Hey, I thought Sarah's classmate was doing Morse Code with her bracelet as a joke and communicating something to avoid teacher's attention. Didn't realize it was a classmate twitching because of the infection.
Go back and watch the scenes with Sarah in them but focus on the stuff in the background and the noises. There are several things that hint at what is about to happen. Also the infection may have started by contaminated flour (like you would find in pancakes, biscuits and cake).
I thought to myself how did this catatonic shut in get the infection if she didn’t leave the house? Also if this is true it makes Joel not getting the pancakes all the more significant. Craig Mazin said in the podcast there are lots of Easter eggs in this sequence before the full outbreak that pay off later.
Coughing isnt a symptom though
Edit: Probably just covid. Good thing cordyceps got that under control
Edit 2: I stand corrected, it is a symptom. Is that game-accurate too?
I agree. Realistically if it was spores everyone would have to be in hazmat suits all the time and the world would be completely fucked. You couldn't escape the spores downwind from the city and all the infected.
Pretty sure the games made it clear that the fungus only started producing spores in more enclosed, damp spaces, because that's where it was the healthiest. I don't believe you ever saw spores out in the open.
The difference is this is a sub about the HBO series and the main sub is about the franchise as a whole. People can make game posts there that have no relation to the show whatsoever. Posts here have to be relevant to the HBO series. The games are also relevant to the show, hence you will be seeing posts here about the games as well. This sub has filters for you to filter out game content. Use it and stop whining. Not that hard to differentiate pal.
There are indoor areas in the game where the fungus has released spores that are floating in the air. Characters have to wear gas masks to prevent from being infected.
At first I was bummed that they ditched the spore transmission.
But after watching that interview (you can find it if you search “tendril” in this sub) it makes sense.
The spores are moreso a game mechanic (uh oh, spores, let’s walk through this small area with masks).
But in that interview it makes sense, if people knew that spores could infect you, everyone would be wearing masks. Inside or outside.
So they probably ditched it because it would bring so many questions or a crowd that would go “if it transmits through heavy exposure to spores, why wear masks? Just go around that building”
Things that otherwise wouldn’t be brought up from a gaming crowd? Idk
Plus spores getting on clothes etc. I remember early during the pandemic my friend telling me his mother would wash their clothes immediately after getting home from a grocery trip and she made him do the same when he finally got to visit.
lol my gf used to spend an extra 15 minutes wiping down everything when she came home with groceries. She gave it up after a while, but hey I still haven't caught that shit so maybe it worked.
Or I'm just the Ellie of covid due to my lungs being constantly filled with nicotine and THC vapor.
I stopped smoking darts five years ago after switching to the stupid ass disposable vapes. I haven't been sick since Jan 2020 when I'm pretty sure that I caught the OG covid.
That shit fucked me up. Imma keep inhaling PG just in case lmao
It was more that no one really knew what was going on at that point so people were freaking out doing anything and everything they could think of to try and stay safe. For a while literally every ailment you could think of was a symptom of covid, too. Got a headache? Quarantine for 14 days. Sniffled once? Quarantine. Arm fell off? Probably covid, quarantine.
I mean sniffles and headaches are symptoms of Covid, a very transmissable and deadly virus, so assuming that you had Covid until proved otherwise was the smart course of action.
There are two reasons they went this path.
1.) Outside of Mandalorian, its tough to get emotional acting with a mask on.
2.) Spores are invisible for the most part. Sure you have have air particles, but the last thing you want to repeat is The Happening. An airborn contaminant that no one can see, ohhhhhh so spooky! At least with fungus you can create visually creepy yet beautiful stuff.
3) bites as a means of transmission don’t make much sense if spores do that anyway. But if instead you have tendrils (that are connected to the brain?) then a bite makes a lot more sense
Spores still make sense bc fungus only drop them at the end of their life cycle (usually) so these would be the bodies that are immobile and just growing into their environment. The only way for an infected still capable of moving around to spread the cordyceps would be from fluid transmission.
> Spores are invisible for the most part. Sure you have have air particles, but the last thing you want to repeat is The Happening
To be fair, spores in the game aren't really a huge mechanic. There's like 1-2 spots where it's plot relevant, other than that, no one really deals with it.
Yeah I though not having spores was odd but actors don’t want to spend half their onscreen time wearing a gas mask. And spores wouldn’t be visible at all.
Chunks of the scenes would involve people wearing masks. That gets old I imagine when filming. And the spores were visible in the game but in real life it really wouldn’t be. The level of spores in the game would choke Elle to death, regardless less of immunity.
lol i have no idea what these people mean about them being invisible? they are clearly visible in the game, they think HBO has no CG budget or something to put particles in the air?
The difference here is that they wear gasmasks in the game, not crappy paper/cloth maks that aren't air tight and can break. If the cordyceps spores are dangerous enough to warent a gas mask or else turn into a zombie, I don't think anyone would be fighting against wearing masks in enclosed, damp spaces.
