As you possibly can see, the sport doesn’t determine Jakarta as the particular breakout level as the present appears to do. Indeed, the sport appears to suggest that reporters/researchers in The Last of Us sport universe appeared to imagine that the an infection might have began in South America. That article additionally identifies “crops” as the believed supply of the an infection’s unfold, but it surely doesn’t determine bread, grain, or flour particularly.
As we additionally beforehand mentioned, it also needs to be famous that the method the Cordyceps an infection spreads from individual to individual was modified barely from the sport to the present. Most notably, the model of the Cordyceps an infection we see in the sport generally spreads through spores that the contaminated hosts can launch after sure phases of an infection (or after they’re lifeless). It’s potential that variations of these spores are literally what unfold through these tainted crop shipments in the video games. Again, although, some of the particulars stay unknown and deliberately ambiguous. Furthermore, the fictionalized model of that an infection is completely different sufficient from its real-life counterpart to make it troublesome to make use of that real-life an infection as the foundation of extra detailed hypothesis.
There’s additionally the matter of sure timeline variations. As chances are you’ll know, HBO’s The Last of Us alters the sport’s timeline by suggesting that the preliminary outbreak occurred in 2003 and that the “present-day” sequences happen throughout 2023. In the video games, although, the outbreak happens in 2013 and the “present-day” sections happen throughout 2033.
Interestingly, it’s additionally implied that the an infection additionally takes a bit of longer to unfold in the video games than it does in the present. After all, that aforementioned sequence set in Jakarta happens on September 24, 2003, in the occasions of the present. Two days later, we see that it has brought on widespread destruction so far as Austin, Texas. Radios in Austin additionally share reviews of unrest in Jakarta at the moment, which appears to suggest that the outbreak unfold throughout the globe extremely rapidly.
In the sport, although, that aforementioned Texas Herald article (which was dated September 26, 2013) appears to counsel that the FDA had been monitoring doubtlessly contaminated crops for a bit of longer than that and that some firms have been already recalling their merchandise. Again, the implication appears to be that there was a minimum of a bit of extra consciousness of the outbreak itself however that the pace at which it unfold (and the violent nature of it) finally caught everybody unexpectedly.
At this time, it additionally doesn’t look like the showrunners intend to rewrite the an infection’s origins as they’re offered in the sport or counsel that the present affords an expanded model of these occasions that immediately applies to the video games. The Last of Us collection co-creator Craig Mazin beforehand said that they “wanted to give a little bit more of an origin story [to the Cordyceps outbreak]” and “how also that it was global, that this wasn’t just happening in America. This was the world.” Still, there are sufficient variations between the origins to counsel that they belong to that “parallel universe” the showrunners talked about creating. In any case, some of the most essential particulars stay largely the identical.
