50 Fun Facts About Uncharted

Which studio developed the main Uncharted games?

Naughty Dog could have made another Jak and Daxter; its co-president said more powerful hardware meant it was time to move from stylised cartoon heroes to human characters in the modern day.

Who is credited as the creator of the Uncharted franchise?

Amy Hennig headed the writing of the first three games and had begun the fourth when she left the studio in 2014; the lead actor later said eight months of his work on it was thrown out.

Nathan Drake's ring carries the Latin motto 'Sic Parvis Magna', which the games translate how?

Greatness from small beginnings is how Nate renders it for Elena in the first game. The ring is also dated a day after Sir Francis Drake's recorded death, and its engraved coordinates are how Nate found the coffin.

What is Nathan Drake's real birth surname, revealed in A Thief's End?

Morgan was the name of his late mother, Cassandra. As a boy on the run from the police he took the name Drake to honour her theory that the Elizabethan sea captain had left descendants.

Which actor voices and motion-captures Nathan Drake?

Nolan North also turns up in the 2022 film, lounging on a beach as the drenched young Drake explains he fell out of a plane, and replies that something like that happened to him once.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune was released in 2007 for which console?

PlayStation 3 Trophies arrived after the game did: a 2008 patch matched them to the medals the game already awarded, but players had to start a new save to earn any.

What lost treasure does Drake hunt in Drake's Fortune?

El Dorado is no city of gold here but a golden idol, and the idol a sarcophagus: the mummy inside carries an airborne infection that turned the Spanish colonists who opened it into monsters.

Elena Fisher, who eventually marries Drake, has what job?

Investigative journalist is her job by the second game. In the first she hosts a cable TV show, and Drake and Sully ditch her at a dock, afraid her filming will bring rivals after the treasure.

In which service did Victor 'Sully' Sullivan learn to navigate by the stars?

The U.S. Navy comes up in Drake's Deception, when he offers to find a lost city from its constellations. In the first game he survives a gunshot because the old diary he is carrying stops the bullet.

In which country did Sullivan first meet the young Nathan Drake?

Colombia, in Cartagena: a teenage Nate is cornered at gunpoint while robbing a museum, and Sully, who had been working with the armed crew, rescues the boy and takes him on as his protégé.

Which actress voices Chloe in the Uncharted games?

Claudia Black, the Australian star of Farscape, called Chloe 'Indiana Jones with nice hair', and said her chemistry with the actor playing Drake partly decided who the character became.

The second Uncharted game sends Drake after the Cintamani Stone and which mythical city?

Shambhala, which the game equates with Shangri-La, hides a twist: the fabled Stone is no sapphire but a giant orb of fossilised resin from a Tree of Life whose sap gives drinkers monstrous strength.

The second Uncharted game follows the trail of which explorer's lost fleet?

Marco Polo's 1292 voyage home is real history: he left China with 14 ships and some 600 passengers, and only 18 of them reached Persia alive. The game invents what became of the rest.

Which Uncharted game was the first to include online multiplayer?

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves added co-op for three and five-a-side matches, and players first got in through a beta code packed with early copies of another Sony game, Infamous.

Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception centres on the search for which lost city?

Iram of the Pillars, the 'Atlantis of the Sands', hides a trap in the game: a vessel sunk in its cisterns has laced the water with a hallucinogen, which the villains want as a weapon of fear.

Who is the villain of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, a former employer of Sullivan?

Katherine Marlowe leads a secret society, the Hermetic Order. She ends the game sinking into the sand as the lost city collapses around her, and takes Drake's treasured ring down with her.

The plot of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception drew inspiration from the life of which real archaeologist and soldier?

T. E. Lawrence dug in Syria as an archaeologist before he became 'Lawrence of Arabia', and he talked of going back to hunt for a lost city under the sands, which is the thread the game picks up.

In Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Drake leaves retirement to help which presumed-dead relative?

His brother Sam, shot and presumed dead in a prison break 15 years earlier, turns up claiming a drug lord freed him and wants paying in treasure. It is a lie told to lure Nate out of retirement.

Whose long-lost treasure is the target in Uncharted 4: A Thief's End?

Henry Avery's haul is real history: he plundered a Mughal treasure fleet and then vanished from all records. The game imagines he founded a pirate colony with it and poisoned his fellow founders.

Which pair took over Uncharted 4 after its original directors left in 2014?

Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley had just led The Last of Us when they took over mid-development. Straley left the studio the year after the game shipped, and his next game was not revealed until 2025.

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End was its studio's first game built specifically for which console?

PlayStation 4 power still had limits: the team aimed for 60 frames a second throughout, then locked the story mode at 30 after deciding that a steady frame rate beat a faster, uneven one.

The second Uncharted game opens with a wounded Drake waking up inside what?

A train hanging off a cliff is the first thing players see, as a bleeding Drake climbs out of the wreck. The story then jumps back months to show how he got there, and catches up with that scene much later.

In Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, Nate bets Elena he can beat her high score on which real 1996 game?

Crash Bandicoot was the studio's own first hit, yet the request to use it was first refused, and the team had started building a stand-in retro game before a late deal. The stake in the scene is the washing-up.

What artefact is the goal of the 2017 Chloe-led Uncharted expansion?

The Tusk of Ganesh comes with a story the game leans on: the god let an axe cut it off, because the weapon was a gift from his father Shiva and defeating it would have shamed him.

The 2017 Chloe-led Uncharted expansion is set mainly in which country?

India is personal ground for Chloe: her father, a treasure hunter of Indian descent, was killed by bandits while chasing the same relic, and a trinket of his is all she has left of him.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss was a launch title for which handheld?

PlayStation Vita owners alone got to play it: the makers of the main games weighed adding it to the 2015 remastered trilogy, then decided the three console games were enough to set up the fourth.

