The Last of Us Show Banned One Key Word on Set

By Cade Onder

The Last of Us banned one word from ever being uttered on set. The Last of Us is one of the most influential games of the last decade as it really adopted this cinematic approach to storytelling in gaming while still having really solid, fun, and engaging gameplay. It was a really compelling mix between two mediums. The success of the game caught Hollywood's eye and resulted in an adaptation being greenlit very quickly. A Sam Raimi-directed film was in the works for quite some time until it eventually fell apart and evolved into an HBO TV series without Raimi's involvement. It was a long process to bring this game to life, especially in such a faithful capacity, but it worked out tremendously.

In order to retain that kind of authenticity to the game, there was one word banned on set: zombie. Yes, although The Last of Us is set in a world where infected people roam around trying to bite and infect other people, they are not zombies. They are simply zombie adjacent and the distinction was important. When speaking to The Credits, The Last of Us cinematographer Eben Bolter revealed the word was banned on set and noted that the series was much more than another "zombie show". 

"We weren't allowed to say the Z word on set," Bolter said. "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. For example in Episode Three, Ellie hears an Infected trapped under some rubble. Initially, she's scared, but then you see her grow in confidence, cutting open the Infected and looking at the fibers. Through that interest, you see what the Infected means in Ellie's own life. She was born into this world that's completely gone to hell because of this thing and now, maybe she has inside her a solution to this thing. We see Bella's performance as she goes from wonder to hate and you start to think, wow what is this girl capable of? There's darkness and anger in there. So [even in scenes featuring the Infected], it's character first and then just tell the story."

It's easy to mock something like this, but it does make sense. Some have tried to criticize The Last of Us for having a lack of infected and focusing too much on humans in some episodes, but ultimately, the infected are not the point of the show. It's a show about humans and it's not particularly subtle about that either!

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What do you think of HBO's The Last of Us? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

[H/T Variety]

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