The Last Of Us Unknown Facts (2023): What if the threat to humanity wasn’t a flu-like virus but a parasitic fungus that used rising temperatures to change and switch hosts, from ants to people? This is the scary premise of The Last of Us, another post-apocalyptic prestige drama in a TV world full of “game over” situations, which is understandable. Its zombie skeleton makes it look a lot like The Walking Dead, but its beating heart is more like Station Eleven, which came out last year. Both movies have a surprising steady and meditative pace.

The Last Of Us Unknown Facts (2023)

The music for the show was written by Gustavo Santaolalla, who wrote the music for the video games The Last of Us (2013) and The Last of Us: Part II (2020).
Merle Dandridge played Marlene again, which was a role she had in the games.
In the games, spores in the air help the fungus spread. They were switched out for tendrils for the show. Neil Druckmann said that he made this choice early on in the show’s development because he wanted to make the world seem more real and the fungus scarier.
Four of the actors from the games will be in the TV show: Merle Dandridge plays Marlene, which is the role she played in the video games. She was the first person to be announced for the role. Ashley Johnson played Ellie Williams in both games. In the series, she will play a new character named Anna. Troy Baker, who played Joel Miller in both games, will play James, a minor character in the first game and part of the group of survivors led by David. In the games, Jeffrey Pierce played Joel’s brother Tommy. In the show, he plays a new character named Perry.
The producers of The Mandalorian let Pedro Pascal work on the show. He is said to make $600,000 per episode, which makes him one of the highest-paid TV stars in the U.S.
The Last of Us (2013) has won over 200 Game of the Year awards, making it one of the most acclaimed and successful games of all time. Seven years later, its sequel, The Last of Us: Part II (2020), would break that record.
The teaser uses the song “Alone and Forsaken” by Hank Williams. This is the same song that plays when Joel and Ellie are driving into Pittsburgh in the first game.
It is the first time that a video game has inspired an HBO show.
Annie Wersching, who was the voice of Tess in the Naughty Dog video game, died of an unknown type of cancer the day before S1 E3 aired. She was 45 years old.
Before they were cast, the actors who played the Clickers were big fans of the game and worked hard to move as the Clickers did in the game.
Pedro Pascal, who wasn’t a gamer, watched his nephew play the first part of the first game because he didn’t know how to play it himself. He thought Joel was “so impressive,” but he didn’t want to copy the games too closely, so he decided to “create a healthy distance” and let the showrunners decide the characters.
When her casting was announced, Bella Ramsey vowed not to look at social media comments. She said it was her first time seeing a lot of negative comments and that she was “aware of all of it.”
After the second season of The Mandalorian came out, Pedro Pascal was free to start a new show. He got several offers from big networks, but he chose The Last of Us because he wanted to work with co-creator Craig Mazin. Neil Druckmann and Mazin had been thinking about Pascal for a long time. In less than 24 hours, he said yes.
Even though Annie Wersching, who did Tess’s voice and motion capture, died earlier that day, Naughty Dog dedicated the release of the third episode to her.
The male and female Clicker voices in the video game were done by the same two actors who make the Clicker sound.
On March 6, 2014, Sony Pictures announced that Screen Gems would be putting out a movie version of The Last of Us (2013), which was written by Neil Druckmann and produced by Sam Raimi. By January 2015, Druckmann had finished the second draught of the script and done a read-through with some actors. After that, not much was done, and in April 2016, Druckmann said that the film was in “development hell.” In November 2016, Raimi said that the movie was on hold because Sony and Druckmann had a fight. Maisie Williams was excited about playing Ellie and talked with Druckmann and Raimi about getting the part. Sony Pictures Television and HBO restarted work on a TV series based on the book in March 2020.
Bill was first supposed to be played by Con O’Neill, but he had to drop out because of scheduling problems. Nick Offerman took his place.
It looks like Troy Baker is very happy that Pedro Pascal is playing Joel. In the same way, Ashley Johnson loves Bella Ramsey as Ellie, and a different interview says that she was the one who chose her out of more than 100 girls who auditioned.
In the first season, Pedro Pascal, who is 46, plays Joel, who is 56.
On the TV show Game of Thrones, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey both had roles (2011). Ramsay played Lyanna Mormont, and Pascal played Oberyn Martell.
Matthew McConaughey, Mahershala Ali, Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, Jon Bernthal, Gerard Butler, Josh Brolin, Jon Hamm, David Harbour, Keanu Reeves, Chris Hemsworth, Harrison Ford, Tom Hardy, and Joel Edgerton were all considered for the role of Joel Miller before Pedro Pascal was chosen.
