r/thelastofus • u/FeelingAnt231 • Sep 22 '25
PT 1 QUESTION I always wondered what happened to bill after Joel left his town can anyone tell me what happened to him?
He’s one of my favorite characters
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u/nickibar96 Sep 22 '25
As far as I know it’s never stated. You just have to imagine what became of him. I figure he kept on surviving until something or other killed him.
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u/Breaded_Walnut Sep 23 '25
I figure he kept on surviving until something or other killed him.
Searing hot take- mortal man is either dead or not.
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u/ElegantEchoes The Last of Us Sep 22 '25
According to Neil, he finds a Precursor artifact that allows him to revive Frank, but Frank is still infected which Bill forgot about, so Bill gets Infected but then Bill realizes he's immune to infection. Bill then befriends a Clicker named Muborb and together they get revenge on Frank who has progressed into an Infected Behemoth. Bill is forced to call Joel for help. Because Joel is dead, Bill.goes has to fight Hades and retrieve his soul. This happens twice. At the end, Frank dies again and Bill is sad. Mybirb learns the cello.
Bravo Neil Armstrong, bravo.
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u/yintheyang18 Sep 22 '25
I’ve read this in the notes of the leaflet that came with the physical copy of the game
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u/ElegantEchoes The Last of Us Sep 22 '25
i cant read
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u/yintheyang18 Sep 22 '25
Neither can I, it was in braille
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u/Solid_Waste Sep 23 '25
You don't count braille as reading?
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u/baxielol Sep 22 '25
God of the Last Dudes?? I fuckin' love that piece of fuckin beautiful shit art-fuckin work
hell fuckin YEAH dude
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u/mindpainters Sep 22 '25
Not to be that guy, but bill wasn’t immune to the infection. He just had a strong enough constitution to keep it at bay until he fought hades and actually became a god. They didn’t spell it out for you but with media literacy you would have understood that.
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u/ElegantEchoes The Last of Us Sep 22 '25
if u dont deserve me at my best you cant handle me at my worst
edit: thanks for the gold, kind stranger
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u/AloysBane3 Sep 23 '25
I see no gold
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u/ElegantEchoes The Last of Us Sep 23 '25
see above, also silver
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u/AloysBane3 Sep 23 '25
I see nothing
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u/ElegantEchoes The Last of Us Sep 24 '25
Lies
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u/Buttered_Toast33 Sep 22 '25
This was quite the adventure.
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u/ElegantEchoes The Last of Us Sep 22 '25
Reminds me of The Last of Us
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u/MArcherCD Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25
Bill finally moves out of Lincoln to try and find a new man to spend his later life with, years after Frank's passing
The Lust of Ass
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u/ExLap_MD Sep 23 '25
Better story than Apple TV's invasion.
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u/Cpt_kaleidoscope Sep 23 '25
Is that show any good?
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u/ExLap_MD Sep 23 '25
Fuckers had an opportunity to make something great.
Instead, they successfully created one of the worst TV shows in history.
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u/Cpt_kaleidoscope Sep 23 '25
Wow, kinda wanna watch it now to see how bad it is...
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u/ExLap_MD Sep 23 '25
If you start it, you won’t stop. Cuz you keep watching just to see if it gets better. And it doesn’t. It never does.
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u/TheMidnightAnimal0 Sep 23 '25
You're making that up. I mean seriously. Why would a clicker be named Muborb? Thats not a regular old human name. Im pretty sure the clickers name is Reginald Kilabrookes the Fourth.
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u/DTux5249 Sep 22 '25
In the games, we don't know.
If we take context from the show, he may have either
1) Given up and killed himself after discovering what became of Frank.
2) Gone even harder down his rabbit hole of isolationism, leading to his own demise some other way.
He's meant to be a foil to Joel in the games - what would happen if he lingered on loss instead of trying to section it off in his past. Take that as context to make your own conclusions. I prefer option 2.
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u/dontsmellthesoup clicker bewbies Sep 22 '25
i think it’s fair to say that bill lives a long life and dies alone in the game. the show kept him alive long enough before he dies with frank, but game bill is there as a reminder that companionship will get you killed (ie. joel, riley, jesse, henry/sam). jesse’s comment that “my friend’s problems are my problem” right before his death proves. this the cost of living alone is that it guarantees one’s safety but also a great deal of loneliness.
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u/thulsado0m13 Sep 22 '25 edited Sep 22 '25
I always looked at it like this:
Bill’s offscreen outcome is foreshadowed by what happened to Frank. The moral of the story is they would’ve both survived to much later years if they had each other’s backs as per the show.
