The Last of Us: 5 Things That Series Changed from the Video Game: The End of Bill and Frank Is Darker
To the taste of many fans, The Last of Us is one of the video game adaptations in series or movies that have remained very faithful to the original material, although it does have certain important changes and differences. As the television format allows the story to be further expanded and some moments in the game have to be told differently, several things do not happen in the series such as the story of the 2013 PlayStation video game. Long awaited by everyone, The Last of Us TV series has come to the attention of fans of the Naughty Dog video game and, as easily predictable, many are having fun finding details in the video game or going under the lens of enlargement of some creative liberties that the screenwriters have taken, adding and embellishing the already rich narrative fabric.
In this article, we will bring you all the main differences between the video game and The Last of Us TV series. Before proceeding, it is necessary to make the usual recommendation that in the following lines, you will find spoilers on the events of the individual episodes, so if you do not want to spoil the surprise of the show broadcast on SKY, stop reading here and come back after catching up with the programming.
The Last of Us Changed the Way Cordyceps Works
In the original, The Last of Us video game, the cordyceps fungus (which exists in real life) can infect people through bites and the spores that the infected release into the air when they die. However, in the series, the spores have not been shown and it seems to be the least useful way for the fungus to be transmitted from person to person. Instead, the infected have tentacles coming out of their mouths. Another change that the series introduced is the idea that the fungus and the infected are interconnected with roots that run hundreds of meters underground. This causes that if an infected person is injured or discovers someone healthy, all the infected who have contact with the root of the fungus are alerted and even thousands of miles away they can know where the people are.
The Last of Us Changed Tess’s Death From The Video Game
In the second episode of the series, after she was bitten in a museum and must be sacrificed, Tess (Anna Torv) dies after receiving a “kiss” from a zombie. But in the video game things are different, when Joel, Tess, and Ellie arrive at the meeting point of the Fireflies, they see that their members were killed by Phaedra soldiers. After Tess is revealed to have been bitten, Joel’s smuggling partner stays behind to confront the soldiers and is killed in the shootout, buying enough time for Joel and Ellie to escape.
In the video game, when Joel, Ellie, and Tess reach the government building, they will have to deal with a sad truth: during the clash with some infected in a museum, Tess was bitten. Hoping to be able to crown his last race by delivering Ellie to the Lights, upon arriving at the meeting place they discover that all the men have been killed by the FEDRA army, a military force that controls the quarantine areas. When more soldiers arrive to kill the fugitives, Tess sacrifices herself to give Joel and Ellie time to escape.
In the TV series, Tess’s fate is the same, but it develops in a very different narrative context: when they arrive at the government building they discover that the militiamen of the Lights have been killed, probably by the infected. Realizing that more infected are on the way, Tess will first show the bite mark, and then fill the room with explosives and gasoline while yelling at Joel and Ellie to leave. Tess thus remains in the room waiting for the arrival of the infected. A peculiarity of this moment is that one of them, recognizing the infection in Tess’ blood, will approach, squeezing the woman in a disgusting kiss with the same tentacles of the virus coming out of the mouth of the infected. Tess will therefore have plenty of time to tinker with the lighter and let the flame fall to the ground which will cause part of the government building to explode.
Bill and Frank’s Relationship is Different in the Game The Last of Us
The third episode of the series introduces Bill and Frank, a couple of men who manage to live together for close to 20 years thanks to keeping their community isolated from the world and exchanging goods with Joel and Tess. Just like in the series, Joel and Ellie arrive at Bill’s house to find help and a vehicle to cross the United States; however, Bill and Frank’s relationship is only mentioned in documents and letters. The video game only gives clues that both were in a loving relationship and Frank does not physically appear, because when the player arrives at the house, he has disappeared and abandoned Frank.
It is later revealed that Frank tried to escape because he was fed up with Bill and was bitten on his way. Just like in the series, Joel finds a suicide note, but it’s not the one of affection and love that the couple leaves him on HBO. In the video game, Frank kills himself to avoid becoming infected, in his letter he reveals that he hates Bill and would rather die than spend another day at his side. For his part, Bill becomes even more reserved and spends the rest of his days alone.
Bill’s Story Arc
In the video game, the meeting with Bill comes out of strict necessity: after Tess’ death it is necessary to reach a refuge of the Lights; Joel and Ellie decide to drive to Bill’s town to get a car, trusting that Bill owes Joel a favor. Once they reach the city full of traps and meet Bill, the three make their way through the infected to retrieve a battery and start the car and leave the area. During the dangerous crossing, the group also comes across the corpse of Frank, whom we understand to have been Bill’s companion and who on a final note confesses that he has always hated the man and the time spent with him. Once the battery is found, Joel and Ellie leave while Frank returns to his town.
