The world is dying. We are no longer at the top of the food chain. Cities
have fallen to ruin as friends and neighbors transform into mindless
predators. Faceless monsters guard the ruins, denying us the derelict remains of our past
dignity. Humans are going extinct. And all of it. All of it. Because of this.
Hello, Internet! Welcome to Film Theory the fun guy who's here to talk about fungi. Ladies and
gentlemen, it's that time again. Time for the transmedia landscape to result in us talking
about video games here on the film and TV channel. That's because the Last of Us, just like Sonic,
League of Legends and Pokemon before it, is the latest in a line of games that's been
turned into a fantastic movie or TV show. Take that Game Theory! That's another piece
from your toybox that's ours. ha ha ha ha haa haa. Wait, am I? am I laughing
at myself with this joke? I'm in charge of all of these channels. What's going on here?
In case you're not a l33t gamr like all of us over here. Let me catch you up.
The Last of Us started its life in 2013 as a video game that set a new benchmark
for cinematic storytelling in the medium. This story of a wounded man and his surrogate
daughter trying to survive a world devastated by a zombie apocalypse immediately cemented itself
as a pivotal piece of gaming history. The moment that gaming stood up and shouted Yes,
we too can have emotional movie quality stories. Now, to be completely honest, gaming has already
had plenty of other amazing stories in the past. But this was the moment when the visuals and the
story both reached a point where no one could deny gaming's artistic properties anymore. The
game was so good that Sony just had to release it on the PS3 and the PS4 and PS5 again,
all in under ten years, no less. And here we thought rebooting movies happened quickly.
Anyway, now here in 2023, the dramatic prestige video game has been turned into a dramatic
prestige streaming series. In fact, as both top tier gamers and top tier movie nerds, Steph
and I were lucky enough to get invited to the premiere. On that note, this video is #NOTSPON,
but considering the amount of free popcorn that I ate that night, might as well have been.
Hey, you invite me to a place where I'm getting free unlimited popcorn and Diet Coke. I am
going to make you hurt. So after meeting some of the team who worked on the show,
who also happened to be fans of Food Theory,
that was a fun little twist. And then stealthing our way down the red carpet.
It was time for the show!
Honest review: It's great. I get nervous whenever anyone tries to adapt such a perfectly told story,
but I've got to admit they nailed it. Sure, they made some changes to the source material,
which we're going to talk about here in a second,
but it never detracted from the core story. So with yet another series showing that the
video-game-bad-movie Curse is not a real thing anymore, we finished by dancing the night away.
Though to be fair, we didn’t party as hard as some.
Now, as you might have guessed at this point, the zombies in the Last of US function a bit
differently from your usual apocalyptic scenario. In most media, you're dealing with a blood borne
virus that's spread through bites, but not so much here. What makes the Last of Us so interesting is
that it's all a fungus. In fact, the show spends its entire opening scene laying out
why a fungal pandemic would be terrifying, using real science to lay out exactly what would happen.
The fungus this scientist is talking about is a real thing called cordyceps,
which we've actually talked about multiple times over on the sister location Game Theory.
It is terrifying stuff, but something that we shouldn't have to worry about,
right? I mean, the show claims that fungal infections of this type…
But then they ask, what if that changes?
Man, HBO sure loves using zombie invasions as a metaphor for climate change.
If only Westeros had reduced its greenhouse gas emissions. What's crazy though,
is how quickly things fall apart in the world of the Last of Us. Seriously, It basically
felt like over the course of just a day or two, everyone everywhere, all at once, suddenly had
their brains hijacked by a fungus like it was a five star Grand Theft Auto rampage. Suddenly
zombie runners are in houses in the streets, planes crashing out of the sky. What happened?
And it's here that we actually get to one of the big differences between the game and the
new series, as well as our main theory for today. How did the fungus spread so quickly in the new
HBO series The Last of Us? You see in the game, part of the reason the cordyceps were able to take
control so quickly was through the use of spores. Like traditional zombies the infected in the Last
of Us game are able to spread infection to new people through bites. And this is true for the
new series. There's this really great, horrifying shot where fungal tendrils are worming out of a
woman's mouth to infect someone else. It is so gross. It was this moment that I'm like,
YEEEESS this series GETS IT. But in addition to marching on the living, the video game version
of the cordyceps were able to infect new people through airborne spores produced in the bodies of
the infected. And this creates a huge threat for all the survivors. There are big chunks of the
game where our protagonist, Joel, has to wear a gas mask to survive. He even keeps one on him at
all times, just in case. So, yeah, that's the way that you get this sort of rapid zombie spread, if
the show had airborne spores. But it doesn't. One of the show's creators, Craig Mazin, previously
worked on the series Chernobyl for HBO, which had a ton of scenes with actors in hazmat suits and
gas masks. Mazin found that it was more difficult to create drama when an actor's face was covered
by a bunch of safety equipment. Hence Joel's gas mask and the fungal spores having to go to.
