Welcome back, everyone is Charlie.
This will be my For Last of Us Episode 2 video.
There's a whole bunch easter eggs and references, so we'll break it all down.
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and just push your favorite moment from the episode on the video.
Careful for spoilers if you haven't seen the episode yet,
we'll just start at the beginning, work our way through, shot by shot.
Talking about Easter eggs in WTF moments, starting with the title of the episode.
It was Infected, which is literally a reference
to all the people who have been infected in the origin of the cordyceps fungus.
This episode was another history lesson in a tutorial in present day
about how the fungus just works in general, like where it came from, how
it started confirming a bunch of theories that episode one.
Turns out flour is the real villain here,
but in present day there are a lot of references
to how the fungus works on the infected and different types of infected.
Like we finally see some clickers up close and personal.
The actual opening scene starts in another flashback to life in Jakarta,
Indonesia in 2003, right before Joel and his daughter in episode
one heard the news about problems there on the radio.
The main reason why the fungus hit here first
is because of the warmer average climate and because of the flower.
Jakarta holds the world's largest flower factory.
The whole idea is that the fungus had an easier time surviving in warmer climates.
So as global warming slowly increase, the average temperatures around the world,
like certain places in the world, were just warmer
naturally than others, Jakarta being one of them.
And because they had the largest flower plant there, it just natural that
that's where the first giant outbreak of the fungus was.
And remember, it's the mutant fungus because the woman who investigates
it is like, Oh no, it can never survive in humans.
We don't have to worry about it.
The military men come to pick her up.
She's a professor of mycology, which is the study of fungus.
They want to develop a vaccine, but turns out there is no actual cure for it.
Like Elly
is meant to be the first known person in the series in the games who's immune.
That's why they're trying to use her to create a vaccine.
The version of the fungus that she winds up looking at here is the mutated version
because the sample was taken from a human and they show you how they discovered
the first known infected,
at least that they know of in how they try to get more information.
I love the way that some of this plays out, too.
Like the guard tells her, If you feel sick,
be sure you leave this room, which is like the worst possible thing she could do.
Like, that's just another way to spread it.
But that's when they had spores in there.
Not really doing spores during season one.
The showrunner said that they might do spores in season two, so, like,
they still might be a thing and they reference spores in present day
when Ellie is talking about the different types of infected.
So the main way to get infected right now is just to get bitten
by one of the other infected.
So as long as the woman
didn't get infected here or the fungus didn't get inside her suit, she'd be fine.
The bullet wound in her head was where they shot her,
because, as they said, she turned violent.
She turned into a runner.
Basically,
all the things they're describing, the stuff that we saw during episode one.
So, like we've already seen this play out.
It is possible to kill the infected, but as the fungus progresses
through different stages, it creates stronger
and stronger armor around their bodies and they gain the ability to spit
acid, throw spore bombs, which they reference later in the episode.
So there aren't super infected fungal spores on you,
or ones with split open heads that see in the dark like bats.
Hopefully they're not infected through spore bombs at you.
Boy, is Ellie going to be in for a surprise.
But the big idea here is that they got her with the head shot,
which is how you kill them.
It's just like on The Walking Dead with the walkers.
You get them with a head shot, That's how you take them down.
You also notice that when she discovers the fungus in her mouth,
it's still growing, which they reference.
Later in the episode to look. The fungus continues on.
Even if you've killed the infected,
which in the games is another reference to the spores.
Like the whole idea that when you kill someone,
they give off spores and they can continue to infect you.
So that's why the infected on
the last of us are way more dangerous than the walkers on The Walking Dead.
The whole thing here is then
just confirming where the first infected were found in a flower grain factory.
Also supporting the flower theory from episode one.
There's a type of fungus that just naturally grows around.
Grain isn't harmful to humans by the time it makes it through flour mills
and into food products.
During episode one, there were all these references to Joel
and his daughter
not eating flour because they were like they didn't have any flour in.
Somehow they survived.
They didn't get infected like their neighbors
who were eating cookies with flour in them.
Also, the world's largest flour mill is in Jakarta.
So it's just the show
saying that the origin of the fungus was Jakarta in the flour here.
It was the perfect quote unquote substrate, as she says.
