The hunt for the last one begins easter eggs: with the beginning of The Last of Us, there series exclusively on Sky and streamed only on NOW from the January 16, absolutely simultaneously with HBO extensionthe search for the differences between video game and tv series. And we guarantee you won’t be disappointed with it.
In the TV adaptation of the hit video game by Naughty Dog, brought to the small screen by Craig Mazin And Neil Druckmann, both fans and viewers who have never tried the videogame experience of the title will find a story that closely resembles the source material, albeit detached when necessary. And in each episode, there will be Easter eggs, 1:1 references to the work, subtle hints or other deeply curated curiosities. Ready to discover them and survive?
The story of The Last of Us would need no introduction, but for the many who have never held a pad to direct Joel or Ellie along the arduous road of survival among the last glimmers of the human race, let’s make a brief summary: the world has been brought to its knees by a parasitic fungus, which worse than a virus, has infected and infested 60% of the global population. Among what remains of human beings, we find a smuggler, Joel, grappling with a rare bargaining chip, Ellie, a girl who will find herself traveling with him across the United States.
If the video game of The Last of Us has given its players the opportunity to try, fight, reason and live as the last part (good or bad?) of a humanity that desperately tries to cling inside its characters, in the series there is ample space for further deepening to this experience, enriched by all the facets that only the seventh art can offer: Pedro Pascal, as Joel, and Bella Ramsey in Ellie’s, as already anticipated in our review, there are two credible survivors, with their own weaknesses and strengths. But they won’t be the only great protagonists and they find space in this first season unpublished stories or enriched parts that give depth and value to the whole series, ready to compete for the title of “best adaptation from a video game“. However, what changes compared to the video game and what the writers have inserted in a visible and less clear way in this title full of lights and shadows?
WARNING: The following contains spoilers about The Last of Usthe series
The Last of Useaster egg and differences between tv series and video game
The Last of Us Episode 1: easter egg and differences between TV series and video game
From the first minutes of the series of The Last of Us let’s point out a few slight differences: the TV series and the video game open up to the world differently from each other, the HBO adaptation features a completely original scene, a television interview of 1968.
A scientist, played by John Hannah, predicts the apocalyptic future, emphasizing the danger of a mushroom compared to a virus. This scene lacks compared to the video game, even if it faithfully follows the original plot in broad terms. The scene also serves to anticipate and at the same time enrich the sequence of suspense theme song, which plays on several metaphors and interpretations, the most obvious being the realistic “stick” growth of the Cordycepssimilar to skyscrapersthe more subtle it is in fact is how the parasite spreads on what it seems like USA seen from above. Finally, in the midst of what remains (literally) of the human race, our last protagonists, placed in front of the light.
If this opening winks a bit according to some to other iconic opening acronyms, such as that of Game of Thrones, always from HBO, what makes the difference is also the music: in the series we find, in fact, the same composer of the soundtrack of the game, Gustavo Santaolallawho strokes his guitar once again to gently guide us towards the end of the world.
The first episode of the Last of Us of HBO spends about more than a third of its time following SarahJoel’s daughter, played by Nico Parker. This first half hour shows many background before his death, essential to maintain fidelity to the original work. Each element that deepens the figure of Sarah and her relationship with her father, serve even more in the series to enrich Joel with further thickness and further validate her personality that will be slowly broken down by Ellie episode after episode.
But in the first chapter of the season of The Last of Us there are also parts hinted at in the game, others we’ve never seen and even new content: the getaway in the car, the dialogues between Marlene (played by Merle Dandridgewho also voiced the character in the original game) and Ellie, the writing on the walls left by Lightsthe quote a Riley recall the original game, adding ideas that we will see in the course of the series, as well as the easter egg of sarah t-shirt, also present in the game. The girl is wearing a t-shirt with gliders Halican Dropsa band that “coincidentally” went on a tour whose stops are the same ones Ellie and Joel will visit during their trip.
Apart from these elements faithful to the title published by Sony Interactive Entertainmentthe series adds some new features, such as the at your place of the beginning of the pandemic, slipped from 2003 in the series compared to 2013 in the game, the origins of theJoel’s watch given to her by her daughter, the film by Curtis and the Viper 2 which connects to The Last of Us Part 2, the radio code and the music that concludes the episode (which from Joel’s gaze suggests a meaning for the use of 80’s songs) and finally the wrench which Joel uses to save his daughter. Why did he leave behind such an effective weapon? Best guess is this is a nod to the video game: in The Last of Us Part 1 And The Last of Us Part 2 the use of melee weapons is very limited and they break all the time. Since it is a game about survival, the focus has rightly been placed on using multiple tools to target the infected and aggressive humans. Keeping a wrench in that situation would perhaps have been useful for some time, but it would also have been of little relevance to the original work.