No, no, you're not, Stephanie. These babies are no longer airborne. Your dance is non-canonical.
But if it's not spores, then what is it? What's causing the zombie fungus to spread? Surely there
has to be some sort of an explanation. So I dived into behind the scenes information about the show,
hoping to find some answers. And though I didn't find an explicit answer. What I found instead was
a challenge. in the official HBO Max Last of Us post episode podcast. They say this:
Excuse me? Careful viewers? Do you know who you're talking to? I've spent the last eight
years poring over every frame of movies and television that I've watched. Over-thinking,
analyzing it. You challenge me to search and I will find it. And you know what loyal theorists?
I did! I found the answer to how exactly this fungal parasite devastated the world so fast.
And true to the creator's word, it was in the small details that were hidden in plain sight all
along. How did the world of the Last of Us end? Cookies. Or more specifically, the flour that was
used to bake those cookies. Allow me to explain. The first thing that tipped me off about flour
is this line right here: In the background of one of the morning scenes we can hear a
radio broadcast that specifically talks about problems happening in Jakarta.
It's in Indonesia Joel, learn some geography. Anyway, the call out of Jakarta immediately struck
me as odd. Why, there, of all places? It seemed oddly specific. Well, in addition to beautiful
beaches and tropical architecture, Jakarta also happens to be home to the largest flour mill in
the world. This behemoth run by P.T. Bogasari flour mills, has 15 milling lines. In fact,
it's able to produce more than 4 million tons of flour each year. If this fungal infection spreads
through flour products. Of course, there's going to be disturbances starting in Jakarta.
Hey, guys, this is a future MatPat here. So this theory was written immediately after I saw the
first episode. But ah, episode 2 actually gave us a little more information about the Jakarta
situation in the show. That is very often the risk that we take when we do theories about
ongoing series. Anyway, episode 2’s Cold Open takes place in Jakarta where a professor at the
University of Indonesia is taking a look at one of the first infected people. We're told that
this infected person came from, quote; “a flour and grain factory on the west side of the city”.
And then under her breath, the professor says “a perfect substrate”. A substrate,
in case you don't know, is a surface or material where an organism; like say, a fungus, can live,
grow and obtain nourishment. Basically, this practically confirms our theory that flour is
the reason for the cordyceps outbreak in the show. So wooo! We got it right. That said,
there's still a ton of fun evidence here in the episode, so I'm just going to hand it back off to
past MatPat now so you can keep watching and be impressed with how we solved this a week early,
and then released the video a week later. What's more, there are also tons of flour mills
all over Texas: in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and yes, Austin, where the show’s prologue takes
place. With so many mills throughout Texas, the state would be a hotspot for an outbreak,
just like we saw with Jakarta. But fungi in flour, is that scientifically reasonable? Flour
is usually made from wheat or other grains. So how would a fungus get in there? Well, hate to say it,
but you know mold? the gross stuff that grows on food that’s spoiled or been left out for
too long? That is a type of fungus. So if the wheat used to make it has gone bad in any way,
there's likely some fungus mixed in there. Even freshly made flour out of mills has been shown to
sometimes contain fungus. According to one study, there can be a ton of fungus inside of commercial
flour. This study took 19 flour samples and 11 wheat samples from 11 different mills across
Kansas, Nebraska and the Pacific Northwest. In those samples, the fungal count in flour
ranged from 85 to 8,100 per gram and between 90 and 1,400 per gram in the wheat. In both cases,
spoilage of the product was not the source of the fungus. The stuff was just in there. So if
a fungus can indeed be inside freshly milled flour somehow. Why not cordyceps? So with me suddenly
thinking that flour is sus, I rewatched the episode again. And immediately you see a bunch of
little details starting to add up. All throughout the Prologue we never once see Joel, Sara or Tommy
eat anything flour based. To the point where it's almost a miracle. In the morning, though
Sarah planed to make Joel pancakes, she can't because they don't have any more pancake mix.
