The Last of Us

Fandom
Name:	The Last of Us
Abbreviation(s):	TLoU
Creator:	Naughty Dog/Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann
Date(s):	1996 – present
Medium:	Video game (Playstation) TV Series adaptation
Country of Origin:	United States
External Links:	Official Video Game Site Official Site Official TV Series Site The Last of Us Poster by Virtual-Waster-Art (2013)
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

The Last of Us is an action-adventure survival horror video game series. In the first game, you play as Joel, a man tasked with escorting a young girl named Ellie across a post-apocalyptic United States.

An expansion pack, The Last of Us: Left Behind, focusing on Ellie and her best friend Riley, was released on February 14, 2014. A sequel, The Last of Us Part II, was released in June 2020.

On January 15, 2023, a live-action television adaptation aired on HBO with Bella Ramsey cast in the role of Ellie and Pedro Pascal cast in the role of Joel. The show was renewed for a second season before the first season ended.

Canon

The Last of Us is played from a third-person perspective; players use firearms, improvised weapons and stealth to defend against hostile humans and zombie-like creatures infected by a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus. "Listen mode" lets players locate enemies through a heightened sense of hearing and spatial awareness. Players can also customize weapons and items using items scavenged from the environment. In the game's online multiplayer, up to eight players engage in co-operative and competitive gameplay in recreations of single-player settings.

Criticism

The Last of Us was well-received by critics and fans. It is considered one of the greatest video games ever made.

The Last of Us Part II got acclaim from critics, but received a mixed-to-highly-negative reception from fans. The online backlash towards the game is comparable to that of Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Game of Thrones' eighth season.

Fandom

Pairings

As of January 2024, with The Last of Us II's canonical events having not occurred in the HBO series, there is a notable difference between pairings popular in fanworks for the video game side of the fandom compared to the TV series. While the video game has both F/M and F/F works being roughly equally popular, F/F is far less common in fanworks tagged as the TV series. However, across both media, fanworks focused on the platonic relationship between Ellie & Joel are the most commonly tagged.

In addition to fanworks focused on the canon characters, Reader Insert and OC fanworks are reasonably popular within the fandom across multiple fanwork sites. Joel, Ellie Williams and Abby Anderson are popular canon characters for romantic/sexual pairings with OCs and reader inserts. Less commonly, there are also fanworks with the reader inserts or OCs in platonic fanworks with canon characters, for example being written into fics with Joel as a father figure.

F/M

• Joel/Tess
• Joel/Original Female Character

F/F

• Dina/Ellie Williams
• Riley Abel/Ellie Williams

Gen

• Ellie & Joel
• Joel & Tommy

M/M

• Bill/Frank

Reader Inserts

• Joel/Reader
• Ellie Williams/Reader
• Abby Anderson/Reader
• Joel & Reader

Fanworks

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

Fanart

• Endure by Astri-Lohne
• LAST OF US by cherrysplice
• The Last Of Us - Ellie by felitomkinson
• Last of Us: Halloween by adlovett
• nice clickers by Bisparulz
• The Last of Us, in Japan! by prom-knight

Fanfiction

• the ghosts that we knew by magicasen
• on rusted things that had stopped moving by sowingpoppies

Gallery

• 

  The Last of the American Gothics by MrIrishlad98 (2017) – Fanart of two infected based on Grant Wood's American Gothic.

Archives & Fannish Links

• Last of Us works at FFN
• The Last of Us (Video Games) and The Last of Us (TV series) works at AO3
• The Last Of Us community at Deviantart
• The Last of Us works at Wattpad
• The Last of Us tag at Tumblr
• The Last of Us and The Last of Us (HBO) subreddits at Reddit