The bullet that the game later reveals Sully survived — the fake-out death that Uncharted uses to establish its stakes before revealing they are more generous than they appeared. Nate's reaction in the moment is the measure of what Sully means to him: not a mentor in the abstract but the specific person whose continued existence shapes the shape of Nate's life. The frying pan of the title is the island. The fire is everything that follows the shot.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune establishes the series' fundamental contract with the player in this sequence — the game will make you feel the weight of loss and then, often, give the weight back. What it does not return is the feeling of having felt it. The seemingly is doing all the work.