The Last of Us: All the game Easter eggs in the HBO show

HBO’s The Last of Us is a method to revisit the iconic and beloved video game of the similar identify — to revel in the methods it’s each unchanged and fully completely different. For devoted followers of the game, the attraction of The Last of Us shouldn’t be essentially in being stunned by twists and turns of the story; relatively, it’s to see the franchise in a brand new mild, choosing out the little particulars that time again to the unique media.

There’s loads to see in that regard. Video video games are identified for his or her Easter eggs, the small and obscure references hidden as little surprises in the game. And so it is smart that HBO’s The Last of Us would do the similar, to make refined (and never so refined) nods to all the The Last of Us-heads on the market. The Last of Us Part 1 felt prefer it so badly wished to be a film or show, and now the TV show is switching that up — at the least in a technique.

Episode 2

Giraffe plush

There’s a unclean, run-down giraffe stuffed animal underneath a automotive’s tire as Ellie, Joel, and Tess escape by Boston. Anyone who has performed the game will know instantly what this references: an iconic, touching second that comes late in the first game, seemingly one of the most talked-about scenes in the game.

Ellie can’t swim

When Ellie, Tess, and Joel enter the resort in Boston, they’ve acquired to trudge by some cloudy water. It’s the place show viewers study that Ellie can’t swim — possibly not an enormous deal in the show, however that truth is important in making the video games’ environmental puzzles work. Ellie can’t swim in the first game, both — so to cross water, the participant has to resolve environmental puzzles to get her by, normally by discovering a hidden floating pallet.

Locked doorways

Like the floating pallets, locked doorways in the video game serve to set gamers up for environmental puzzles. You can’t go straight by the door, and as an alternative must discover a new approach round. It’s in the game a lot that the show’s re-creation seemingly elicited a groan from those that’ve performed it. I can’t overstate what number of occasions I’ve seen the animation for Joel lifting Ellie over a wall or right into a window to go unlock a door.

The Boston museum

The Last of Us Part 1’s Boston escape takes gamers by the Freedom Museum of Boston, and the show has a reasonably dang good re-creation of it. It’s seemingly drawing inspiration from the real-life Bostonian Society Museum. The museum itself is inside a colonial or colonial-style house, and the quarters are quaint. There’s tons of busts of previous males to knock over, and in the darkish, it’s a creepy venue to lurk round — is that shadowed head a clicker or a statue? (Probably a statue, until it’s clicking.)

Health kits

Characters in a TV show don’t have to heal themselves, however gamers of the game shall be extraordinarily aware of the act of placing collectively well being kits with discovered alcohol and rags. But there are nods to this in the show — Joel provides Ellie a rag to cowl her chunk wound, and he tapes up Tess’ harm foot utilizing duct tape, one other important useful resource in the game.

Tess’ goodbye

Tess doesn’t final lengthy in The Last of Us Part 1, and that’s the similar for the show — she lasts two episodes. But the approach she goes is completely different from the game. In each cases, she’s been bitten and will get left behind to carry off an oncoming horde. In the game, she’s holding off people which might be coming after the group, conserving them busy sufficient to offer Joel and Ellie a head begin for escape. But in the show, it’s a bunch of contaminated which might be coming their approach; she stops them from going after Ellie and Joel by blowing the complete place up after getting kissed (???) by a zombie.

Episode 1 Easter eggs

Halican Drops

Photo: Shane Harvey/HBO

Halican Drops is the identify of the band on the T-shirt that Joel’s daughter Sarah (performed by Nico Parker) is sporting at the starting of the show — and the game. There’s no actual significance for the band in the game, apart from a couple of posters, however the again of the T-shirt does foreshadow how the game performs out: Each tour cease is one other location that Ellie and Joel will go to all through their journey.

Aside from Sarah’s T-shirt, there are Halican Drops stickers in home windows, too — at the least in line with set footage.

Back-seat driving

When Joel, Tommy, and Sarah try to flee Austin, Texas, throughout the chaos of the preliminary outbreak, the show’s administrators make intelligent use of digicam angles to make The Last of Us really feel like the video game. It’s all in the third-person view, with the digicam in the again seat. This is strictly how the game is shot from the truck — you’re nonetheless taking part in as Sarah at that time, and she or he’s in the again seat. Several of us famous immediately that it simply feels like a video game throughout these pictures, a trick that’s of a lot better use right here than in different TV variations of video games, like Halo, which tried the first-person view — together with participant UI.

Sarah waking up

Sarah wakes up in her bed room in the center of the evening in each the game and the TV show, stumbling round sleepily in the darkish to see what’s occurring. Both scenes present a little bit extra context, however in alternative ways. In the video game, you management Sarah, and she or he’s trying by her home in the darkish. You’re not on a set path, and you may choose up issues in the home, which offer some clues — one merchandise is a newspaper saying that admittance to native hospitals is up by greater than 300%. In the video game, an contaminated particular person comes busting by the glass door, however Joel shoots him, earlier than they run exterior and Tommy exhibits up, proper on time.

