The Last of Us had hidden The Lord of the Rings crossover
The Last of Us is finally over, and to be completely honest, we’re not entirely sure what to do with ourselves. HBO's series was exactly what many had hoped it would be - a dedicated and true-to-the-game adaptation that brought Joel and Ellie to life in a pretty gorgeous way.
Importantly, The Last of Us allowed for a new audience to watch the pair's story unfold. It was a pipe dream, what with the historic reputation of video game adaptations being pretty sordid, but the fact that we got it has shone a light on the future of video games being brought into live-action.
The Last of Us was boundary-pushing, from its adaptation successes to its weekly viewer numbers - and it looks like it has pushed those boundaries so far that it has found a connection with another titan of a franchise.
How are The Lord of the Rings and The Last of Us connected?
Click to enlargeIt looks like the post-apocalyptic tale of woe and strife has more in common with the whimsy of Middle-earth than we had once thought, as it turns out it has a mutual team behind the scenes.
As reported by Comicbook.com, it has been pointed out that Wētā FX, the team behind the visual effects of The Lord of the Rings, has one member of staff that has helped to bring the world of The Last of Us to life. Gino Acevedo, one of the primary designers of Gollum, also had a hand in creating the TV show’s iconic Bloater.
"Gino was heavily involved in the creation of the Bloater," says FX supervisor Simon Jung. "He figured out all the proportions and some of the growths and yeah, it was a combination of game reference and what we had gotten from the prosthetic suit.
"Then what we had done in terms of concept work, and then some unreleased concept work from Naughty Dog as well, that Neil [Druckmann, showrunner and creator of the game] was generous enough to let us take a look at."
Gollum's sculptor helped to make the horrifying Clicker child
It's not just the beefy Bloater that Acevedo had a hand in, either - he also helped to develop the truly horrifying young girl who had been turned into a Clicker that features in the same episode.
"Speaking of nightmares, that's still haunting," Jung adds in reference to the Clicker. "It took a very long time to sell both the fact that this is a child, or used to be a child 20 years ago before she fully matured into that Clicker status.
"That she's a child, because of the proportions of her were really hard to sell because you don't have the eyes or you don't have a nose, you don't have really a forehead or anything that you immediately would recognize visually as the proportions of a child where everything is kind of a little bit out of scale."
Though there are horrors across Middle-earth, they're perhaps not of the scale of the Infected of The Last of Us - but we're glad that the masters had a hand in bringing them to life.