HBO’s The Last of Us has wrapped its first season. The on-screen adaptation of the 2013 video game by Naughty Dog has been seen by many as a success and a benchmark for what a video game adaptation should look like. The series opens in 2003 on the eve of the sudden outbreak of the Cordyceps infection. The plague that ravages this world sees fungi, adapting well enough to exist in the human body and soon taking control of the host within a short period. What happens is the turning of much of the world’s population into hideous, monstrous, and flesh-hungry creatures. In other words, the world had a “zombie-fueled” plague on its hands. However, it seems the word “zombie” was not allowed on the set of The Last of Us by Craig Mazin or was it?
The video game adaptation has seen a ton of cinematic beauty which can be attributed to the work done by series cinematographer, Eben Bolter. While speaking to The Credits in an interview last month, Bolter was asked about how action scenes involving Infected were dealt with. The interviewer called Cordyceps-driven beings’ “zombies” to which Bolter replied, “We weren’t allowed to say the Z word on set. It was like a banned word. They were the Infected. We weren’t a zombie show. 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.”
However, per Entertainment Weekly, while speaking at a virtual press conference alongside game creator and co-showrunner, Neil Druckmann, Mazin sought to clear up any confusion. After the topic was broached playfully with Druckmann saying, "Maybe we should talk about how Craig banned the Z-word on set." Mazin had the right to reply and explained laughing:
"Which I did not do, and I call them zombies all the time. I don't know what Eben was talking about, we call them zombies all the time, because it's funny. So, obviously, part of the adaptation process is trying to figure out how to take source material that was built around gameplay, and port it over to a medium that is passive. A lot of the gameplay is centered on NPCs that you have to get around, either avoid, or stealth kill, or just confront head-on. That's sort of your choice when you're playing, and the NPCs were either raiders or cannibals, or FEDRA, or they were the infected. So, there's a lot of fighting, I don't know what your ultimate kill count is on a typical run of The Last of Us, but it's in the triple digits for sure."
Audiences would be forgiven to categorize the Infected in The Last of Us as zombies given the similarities the two species share. Both are based on humans who have been infected by a plague, losing their sense of autonomy and dedicated to the replication of the carnage within their bodies on the rest of the earth’s population. While regular zombies exist mainly in hordes, the Infected in The Last of Us show varying classes, as seen by the revelation of the Runners, the Clickers, and the Bloaters throughout the first season.
The first season of The Last of Us is streaming on HBO Max. Watch the season finale featurette below: