Trivia / The Last of Us (2023)

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• Ability over Appearance: Bella Ramsey looks nothing like Ellie from the game, but the critical praise they got for the series proved they have the acting chops.
• Acting in the Dark: Both Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey have admitted that they never actually played the game (in Pascal's case, he apparently tried but it was too difficult for him) and so while they are aware of the game's basic plot — for example, Pascal has confirmed that he knows what happens to Joel in the second game — they haven't seen much of Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson's performances and are effectively starting from scratch. The showrunners also revealed that they instructed the two of them to not play the game after they were cast so that they wouldn't find themselves copying anything they saw, a sentiment that Troy Baker agreed with.
• Actor-Inspired Element: In the podcast accompanying the third episode, Mazin and Druckmann revealed that Bill's opening line "Not today, you New World Order jack-booted fucks" was originally only in the stage directions as indicating what he was thinking. Nick Offerman asked to say it out loud, which they agreed to.
• Actor-Shared Background: Pedro Pascal grew up in Texas, like Joel Miller. Tommy's actor, Gabriel Luna, was born and raised in Texas (as was Troy Baker, Joel's original actor).
• Approval of God:
  • Troy Baker has nothing but positive things to say about the show; he loves Pedro Pascal as Joel, even saying that he now wishes he could go back and do some things differently in his own performance, thinks that Sam being deaf was an "amazing" choice, loves Ellie's signature costume, and called the third episode "one of the most beautiful episodes [of] any show I've ever seen".
  • Likewise, Ashley Johnson loves Bella Ramsey as Ellie, and according to another interview, had even been the one to pick them over more than 100 girls auditioning.
  • Tommy Miller's game actor, Jeffrey Pierce, praised Gabriel Luna's portrayal of the character, and has regularly complimented the show in general.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Pedro Pascal expressed interest during the Triple Frontier press tour at appearing in a video game movie. Starring in a video game-based show, especially one that positively "stunned" him just from the first two episodes' scripts, brings him one step closer to fulfilling that desire.
  • Bella Ramsey praised the first two episodes' scripts as "the best [they] had ever read".
  • Nick Offerman nearly didn't sign up due to scheduling conflicts, until his wife read the script for the third episode and pushed him into taking a second look and accepting the part. He has since called it the "greatest script" he had ever been handed.
• Better Export for You: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment's American branch sells the Complete First Season Blu-ray and UltraHD sets separately, to the inconvenience of UHD collectors who'd also want to watch the show and/or the bonus features on a 1080p system. The German branch sells both sets in one case.
• Blooper:
  • In a wide shot of the bridge that Joel and Ellie cross in Episode 6, a camera crew can be seen in the bottom left corner. This mistake would later get removed.
  • When Ellie goes to greet a foal in Jackson in the same episode, one can briefly spot the hand of a crew member making sure the foal's head is in place. This mistake would also be removed.
• California Doubling: The first season was filmed almost entirely within Alberta, Canada, standing in for various locations across the US both before and after the apocalypse (as well as a Cold Open scene in Jakarta, Indonesia). (This is actually cited by the creators as why the second city is Kansas City and not the comparatively rugged, hilly Pittsburgh.) Notably, the episode "Left Behind" shows a Thai Express restaurant in the mall - Thai Express is a Canadian chain whose first American location wasn't opened until 2017.
• Cast the Expert:
  • The actors who played the Clickers were avid fans of the game before they were cast, and worked hard to emulate the in-game movements as much as possible.
  • The actress playing the little girl Clicker in "Endure and Survive", Skye Cowton, is a gymnast/contortionist, which meant she could pull off some truly unsettling moves while chasing Ellie through a car.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Reportedly, Kaitlyn Dever auditioned for the role of Ellie, but the producers deemed her too old for the role, and later cast her as Abby instead.
• Dawson Casting: 14-year-old Ellie is played by 19-year-old Bella Ramsey, although they were 17 when first cast.
• Dear Negative Reader: Bella Ramsey addressed the LGBTQIA+ stories' haters by saying: "I know people will think what they want to think. They will have to get used to it. If you don’t want to watch the show because it has a gay storyline, because it has a trans character, it’s your fault and you’re missing out on something."
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: Sam is deaf and his actor, Keivonn Woodward, is also deaf. In one behind the scenes episode, the cast and crew also learned ASL so they could communicate with Keivonn; the ASL expert hired for the episode gave lessons to whomever had the time to sit down with him, and almost everyone who could did so.
• Dueling Works: Against The Mandalorian Season 3. Both science-fiction shows star Pedro Pascal as an anti-heroic surrogate father, and The Last of Us episodes #7-9 aired during the same weeks as The Mandalorian Chapters 17-19. It also doesn't help that HBO required Pascal to prioritize TLoU above The Mandalorian, resulting in him missing an undisclosed portion of principal photography for Mando S3.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Bella Ramsey cut off fifteen inches of their hair to play Ellie.
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • Both Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal have said they didn't need to do much acting during the Clicker encounter in episode 2. They were genuinely stunned and unnerved by the makeup and performer.
  • When Joel tearfully begs Tommy to deliver Ellie to the Fireflies for him, Pedro Pascal cried even when the camera cut away from him, ensuring genuinely concerned reactions from Gabriel Luna.
• Executive Meddling: HBO originally ordered 10 episodes, but ended up combining the first two. The first originally ended by cutting from Joel unflinchingly burning an infected boy's corpse, to Ellie in chains. After HBO realized this would end the premiere on too grim and vague a note, especially with Sarah's death occurring only slightly earlier, they moved up the earliest interactions between Joel and Ellie to offset it.
• Fake American:
  • British Bella Ramsey as Ellie Williams.
  • London-born Nico Parker as Texan Sarah Miller.
  • Australian Anna Torv as Detroit-born Tess Servopoulos.
  • Australian Murray Bartlett as the American Frank.
  • Canadian Lamar Johnson as the American Henry.
  • New Zealander Melanie Lynskey as Missourian Kathleen.
• Friendship on the Set: Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey formed one so strong that the duo and their fans refer to them as a real-life Joel and Ellie.
• In Memoriam: While not part of the episode itself, Naughty Dog dedicated the release of the third episode to Annie Wersching (Tess' voice and motion capture actor) who passed away earlier that day.
• Making Use of the Twin: Twins were used to play baby Ellie in the flashback scene in the last episode. One of the twins was not very cooperative, though.
• Never Work with Children or Animals: The popular "piano frog" in the second episode was supposed to be replaced by a fake frog that a (real) gull would eat on screen, but the gull would either not stay in shot or not eat the frog while a handler kept it in. So the final scene featured the frog only.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Nick Offerman, who is best known for his many comedic roles, gets an emotional turn here as Bill.
  • In Season 2, Kaitlyn Dever, who was known for playing sweet, adorable, pitiful girls and young women even in her darkest roles, takes up her first villainous role as the vengeful Abby Anderson.
• Playing with Character Type: Anti-heroic Joel marks Pedro Pascal's third time playing a morally-grey single father on HBO, after Game of Thrones anti-hero Oberyn Martell and Wonder Woman 1984 anti-villain Maxwell Lord. Unlike Oberyn and Maxwell, Joel outlives his offspring in the series premiere, then spends the remainder of the season protecting a surrogate daughter.
• Promoted Fanboy: The actors who portrayed the Clickers were big fans of the original game, which is why they were able to recreate the odd movements of the infected so well.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor:
  • Nonbinary actor Bella Ramsey plays Ellie Williams, who is a lesbian.
  • Gay actor Murray Bartlett played Frank, who became lovers with Bill.
• Reality Subtext: It's not lost on a majority of viewers that the show draws similar parallels to the real-life COVID-19 pandemic, with Ellie's "their shitty government failed to prevent a pandemic" line being reflective of many people's view of how various governments have handled the COVID-19 pandemic, which was still ongoing in 2023.
• Refitted for Sequel:
  • Tendrils were featured in Concept Art but not included in the final game, although as a secondary dispersal mechanism after almost every human part of the infected was gone. In the show, tendrils replace airborne spores as the fungus's main dispersal method and come out of the infected's mouths already during the first 'Runner' phase.
  • According to Neil Druckmann, Anna’s storyline from the show is lifted from a planned DLC that never came to fruition.
  • In an early draft for the game, Tess was an antagonist hunting Joel and Ellie in revenge for the death of her brother who died in the crossfire of a FEDRA shootout. In the show, Henry's backstory is altered so that Kathleen, a character unique to the show, spends episodes 4 and 5 hunting him and Sam for revenge after Henry caused her brother to be killed by FEDRA.
• Revival by Commercialization: Linda Ronstadt's "Long Long Time" went up by 4900% in Spotify streams thanks to its use in Episode 3.
• Role Reprise:
  • Merle Dandridge as Marlene.
  • Laura Bailey as one of the nurses in the hospital.
  • Did you think the Clickers sounded identical in the game? It's because the Clicker sound is made by the same two actors who did the male and female Clicker voices.
  • Returning from the game's Japanese dub are Kōichi Yamadera as Joel Miller, Megumi Han as Ellie Williams, Hiroki Takahashi as Tommy Miller and Atsuko Tanaka as Tess.