The Last of Us Episode 2: easter egg and differences between TV series and video game
In this new installment of differences and easter eggs between the two media, we delve into what we found in the second episode of the series of The Last of Us, from a completely new scene that rewrites an important element of the original plot up to Clickers.
Fans of the video game will have noticed how much, once again, the adaptation created by Craig Mazin And Neil Druckmann faithfully reflects the source material. During the episode, we find Joel, Tess and Ellie as they make their way through Boston. Just like in the introduction of the premiere, the second episode also includes a completely new sequence, which is missing in the game. At the beginning we find ourselves, in fact, a Jakarta, in Indonesia, in 2003: here a professor of mycology, Ibu Ratna (Christine Hakim ), is interrupted during her lunch and is escorted to a government building by some soldiers. Here she examines some samples of ophiocordyceps, which he discovers is from a human. Finding the absurdity of the fact (the Cordyceps does not really infect humans), he has the opportunity to examine the body of a woman and thus verifies in spite of himself how the parasitic fungus has branched out inside the person, bitten by a “infected“.
The victim worked on a farm where flour was produced. Before being killed by the police, the woman attacked other colleagues and many of them were not caught. This horrified the mycologist: it means that the spread of the fungus is incalculable and now irrecoverable. Craig Mazin stated in the course of an interview that this, for him, is the scariest moment of the whole series, this is because we really depend enormously on rice, wheat and corn as food sources. If any of these become infected with a fungal pathogen, it could be devastating.
The game kept its focus on Joel and Ellie’s perspectives, so references to the origins of the pandemic are limited to notes and old newspapers scattered around. Little is known about the causes of the pandemic, which appears to have started in some agricultural cultures of the South America, while in the series the second episode would reconnect the epicenter of the epidemic in Southeast Asia. This important difference would be motivated by some important theories, the first regarding the fact that the highest number of subspecies of Cordyceps is actually located in Asia, and the other “chance” is given by the fact that the largest mill in the world is located in Jakarta. In addition to the fact that some fans could not help but notice that a certain epidemic has always originated from Asia in the recent period.
But the differences between game and TV series are not limited to this huge twist: in the title of Naughty Dog, the contagion from Cordyceps it happened through spores, while in the series the infection spreads through this oral exchangea bite or, as we will find out later, another type of contact. Mazin had already declared this modification of the original plot, justifying it for the purposes of a greater rendering on the television medium:
As well as avoiding that the characters always wore gas masks in the series, we found this image that an artist had created on an infected and there were mushrooms in his mouth. We discussed these tendrils coming out of the mouth and asked, “Why are infected people violent? If the aim is to spread the fungus, why do they have to be violent?” We have come to the conclusion that this is not the case. They are not willing. They’re trying to resist, but what if you can’t? So we came up with this nightmarish thought [il metodo di diffusione tramite anche un bacio, NdR]. It’s creepy and it’s violent. I think it’s very primal in the way it invades your own body. To use one word: abuse.
During the second episode, instead of the soldiers of the FEDRA who rush into the building, as happened in the game, Tess dies due to a horde of Clickers, who have sensed their presence in the Capitol since they are “connected” to each other. The introduction of the link between parasitic fungi is also new, as well as the scene “of kiss“, which introduces and confirms the theory on the diffusion method.
Among the sprinkling of changes that only veterans of The Last of Us will note, it’s worth pointing out that much of the journey through Boston is set at night in the game. In the second episode, everything takes place during the day instead. Finally, it is impossible not to notice the easter egg of Ellie who can’t swim: in the series, Ellie mentions that she can’t swim before Tess’s death, while in the games, it occurs after and is related to a funny moment of gameplay, in which Joel was forced to take a wooden palette to ferry the girl across deeper bodies of water. This was most likely done because of the settings: in a TV series it is more effective to have more space, just as we have seen so far, with a whole series of different connections regarding the external environment, from wild vegetation to flooded ruins.