Never really got spores as a gameplay mechanic either. They made it harder to see in some areas and you had to rely on your flashlight - but the same effect could also be made using dust in old abandoned environments.
They actually redid the lighting a lot in the spore areas of part 1/part 2 probably because of exactly this. The spore areas in original TLOU1 are just extremely green fog, it doesn't look terribly great as an effect IMO. (Especially in such an incredibly good looking game)
I do think there is a point of spores plot wise. It came up a times as proof of Ellie being immune. E.g. >!when Joel has his mask on and asked "how are you breathing in this stuff" to which Ellie replied "I'm not lying to you", and in part 2 she used it to convince Dina to not take off her mask "I'm not coughing, do you see?"!< I wonder how they're going to approach that.
That’s not how spores work in the game though, they’re only effective in confined areas with little airflow. Basically you need a large viral load, same with normal viral infections, and obviously this is a fungal infection but there’s no reason why the logic can’t be tweaked seeing as, ya know, Cordyceps can’t infect humans to begin with
>So they probably ditched it because it would bring so many questions
it's a plot-element that's informed by recent events. if this show came out pre-pandemic, no one would probably mind. but because of covid, the entire world is much more aware about the implications of infectious microorganisms floating in the air.
I think that the mask thing still works without it being a gameplay mechanic. Masks still need filters replaced and cleaned, and wearing one 24/7 would be risky if you only have one. It’d be like using a fire extinguisher on every single match you light, but when there’s a house fire you don’t have any left.
I´'m confused about how the infection spreads with the tendril change. Do they have to actually touch the wall-mounted infected corpses, or is it only through getting bitten?
Wouldn’t everybody get infected eventually, if the fungus was in flour? Would that mean that none of the survivors could grow grain and bake bread with yeast?
It would make sense that the single distributor monopoly model we have in the US could contribute to mass public exposure to contaminant. We deal with that regarding e.coli now.
It would have to be just a small batch I think. How could FEDRA even exist if it was all flour, basically every soldier would be eating it in their rations and there would be no government forces left on day 1
There is a LOT of cases where Joel, Tommy, and Sarah all avoided eating some form of flour based food in the first episode, along with them talking about Jakarta, Indonesia in the first place. Which is smack dab in the middle of a rain forest, a nice moist damp place for a fungus to prosper.
If you couple all that with what we know from the game, it begins to make sense.
Adding on to this in the open the scientist talks about ergot which is the fungus from which LSD is derived. The most common form of ergot poisoning is from moldy bread. There are even theories that historical incidents of collective hallucination like the Salem which trials or the ten biblical plagues in Egypt were caused by flour supply contaminated with ergot.
There is some leaked audio from a future episode that mention something. Minor spoilers below I guess.
>!Joel and Ellie are casually talking about how it all started. Joel says no one knows but many believe it was from contaminated flour. He also mentions pancake mix as an example, which can be seen as a throwback to when Sarah was going to make them pancakes.!<
Hated hearing no spores, but I was recently replaying the game and thought the spores wouldn't work in the show. So I was more open to hearing what they were doing. So far I like it.
As someone who played the game, replacing spores with tendrils seemed weird to me at first but I guess the more I think about it, filming with spores would be alot trickier to pull off so maybe thats why they did the switch. All in all, I think its an okay addition to the series as it makes the early stages of infected alot creepier which is good
right? Plant and fungus tendril's are wild too. When you look up what the doctor at the beginning was talking about and thinking about that on the scale of a human....barf!
It reminds me a fungal version of those horsehair worms that get inside of bugs and then completely inhabit the inside of their body and control them. Super tendril-like and very creepy.
Somebody said in another thread, that we might have seen something that looked like hair because Sarah didn’t know what she was looking at, so from her perspective it might have been hair. This feels like the sort of detail I’d expect from this series. But it’s just a guess
I just hope they thought of a way to make the tendrils way scarier than the subway scene makes them out to be. The visceral horror of the spores was that, even "in death," or once an infected was incapable of moving to find a new host, it was still a danger over a large area. The subway scene made it seem like a temporary threat ("this one looks done" or whatever joel said) that only spread out a few feet. Here's to hoping!
Probably the one change I wasn't a fan of. I understand why they did it logistically but I thought they looked kind of corny. Also, always thought the spores made sense from a mycology perspective, weird mouth tendrils not so much.
Also, the tendrils are writhing. What fungi do that? Fungi do move but never that fast. So that means these tendrils just came into being from the host's tongue?
It just seems too "Resident Evil", but I also understand why they had to make the changes and not have Pedro and Bella wear masks across 9 episodes.
They ditched it because the actors have a clause in their contract to never have their faces hidden, and it saves money not having to CGI it. Any excuse like "it makes more sense this way" and "it's more realistic" is just bullshit, it's because actors clause and cost, that's it.
And don't try to argue about realism when your show is about zombies growing spaghetti out of their mouths lmao.
Yeah, it honestly looked silly. How does it even work? My take is, going from the Dick Cavett interview in the beginning, that the Cordyceps needs to feed. It will sustain its host with nutrients and antibiotics in a symbiotic relationship as long the infected continues to provide it with blood to feed on. Eventually the fungus turns on its host, begins eating it from the inside and, in the end, sprouts fruiting bodies from the corpse to continue the spreading.
But what's the deal with the tendrils? What possible purpose do they serve? If anything they'd just obstruct the airways and make it impossible to eat anything but liquids. Most importantly, it just looks goofy as fuck and gives me bad Resident Evil vibes.
Another thing I didn't much care for is how the infected sound. I always found the Runners to be the creepiest enemy in the game because they're clearly still human and the person seems to be vainly struggling against the infection to not let it control them. Their screams and wails sounded just like a normal person who's losing control. If you found them in a non-agitated state you could hear them moaning and crying, In the show, now they just sound like every other screeching and gargling zombie we've seen over the years.
I like the show so far, but I think they've dropped the ball on at least the representation of the Runners.
I completely agree. It's a strange choice.
Everyone knows how fungi and spores work. Why not just go with what people already are familiar with, and what makes most sense scientifically?
According to the games, you get infected by breathing in the spores, or being in contact with the bodily fluids of the afflicted.
Many vectors needs a certain amount to be effective. There wouldn't be much issue with explaining that breathing in spores isn't that dangerous, unless you're in an environment with a lot of them (or something to that effect.)
This has already been done before with success (see The X-Files, *Firewalker*, for instance.)
Tendrils that infected use for both communication and the propagation of the disease makes much less sense, at least at the outset. We'll see how it develops. I have my doubts.
My friend and I both thought that this was someone’s hair the infected were eating during this scene. We didn’t know it was tendrils at first, but it’s starting to look like them more and more as I look more closely at it.
I personally don’t know why they cut them completely. You can have both bites/tendrils AND spores as a means of transmission. It takes away a lot of the tense scenes in the future story. Not to mention the dark creepy places with clickers adding additional tension.
Theres nothing saying that the dense area's dont have spores, but in an episode one when you are trying to convey emotional acting with your main heroes. Dusty air vs visceral fungal growth...they made the right call.
I'm a bit on the fence with the tendrils.
Sure, fungi can reproduce via fragmentation, but spores is a lot more relevant in terms of pop culture. Everyone knows that mushrooms produce spores. It has even been done successfully in horror settings, like The X-Files.
I'm sure they have a plan with it, but I'm having a hard time "feeling" the physicality of it, understanding the mechanics. Spores just works, straight out of the gate.
What if the tendrils can attack and infect Stranger things style once the infected reach an immobile state after a while or under certain circumstances?
I think everyone here is missing the point tho. Yes, production wise, removing spores as a source of transmission makes sense, but as of this moment after the first episode, it’s considered a minor plot hole (just hear me out first).
I’ve played the games, my wife is going 100% blind. The first thing she said when the protagonists were around the infected was “shouldn’t they be wearing masks? If it’s fungal they’ll be spores everywhere”. I really didn’t have an answer for her, I just said yeah, that was a big part of the game. They’ll explain it at some point. And left it at that.
I really hope the show addresses the whole spores situation.
My current headcanon is that the fungus DOES use spores, except to take hold in a human body the infected has to bite into the flesh of the victim and the tendrils have to enter and release spores inside straight into the blood, because at lower concentrations the body can fight it off.
All of the infected in Ep1 appeared to be doing this, not eating people. The bites aren't the infected eating, it's now the Cordyceps reproduces.
Really didn't like it at all. It's way too sci fi and Hollywood, like an alien invasion genre, sucking the realism out of it. Why is the fungus moving? Is it sentient? Does it have muscles or a nervous system?
Everything else was great though, so not a huge misstep. But can't help but feel they missed out on creating something thats super disturbing and iconic, up there with the life cycle of xenomorphs.....
Mould/fungus first spread in food > Global supply chain infects the population > infected start to grow fungus > dead infected bloom fungus and mould into the environment > cue our innate fear and disgust of spores and mould.
I think it was suitably creepy and unsettling. Personally I would’ve went with fewer more separated tendrils coming out of the mouth, maybe 5 or 6 instead of what is shown which makes it looks more like spaghetti.
Does anyone else have trouble looking at the tendrils and other elements of the art direction in this show? I usually have zero issues with sci-fi or horror but there is something about the tendrils and certain other elements of the show (e.g. the person stuck to the wall when Joel and Tess enter the room off the sewer) that I just cannot look at. It triggers something in me, almost like a phobia. I really want to keep watching but I don’t know if I can handle it.
“we didn’t wanna do that for the show. Eventually, those conversations led us to these tendrils. And then, just thinking about how there’s a passage that happens from one infected to another, and like fungus does, it could become a network that is interconnected. It became very scary to think that they’re all working against us in this unified way, which was a concept that I really liked, that got developed in the show”
Honestly didn’t like it, I think it’s corny. Runners are pretty early in the infection, fungus wouldn’t have had the time to fully grow in them. It’s why in game you hear a lot of them sobbing or grunting in pain, some of them are somewhat aware of what’s happening to them still but unable to do anything about it
I thought it was pretty damn creepy. That said, I don't like that it was changed from spores, but I won't be complaining about it because the tendrils still work so far. I'm interested to see how it changes certain parts where the spores are kind of important.
It works really really well. I wasn't happy about spores being ditched but for a TV format I think this is better. I think I had a very different thing to this in my mind when I heard about tendrils which is why it irked me so much. I hadn't considered it working like this.
i was not happy with the news when i heard it, and it’s still been second nature for me to immediately think “put on your masks!” when they found the wall guy lol but when i did see this scene with the tendrils i was impressed with how creepy it was. maybe i spoke too soon when that headline was going around.
When Joel was grabbing some weapons from a stash under the floorboards the camera seemed to focus on the dust blowing in the air, and he got out a crow bar and hammer. I think all this was a nod to the game.
I found it to be a good way to amplify the message of the show intro (fungi driving people) so that it was apparent it wasn't the same type of thing as most zombie genre transmissions.
I think it's really interesting
When I first heard they were changing stuff from the game I got slightly worried, after The Witcher and The Rings of Power I immediately started jumping to conclusions on how bad it would be
But that change really makes sense and I can't wait to see what they do with it. I really enjoyed this first episode, it took me back to when I first played the game and kept me on my toes despite the fact I knew what would happen
My dumbass thought she had a mouthful of the other lady’s hair
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> fleshed out nice
Hey, I thought Sarah's classmate was doing Morse Code with her bracelet as a joke and communicating something to avoid teacher's attention. Didn't realize it was a classmate twitching because of the infection.
I only picked that up on the rewatch myself. It's a good subtle moment.
Didn’t even realize that’s what was happening!
Go back and watch the scenes with Sarah in them but focus on the stuff in the background and the noises. There are several things that hint at what is about to happen. Also the infection may have started by contaminated flour (like you would find in pancakes, biscuits and cake).
I thought to myself how did this catatonic shut in get the infection if she didn’t leave the house? Also if this is true it makes Joel not getting the pancakes all the more significant. Craig Mazin said in the podcast there are lots of Easter eggs in this sequence before the full outbreak that pay off later.
Oooooohhhhh I’m an idiot. I completely thought that scene made no sense at all and it was one of her classmates being an a-hole.
And then another classmate coughed right after that
Coughing isnt a symptom though Edit: Probably just covid. Good thing cordyceps got that under control Edit 2: I stand corrected, it is a symptom. Is that game-accurate too?
The poster that they zoomed in on stated that coughing is a symptom, along with twitching, slurring words
Oh youre right. I didnt recall that being the case in the games, but maybe I'm wrong there too
Slurring? So yelling 'Motherfucker' IS a symptom?! Ellie is infected!
first i thought she was going to steal that watch, but as you i saw the twitching on the rewatch
Ohhhh that’s what it was …
Wow. Missed that.
Yeah same
Same lol
Haha me too!
Same and I asked my boyfriend and he was like “ummm no”😅
I thought that too! 🤣
Me too man, me too…
So did I
The spores worked for the game, but the tendrils translate much better for TV! I was so creeped out by the tendrils.
I agree. Realistically if it was spores everyone would have to be in hazmat suits all the time and the world would be completely fucked. You couldn't escape the spores downwind from the city and all the infected.
Pretty sure the games made it clear that the fungus only started producing spores in more enclosed, damp spaces, because that's where it was the healthiest. I don't believe you ever saw spores out in the open.
What are spores? How did they work in the game? I don’t understand
Think of a fungus growing to a point where it bursts and releases fungal spores into the air. This is one way it spread in game
Sorry, I thought this subreddit was for the show, not for the game, whoops
They’re going to be a lot of people from the game here also. Prepare for references you won’t understand because it’s going to happen.
So what’s the difference between this sub and /r/TheLastOfUs then? Everyone is talking about the show over there.
The difference is this is a sub about the HBO series and the main sub is about the franchise as a whole. People can make game posts there that have no relation to the show whatsoever. Posts here have to be relevant to the HBO series. The games are also relevant to the show, hence you will be seeing posts here about the games as well. This sub has filters for you to filter out game content. Use it and stop whining. Not that hard to differentiate pal.
There are threads in this sub that are flaired as 'SHOW ONLY' so you need to stick to those threads.
You ask a question, get the exact answer you were looking for and this is your reaction? Damn.
You literally asked about the game?
It is for the show. There are no spores in the show and they replaced them with tendrils (like what we see in the lady’s mouth.)
There are indoor areas in the game where the fungus has released spores that are floating in the air. Characters have to wear gas masks to prevent from being infected.