In the beginning, John Hannah says that there are no cures or vaccines for fungus and that it is not even possible to make them. While this isn’t true for the cure one, it is very true for vaccines, according to Professor Neal Ar Gow, who co-edited the Oxford Textbook of Medical Mycology (the study of fungi). He says that this is partly because the immune response to fungi is very complicated. His claim that global warming can cause deadly fungi to spread around the world is true for Batrachochytrium, which has killed off many species of amphibians since the 1970s, sometimes to the point of extinction. Fungi do connect their hosts with underground networks that are used to move nutrients.
Craig Mazin agreed to help make an adaptation of The Last of Us because he thought it had “the best story ever told in a video game.”
Neil Druckmann says that the show’s story about Anna was taken from a DLC that was supposed to come out but never did.
Before Bella Ramsey was chosen, the role of Ellie Williams was considered by Dafne Keen, Kaitlyn Dever, Maisie Williams, Thomasin McKenzie, Eliza Scanlen, Izabela Vidovic, Bailee Madison, Nico Parker, Elle Fanning, Julia Butters, and Mckenna Grace.
The first season was almost entirely shot in Alberta, Canada, which stood in for different places in the US before and after the end of the world (as well as a Cold Open scene in Jakarta, Indonesia).
14-year-old Bella Ramsey, who is now 19, plays Ellie. When she was first cast, she was 17 years old, and she really does look 14. Also, the fact that the show’s next season will be based on the second game, in which Ellie is 19 years old, makes sense.
Bella Ramsey said that the scripts for the first two episodes were “the best she’d ever read.”
Around 105 actors were considered for the role of Ellie. The producers were looking for someone who could play a character who was resourceful, weird, and could be violent. After seeing Bella Ramsey’s audition tape, they talked to the showrunners of Game of Thrones, where Ramsey had a recurring role, David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, who told them she was good. Ramsey got the part less than a month after trying it out. She found out she had been cast while working on a different project. She said that the show felt like “the biggest thing” she had ever done, and she was relieved to hear that Pedro Pascal would be performing with her the whole time. Ramsey knew about the game before her audition, but she was told not to play it so that she wouldn’t copy the original performance. Instead, she was told to watch some gameplay on YouTube to “get a feel for it.” Even after filming the series, she still hadn’t played the game. Ramsey wanted her performance to be like the games, but not exactly the same as them.
The show became popular on social media in Indonesia because the first scene of the second episode took place in Jakarta, which seemed to be the centre of the pandemic. It also helps that one of Indonesia’s most famous actresses, Christine Hakim, was in the scene, and that the scene as a whole did a good job of showing Indonesia in the early 2000s.
Bella Ramsey told the people who didn’t like LGBTQIA+ stories, “I know people will think what they want to think. They’ll have to learn to live with it. If you don’t want to watch the show because it has a gay storyline or a trans character, it’s your fault, and you’re missing out on something.”
Pedro Pascal made Joel’s voice based on how he spoke when he was growing up in San Antonio, Texas. He toned down the Southern accent used in the game to make Joel’s voice sound more natural.
The people who are fighting against FEDRA are called “Fireflies.” During the revolt against King Charles III, who was also known as Charles the Fat, in France in the 9th century, one of the main groups of resistance was called the fireflies. The painted a picture of a firefly to mark important areas like safehouses, they chose a firefly as a symbol because it was something people would not typically associate with war or a militia group, something that could both stand out and be easily ignored by someone not knowing what to look for. Most likely for the same reason that the militia group in The Last of Us chose it.
Carrie-Anne Moss was considered for the role of Tess before Anna Torv was cast.
Before they got too old for the long-running project, Maisie Williams and Kaitlyn Dever were both up for the role of Ellie.
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey formed a friendship so strong, that the duo and their fans refer to them as a real-life Joel and Ellie.
HBO Max stated that Brazil alone was responsible for over 50% of all online engagement and posts on social media related to the series. It helps that the Brazilian voice actors who did the dubs for the games are back for this series.
Even though the Infected, who are sometimes called “clickers” and “bloaters,” look like zombies, fans and crew would be wrong to call them that. In an interview with The Credits, the show’s cinematographer, Eben Bolter, said, “We weren’t allowed to say the Z word on set.” “It seemed like a forbidden word. They were called the Infected. We weren’t a show about zombies.” Of course, there’s tension building and jump scares, but the show’s really about our characters; The Infected are an obstacle they have to deal with.” Since the first episode of the show, many people who didn’t play the original video game have called it a “zombie show.” Ben Shapiro was made fun of when he said that the third episode, which was a fan favourite, had “no zombies” and “no real threat.” “The Last of Us is not a lot of things,” Bolter said. “It’s not a typical zombie movie, and it’s not shot in Hollywood with perfect close-ups of everyone. It’s a world of organic cinematic naturalism, and that’s something I could feel.”
