Music is an important element through both the "Last of Us" video games and the live-action HBO adaptation. Both have a strong style of primary background music, which relies on a lot of acoustic guitar to play into the story's neo-zombie-Western vibe. In addition to the scoring, "The Last of Us" also relies heavily on diegetic music. Joel (Pedro Pascal) plays guitar himself and tells Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in season 1 that he would have liked to have been a singer. In season 2, she's learned to play too after years of learning from him, though the schism in their relationship pushes her away from the instrument.

There are other notable examples, like the use of Linda Ronstadt's "Long Long Time" during the Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) episode of season 1, in which the heartbreaker tune serves as both episode title and thematic throughline.

Now that we're getting into...