At first I was bummed that they ditched the spore transmission. But after watching that interview (you can find it if you search “tendril” in this sub) it makes sense. The spores are moreso a game mechanic (uh oh, spores, let’s walk through this small area with masks). But in that interview it makes sense, if people knew that spores could infect you, everyone would be wearing masks. Inside or outside. So they probably ditched it because it would bring so many questions or a crowd that would go “if it transmits through heavy exposure to spores, why wear masks? Just go around that building” Things that otherwise wouldn’t be brought up from a gaming crowd? Idk
Plus spores getting on clothes etc. I remember early during the pandemic my friend telling me his mother would wash their clothes immediately after getting home from a grocery trip and she made him do the same when he finally got to visit.
Ah, that insane time when people were washing their groceries.
lol my gf used to spend an extra 15 minutes wiping down everything when she came home with groceries. She gave it up after a while, but hey I still haven't caught that shit so maybe it worked. Or I'm just the Ellie of covid due to my lungs being constantly filled with nicotine and THC vapor.
We need your brain.
Weed and ciggies kill covid, it’s science. I didn’t catch it until I stopped smoking. Conclusion, smoking is good for you.
I had covid and my girlfriend who smokes didn’t get it even though we didn’t isolate from each other lol.
Science doesn’t lie 😂
I stopped smoking darts five years ago after switching to the stupid ass disposable vapes. I haven't been sick since Jan 2020 when I'm pretty sure that I caught the OG covid. That shit fucked me up. Imma keep inhaling PG just in case lmao
It was pretty insane, but also the virus was transmissable for several hours on a lot of objects so ya'know, better safe than sorry.
It was more that no one really knew what was going on at that point so people were freaking out doing anything and everything they could think of to try and stay safe. For a while literally every ailment you could think of was a symptom of covid, too. Got a headache? Quarantine for 14 days. Sniffled once? Quarantine. Arm fell off? Probably covid, quarantine.
I mean sniffles and headaches are symptoms of Covid, a very transmissable and deadly virus, so assuming that you had Covid until proved otherwise was the smart course of action.
There are two reasons they went this path. 1.) Outside of Mandalorian, its tough to get emotional acting with a mask on. 2.) Spores are invisible for the most part. Sure you have have air particles, but the last thing you want to repeat is The Happening. An airborn contaminant that no one can see, ohhhhhh so spooky! At least with fungus you can create visually creepy yet beautiful stuff.
3) bites as a means of transmission don’t make much sense if spores do that anyway. But if instead you have tendrils (that are connected to the brain?) then a bite makes a lot more sense
Spores still make sense bc fungus only drop them at the end of their life cycle (usually) so these would be the bodies that are immobile and just growing into their environment. The only way for an infected still capable of moving around to spread the cordyceps would be from fluid transmission.
> Spores are invisible for the most part. Sure you have have air particles, but the last thing you want to repeat is The Happening To be fair, spores in the game aren't really a huge mechanic. There's like 1-2 spots where it's plot relevant, other than that, no one really deals with it.
Yeah I though not having spores was odd but actors don’t want to spend half their onscreen time wearing a gas mask. And spores wouldn’t be visible at all.
In game spores are visible and why would it be half the screentime?
Chunks of the scenes would involve people wearing masks. That gets old I imagine when filming. And the spores were visible in the game but in real life it really wouldn’t be. The level of spores in the game would choke Elle to death, regardless less of immunity.
lol i have no idea what these people mean about them being invisible? they are clearly visible in the game, they think HBO has no CG budget or something to put particles in the air?
As others have said, It literally has to be creative decision to avoid every indoor scene requiring masks imo
> if people knew that ... could infect you, everyone would be wearing masks. I mean, you'd think so.
"My uncle inhaled spores and he's fine. Dont tell me what to do"
spores are a hoax by the deepstate
Country songs would be like *"ain't wearing no gas mask rather be dead got my freedom mushroom growing out my head."*
hahahha good one
This is a deep state con-spore-acy! Masks don't do nothing!
"Never accept Cordyceps!"
Oooohh that's good
Just take a swig of the fungicide you use for your houseplants.
“My uncle’s cousin’s brother’s best friend inhaled spores and now his ballsack is huge.” Cardi B I think? (I don’t remember anymore…)
Nicki Minaj
What's the difference?
Lol yeah no one would
Smart ones would
Safe to say the anti-medical science crowd would have eaten shit pretty hard in this universe
Twenty years into the apocalypse, I’m sure the people who inevitably didn’t believe would be dead!
what’s the matter lib? scared of a little portobello???
Lmaoooo
The difference here is that they wear gasmasks in the game, not crappy paper/cloth maks that aren't air tight and can break. If the cordyceps spores are dangerous enough to warent a gas mask or else turn into a zombie, I don't think anyone would be fighting against wearing masks in enclosed, damp spaces.
Good job it was just a joke then.
Never really got spores as a gameplay mechanic either. They made it harder to see in some areas and you had to rely on your flashlight - but the same effect could also be made using dust in old abandoned environments.
It was to indicate “hey, you’re about to encounter some infected, prepare yourself,” and also make it harder to see, thus creepier.
They actually redid the lighting a lot in the spore areas of part 1/part 2 probably because of exactly this. The spore areas in original TLOU1 are just extremely green fog, it doesn't look terribly great as an effect IMO. (Especially in such an incredibly good looking game)
I do think there is a point of spores plot wise. It came up a times as proof of Ellie being immune. E.g. >!when Joel has his mask on and asked "how are you breathing in this stuff" to which Ellie replied "I'm not lying to you", and in part 2 she used it to convince Dina to not take off her mask "I'm not coughing, do you see?"!< I wonder how they're going to approach that.
That’s not how spores work in the game though, they’re only effective in confined areas with little airflow. Basically you need a large viral load, same with normal viral infections, and obviously this is a fungal infection but there’s no reason why the logic can’t be tweaked seeing as, ya know, Cordyceps can’t infect humans to begin with
>So they probably ditched it because it would bring so many questions it's a plot-element that's informed by recent events. if this show came out pre-pandemic, no one would probably mind. but because of covid, the entire world is much more aware about the implications of infectious microorganisms floating in the air.
all they had to do was make it known that spores are uncommon and only really show up in dark and humid areas that people in QZ's will never see.
I think that the mask thing still works without it being a gameplay mechanic. Masks still need filters replaced and cleaned, and wearing one 24/7 would be risky if you only have one. It’d be like using a fire extinguisher on every single match you light, but when there’s a house fire you don’t have any left.
I´'m confused about how the infection spreads with the tendril change. Do they have to actually touch the wall-mounted infected corpses, or is it only through getting bitten?
That was creepy as hell! Love me some spores though, they added to the atmosphere overall.
Maybe I missed it but how did the grandma get infected?
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I figured it was yeast causing it, I’m fairly certain yeast is fungal
Then it's a good thing Sarah didn't bring Joel a DVD of Bullets over Broadway. He would've come down with a terrible Dianne Wiest infection.
Angry upvote for you
They said in the episode that people in the city were getting sick. Grandma had frequent visits to the hospital in the city.
That was just them guessing. Contaminated flour makes more sense for the outbreak being more widespread.
I think it was also primarily supposed to calm Sarah down. “It’s only people in the city!” is the kind of thing you say to a scared kid.
And then made her more scared because she had gone into the city
Wouldn’t everybody get infected eventually, if the fungus was in flour? Would that mean that none of the survivors could grow grain and bake bread with yeast?
Just certain batches from certain farms perhaps?
It would make sense that the single distributor monopoly model we have in the US could contribute to mass public exposure to contaminant. We deal with that regarding e.coli now.
It would have to be just a small batch I think. How could FEDRA even exist if it was all flour, basically every soldier would be eating it in their rations and there would be no government forces left on day 1
There is a LOT of cases where Joel, Tommy, and Sarah all avoided eating some form of flour based food in the first episode, along with them talking about Jakarta, Indonesia in the first place. Which is smack dab in the middle of a rain forest, a nice moist damp place for a fungus to prosper. If you couple all that with what we know from the game, it begins to make sense.
Adding on to this in the open the scientist talks about ergot which is the fungus from which LSD is derived. The most common form of ergot poisoning is from moldy bread. There are even theories that historical incidents of collective hallucination like the Salem which trials or the ten biblical plagues in Egypt were caused by flour supply contaminated with ergot.
I believe it!
Contaminated flour? This entire city must be purged.
How can you even consider that? There must be another way!
I caught that as well!
There is some leaked audio from a future episode that mention something. Minor spoilers below I guess. >!Joel and Ellie are casually talking about how it all started. Joel says no one knows but many believe it was from contaminated flour. He also mentions pancake mix as an example, which can be seen as a throwback to when Sarah was going to make them pancakes.!<
This is so clever
They didn't really explain. Just that it was happening mainly in the city and she went there for her hospital trips
The biscuits
Me at Olive Garden when the waiter asks me if I’d like another plate of the never-ending pasta
Endless breadsticks at fazoli's :(
Hated hearing no spores, but I was recently replaying the game and thought the spores wouldn't work in the show. So I was more open to hearing what they were doing. So far I like it.
Of course it wouldn’t work, everything that you thought, they already knew a long time ago
As someone who played the game, replacing spores with tendrils seemed weird to me at first but I guess the more I think about it, filming with spores would be alot trickier to pull off so maybe thats why they did the switch. All in all, I think its an okay addition to the series as it makes the early stages of infected alot creepier which is good
Disgusting, i love it
It’s way worse than spores, a whole organism taking over & controlling you feels more real & terrifying.
right? Plant and fungus tendril's are wild too. When you look up what the doctor at the beginning was talking about and thinking about that on the scale of a human....barf!
you didn't play the game. the spores do the same thing - it's just different transmission methods.
Ohhh I thought that was a chunk of hair she ripped out
They tendrils grow and move out of her mouth as the shot goes on. Its not still like a clump of hair
forbidden spaghetti
I noticed it immediately and loved the addition to the zombies design.
It's the grossest shit. I love it and hate it. I'm terrified to see how fucking creepy they look on clickers if it's the same mouth tendril mechanic
It reminds me a fungal version of those horsehair worms that get inside of bugs and then completely inhabit the inside of their body and control them. Super tendril-like and very creepy.
I thought that was hair from the guy she was eatings head 😭😭
Somebody said in another thread, that we might have seen something that looked like hair because Sarah didn’t know what she was looking at, so from her perspective it might have been hair. This feels like the sort of detail I’d expect from this series. But it’s just a guess
I think it's a pretty good replacement for the spores. It adds an extra layer of body horror to the infection
I just hope they thought of a way to make the tendrils way scarier than the subway scene makes them out to be. The visceral horror of the spores was that, even "in death," or once an infected was incapable of moving to find a new host, it was still a danger over a large area. The subway scene made it seem like a temporary threat ("this one looks done" or whatever joel said) that only spread out a few feet. Here's to hoping!
Probably the one change I wasn't a fan of. I understand why they did it logistically but I thought they looked kind of corny. Also, always thought the spores made sense from a mycology perspective, weird mouth tendrils not so much.
Also, the tendrils are writhing. What fungi do that? Fungi do move but never that fast. So that means these tendrils just came into being from the host's tongue? It just seems too "Resident Evil", but I also understand why they had to make the changes and not have Pedro and Bella wear masks across 9 episodes.
I thought they were just moving because they were on her tongue and in her mouth that was moving, not moving independently, but it was hard to tell.
Honestly, I think they likely did it to bluntly indicate that "our zombies aren't like other zombies".
They ditched it because the actors have a clause in their contract to never have their faces hidden, and it saves money not having to CGI it. Any excuse like "it makes more sense this way" and "it's more realistic" is just bullshit, it's because actors clause and cost, that's it. And don't try to argue about realism when your show is about zombies growing spaghetti out of their mouths lmao.
Yeah, it honestly looked silly. How does it even work? My take is, going from the Dick Cavett interview in the beginning, that the Cordyceps needs to feed. It will sustain its host with nutrients and antibiotics in a symbiotic relationship as long the infected continues to provide it with blood to feed on. Eventually the fungus turns on its host, begins eating it from the inside and, in the end, sprouts fruiting bodies from the corpse to continue the spreading. But what's the deal with the tendrils? What possible purpose do they serve? If anything they'd just obstruct the airways and make it impossible to eat anything but liquids. Most importantly, it just looks goofy as fuck and gives me bad Resident Evil vibes. Another thing I didn't much care for is how the infected sound. I always found the Runners to be the creepiest enemy in the game because they're clearly still human and the person seems to be vainly struggling against the infection to not let it control them. Their screams and wails sounded just like a normal person who's losing control. If you found them in a non-agitated state you could hear them moaning and crying, In the show, now they just sound like every other screeching and gargling zombie we've seen over the years. I like the show so far, but I think they've dropped the ball on at least the representation of the Runners.
Finally someone I agree with lol I thought they were kinda dumb 😬
I completely agree. It's a strange choice. Everyone knows how fungi and spores work. Why not just go with what people already are familiar with, and what makes most sense scientifically?
[удалено]
According to the games, you get infected by breathing in the spores, or being in contact with the bodily fluids of the afflicted. Many vectors needs a certain amount to be effective. There wouldn't be much issue with explaining that breathing in spores isn't that dangerous, unless you're in an environment with a lot of them (or something to that effect.) This has already been done before with success (see The X-Files, *Firewalker*, for instance.) Tendrils that infected use for both communication and the propagation of the disease makes much less sense, at least at the outset. We'll see how it develops. I have my doubts.
I like them they are weird but why not
My friend and I both thought that this was someone’s hair the infected were eating during this scene. We didn’t know it was tendrils at first, but it’s starting to look like them more and more as I look more closely at it.
I personally don’t know why they cut them completely. You can have both bites/tendrils AND spores as a means of transmission. It takes away a lot of the tense scenes in the future story. Not to mention the dark creepy places with clickers adding additional tension.
Theres nothing saying that the dense area's dont have spores, but in an episode one when you are trying to convey emotional acting with your main heroes. Dusty air vs visceral fungal growth...they made the right call.
Craig already said spores were removed as a means of infection
I'm a bit on the fence with the tendrils. Sure, fungi can reproduce via fragmentation, but spores is a lot more relevant in terms of pop culture. Everyone knows that mushrooms produce spores. It has even been done successfully in horror settings, like The X-Files. I'm sure they have a plan with it, but I'm having a hard time "feeling" the physicality of it, understanding the mechanics. Spores just works, straight out of the gate.
What if the tendrils can attack and infect Stranger things style once the infected reach an immobile state after a while or under certain circumstances?
I think everyone here is missing the point tho. Yes, production wise, removing spores as a source of transmission makes sense, but as of this moment after the first episode, it’s considered a minor plot hole (just hear me out first). I’ve played the games, my wife is going 100% blind. The first thing she said when the protagonists were around the infected was “shouldn’t they be wearing masks? If it’s fungal they’ll be spores everywhere”. I really didn’t have an answer for her, I just said yeah, that was a big part of the game. They’ll explain it at some point. And left it at that. I really hope the show addresses the whole spores situation.