But the factory here where they had this initial outbreak,
they cut 14 people and claimed that there's one person that they missed,
the person that bit her, the 15th person, which is how it spread around the city.
And then it cuts to the scene where she basically tells them
that there is no possibility for a vaccine or a cure.
The best way to take care of
this would be to bomb the city, kill everybody in it, and hope to contain it.
But there's another reference to this later in the episode
when Taz talks about what happened to Boston,
about how they bombed all the cities in the U.S.
as a way to do the same thing, to try and contain the fungus.
I couldn't detect any changes to the opening credits from episode one.
It is the same theme song from the games like The Last of US main theme song.
I reference this during my episode one video, but the growth inside
the opening credits is the fungus growing in the map of the United States
and then the rest of the world spreading around the world.
Like you can see the outline of the United States here.
You can also see Joel and Ellie's outline in here, too.
Then in present day, we pick up with Joel and Tess
watching over Ellie as she sleeps and wakes up.
The reason why he has the gun on her is that he's still worried
that she's going to turn and try to bite them, infect them,
because it takes them a while to come around.
It's not till the end of the episode when he starts
to actually believe that she might be immune.
Pretty much this entire episode, at least the present day of the episode,
is taken directly from the games, but it's like a much more elongated
version, like it's much more stretched out version of this part of the game
with him trying to
make it across the downtown district to get her to the other fireflies.
So they basically start from square one here with this whole scene of her
explaining everything to them about how she's immune, teasing her backstory
a little bit with Marlene about how she found her after she'd been infected.
They'll be more flashbacks for this
and future episodes for Ellie's backstory with Riley, with her mother.
She also makes a few references to this later in the episode to
when she starts talking about how she got bitten in the first place.
The whole joke with the chicken sandwich is that the rations in
the city are generally terrible and never enough to meet people's needs,
so they rely on smugglers to bring in food to the city,
which is how the fireflies got the chicken.
But Joel and Tess are smugglers, like they're the people responsible
for doing that.
But they're stuck eating this really terrible jerky.
There's a lot of scenes early on here, too,
where Ellie tries to cut the tension by telling inappropriate
jokes like, Don't do that. Don't pretend you're infected.
Just to show you how she's going to balance out the relationship with Joel
like Joel is this super serious person in the relationship.
Ellie is the person that, at least at first
they'll use for a lot of comedic relief.
But she's also a very tragic character.
So this is you know, any time she gets really serious, shit is about to go down.
Not expecting Joel to start telling jokes any time soon.
The way that Joel talks about the idea of a vaccine in the Fireflies
working out west in Salt Lake City, sounds like
it's been an urban myth for a long time, and he just doesn't believe it yet
because, as Tess says, for now at least, this part of the episode,
they still really don't care about her that much.
They're only doing this
so they can get the reward from the fireflies,
and he can get to his brother in Wyoming to make sure that is okay.
In a lot of these scenes here where you get tutorials
on how the fungus works, how the different infected
work are meant to be viewed from Ellie's perspective.
Because even though she knows a lot of this stuff,
she's seeing all this for the first time.
I love the wide shot around the destroyed area of Boston here, too.
Really great special effects.
Like I said, when Tess starts talking about the bombing of cities,
it's another reference to the beginning of the episode where the woman is like,
the only way to contain this would be for you to bomb
this entire city and kill everybody in it, as Tess is talking about it.
And they're staring in this giant bomb crater, you know, is the car
that they pass is an early 2000s model because that's when the city was bombed.
The mall that Ellie talks about, where she was a bit
is more of her backstory with Riley that they'll cover in future episodes.
They might change the way this works on the show
just a little to make it more tragic.
But originally in the games,
Ellie was bit by a runner as they were trying to escape.
They might say on the show that she was bit by Riley after she had turned just
to make circumstances of her backstory even more tragic than they already are.
She's lying to test when she says she was alone inside the mall when she was bit.
She was with Riley, who got bit and she was forced to kill her, kill her
best friend.
When she says she's an orphan, her mother is going to be played
by Ashley Johnson, who was the voice of Ellie in the games,
who will be featured in flashbacks
in future episodes when they do more of her backstory.