  • The same goes double for the European Spanish dub, as the entire cast, including minor characters, reprise their roles as well.
  • Ditto in the Latin American Spanish dub, as Adrián Wowczuk, Mariela Centurión, Jimena Vallejos, Martín Gopar, Lucas Medina and Mara Campanelli returns as Joel Miller, Ellie Williams, Tess, Tommy Miller, Bill and Marlene respectively from the dub of the first game.
  • In the Italian dub, Lorenzo Scattorin, Stefania De Peppe, Beatrice Caggiula and Davide Albano reprise their roles as Joel, Marlene, Tess and Henry from the games.
  • In the Brazilian Portuguese dub, Luiz Carlos Persy, Luiza Caspary, Miriam Ficher, Clécio Souto and Vic Brow all return as Joel, Ellie, Tess, Tommy and Sarah, respectively.
• Self-Adaptation: Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann wrote the episodes based on Druckmann’s original game scenario.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: You'd be forgiven for thinking that the pregnant woman running through the woods in the opening of "Look for the Light" is Ellie after a Time Skip, rather than her mother in a flashback. Bonus points for it being Ashley Johnson, the actress who played Ellie in the video games.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: The Pittsburgh portion of the story takes place in Kansas City instead, after the crew decided Calgary looks more like the latter than like Pittsburgh.
• Shrug of God: On the podcast after "Kin" was released, the showrunners acknowledged the theory that the girl seen staring at Ellie was Dina, her Love Interest from the second game and implied that it might be true, but they stopped short of actually confirming it.
• So My Kids Can Watch:
  • Christine Hakim, who played Ratna, was initially reluctant to film her scenes in Alberta in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic until her grandniece, who is a fan of the original game, helped convince her to take the role.
  • In his appearances in The Making of The Last of Us and The Graham Norton Show, Pedro Pascal openly admits that part of his acceptance of the role was his nephews being active fans of the game — and were already pressuring him to go for it even before he finished saying the title.
• Suppressed Mammaries: Bella Ramsey mentioned that they spent most of the first season binding their chest, and further admitted it wasn't all that healthy. They advised people to bind with safe methods.
• Throw It In!:
  • In "When You’re Lost In The Dark", Pedro Pascal improvised the "Tommy, help me!" line.
  • In "Kin," Pascal improvised Joel's lament that even when he forgets what exactly happens in his anxious dreams, he wakes up knowing that he lost something.
• Typecasting: 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.
• Underage Casting: The first season has 46-year old Pedro Pascal portray a 56-year old Joel.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Before the movie was officially shelved, both Neil Druckmann and Troy Baker had shown interest in Josh Brolin to play Joel, while Ashley Johnson's own personal choice for Ellie was Game of Thrones actress Maisie Williams, to which said actress has stated that she'd have been very happy to play her. Hugh Jackman was rumored to be considered for the role of Joel as well. Funnily enough, Logan, in which Jackman starred, and is seen by many as a spiritual adaptation of this game's story, came out right around the time the movie was officially cancelled in late 2016/early 2017.
  • Matthew McConaughey was offered the role of Joel, but turned it down. Mahershala Ali was also in negotiations but turned it down.
  • The aforementioned Maisie Williams was also considered to be casted for Ellie, but she was considered too old, as was the second choice of Kaitlyn Dever. Dever ended up joining the show in Season 2 after being cast as Abby.
  • HBO originally announced Con O'Neill as Bill, but due to scheduling conflicts with Our Flag Means Death, the role went to Nick Offerman instead.
  • On the podcast for the second episode, Mazin and Druckmann mentioned an alternative Cold Open to episode two which was a flashback to Tess's backstory. It would've revealed that she had a husband and son who were infected during the outbreak. She would've killed her husband but locked her son in the basement when she couldn't bring herself to kill him. This was scrapped before filming in favour of the flashback to Jakarta.
  • It was originally planned that the big set piece in the fifth episode with the Infected massacring the Kansas City rebellion would happen during the day, as it did in the game sequence that it's based off; but Mazin, Druckmann and Jeremy Webb (who directed the episode) realised that the Infected and explosions looked much more impressive and frightening by night.
  • Mazin and Druckmann seriously considered multiple alternatives to Henry shooting himself after killing Sam as they were worried about audience reactions, but in the end they decided it made the most sense for him as his suicide reflected that he truly had nothing left after his brother's death.
• Word of Saint Paul: Troy Baker sought to play James as a pragmatist who doesn't buy into David's talk of religion at all and regards David himself as the Devil, but goes along with him to stay on his good side.
• Working Title: "Cordyceps Ordo Seclorum" for the second episode. Rotten Tomatoes accidentally posted this in December 2022.

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