The Last of Us Fans Made Joel's Scary Moment Into Hilarious Memes

By Kofi Outlaw

The Last of Us HBO series continues to capture the mainstream zeitgeist, and Episode 6 is no different. The latest episode, "Kin," examines how Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) are getting along, months after their tragic experience with Henry and his brother Sam. Traveling and surviving together has bonded Joel and Ellie – but for Joel, that new connection comes at the cost of unearthing the deep wells of trauma surrounding the death of his daughter, Sarah, decades earlier (at the start of the show). 

Pedro Pascal brought a level of emotional vulnerability to his scenes of Joel suffering debilitating panic attacks, which were entirely missing from the games. Of course, social media saw Pedro Pascal digging deep to mine emotional gold, and quickly turned it into a set of hilarious Last of Us memes! 

On A Serious Note...

Before we get into all the funny memes, let's take a minute to acknowledge the very real impact Joel's panic attack scenes had on some viewers.

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Laughter vs. Pain: I'm Torn

Is it okay to laugh at these The Last of Us memes of Joel's panic attacks? We leave it to you to decide...

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Walk Hard, Joel

Shoutout to Dewey Cox! These Joel guitar-playing scenes are about to hit different...

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Deep-Cut Easter Egg?

The Last of Us co-creator Neil Druckmann originally did want the male protector to have the handicap of a heart condition. Druckmann is working on the HBO series so were panic attacks a cool Easter egg reference to that?

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Joel Memes Go Meta

We've reached that point in The Last of Us' popularity that fans are making memes of Joel ABOUT people making memes of Joel.

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Family Guy Joel

There are about a million versions of this meme of people connecting the dots between Joel's panic attacks over Ellie and the trauma of losing his daughter Sarah.

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Hot Ones Type Pain

Joel out here looking like he swallowed a ghost pepper. "Ghost" pepper: see what I did there?

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Another Episode of Emotional Breakage

Must-see PTSD TV.

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Super Bowl Vibes

Philadelphia Eagles fans everywhere know just how Joel feels.

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Giving ME Anxiety

<center><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">TLOU ep 6… pedro is such a good actor that joel's anxiety and panic attacks induced a second-hand anxiety for me. ENOUGH!! <a href="https://t.co/NCxBjYc1Li">pic.twitter.com/NCxBjYc1Li</a></p>&mdash; miranda (@sambalteryy) <a href="https://twitter.com/sambalteryy/status/1627910095219859456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 21, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></center>

We end this full circle, with a meme of Pedro Pascal reacting to Joel's panic attacks.

The Last of Us airs Sundays on HBO and HBO Max. Check out ComicBook.com's The Last of Pods for in-depth recaps and cast interviews.

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