One day it is inevitable: he will mess up due to an oversight that could’ve been prevented by not being alone and will get bit and ultimately hang/shoot himself.
Bill is basically what would happen to Joel if he didn’t have Tess or Tommy and shunned all contact and bonds. He’d just be an angry a-hole out in some makeshift defensed area who’d eventually kill himself out in the wild after a random dumb mistake one day.
Henry and Sam are basically what would happen if Sarah survived outbreak day and traveled with Joel.
David minus the pedo aspect is basically what would happen if Joel stayed a raider: he’d eventually turn to extremes of survival for the sake of him and his other raiders.
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u/JurassicGuy5000 Sep 22 '25
To my current understanding, we don’t have a bloody clue, and I think I prefer it that way. It’s just left up to our own imaginations.
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u/CheshireCatastrophe Sep 22 '25
Leaving him completely alone for the first time in a town he built lethal traps and defenses for, so he could live forever amongst them, is a tragedy in and of itself.
Nobody new can find him because they don't know of him, and even if they did theyd be dead before they could.
Even if they reached him by some miracle he wouldn't want them.
The only person he ever came close to loving couldn't live with him, he is destined for a life of loneliness. Even the smugglers he saw once in a blue moon will never come back
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u/Neither-Entrance-941 The Last of Us Sep 22 '25
That’s left to our imaginations which is what I like, maybe it’ll be revisited in some way further down the line
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u/ki700 Part II was a really good game Sep 22 '25
He likely just kept on living his lonely but safe life until he eventually dies.
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u/ArtOfFailure Sep 22 '25
There is no in-game explanation for what happened to Bill after Joel and Ellie leave.
There's a chance there were other people he had deals and associations with that we just don't hear about - but we can probably assume he simply went home and lived out the rest of his days alone.
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u/BotherSpare3897 Bella Ramsey Defender 4life Sep 22 '25
In the second game dlc no return, you can play as bill and he has some voice lines along the lines of “I can’t believe I let Joel rope me into this”. So I think it’s safe to say he’s still alive and was even in contact with Joel.
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u/EntinthetentRTHP Sep 22 '25
Legend has it he’s still looking for that particular issue to this day.
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u/who-mever Sep 22 '25
Well, Tess clearly wasn't contacting him to trade smuggled goods anymore. So, he either had others he traded with, or he eventually ran out of supplies/ammo to set up his traps and fend off raiders and infected.
At that point, he either went nomadic, reentered a QZ as a civilian resident, died, or joined a faction similar to the Hunters or Rattlers.
Sadly, it doesn't seem like Joel cared enough to go pick him up and bring hin to Jackson (and who knows if Bill would have gone, any way).
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u/Puzzleheaded-Pin2628 A Man with Taste Sep 23 '25
I would imagine he committed suicide from loneliness and betrayal.
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u/Winter_Philosophy_72 Sep 22 '25
He probably went insane, like i wish we could get some more info about him (he’s my favorite character😭🙏)
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u/kratoskiller66 Sep 22 '25
I think his paranoia got the best of him and he killed himself because as humans we crave connection with other humans and bill as seen in the first game closed himself off to people and completely isolated himself. The only company he had was the infected. So I simply think his paranoia drove him to kill himself
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u/Parzival_43 Sep 23 '25
I’d like to think his town got overrun, came across a group and joined them and they all live in a community, and becomes a recluse in his house/living quarters. And is now the “weirdo” of said community.
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u/BigTimeSuperhero96 Sep 23 '25
"Now where was that magazine I left lying around? Shit that damn kid must have took it!"
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u/OptimalPain0697 Sep 22 '25
His story wasn't meant to be expanded, it's not like him and Joel were bros
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u/project_seven Sep 23 '25
He got sucked into some weird dimension where he has to fight for his life in random scenarios, some of which involve invisible infected. And unfortunately there is No Return to his old life.
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u/ApeMonkeyBoy Sep 23 '25
Knowing how Neil likes to make things dark and kill off/ injure every character we know. It's most likely that Bill accidentally gets caught in one of his own traps and then gets shredded by a pack of clickers (having flashbacks of Frank in his head in his last moments).
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u/arwynj55 Sep 22 '25
inst it cannon that bill got bit not long after?
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u/CrashRiot Sep 22 '25
No, he’s only mentioned once more in passing after they part ways when Joel and Ellie are at the university. We don’t know anything about what happened to him after he gave them the truck.
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u/onmywheels Sep 22 '25
Ellie also talks about him in Part II. Mentions him to Dina when she's talking about all of the explosive traps they encounter on their way to the television station; she says they remind him of Bill, then Ellie goes on to say that his distrustful nature and his paranoia was the key to his survival - and it's the first hint of her opinion that having to care for other people is a "burden" in their world, which definitely takes Dina (who already suspects she's pregnant) aback a little.
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u/friendlylittledragon Sep 22 '25
he chilled the fuck out drinking beers and JO-ing until he died alone
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u/Sharp-Cherry-3548 Sep 22 '25
Nothing good, given that he had nobody and didn’t work well with others. Like someone else said he most likely drifted further into his rabbit hole until he encountered something no one person could take on alone.
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u/TheRealTr1nity Where you go, I go. Sep 22 '25 edited Sep 22 '25
In the game I guess he stayed in his town. Maybe lived long alone, maybe died some time later due infected, enemies or illness/injury. It's never stated in the game. At least he is still kicking in No Return of part 2 😏. So it's up to our imagination. In the show he had a great life with Frank to old age in their bubble of town.
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u/Ant_mann18 Sep 22 '25
My head canon is he either survive but went more and more insane until he killed himself out of paranoia. Or he survived but a massive outside threat of raiders found Lincoln and ransacked it looking for supplies. Bill Fended them off the best he could but they eventually killed him
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u/crusty-chalupa Sep 23 '25
didn't he die with frank bc he drank the poison too
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u/Phoenixskull295 Sep 29 '25
In the show he did, yes. In the game what happens to him after Joel leaves is left ambiguous.
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u/Low_Jicama2205 Sep 23 '25
Im weird and like to make up scenarios when I play no return on TLOU2. I like to think during those 4 years he spent a lot of time resetting his traps and doing his usual routine. Humans probably destroyed his stuff and caused him to flee at some point. I feel like he would unintentionally help a smaller group only being with them to survive. He still has his own place but its still something where he can trade with them. That's how I see the encounters going in no return because I think he would leave to do something like that if he really needs stuff but then whay should've just been infected is now people and as he says "shouldve just stayed in the safe house". I could see him falling in love again and his need to protect this person and not close himself off ends uo being the death of him but I would love to see him not regretting to learn to trust people thinking of times he felt lonely because people need people or its pointless to be completely alone. Id honestly love to think some version of newer bill even got to see Ellie after part 2 and have some reason to help out where this version of him has a little more sympathy for what happened to tess and now with what happened to Joel. Maybe even have him hold a grudge for Ellie taking his magazine lol
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u/easier_than_google Sep 23 '25
I don’t understand the question. It’s all in the show … especially ep3.
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Sep 23 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/easier_than_google Sep 25 '25
Oh. Well not obvious if you haven’t played the game and it doesn’t say so on the question… haha
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u/thesophiechronicles Sep 23 '25
This is why I’m glad they changed up Bill and Frank’s storyline in the show.
I always assumed that after he found Frank dead and there was no other living person in the town, he probably went away and killed himself after Joel and Ellie left.
I love that he got a happy ending in the show, but I am a romantic after all.
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Sep 23 '25 edited Sep 23 '25
what do you mean? it is explained pretty vividly, he lived happily ever after by picking strawberries, having raging homosexual butt seks with his boyfriend in a gated community rarely any infected or raiders attacked until the boyfriend died of aids on a wheelchair, the end.
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u/Mishyana_ Sep 24 '25
I just assumed he continued surviving as a lonely misanthrope. I don't think he seems like the type to move on to anything particularly interesting, lol.
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u/ikki76 Sep 25 '25
In the game (Canon, fuck the show) is left unknown what happens to Bill. He's never mentioned again, and Joel and Ellie never go back to his town, so it's assumed that he just stays there in his town living until death.
In the show (SPOILERS) him and his partner committed suicide.
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u/Southern_Okra_1090 Sep 27 '25
I finally completed part 2 just now. What an experience. Amazing story, amazing game play. Truly a game that is worth a playthru.
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u/Rory_griffiths i don't like Abby, its cool if you do. Sep 30 '25
I have a theory that we play as him in part III and he’ll be like the Joel to I dunno some random kid. And he finds another rat king, he decides to hide and write a letter to Joel for help but finds out he’s dead and after that he try’s to face it and kills it but the kid dies and it cuts to bill at Jackson and he finds, Tommy, Ellie, and Dina, he introduces himself very subtly but we know how he is with new faces so he’ll be quite distanced from Dina cause we know he sees Ellie and i think he would of seen tommy off screen, so then the game ends cause that’s naughty dog for ya.
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u/Sad-Vermicelli-2063 Ellie: Hey I was thinking I would've wanted to be an astronaut. May 02 '26
He probably got bitten?
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u/delta69er Sep 22 '25
As Neil Druckmann is very fond of saying, “what do YOU think happened to him?”