At Lakehill Seattle Hospital, while Ellie is looking for Nora, she holds a guard named Whitney at knifepoint, who is seen during the game playing a PlayStation Vita. The game she is playing is Hotline Miami, as indicated by the second floor of Chapter 7: Neighbors on the Vita's screen and the song "Hydrogen" playing in the background.

In a 2020 Eurogamer interview with the game's co-director Neil Druckmann, he revealed that they were originally going to use a previous Naughty Dog game in that scene, until they thought: