The Last of Us

Gustavo Santaolalla, the music composer for video games The Last of Us (2013) and The Last of Us: Part II (2020), was brought on to compose the series soundtrack.

As with the game, the series' depiction of the cordyceps fungus has some inaccuracies. Overall, the probability of a fungus of this type evolving the need and capability to infect humans is astronomically small. Human brains contain hundreds of thousands of times more neurons compared to an ant brain, and it would be an extraordinarily rapid evolution for cordyceps to gain the ability to infect and take over one. Even if it did, fungal infections are slow, taking a matter of weeks, and nothing like the near-instant transformation depicted; new filaments take some time and energy to produce. All 600 species of Cordyceps which seize control of insect bodies do so to force the host into a humid place where the fungus can feed on the body and spread its spores, so if an evolved cordyceps infected a human and over the course of many days transformed the body into a shambling host, the fungus' end goal would be much the same. Lastly, while insects do gain some level of aggression when infected, they normally do not attack other insects.

The opening titles display a Cordyceps fungus taking on the forms of various landscapes, and finally the forms of Joel and Ellie.

Featured in The Reel Rejects: THE LAST OF US EPISODE 1 REACTION!! 1x1 Review & Breakdown - HBO - Ending Scene (2023)