The first episode of The Last of Us already signaled a major shift within the mythology of games. As the adaptation showed, the functioning of those infected by the cordyceps fungus will work in a slightly different way than in games. And it’s not just an aesthetic issue, as many can imagine, but changes that greatly affect the dynamics of how Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) need to deal with this threat.
That’s because the HBO series was concerned with moving its infected away from the classic zombie even further. Although the different types of infected already have very different characteristics from the traditional undead, the series introduced new rules to make them even more unique – which includes things that do not exist in video games.
It is for this reason that we have a much more visually impactful contamination in the first episode. It’s more than that, The Last of Us will also introduce other infected behaviors that will surprise even the most veteran players.
the danger of the bite
The first of these changes is already present in the initial episode and differentiates the infected from The Last of Us of the classic zombie. What the series does is make it very clear why the bite is a transmission vector, bringing weight and visual appeal to it all.
As is already evident in the scene where Sarah (Nico Parker) finds her elderly neighbor killing the rest of her family, it is possible to see the fungus coming out of her mouth. The presence of these hyphae at the time of biting was never mentioned in the games, but it is something that is present throughout the entire series — there is even a much more impactful moment in relation to this in the second episode.
The explanation for this change is quite obvious. By just saying that contamination happens through the bite, there is no difference between cordyceps and any other zombie virus we’ve seen in other movies and series.
It is a subtle change, but one that gives this threat its own identity, making it much more disgusting and giving a form to this hitherto invisible danger.
moldy bodies
Another alteration made is in the behavior of the fungus inside its host’s body. In the opening scene of The Last of Usthe infectologist who predicts the end of the world caused by these organisms describes how these fungi can completely take over a body, explaining how some species manage to keep the individual alive while being controlled.
Basically, the rationale is that the fungus spreads within the body, feeding and spreading to every possible place while taking over basic functions that will allow it to spread to other individuals. And that creates moments that are also unique to the series.
The most obvious result of this is that the HBO series will treat the infected as people who are literally moldy inside. At the beginning of the second episode, for example, we see some corpses that are cut and the fungus simply comes out of the wound, showing how much the cordyceps has already taken over the whole organism.
It is an expansion of the very idea of the hyphae that we saw at the time of the bite. If the infection is so big that it’s coming out of the infected person’s mouth, just imagine how the rest of the body is doing. Not by chance, when the contamination lasts a long time, it ends up evolving and giving life to the clickers.
connected to each other
However, none of the changes HBO made regarding those infected in The Last of Us it’s as big as the idea that they’re all connected to each other — or nearly so. It’s something that doesn’t exist in games and that makes all the difference in terms of narrative and situations faced by the characters.
This is a detail that the series starts to present from its second episode, when Joel, Ellie and Tess (Anna Torv) start to explore the devastated streets of Boston. It is at this moment that they explain to the girl that cordyceps is not only in the infected, but that the contamination has affected the soil itself and that it is through this “great network” formed by the structure of the fungus that they communicate with each other, since they are connected to each other.
In practice, this means that a single infected can attract a much larger horde in a matter of seconds. As the cordyceps mycelium spreads throughout an area, it is as if everyone infected by the fungus in an area were part of one large organism. So when the characters run into one, the rest are informed of it and run to that place.
Although this has not yet been shown in the first episode, the series will explore this feature a few times in the future precisely to create greater tension in the heroes’ journey of survival. This makes Joel and Ellie have to run much more for their lives when they learn that there is an avalanche of infected running towards them.
At the same time, this idea of a large organism connecting many monsters at once is a good alternative to the absence of spores. In the games, there are specific locations where fungus contamination is so great that it spreads through the air, forcing survivors to wear masks to move around. However, HBO chose to remove this feature, either to prevent Pedro Pascal from going around masked up again or to avoid wasting time with further explanations.