There's another big video game reference and more foreshadowing
for the future types of infected they'll encounter
when she starts joking about infected that shoots spores at you.
Those are a reference to blotters, which are like the fourth stage of the fungus.
They're like very advanced versions of the fungus.
You start out as a runner,
then you turn into a shamble after a little while,
then you turn into a clicker, which we see later in the episode.
And then after a bunch more time, you evolve into a blotter in addition
to the spore bombs, the blotters also have super tough skin,
so they're way harder to kill than runners shamblers or clickers.
The ones with the split open heads that have echolocation
like bats, as she says, are the clickers that we see in the episode,
which is also where we hear that first cry of the episode like up.
Yet they are.
We're going to see them in a little while when they make it in the hotel
and Alex starts playing around making all that noise.
Obviously very bad. Don't want to make a bunch of noise.
They have another perfect copy of a scene that was taken from the video games
when she's joking about checking into the hotel.
Yes, sir.
I would like your finest suite, please.
Oh, I'll be checking in for one night, and I would like your finest suite.
Please help you doing?
Why, yes.
You can take my luggage upstairs.
You are a weird kid.
And weird kid. You're a weird kid.
But you notice when Joel helps her up, he recoils his hand
because he's still not 100% on being immune.
He's still worried about getting infected.
Like you can't touch her too much.
The switchblade night
that she has, which he compliments her on, was given to her by Marlene.
We'll see Marlene again on the show like she's a pretty big character in the story.
She gets a little bit more of a tutorial about how the infected live,
like some of them live a little bit longer than others.
That's just a reference to them evolving into higher states
like the clickers, which we see pretty shortly,
like the idea that some of them live longer, 20
plus years, even without other people trying to kill them,
they just naturally continue to evolve their whole back
and forth here to where they start talking to each other about their past.
Like, have you ever killed anyone who's been infected, who used to be a person?
How did you feel about that?
That's her slowly opening up in trying to talk more about what happened
with her and Riley in her backstory, because it's still very traumatic for her.
But Joel, at this point doesn't want to have anything to do with it.
He doesn't want to examine his past at all.
He wants to tamp that down as much as possible.
The whole idea is he's been so traumatized in his past that he just wants to forget
about all of that pain, just push it down, which is why at the end of the episode
is so heartbreaking for him,
because he's kind of opened himself up to tests like he genuinely cared about her
and her dying.
At the end of the episode is just another example to him of why
he shouldn't start caring about people pushing him further away from Ellie,
even though during the episode there are a couple of moments teasing.
They're preparing like they're father daughter relationship.
Like eventually
they will start to think of each other as a surrogate father and daughter.
They show you the group of infected moving in unison, just to remind you
the way the fungus controls their brain functions,
they're literally and metaphorically connected,
not only sort of like a hive type of group, but also tells explain to her
how the fungus grows, tendrils underground and can alert other groups of them
very far away, which they pay off at the end of the episode.
All these mechanics, the way that the infected work are meant
to be based on the real life way that fungus actually works and grows.
And if it wasn't clear during episode one, the cordyceps
fungus is a real type of fungus, like it actually exists in the real world.
And just like the scientist
said in the episode, it couldn't survive in humans.
And that's true right now.
But the whole basis for the game is theoretically
what would happen if it could survive in humans.
The museum is right out of the video game alley asking them for a gun
all the time is also meant
to be foreshadowing for her, eventually saving Joel a bunch in the future.
But she's not lying when she says that she's not totally helpless.
She has a little bit of a baby Yoda type of character.
Like we talk about Pedro Pascal, Easter eggs, Pedro Pascal into the past golfers
because we have Mandalorian Season three episodes coming really soon, too.
There will be some overlap with the last of US episodes in on
both shows, he plays a surrogate father protecting a very small person.
But part of the idea of the series is the Ellie.
Even though she's only 14 years old, is a very capable person
and does wind up helping Joel a lot in the future.
The reason why he and test freak out when they find the new victim
and go super quiet is because the person was killed by a clicker.
The clickers.
We see two of them upstairs later and they have echolocation.
They also use this part of the episode as another tutorial in
how the other types of infected work, like how the clickers work
when they take them on.
I did think it was weird that Joel hit it with so many body shots
and didn't go straight for head shots at first.
