The Last of Us was never a story about the undead, so why are so many people still wondering where all the zombies are?
If HBO’s adaptation of 2013’s hit PlayStation game The Last of Us has seen mostly widespread acclaim thus far, one ‘criticism’ that continues to follow it comes in the form of complaints that it doesn’t feature enough zombies.
But there are more than a few issues with this criticism.
For starters, The Last of Us is not a zombie story.Infected… with facts!
It might seem like splitting hairs, but it’s worth pointing out that the infected of The Last of Us have never actually been zombies at all.
The game’s creator and show co-runner Neil Druckmann has himself said as much.
You might have noticed that The Last of Us doesn’t refer to the monsters of its world as being zombies, and for good reason. Strictly speaking, ‘zombie’ is a designation given to a reanimated corpse, as the once dead become the undead instead. Creature feature classics such as Night of the Living Dead and Return of the Living Dead have made this clear in the past, not to mention the famous example of Michael Jackson’s Thriller showing zombies literally rising out of the grave.
The infected of The Last of Us, meanwhile, are just that – infected. The world-ending pandemic of the series finds the cordyceps fungus infecting the brains of those exposed to it, subsequently corrupting the minds of its hosts.
The various forms of the infected in The Last of Us also support a distinction from zombies. Clickers, for example, are explained as appearing and behaving differently to other infected due to a longer period of exposure to the cordyceps infection, demonstrating progression characteristics typical of an infection.