After school when Sarah visits their neighbor, Mrs. Adler,
she turns down an offer to eat a cookie. Likely this is because their raisin cookies
and raisins are just awful lies masquerading as chocolate chips. But still, this one move
may have meant that Sarah missed a big ol bite of zombie infection. Already, that’d be enough
to raise some eyebrows. But the coincidences just keep going. That night, when Joel gets home late,
they realize that he's forgotten to pick up the birthday cake that they were going to share.
And earlier in the day, they saw Mr. Adler feeding his elderly mother biscuits. In fact, when he
offers some of the extras to Sarah and Joel, they decline. Joel even jokes that he loves biscuits…
Atkins is, of course, a fad diet that recommends not eating any bread or grain products. Obviously,
Joel isn't actually on Atkins here, given his plan to have pancakes and birthday cake, but
it's still an interesting thing for the show to bring attention to, isn't it? Additionally, in the
parts of the first episode set after the outbreak, we never actually see anyone eating any products
made from flour. There's this big open crowd shot where we can't make out anyone's plate and there
isn't any bread scraps on Ellie's empty plate when she's being kept prisoner. Basically the
only thing that we see anyone consuming is Joel drinking some alcohol. In short, this show goes
very far out of its way to never show us its main characters explicitly eating flour based product.
Hey, this is future MatPat over here again, with some additional evidence that we see happening in
episode 2. We do actually get someone eating bread during the present day. We see Ellie is eating a
sandwich, which makes sense because she's immune to the zombie outbreak. And you notice what Joel
and Tessa are eating? Jerky, no bread. I thought that was just another little detail that was worth
pointing out. The only immune person is eating bread while everyone else apparently isn't.
Just cool Little Easter eggs that I found while licking the wounds of this theory that came out
too late. Curse you extended editing pipeline! Now I know what you're thinking. Wait, wouldn't
the fungus just die off while being baked? And that's a really great thing to call out.
Yes. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, most yeast and mold fungi are super
sensitive to heat. Normally, they can be destroyed at temperatures of 140 to 160 degrees Fahrenheit,
or 60 to 71 degrees Celsius. And most ovens when they're baking cookies are
set somewhere between 325 and 350 Fahrenheit or 163 to 177 C well above those fungi killing
temperatures. Even the most heat resistant fungi in history found in 2011 by scientists in India,
can only survive temperatures of 239 degrees Fahrenheit or 115 C. But all of that being said,
fungi in the production lines of baked goods and bread products are still a massive problem.
According to a study published in Food Research International. They actually found more fungus in
goods after they'd been baked than anywhere else in the cooking process. Basically,
they say that the highest fungal counts were seen in the final processing stages of making the goods
right after they'd come out of the oven and were busy cooling. And considering that the Last of Us
spent that whole opening scene pointing out that the fungus in the world evolved to survive at
higher temperatures, it's entirely plausible that the cordyceps made it out of the oven. And so now,
with all of that in mind, I can't help but look back at the podcast that got me started down this
rabbit hole to begin with. And you know what I realized? The answer has been staring me in
the face the entire time. Do you remember exactly what was said by the creators during that podcast?
Breadcrumbs huh? like flour based breadcrumbs? They told us the answer right there,
those cheeky sons of a gun. And just to put the cherry on top here, the piece de resistance. Do
you know what they were talking about right before this in the podcast that
got them to start talking about these little hints? the intentional trail of breadcrumbs?
They were discussing the elderly neighbor, the first infected person we see, and how she was
being fed biscuits. The evidence has mounted here, folks. The society of the Last of Us
TV show fell apart because the cordyceps fungus evolved to be more heat resistant,
to be able to take root in humans, and then its particles were spread worldwide through
flour. The next time you see anyone in the show taking a carbo load, just know that they're soon
to be on the chopping block. So Joel. I guess you had plenty of reasons to say…
Your Atkins diet might be saving more than just your waistline.
But hey! If you want to learn more about the evil fungus science behind this amazing story,
check out our Game Theory, Talking about how Ellie isn't actually immune to the cordyceps
infection. Or if you want more of a strategy guide on how to survive a post-apocalyptic wasteland,
check out our video explaining why musicians would have the best chance of surviving a
quiet place. As always, don't forget to take a big ol bite out of that subscribe
button so you never miss a new theory. There are a ton of great new movies and
shows coming out this year that I can't wait to analyze alongside you guys. But until then,
remember, it's all just a theory, A FILM THEORY! aaaaaaaaaand cut.