I think that's just because they want
to show you a little bit about how they actually work.
But the fact that there are two of them is meant to be how test y ends up
getting bitten.
You also notice through the course of the fight here,
like it's things start to get crazy.
Joel starts to go into protective dad mode and get less worried about Ellie
being infected, like he's slowly starting to warm up to the idea
that she's telling the truth. She really is immune.
When they wind up escaping.
The reason why Tess gets short with him
is because she knows that she's been bit in. Let Sid for her.
She's dead.
There's also why she walks so far ahead of him
when they're in the street, walking on their way
to the Capitol building because he doesn't want to be close to him.
If she turns the shot of them standing together here too, looking forward is more
foreshadowing for their father daughter relationship in the journey ahead.
That's why they start playing the theme song
from the Last of US, like it kicks in when he steps into frame with her.
The whole reason why the other fireflies aren't
at the rendezvous is because they're all dead.
One of them went up turning
and it caused this domino effect that led to them all killing each other.
Which is why Joel winds up being the one to take Ellie all the way
to Salt Lake City, Utah, but only after another cold action from test.
Like he still needs a little bit of convincing
even after he knows that she's going to die.
The scene of them finding the bodies is also right out of the game.
Like all the stuff is right out of the game,
as is the scene of Tess revealing that she was infected
and telling Joel why it's so important that he take Ellie all the way
with the hope of finding a vaccine in saving humanity, making things right.
And remember, the reason why this is meant to be
so heartbreaking is because Joel actually genuinely did care about Tess.
Like they've been together as a couple for a long time,
even though, as Tess said, they're not nice people.
He's genuinely heartbroken again, like he opened himself up again finally,
and it just wound up biting him in the ass
like the person that he loved wound up dying again.
They also use this as a way to prove Ellie's immunity because as Tess
shows her infection, she's only been infected for, like,
less than an hour
and see how quickly it's progressed in Ellie hasn't changed at all.
They also pay off Tessa's earlier reference about the way the fungus
grows tendrils underground and can alert other groups of infected
when they kill that remaining infected in the tendrils, continue
growing and alert the others that come racing towards them,
with her sacrificing herself to make sure that they could get out of Boston
the rest of the way in, find Bill and Frank.
So R.I.P. Tess.
Everyone have to pay respects
that look on their face at the end as they see the building blow up.
And Ellie kind of looks up at the sky like,
Oh, here we go is really where she starts to depend on him.
Kind of like a father figure.
But they still don't view each other as like a father daughter duo yet.
That's a little ways off.
You kind of see them slowly warming up to each other, like she's relying on him.
Like she's like, okay, I'm putting my hands in him.
Hopefully this goes well.
Angela's kind of like, here we go again.
Tamp down those terrible feelings inside about what just happened
to the person that I love to Tess feeling just like he did when his daughter died.
But he's going to keep having moments like he did during episode one,
which is protecting Ellie
and hallucinating his daughter, just associating the two together
in that being the path to him, slowly thinking of Ellie as his daughter.
It sounds like episode three is going to be all about Bill
and Frank, who are right out of the game.
They're huge characters, but in the game it's only Bill that they interact with.
In the next big goal is really to find a car
that's capable of getting them
the rest of the way to Wyoming and then Salt Lake City, Utah.
Like we're still just getting started.
this is the very beginning of the game.
Bill is being played by Nick Offerman.
He's been in all the trailers, which is funny
because there's been a video game meme of Bill done in the style of Ron Swanson
for a long time now.
I even put in my episode one video
if there's any Easter Eggs references that you spotted in the episode
that I didn't talk about in this video, just write them below in the comments.
Episode three is supposed to be fantastic.
I'm loving the show so far
and it seems like they've broken the curse of the video game adaptation.
We can only pray that the God of War series is going to be this good.
My Last of Us Episode 3 Trailer Video We'll post next in my full
Episode three video We'll post next Sunday after they release it.
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in a couple of weeks too.
There'll be a bunch of really big trailers coming.
Everyone click here for My Last of Us Episode 3 Trailer Video.
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Episode Videos. Thank you so much for watching.
Everyone stay safe and I'll see you guys in the next one.