Chris Pine, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and Chris Pratt were considered for the role of Tommy Miller before Gabriel Luna was cast.
After Prospect and The Mandalorian, The Last of Us marks the third science fiction drama to cast Pedro Pascal as the older half of a Badass and Child Duo.
To play Ellie, Bella Ramsey cut off fifteen inches of her hair.
HBO first said that Con O’Neill would play Bill, but Nick Offerman got the part instead because O’Neill’s schedule didn’t work.
Tendrils were shown in concept art but weren’t in the final game. However, they could have been used as a secondary way for the infected to spread after almost all of their human parts were gone. Tendrils, not airborne spores, are the main way the fungus spreads in the show. They come out of the mouths of the infected during the first ‘Runner’ phase.
In the TV show, Jeffrey Pierce plays Perry. In The Last of Us video games, he played Joel’s brother Tommy.
During the Triple Frontier press tour, Pedro Pascal said that he would like to be in a movie about a video game. Starring in a show about video games, especially one where the scripts for the first two episodes “stunned” him, brings him one step closer to his goal.
Neil Druckmann and Troy Baker were both interested in Josh Brolin playing Joel before the movie was officially scrapped. Ashley Johnson wanted Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams to play Ellie, and she said she would have been very happy to. Hugh Jackman was also said to be in the running for the part of Joel. The movie Logan, in which Jackman was a star, came out around the same time that The Last of Us was officially cancelled in late 2016 or early 2017.
Most viewers know that the show has a lot in common with the real-life COVID-19 pandemic. Ellie’s line, “their shithole government failed to stop a pandemic,” is a good example of how many people feel about how different governments have dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic, which is still going on in some parts of the world in 2023.
Like Joel Miller, Pedro Pascal grew up in Texas. Gabriel Luna, who played Tommy, was born and raised in Texas, as was Troy Baker, who played Joel in the first movie.
Even though Joel, Tommy, and Sarah were all white in the video game, the TV show casts Chilean-American Pedro Pascal, Mexican-American Gabriel Luna, and Zimbabwean-English Nico Parker to play them. In the game, Maria is also shown to be white, but in the show, she is played by an African-American actress, Rutina Wesley.
China Before Storm Reid was chosen, Anne McClain was a possible choice for the role of Riley.
Ninety percent of the time, Bella Ramsey wore a chest binder to help her stay more focused on set. “Which is probably not good for you,” she said. “Please tie safely, Like.”
Any recipe that calls for flour needs to be baked at 300-350 degrees F. The Cordyceps can live at human body temperature but also in temperatures that would kill most other living things on Earth. This means that the Cordyceps could live on even if the bodies are burned. Worse, the heat could let the spores spread on the wind, making it more likely that other people nearby or even people miles away could get sick. Now think about how the most common way to get rid of bodies during a pandemic of this size would be to pile them up and burn them.
Jensen Ackles said that he really wanted to play the lead role of Joel, but Pedro Pascal got it instead.
Johan Renck, who worked with creator Craig Mazin on Chernobyl, was announced as the director and executive producer of the pilot episode in June 2020. However, Renck dropped out of the project in November 2020 because of scheduling problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, Kantemir Balagov took over as director. Balagov had been interested in making an adaptation of the game for years and was set to direct a few of the first episodes. Craig Mazin’s “Scriptnotes” podcasts from January 28, April 6, and May 3, 2021, are one source for this information. In October 2022, Balagov said that he had left “The Last of Us” a year earlier because of creative differences and that his work would not be used in the show. However, after the pilot aired, he said his work was about 40% of the first 40 minutes.
Season 3 of Against the Mandalorian. Pedro Pascal plays an anti-heroic surrogate father in both shows. Episodes 7–9 of The Last of Us will air during the first three weeks of The Mandalorian Season 3. It also doesn’t help that HBO made Pascal put TLoU ahead of The Mandalorian, so he missed a part of the main filming for Mando S3 that hasn’t been revealed.
The Last of Us (2013) is a video game made by Naughty Dog and Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Based on Druckmann’s original game scenario, Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann wrote the episodes.
