Headscratchers / The Last of Us (2023)

Why no armor?

• Why don't they build old fashioned plate armor? The creatures can't bite through armor. It's a plot-hole in most long-term zombie stories. Old fashioned plate armor would make people basically invulnerable to zombies.
  • Armor is effective, but not invincible, and all forms of it come with various limitations. First is manufacture; imagine having to find or train enough armorers AND scrounging enough steel or iron to forge with only FEDRA's limited resources. Second, plate armor is heavy. In warmer weather it's basically wearing an oven, slowing you down further, and the Infected would simply Zerg Rush armored opponents and bury them alive. Finally, with these particular "zombies," bites are merely the quickest way to spread Cordyceps. The tendrils can easily find chinks in armor and creep about inside till they find the nearest convenient orifice.
    • If you have decent models to work from, plate armour isn’t that heavy. It’s designed to be fought in all day by men who needed their agility to dodge swinging metal, after all. Plus, they’re surrounded by all the metal they could ever need. All those cars for a start, plus tons and tons and tons of rebar. High quality stuff, too. Or they could just melt it down, extrude it through a spool and make chainmail. FEDRA might not think it’s effective, but there might be surviving groups out in the Wild who had a recreationist or two in their number who gave them the idea.
    • And if you were willing to stand still and let said tendrils scope out your armor, you might be in trouble. Eventually. But ignore that. You don't need plate mail because none of the infected are wielding weapons. Human beings suck at inflicting damage on one another barehanded. It's why we invented weapons in the first place. Zombies (of any flavor) whose primary method of spreading infection is biting are a minimal threat. Even a dog bite suit will stop a human bite with ease. Hell, thick leather will do the job. Add a helmet and good gloves and congratulations you are now effectively bite-proof. Granted, armor won't stop someone from being physically overwhelmed by dozens of infected and, as Joel so colorfully put it, getting torn apart, and all armor is hot to wear. But effective armor against the infected would not be difficult to craft out of almost whatever materials are at hand. Personally, although this troper feels that it's an induced oversight to maintain tension that would otherwise be completely nullified, it could be explained in-universe as yet another case of FEDRA running with the Idiot Ball for all it's worth; their focus appears to be on "bullets and pills, pills and bullets." They're not innovating or even pushing to make advances; they're maintaining the status quo. Could be a Hanlon's Razor situation, could be simply clinging to power, but either way FEDRA shows amazing, borderline godlike incompetence when it comes to countering the actual threat and this is yet another example of it.

Tess there are grenades right there...

• Why was Tess fumbling with a lighter during her Last Stand when she could have sent everything up at once with one of the many grenades at her feet?
  • She wanted to start a fire to create a lasting obstacle/distraction. Those kind of grenades do not combust, and are sometimes even used to put out fires.

Late Fungi signals

• In "Infected", Joel shoots a surviving infected from a firefight at the Firefly meet-up spot. The far-stretching tendrils of fungus beneath the dead guy triggers the pile of infected outside to come to the building. But how come the earlier firefight between the fireflies at that outpost didn't activate them? The guy Joel shot didn't move much from where he was; the whole patch he was on was grass/fungus. He just crawled forward a bit and raised his head to yell. If he got shot before Joel got him for real on that patch, shouldn't the infected pile have run at the building before?
  • It's possible that when the infected Firefly guys were killed in the shootout, the rest of the infected in the fungi hive mind didn't feel the need to stay at the meet-up spot since there were no viable hosts that they could pass the fungi to anymore (unlike typical zombies in other works; the victims must be alive for the infected to pass their fungi to), so they moved to other locations (the firefight most likely took place quite some time before Joel's group arrives in the city, since they would've heard the gunfire on their travel there). When Joel's group arrives and that one infected guy (who was probably lying dormant waiting for new victims) is killed by him, it triggers the horde elsewhere to run back to the building since there are now new viable victims at the spot.
  • We don't necessarily know when or where the first Firefly at the outpost to get infected was bitten—they could've been bitten by an isolated infected somewhere else in the city, not a member of the larger horde. Furthermore, it seems like the tendrils connecting an infected to the larger mycelium network take a while to grow, as is the case with real life fungi. The tendrils coming from the infected corpse in the state building could've grown enough over a couple of days between the shootout and Joel and co.'s arrival to connect to the greater network.

Driving the infected underground

• In "Endure and Survive", Henry explains to Joel that the Kansas City QZ FEDRA somehow managed to drive the infected underground and trapped them there about 15 years ago. How did they even accomplish this? Sure, they had high-grade military equipment but it's not like the infected would just go quietly underground, and their only instinct is to infect any other people they come across. By the time they are unleashed during the standoff between Kathleen's revolutionaries and Henry's group, there are dozens and most likely hundreds of them pouring out from underground. How did FEDRA manage to lure that large number of infected underground in the first place?
  • If you recall earlier in the episode Joel mentions people attempted to make safe havens in underground bunkers. We can probably infer there were more than the one bunker Joel and crew happened to stumble upon. It's likely FEDRA drove a much smaller number of infected into the tunnels who promptly began infecting everyone who may have taken settler down there. In fact, it makes sense the little girl Clicker we see later is likely from the abandoned classroom. Which is horrifying to think about because it also means a lot more children were infected.
  • Forcing undesirables to bait infected underground is entirely within character for how KC FEDRA was described.

Upright wine glasses

• As they pass through the ruins of Boston the see multiple tables with wine glasses still standing upright on them. Even after the bombing of the city and the ensuing 20 years of snowstorms, thunderstorms, shambling fungus people and scavengers. How? One, sure... but many?
  • Maybe people put them up out of boredom.

