, was initially planned for June of that year, a few months before the release of Uncharted 3.

Unfortunately, it didn’t go as planned, and Uncharted 3 was introduced with an Easter egg in the game.

The Forgotten Easter Egg

“(We missed the Easter Egg) when it was discovered, a week before VGA. We were in a meeting and a designer texted us saying, “We’ve been exposed.” (…)” says Neil Druckman Kotaku.

Despite the viral marketing of The Last of Us and this prank Easter egg at the time, few gamers guessed that Naughty Dog Studio, which usually developed one game at a time, was behind Sony’s next big title.