Which developer made Uncharted: Golden Abyss?

Bend Studio, the Oregon team behind Syphon Filter, borrowed the main series' motion-capture stage and its returning lead actors, so the handheld spin-off was performed by the same cast as the console games.

Where is Uncharted: Golden Abyss set?

Central America, in the jungles of Panama, hides the city of Quivira, whose gold is real but deadly: uranium deposits made it radioactive, and that is what wiped out the people who lived there.

Which studio handled the 2015 remaster Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection?

Bluepoint Games spent 15 months on it, and the case for the job was simple: by the series' makers' count, about four in five owners of the newer console had never played an Uncharted game.

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection was given away free in 2020 as part of which Sony initiative?

Play at Home was Sony's answer to the first COVID-19 lockdowns: from 15 April to 5 May 2020 anyone could claim the trilogy free, offered as thanks for staying indoors.

Which standalone expansion is bundled with Uncharted 4 in the 2022 remastered collection?

The Lost Legacy was planned as a short add-on to the fourth game, no bigger than an earlier bonus chapter. Its makers said they tried to hold it to that size, then gave in and shipped a full game of its own.

In 2022, the Uncharted series came to which platform for the first time?

Windows PC players first learned it was coming from a slide in a 2021 Sony investor presentation, months before any announcement. The port, built with the Chicago developer Iron Galaxy, arrived in October 2022.

What kind of game was the 2012 spin-off Uncharted: Fight for Fortune?

A turn-based card game, it gave the series' collectable treasures a use at last: a patch for the handheld adventure Golden Abyss turned the finds players had made there into stronger cards here.

The 2011 DC Comics Uncharted mini-series sent Drake after which treasure, lost since World War II?

The Amber Room, the amber-panelled palace chamber the Nazis carried off from Russia, turns up in the comic hidden at the centre of the Earth, stashed there by the explorer Richard Byrd.

In the 2011 novel Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth, which figure from Greek myth designed the mazes?

Daedalus built more than the Cretan maze in this story: a murdered archaeologist's notes send Drake and Sully from New York to buried labyrinths in Egypt and Greece, and on to a fourth in another land.

Who plays Nathan Drake in the 2022 Uncharted film?

Tom Holland plays Drake as a young bartender, and to prepare he worked shifts behind the bar of a London hotel, learning to mix cocktails, do trick pours and toss bottles.

Which Zombieland director made the 2022 Uncharted film after six others had come and gone?

Ruben Fleischer got the job in early 2020. All three other options had held it before him, and the last, Travis Knight, left over a scheduling clash with the lead actor that cost the film its 2020 release date.

The 2022 Uncharted film's treasure hunt is for gold lost on which explorer's expedition?

Magellan's two treasure ships turn up in the Philippines, where the villains try to airlift them whole by helicopter, so the final fight happens on a galleon in mid-air, and Drake fires its cannon at the other aircraft.

Antonio Banderas plays which villain in the 2022 Uncharted film?

Santiago Moncada, invented for the film, is heir to the family that financed the voyage. He has his own father killed to get at the money, then is murdered mid-flight by the mercenary he hired.

The 2022 Uncharted film premiered in which Spanish city, where much of its treasure hunt takes place?

Barcelona is also the film's main playground: a dead navigator's diary leads the hunters to a crypt hidden behind a church altar there, and it floods the moment they open its trapdoor.

The 2022 Uncharted film was the first feature from which Sony banner?

PlayStation Productions was created so Sony could turn its games into films and series itself, after close to a decade of failed attempts at this one. Its debut took more than $400 million worldwide.

Which actor, long championed by fans for the role, played Drake in a 2018 Uncharted fan film?

Nathan Fillion had been fans' pick for the Hollywood version for years. He teased a mystery project on social media, then put the 15-minute short, shot in five days, straight onto YouTube.

A 2023 indoor roller coaster themed on the 2022 Uncharted film opened where in Spain?

PortAventura Park tucked it into its Wild West area: the coaster runs in the dark inside a fake mountain, fires riders sideways at one point, and tells a new story about a hunt for Aztec gold.

Who plays Victor 'Sully' Sullivan in the 2022 Uncharted film?

Mark Wahlberg was first cast in 2010 as Drake himself, under the project's first director. When the film was reworked as an origin story about a young Drake, he came back as the mentor instead.

Which Japanese company published Uncharted: The Board Game in 2012?

Bandai, the Japanese toy maker, turned the series' allies into rivals: each player is a treasure hunter racing the others for victory points by searching ruins and fighting off enemies.

What is the title of the 2009 four-part Uncharted motion comic, a prequel to Drake's Fortune?

Eye of Indra is the amulet Drake agrees to find for a crime boss in Jakarta, because he needs money to fund his search for Sir Francis Drake's coffin, the hunt that opens the first game.

Which former Uncharted antagonist returns as Chloe's partner in the 2017 expansion?

Nadine Ross ran the private army chasing Drake in the fourth game, until she walked out and left her employer to die in a treasure ship's hold. By the expansion her own men have ousted her.

Which Hollywood star was filmed playing Uncharted 3 for a Japanese advertising campaign in 2011?

Harrison Ford was filmed playing the game and giving his verdict on its hero for the Japanese market, a neat loop given how much Drake owes to Indiana Jones.

In Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, the treasure trail leads to which pirate colony?

Libertalia is borrowed from pirate lore, a free colony supposedly founded in Madagascar in the late 1600s. The game's version is a con: its founders rob their own settlers and wall themselves in across the island.

In Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, what do Nate and Sully find rusting deep in the Amazon jungle?

A German U-boat, wedged in a river under a waterfall, holds a page of Sir Francis Drake's diary showing the treasure was shipped to a Pacific island. Nate trips a torpedo on his way out.