Taking the scenic route?

• Math time: Assuming Kansas City and Jackson Hole are in roughly the same locations as they are in real life, there's about 1,050 miles between them. Let's also assume that Joel and Ellie walk for about eight hours a day, at about three miles per hour (the average walking speed of an adult). The trip should only take about a month and a half, not three months. Even factoring in bad weather and Infected-related delays would push it to two months at most. Did they get really lost in the forest, or what happened?
  • "A day" being the operative term - bad weather, detours, scavenging or just plain old stopping to rest (especially because show!Joel's a little older) would stretch that timetable by a decent margin.
  • Not only is Joel fifty-six years old with a bum knee, but Ellie is 14 years old and has very small legs. Eight hours a day is a LOT of walking for those two.
  • True, but it's not like they have anything else to do during the day—they're in the wilderness, and they wouldn't want to stay in one place too long and risk Infected or raiders coming upon them. Even if we knock it down to two miles an hour (still a decently brisk walking pace), three months only works if they take the weekends off for some reason.
    • They sure do. Searching for food and water, securing safe locations to spend the nights, taking it slow or roundabout paths to not stay too much in the open and attract unwanted attention from said raiders and infected. They aren't marching in a straight path with a supply line supporting them.
  • Maybe they DID get lost. It's the apocalypse, lots of landmarks have changed, and it's doubtful Joel has ever come out this far any time recently. Hell, the first scene after the timeskip is them getting directions.
  • Joel isn't heading for Jackson specifically, he has no idea Tommy is there. He's heading for a ham radio tower that Tommy previously broadcasted from, which could be rather remote from the city proper since Maria would not have wanted anyone transmitting from within.

Infected animals

• If the cordyceps mutated to be able to withstand the heat of the human body, why haven't they infected other animals? It's never mentioned in scenes where, for instance, Bill keeps and eats his own livestock or when David and James steal Ellie's deer. Do they check all of their meat with the infection machines before eating them like they do humans before letting them into the Q.Z.s? Why haven't we seen any infected animals attacking Joel and Ellie on their journey?
  • Most animals have a higher body temperature than humans. Chickens are about 106 degrees Fahrenheit, cows are 101F, and deer are about 104F. Humans, meanwhile, are 98 degrees. Cordyceps could conceivably make that jump eventually since it's already done it once, but being able to survive in humans is not enough to be able to survive in the rest of the animal kingdom.

How much did Marlene tell the Fireflies about Ellie?

• The Fireflies who knocked out Joel in the Season 1 finale were clearly aware of who Ellie was, since they brought her to the hospital, so why didn't they know about Joel? Did Marlene not tell them "Hey, there's gonna be a guy traveling with the girl you're looking for. Don't attack him, he's working for me"?
  • I don't necessarily think they were aware of who either were but rather thought to take both into custody and ask questions later. Hence why the gas both of them instead of simply holding them at gunpoint.

The source of Ellie's immunity

• The first season finale reveals that Ellie's mother Anna got infected seconds before giving birth to her, and that the fungus was passed through to her via the umbilical cord. Since Ellie has technically been infected since birth, wouldn't that mean the FEDRA devices would have picked the fungal strain in her blood when tested? She was raised in the FEDRA military base, she would have presumably been tested with the other kids on a regular basis.
  • It may be the cordyceps in her brain delivered by the umbilical chord doesn't show up in Ellie's bloodstream. She becomes asymptomatic when she's bitten because of her immunity to the virus but isn't INFECTED until then.
  • It may be that FEDRA didn't think it necessary to test a newborn with no visible bite marks and no infected tendencies (i.e., trying to bite people (at least no more than normal for a newborn/toddler, anyways). After that they never had reason to test Ellie because she never got bit until the Mall, from where she never returned to FEDRA- the Fireflies took her into custody (and did keep her isolated until they were sure she was immune). Why perform a test when you have no reason to? There's also probably regular medical checkups and (unfortunately) no private showers; any bite marks would be seen immediately (and the victim would promptly be tested and if positive, "euthanized.")
  • The test is too easy and too casual for that to be likely. Even random low-ranking guards have the scanners and use them at the first opportunity. There would be no reason not to incorporate scans into basic medical tests, and likely any checkpoints in the city as well. Ellie had to have been scanned multiple times in her life, which means she had to have shown up as negative until she got bitten.

The locations of the Quarantine Zones

• Why are the Q Zs all located in major metropolitan areas? Episode 3 revealed that the U.S. Government (and FEDRA, as their last surviving remnant) determined that the major metropolitan areas were the most highly infected areas, and went around to small towns and rounded up who they could (and of those killed any who couldn't fit into a QZ). But why take them into a city- where presumably there are a lot more infected- rather than just securing and fortifying one of said small towns- rather like Bill did his town except with the USA's/FEDRA's resources- where at most at the start there might be one or two infected? In addition then they're a long long way away from any infection hotspots, which increases their security in and of itself, plus gives them expansion room into surrounding rural areas for farmland and building additional houses.
  • The finale shows that the US Army initially tried setting up field hospitals near actual hospitals. When the orders changed from trying to treat the sick to "hold what you've got," they presumably just fortified those initial positions and then shortly thereafter they lost any unified command. It's entirely possible that some FEDRA somewhere tried to relocate and set up a remote QZ arrangement, but we don't see much of the country in the games or the show, and the FEDRA we do see is barely clinging to power.