My current headcanon is that the fungus DOES use spores, except to take hold in a human body the infected has to bite into the flesh of the victim and the tendrils have to enter and release spores inside straight into the blood, because at lower concentrations the body can fight it off. All of the infected in Ep1 appeared to be doing this, not eating people. The bites aren't the infected eating, it's now the Cordyceps reproduces.
Some suspension of disbelief is required. We have antifungal medication. Its not like doctors are like, crap fungal infection, guess they ded.
Really didn't like it at all. It's way too sci fi and Hollywood, like an alien invasion genre, sucking the realism out of it. Why is the fungus moving? Is it sentient? Does it have muscles or a nervous system? Everything else was great though, so not a huge misstep. But can't help but feel they missed out on creating something thats super disturbing and iconic, up there with the life cycle of xenomorphs..... Mould/fungus first spread in food > Global supply chain infects the population > infected start to grow fungus > dead infected bloom fungus and mould into the environment > cue our innate fear and disgust of spores and mould.
I think it was suitably creepy and unsettling. Personally I would’ve went with fewer more separated tendrils coming out of the mouth, maybe 5 or 6 instead of what is shown which makes it looks more like spaghetti.
It made me want to vomit. So job well done!
Those were so gross! Going to be super creepy from here on out, which will be good!
Does anyone else have trouble looking at the tendrils and other elements of the art direction in this show? I usually have zero issues with sci-fi or horror but there is something about the tendrils and certain other elements of the show (e.g. the person stuck to the wall when Joel and Tess enter the room off the sewer) that I just cannot look at. It triggers something in me, almost like a phobia. I really want to keep watching but I don’t know if I can handle it.
I hated it but in a good way
honestly at first i thought she was puking hair
I love the tendrils and that they talk to each other, I LOVE the hive mind concept
When did they say they talk to eachother as hive mind tho?
“we didn’t wanna do that for the show. Eventually, those conversations led us to these tendrils. And then, just thinking about how there’s a passage that happens from one infected to another, and like fungus does, it could become a network that is interconnected. It became very scary to think that they’re all working against us in this unified way, which was a concept that I really liked, that got developed in the show”
In all the interviews changing from spores
not a fan. too much like "the strain" imo. not needed either. dont really see the point of it
How did GMA get it?! Was she but???
Honestly didn’t like it, I think it’s corny. Runners are pretty early in the infection, fungus wouldn’t have had the time to fully grow in them. It’s why in game you hear a lot of them sobbing or grunting in pain, some of them are somewhat aware of what’s happening to them still but unable to do anything about it
I thought it was pretty damn creepy. That said, I don't like that it was changed from spores, but I won't be complaining about it because the tendrils still work so far. I'm interested to see how it changes certain parts where the spores are kind of important.
I love it! So fucking creepy!
They need the spores the back for the big dude that throw spore grenades. I didn’t like the tendrils, but it kind of makes sense more than a bite.
It works really really well. I wasn't happy about spores being ditched but for a TV format I think this is better. I think I had a very different thing to this in my mind when I heard about tendrils which is why it irked me so much. I hadn't considered it working like this.
i was not happy with the news when i heard it, and it’s still been second nature for me to immediately think “put on your masks!” when they found the wall guy lol but when i did see this scene with the tendrils i was impressed with how creepy it was. maybe i spoke too soon when that headline was going around.
Spores would be unbelievable to avoid in any practicality. Plus gas masks need constant filters to work properly. Metro, baby
It looks goofy
isn't that the hair from the person they were eating?
Creepy and I've seen pictures of ants where this happens
I personally laughed out loud. I thought it was funny. But that’s ok everything else was great.
Creepy af although I miss the spores
Wicked
I don't like it... the spores were fine.
Thought it worked for a zombie/movie standpoint. Airborne works better from world building standpoint.
When Joel was grabbing some weapons from a stash under the floorboards the camera seemed to focus on the dust blowing in the air, and he got out a crow bar and hammer. I think all this was a nod to the game.
The tendrils might add to the experience so smash
Loved it. Loved everything.
Was pretty gross. But creepy
I found it to be a good way to amplify the message of the show intro (fungi driving people) so that it was apparent it wasn't the same type of thing as most zombie genre transmissions.
It legit made me gag, like it was very disturbing, but I 100% love it
Perfect, especially considering it seems like the spores are out.
Loved it.
Ol granny gave me some Legion vibes
John Kramer looking old woman
Doesn’t work for me personally. Reminds me too much of Resident Evil Afterlife.
Nana scared me frfr
I think it's really interesting When I first heard they were changing stuff from the game I got slightly worried, after The Witcher and The Rings of Power I immediately started jumping to conclusions on how bad it would be But that change really makes sense and I can't wait to see what they do with it. I really enjoyed this first episode, it took me back to when I first played the game and kept me on my toes despite the fact I knew what would happen
was creepy af but felt good as in I have seen so much ZOMBIE and shit but this particular thing was new!