He was buried on the hill top at Heidelberg, overlooking that green valley which, eight years later, Streeton and Roberts and the painters of the Heidelberg School would depict in summer colours.
A third generation Australian—then a rarity—he had often expressed in football and cricket a version of the national feeling which these artists were to express in paint, and he had been quietly proud that the football game he did so much to shape was often called 'the national game'.

— Blainey, A Game of Our Own
Australia's first celebrity sportsman, Wills began to fade from public consciousness within his own lifetime.
His dark reputation and suicide, and his links to convictism and frontier violence—sources of cultural cringe—have been posited as reasons for his descent into obscurity.
Academic Barry Judd called him "a ghost inhabiting the margins of written history".
Coinciding with a revival of interest in Australia's colonial past, Wills has risen "almost to a vogue", and is seen as a forerunner of today's self-destructive star athletes, some of those qualities that alienated his peers "being less shocking to a generation that likes its heroes flawed".
The subject of scholarly, literary and artistic works, his story has been likened to Ned Kelly's as a powerful and quintessentially Australian narrative, and in 2006, The Bulletin named him as one of the 100 most influential Australians.
After several attempts by different authors since the 1930s, a comprehensive biography was published in 2008, Greg de Moore's Tom Wills: First Wild Man of Australian Sport.

Wills' unmarked gravesite was restored in 1980 with a headstone erected by the MCC using public funds.
He was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1989 and became an inaugural member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996.
The Tom Wills Room in the MCG's Great Southern Stand serves as a venue for corporate functions.
A statue outside the MCG, sculpted by Louis Laumen and erected in 2001, depicts Wills umpiring the famous 1858 football match between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College.
The AFL commemorated the 150th anniversary of the match by staging the Tom Wills Round during the 2008 AFL Season.
The two schools played in a curtain raiser at the MCG ahead of the round opener between Melbourne and Geelong.
That same year, Victoria's busiest freeway interchange, the Monash–EastLink interchange in Dandenong North, was named the Tom Wills Interchange.
Tom Wills Oval, inaugurated in 2013 at Sydney Olympic Park, serves as the training base for the AFL's Greater Western Sydney Giants.
He was buried on the hill top at Heidelberg, overlooking that green valley which, eight years later, Streeton and Roberts and the painters of the Heidelberg School would depict in summer colours. A third generation Australian—then a rarity—he had often expressed in football and cricket a version of the national feeling which these artists were to express in paint, and he had been quietly proud that the football game he did so much to shape was often called 'the national game'.
— Blainey, A Game of Our Own
Australia's first celebrity sportsman, Wills began to fade from public consciousness within his own lifetime. His dark reputation and suicide, and his links to convictism and frontier violence—sources of cultural cringe—have been posited as reasons for his descent into obscurity. Academic Barry Judd called him "a ghost inhabiting the margins of written history". Coinciding with a revival of interest in Australia's colonial past, Wills has risen "almost to a vogue", and is seen as a forerunner of today's self-destructive star athletes, some of those qualities that alienated his peers "being less shocking to a generation that likes its heroes flawed". The subject of scholarly, literary and artistic works, his story has been likened to Ned Kelly's as a powerful and quintessentially Australian narrative, and in 2006, The Bulletin named him as one of the 100 most influential Australians. After several attempts by different authors since the 1930s, a comprehensive biography was published in 2008, Greg de Moore's Tom Wills: First Wild Man of Australian Sport.
Wills' unmarked gravesite was restored in 1980 with a headstone erected by the MCC using public funds. He was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1989 and became an inaugural member of the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996. The Tom Wills Room in the MCG's Great Southern Stand serves as a venue for corporate functions. A statue outside the MCG, sculpted by Louis Laumen and erected in 2001, depicts Wills umpiring the famous 1858 football match between Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College. The AFL commemorated the 150th anniversary of the match by staging the Tom Wills Round during the 2008 AFL Season. The two schools played in a curtain raiser at the MCG ahead of the round opener between Melbourne and Geelong. That same year, Victoria's busiest freeway interchange, the Monash–EastLink interchange in Dandenong North, was named the Tom Wills Interchange. Tom Wills Oval, inaugurated in 2013 at Sydney Olympic Park, serves as the training base for the AFL's Greater Western Sydney Giants.
Tom Wills