The Last of Us TV show has Sarah waking up, alone, as a result of Joel went to bail Tommy out of jail. She finally ends up again at the neighbor’s home, bringing their scared canine house. That’s when she will get a really clear glimpse of what’s occurring: The contaminated previous girl is munching on her housemates. This scene units up the horrors of the contaminated in a distinct approach, giving some extra context to show viewers what’s occurring.

But there’s additionally a small, touching reference to the game’s waking up scene, that includes the birthday card Sarah acquired for Joel — it’s one of the issues you’ll be able to choose up and examine throughout this scene from the game. The card itself is on Sarah’s desk in a shot from the show, spotted by former Naughty Dog developer Alexandria Neonakis, the one that designed the card in the game.

Joel’s wrench

Tommy and Joel pull as much as their neighbor’s home simply as Sarah is getting attacked by the contaminated previous girl, however fortunately Joel has a formidable weapon: a wrench. The heavy wrench seems to be of forearm’s size and doubtless fairly helpful whereas they’re escaping the metropolis, however Joel drops it immediately.

Why not put it aside for later use? Toss it into the again of the pickup truck and also you don’t even have to carry it. Our greatest guess is that this can be a nod to the video game — in The Last of Us Part 1 and The Last of Us Part 2, you get max three hits in your on a regular basis melee weapons. They break all the time, and that’s by design. The Last of Us is a game about survival, and you need to scavenge for every part, together with bullets and, sure, wrenches for hitting contaminated issues.

Marlene

Photo: Liane Hentscher/HBO

Does Marlene in The Last of Us TV show sound acquainted? That’s as a result of the similar actor performs each roles. Merle Dandridge performs Marlene in The Last of Us Part 1 and The Last of Us Part 2, taking the position on a 3rd time for the HBO adaptation.

When you’re misplaced in the darkness

Photo: Liane Hentscher/HBO

The full phrase, When you’re misplaced in the darkness, look to the mild, seems a number of occasions in the show, and it’s plastered throughout the video games. The phrase is graffiti on partitions all through Boston (and sure elsewhere), an emblem and motto for the revolutionary group the Fireflies — the people who find themselves preventing the oppressive army in the nation’s quarantine zones. Marlene’s one of them, and an vital one at that: She’s the chief of the Boston faction, and the one that places Ellie in Joel and Tess’ care.

Curtis and the Viper 2

Curtis and the Viper 2 is the film that Sarah picks up from the neighbor’s home in The Last of Us, pulled from a shelf alongside the likes of Pink Panther and Murderball. Unlike these two, Curtis and the Viper 2 isn’t an actual film, however it’s nonetheless an vital one. People who’ve performed The Last of Us Part 2 will bear in mind it tearfully — it’s introduced up in the second game as a tacky ’80s film, however one which was going to imply quite a bit to the two folks watching it.

“The Long and Winding Road”

When Ellie and Joel are ready for Tess to scout for the escape from the Boston quarantine zone, Ellie picks up the ebook of No. 1 music hits and flips by it. There’s one web page marked off with a chunk of paper — the radio code for Joel and Tess’ smuggling operation. The web page it opens to is straightforward to overlook, however could also be a nod to the franchise — The Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road.” This might be reference to the lengthy, winding highway that can take Ellie and Joel throughout the United States, or possibly the lengthy and winding highway it’s been since a The Last of Us film adaptation was introduced in 2014.

Bigwig’s daughter

In the similar scene the place Joel and Ellie are discussing the radio code, Joel begins to query Ellie on her personal life — why Marlene and the Fireflies are going by a lot hassle to smuggle her out of Boston. No one is aware of but of Ellie’s true situation — that she’s immune — and she or he’s sworn to maintain it a secret. Joel asks if Ellie is a “bigwig’s daughter” or one thing, and Ellie responds that it’s “something like that.” These few strains are pulled straight from the game, however in these scenes it’s Tess speaking to Ellie once they’re escaping the zone.

There are additionally different cases of dialogue straight from the show, like when Sarah tells Joel she acquired the cash for his birthday current — the mounted watch — by promoting “hardcore drugs.”

Escaping the quarantine zone

Photo: Liane Hentscher/HBO

Ellie, Joel, and Tess’ escape from the Boston quarantine zone has a couple of pictures which might be heavy references to the game — the overgrown world is darkish and gnarled up with vehicles and buses to crawl underneath and thru. But there’s one scene in explicit that stood out for its similarities to an iconic stage in The Last of Us Part 1: Chapter 3, “The Outskirts.” Crawling by tunnels and particles, the trio has to dodge spotlights and flashlights from the army guarding the quarantine zone wall — spots in the game the place it’s important to play the game as stealthily as potential. Visually, the show does a intelligent job of mimicking that feeling.