Bella Ramsey said that Craig Mazin always tells her one of the most famous lines from “Game of Thrones” repeatedly. Ramsey and her co-star Pedro Pascal got together on HBO Max’s YouTube channel to determine if certain lines came from “The Last of Us” or other shows. Some of the lines were from the parts Ramsey played as Lyanna Mormont and Pascal played as Oberyn Martell on “Game of Thrones.” Ramsey was able to claim one of those lines as her own: “We’re not a big house, but we’re a proud one.” Pascal, for his part, knew right away that it was one of his lines from “Game of Thrones” when he played Oberyn Martell. “Tis a great and beautiful world,” was his line. Most of us are born, grow up, and die in the same spot, so we never get to see any of it. I don’t want to be like most of us,” from the second season’s sixth episode.
Before the Season 1 episode of “House of the Dragon (2022)” and the Season 3 episode of “His Dark Materials (2019),” both HBO shows, the trailer for the new season was shown.
Koichi Yamadera is back as Joel Miller, Megumi Han is back as Ellie Williams, Hiroki Takahashi is back as Tommy Miller, and Atsuko Tanaka is back as Tess. They are all from the Japanese dub of the game. The same is true for the European Spanish dub, where every character, even the small ones, plays the same role again. The same is true for the Latin American Spanish dub, as Adrián Wowczuk, Mariela Centurión, Jimena Vallejos, Martn Gopar, Lucas Medina, and Mara Campanelli all reprise their roles as Joel Miller, Ellie Williams, Tess, Tommy Miller, Bill, and Marlene from the first game’s dub.
Maisie Williams was also thought of for the role of Ellie, but she and the second choice, Kaitlyn Dever, were both thought to be too old.
This is the third time Pedro Pascal has played a morally ambiguous single father on HBO, after Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones and Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman 1984. Joel, unlike Oberyn and Maxwell, lives longer than his children. In the main story, he takes care of a surrogate child instead.
In 2022, HBO Max put out a trailer for a show that would come out in 2023. This includes the first episode of this show, the first episode of Season 2 of “Perry Mason (2020),” the first episode of Season 4 of “Succession (2018),” and the first episode of “The Idol.”
When Ellie and Joel talk in Joel’s apartment, Ellie says, “Wake me up before you go go,” which is a reference to the famous 1984 song by Wham! with the same name.
People have said that too many people are using flashlights because 20 years from now, cell phone batteries won’t work anymore. But in 2022, there are solar batteries that only need the sun to charge, and people can use flashlights that charge themselves when shaken several times.
Fans called the showrunners “pretentious” after it came out that they had “banned” the word “zombie” on set.
Pedro Pascal was in London when he got a call from the movie’s producers telling him that he had been cast as Joel Miller. He didn’t remember the phone call at all the next day because he had taken an Ambien before getting the call. He was tired from a busy day and didn’t think anyone would call so late.
People who watched the first episode closely noticed that the Miller family didn’t eat any food with flour on the day of the outbreak. Joel, who is on the high-protein/low-carb Atkins Diet, did this somewhat on purpose, but the rest of the family didn’t think about it. In later years, they came to believe that the fungus spread through infected flour. At the beginning of the second episode, one of the first people to get sick from the fungus was a flour and grain factory worker, which added to this theory. In the third episode, Joel said that the best guess for how the outbreak started is that the fungus got into a key food ingredient that hit shelves worldwide simultaneously. This episode almost proved the theory.
In the first season, the first game in the series is covered.
HBO originally ordered 10 episodes, but ended up combining the first two. The first one was supposed to end with a cut from Joel burning an infected boy’s body with no fear to Ellie in chains. After HBO realised that this would end the first episode on a too dark and vague note, especially since Sarah had died just a few minutes earlier, they moved up the first time Joel and Ellie talked to each other to make up for it.
Ashley Johnson, who did Ellie’s voice in the first games, plays her mother in the show.
Years before he got the part, Nico Parker watched videos of the game. She wanted to “stay away from the game version” and give her own take on the character. The idea of playing Sarah’s death scared her because of how important it was in the game. Pascal and Parker, with whom he did his first scenes, got along right away.
In an interview at the premiere of The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Pedro Pascal said that he already knew what happens to Joel in The Last of Us Part II, but he didn’t know if the TV show would keep it.

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GSR

My name is Gourav Singh, and some of my favorite hobbies include watching movies and television series, playing sports, and listening to music. For my blog posts, I prefer to write about themes that are lighthearted and fun to read and write about. To keep things light and entertaining, I'll include funny observations on life or a summary of the most recent entertainment news. Check out my blog if you're in the mood for some light entertainment.