The German Zombie is one of the oldest and most resistant sub -ruges in horror, starting with Victor Halperin's seminal film in 1932 starring Bella Lugosi. The subgene has evolved and saw many changes over decades, with new variations, genres mixtures and renaming that keeping it dead fresh and relevant. Is it George Romero that defines modern zombies with a shocking social comment in His "dead" movie series It began with Night of the Living Dead in 1968, Dani Boyle brought the genre to modern times with fast zombies and heinous hand -made films in "28 days later", or "The Walking Dead" turning Undead into an attractive TV drama in the 2010s.

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One thing that many modern movies and shows of zombies have in common, which may seem bizarre for those who are not too familiar with the genre, is a lack of the word "zombies". Indeed, zombies are almost a dirty word in the genre, with most modern films and shows - from "Game of Thrones" to "John of the Dead", and even "The Walking Dead" - I never uttered the word zombie. Instead, these stories find convoluted ways to refer to the undead with different names, such as "pedestrians", "ghosts", "infected" or "Bitri". For the most part, this comes down to zombie stories that want to maintain the illusion of genre blindness, which means that the story can be extracted by the characters have never heard of zombies before, and slowly reveal how to kill them rather than knowing their weakness immediately.

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"The Last of Us" is such a show that never says the word zombie, calling the main creatures of the "infected" show. Although that decision may initially look arbitrary and silly, there is a very good reason why the "last of us" cannot call the infected zombies.

By definition, the zombies are a resuscitated carcass, a dead person who starts moving as if they are alive despite being dead in every way. This is not what are infected in "the last of us". These are not dead people, they are very living people - who are literally infected with the Cordyceps fungus.

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That's right, biology doesn't lie, and the infected in "The Last of Us" is just that - people infected with a fungus that slowly seizes their consciousness and will. The fungal infection of the show is also Based on a very real and very frightening real fungus It can eat on his host and control it - without killing him. Since they are not only resuscitated carcasses, but people are slowly mutated because of the infection, the "last of us" can have their cake and eat it as well. There is a variety of creatures you find in zombie games like "Resident Evil", while still making part of the same progression of the zombification process.

You see, Cordyceps infection occurs in stages, such as the fungus, taking its host and slowly mutating its body. The different types of infected They are not different creatures, but the life cycle of Cordypse infection, as fungal plant sides take the body to the point where it becomes a kind of armor, which makes them large and inflated, and eventually joins the body of the infected environment after the host's body dies so that the fungus can spread. In other words, do not call them zombies.

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