The Last of Us fans want to know if you can eat the Infected
Like those keyboard warriors questioning why Hurley never lost any weight while on the island of LOST, your average apocalyptic TV series usually has characters looking like they're eating pretty well.
The Walking Dead has shown that it's possible to keep society rumbling when the dead take over the world, but in real life, we imagine it's pretty hard to get a balanced diet.
HBO's The Last of Us proved Bill (Nick Offerman) was living on Easy Street with wine and meats, but in other corners of this world, some are likely going hungry. After all, there are only so many tinned peaches and corned beef you can stomach or scavenge.
Can you eat The Last of Us' Infected?
Over on Reddit, someone asked the question we assume at least one other person must be wondering, "Can you eat the Infected?" Like Naughty Dog's game of the same name, the Infected of The Last of Us come in various stages of infection - slowly becoming zombified mushrooms.
The OP wrote, "Like people eat mushrooms all the time, think about it - cannibalism aside, imagine trimming off the juicy mushroom bits from a clicker, marinading it and roasting it over an open flame, doesn't that sound delicious?" But it didn't go down well.
When theorising that you could eat the Infected by chopping the mushrooms off them and sautéeing them in a nice pan, the comment section soon blew up with some wild ideas. We particularly liked the joke, "You have to wonder if someone is eating fungoid people, they might not have...morels."
One critic wrote, "We all know, deep in our hearts of hearts, that in the whole wide world of TLOU... there had to be that one idiot who was like "eh, why not" and was never heard from ever again."
Another added, "In the game, the infection spreads via spores. The growth emerging from a human host is presumably the fruiting body of the fungus, and we see that dead infected emit spores, so it's likely that you'd be consuming spores if you ate any growth.."
A third concluded, "Heck no!!!! Joke aside there are already many types of mushroom that could kill you when you consume them and this is super fungus that turn people to animals!!! maybe you will turn into another type of infected." Basically, we wouldn't chance it.
The Last of Us changed the Infected for TV
While The Last of Us video game had humanity infected via spores, that was mixed up for live-action. Presumably because there's no point in casting Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal to have them running around in gas masks all season.
There was still a nod to the source material, with Ellie mentioning giant versions of Infected that have armour plating and shoot spores. This was a nod to the Bloater, which we saw pop up in Episode 5.
The show also established that tainted flour was the course of the outbreak, meaning we're likely living in a world without bread. If you're wondering how Ellie could be eating a sandwich in Episode 2, it could be because she's immune to Cordyceps. Either way, we need Neil Druckmann to release a TLoU cookbook.