In the TV series we are faced with a great narrative upheaval, the third episode is focused almost entirely on the relationship between Bill and Frank. The narrative focus is on the beginning of the infection, with Bill himself fortifying a small portion of the town where he lives, hiding during the general evacuation, but also on his encounter with Frank who falls victim to one of his traps and on the almost two decades that they will spend together, loving each other and finding in the nefarious pandemic the possibility of living their love story.
This idyll will have a tragic epilogue when Frank, now old and sick, will ask Bill to kill him by administering fatal medicines so that he can go away and stop suffering. Bill accepts, but during their last dinner, he too will use the same medicines, deciding to go with his partner, to their bed. The meeting with Joel and Ellie will therefore be passive, with the same ones who, going to the couple’s house, will find a letter written by Bill addressed to Joel, where he informs him that he can take the car, where to find supplies and recommends him to do not open the bedroom door.
The Last of Us: When The Global Outbreak Occurs Is Different In The Series
Although it might seem like an insignificant change in the video game, the cordyceps infection breaks out on different dates. In the original video game, the end of the world occurs in 2013 and the events of the story with Ellie are 20 years later, that is, in 2033. While the series goes back ten years and everything begins on Joel’s birthday in 2003. In addition to putting the series in the current 2023, it also means that many of the popular references and technology (such as cell phones or the Internet) are very different from the series.
In the videogame, from the narrative events and from some documents that we can recover, we discover that the Cordyceps has two official channels of infection: the exchange of liquids (including the classic bite) and the respiratory exposure to the spores of the same fungus. In the presence of areas with contaminated air, the protagonists wear gas masks to avoid contagion by air. In the TV series, however, Cordyceps does not seem to be contagious by air, indeed the spores themselves are absent due to a very specific choice by the screenwriters. The contagion, in its television form, occurs only through contact or exchange of liquids or bites by the infected.
But there is still a way to talk about this parasitic fungus also for its activity when the host is infected. In fact, in the video game, we know little about the nature of the global contagion together with all that has followed in the following years. In the TV series, there is room for some further hints; especially at the beginning of the second episode of The Last of Us, we have a glimpse of analysis on what appears to be the first infected, with direct concern for the evolution of this fungus that seems to live in human hosts by taking control of the brain, expanding with sprawling actions, resulting alive, an active organism to the naked eye. Few small inputs still manage to give us a certainly richer picture of the parasitic fungus and its direct evolution.
The Last of Us: The Origin of The Infection Is Different In The Video Game
The two ‘Last of Us’ video games don’t explain where the parasitic fungus came from and how the infection spread so quickly across the world. There are only a few clippings, period notes, and stories that suggest that the first cases occurred in contaminated crop fields in South America and that the fungus was in the contaminated bread. While the HBO series does explicitly show that the infection started in Jakarta, Indonesia, home of the world’s largest flour mill, and from there spread across the globe in a matter of days.
Joel’s Watch
In the first episode of the series, we can follow the last moments of normality of mankind, before the proliferation of the parasitic fungus Cordyceps. We see a window into daily life between Joel and his daughter Sarah. In detail, we witness Sarah’s gesture of recovering a broken wristwatch owned by her father and taking it to be repaired to give it to her. The same clock will then break when Joel sees her daughter die in her arms in the night escape, hunted by infected, urban chaos and soldiers trying to maintain order, even using force.
In the video game, the events surrounding this watch are slightly different: Sarah buys a brand-new watch from her father, a gift that Joel accepts and wears immediately, only to follow the same fate, with Sarah’s escape, death, and the watch breaks. In the continuation of the story, Joel will always wear the broken watch on his wrist, but the television decline significantly adds value to that object. Joel wears it as a last reminder of his daughter, the hands stopped at a tragic event, waiting for someone to repair it again.
The Meeting with Ellie
In the video game, the first meeting between Joel and Ellie takes place after exciting events. Joel and Tess, in the USA now in the grip of the pandemic, live in quarantine areas smuggling goods of all kinds from outside. While they fight with Robert (another smuggler) and his henchmen, he is finally killed by Marlene, a woman who is part of the Lights, a group of rioters. Wounded, Marlene takes Joel and Tess to a safe area where Ellie is waiting for them, and where she will ask the two to escort the young girl out of the quarantine area towards a camp of Lights located in the Government building.
In the TV series, the dynamics are similar on average, but with some sharp changes, including an encounter between Robert’s men and Marlene’s Lights that ends in a violent shootout. Joel and Tess in looking for Robert arrive at the end of the battle, finding Marlene wounded and Ellie ready to defend her from the two strangers. After clarifying, the request will be the same: to bring Ellie from the Lights to the Government building.
