The Last of Us: All the Game Easter Eggs on the HBO Show

HBO’s The last of us is a way to revisit the iconic and popular video game of the same name – to enjoy the fact that it’s both unchanged and radically different. For die-hard fans of the game, the appeal of The last of us doesn’t necessarily lie in being taken aback by twists and turns of the story; Rather, it’s about seeing the franchise in a new light and picking out the little details that reference the original media.

There is a lot to see in that regard. Video games are known for their Easter Eggs, the small and obscure references hidden in-game as little surprises. And so it makes sense that HBO’s The last of us would do the same, making subtle (and not-so-subtle) nods to everyone The last of us– heads out there. The Last of Us Part 1 I felt like it wanted to be a movie or a show so badly, and now the TV show is changing that — in a way, at least.

Episode 1 Easter Eggs

Halican drops

Halican Drops is the band’s name on the t-shirt worn by Joel’s daughter Sarah (played by Nico Parker) at the start of the show – and the game. There’s no real significance to the band in the game, apart from a few posters, but the back of the t-shirt gives a glimpse of how the game will play out: each tour stop is another location Ellie and Joel will visit during their journey.

Aside from Sarah’s t-shirt, there are also Halican Drops stickers in shop windows – at least according to the pictures.

Driving in the back seat

When Joel, Tommy, and Sarah attempt to escape Austin during the chaos of the first outbreak, the show’s directors cleverly use the camera perspective to capitalize The last of us Feel like the video game. It’s all in third-person view, with the camera in the back seat. This is exactly how the game is shot from the truck – you’re still playing as Sarah at this point, and she’s in the back seat. Some of us noticed right away that it was easy feels like a video game during these recordings, a trick that is of much better use here than in other TV adaptations of games, such as gloriolethat tried out the first-person view – including player UI.

Sarah wakes up

In both the game and the TV show, Sarah wakes up in her bedroom in the middle of the night and sleepily stumbles around in the dark to see what’s going on. Both scenes offer a bit more context, but in different ways. In the video game you control Sarah and she looks around her house in the dark. You’re not on a set path, and you can pick up things around the house that provide a bit more context – one article is a newspaper detailing how local hospital admissions have increased by more than 300%. In the video game, an infected person bursts through the glass door, but Joel shoots him before they run outside and Tommy shows up just in time.

The last of us In the TV show, Sarah wakes up alone because Joel was trying to break Tommy out of jail. She ends up back at the neighbor’s house and brings her frightened dog home. Then she gets a very clear idea of what’s going on: The infected old lady is nibbling on her flatmates. This scene presents the horrors of the infected in a different way, giving viewers more context to show what’s going on.

Joel’s wrench

Tommy and Joel are pulling up in front of their neighbor’s house when Sarah is attacked by the infected old lady, but luckily Joel has an impressive weapon: a wrench. The heavy wrench appears to be forearm length and probably comes in handy when escaping the city, but Joel immediately drops it.

Why not save for later? Throw it in the pickup truck bed and you don’t even have to hold it. Our best guess is that this is a nod to the video game – in The Last of Us Part 1 and The Last of Us Part 2, receive a maximum of three hits with your everyday melee weapons. They break all the time, and that’s by design. The last of us is a survival game and you have to search for everything including bullets and, yes, wrenches to hit infected things.

marlene

Come in Marlene The last of us TV show looks familiar? That’s because the same actor plays both roles. Merle Dandridge plays Marlene in it The Last of Us Part 1 and The Last of Us Part 2reprises the role for a third time for the HBO adaptation.

When you get lost in the dark

the full sentence, If you get lost in the dark, look into the lightShe appears several times on the show and is taped up throughout the games. The phrase is graffiti on walls across Boston (and likely elsewhere), a symbol and motto for the revolutionary group of fireflies — the people fighting the oppressive military in the nation’s quarantine zones. Marlene is one of them, and an important one at that: she is the leader of the Boston faction and the person who puts Ellie in the care of Joel and Tess.

Curtis and the Viper 2

Curtis and the Viper 2 is the film in which Sarah is picked up by the neighbor The last of uspulled from a shelf next to people like Pink panther and murder ball. Unlike these two Curtis and the Viper 2 is not a real film, but an important one nonetheless. people who played The Last of Us Part 2 will tearfully remind me of that – it was addressed in the second game as a cheesy 80s movie, but one that would mean a lot to the two viewers.

“The Long and Winding Road”

As Ellie and Joel wait for Tess to search for an escape from the Boston Quarantine Zone, Ellie picks up the #1 Music Hits book and flips through it. One page is marked with a note – the radio code for Joel and Tess’ smuggling operation. The page it opens to is easy to miss, but it could be a nod to the franchise – The Long and Winding Road by The Beatles. This could be a reference to the long, winding road that will take Ellie and Joel across the United States, or perhaps the long, winding road it’s been since one The last of us The film adaptation was announced in 2014.

Bigwig’s daughter

In the same scene where Joel and Ellie discuss the radio code, Joel begins to question Ellie about her own life – why Marlene and the Fireflies go to so much trouble to smuggle her out of Boston. No one yet knows Ellie’s true condition – that she is immune – and she has vowed to keep it a secret. Joel asks if Ellie is a “bigwig’s daughter” or something, and Ellie replies it is “something like that”. Those few lines are straight from the game, but in those scenes, Tess is talking to Ellie as they escape the Zone.

Escape from the quarantine zone

Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and Tess (Anna Torv) crouch behind a derelict car in a still from The Last of Us

Ellie, Joel and Tess’ escape from the Boston quarantine zone has a few shots that have strong nods to the game – the overgrown world is dark and gnarly with cars and buses to crawl under and through. But there is one scene that particularly stood out for its resemblance to an iconic plane The Last of Us Part 1: Chapter 3, “The Outskirts”. The trio crawl through tunnels and debris, dodging searchlights and flashlights from the military guarding the quarantine zone wall – points in the game where it’s important to play the game as stealthily as possible. Visually, the show cleverly mimics that feeling.