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Neil Druckmann Reveals His Favorite Last of Us Easter Eggs Hidden in Halloween Horror Nights
Get your fungal fix at Universal Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood!
As fans eagerly await the return of HBO's The Last of Us TV series, they can get their fungal fix at the Halloween Horror Nights haunted house based on the hit video game franchise (the annual spook-fest runs is currently going strong at both Universal Studios Hollywood and Orlando).
Featuring brand-new dialogue performed by veterans of the Cordyceps apocalypse — Troy Baker (Joel) and Ashley Johnson (Ellie) — the immersive experience takes guests through the perils of the Pittsburgh Quarantine Zone, a treacherous location full of Infected and deranged human survivors. While the games take place across the whole of the United States, the designers thought it would be more effective to focus their energies on a single backdrop.
"I think through the brainstorming, being able to narrow it down to the Pittsburgh story, that helped kind of siphon and filter in the types of experiences that we wanted to create for the best," Mike Aiello, Universal Orlando’s Senior Director of Entertainment Creative Development, explained during a recent interview with Uproxx.
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"So much from the sewers and the Tableau; Ish, and his crew; and what happened there, to right now here in the suburbs where it’s that sniper sequence where you have Joel on the roof protecting Ellie at every moment. It’s just directly from the game," echoed The Last of Us co-creator and Naughty Dog executive, Neil Druckmann.
The Last of Us Halloween Horror Nights haunted house Easter eggs
Druckmann also revealed his two favorite Easter eggs (both of which are super deep-cuts) sprinkled throughout the haunted house. The first is "a note from Ish that’s straight from the game," he revealed. The second Easter egg, on the other hand, doffs its cap to the hotel basement generator objective, aka "one of the scariest parts" of the original game.
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"There’s a key card that you have to scan by a key card reader, and the card is somewhere really hidden, and then there’s a key card that’s blinking green like in the game," Druckmann continued. "Again, it’s such a detail that only the most hardcore fans are going to pick up, and the fact that this team, again, we didn’t even tell them to do it, on their own, they’re studying the game and putting in this stuff. I was like, 'That’s pretty impressive.'"
Halloween Horror Nights runs through Tuesday, October 31 at Universal Orlando and Universal Studios Hollywood. Click here for ticketing options!
Looking for some more thrills? Head over to Peacock for a plethora of horror offerings like Renfield, You Should Have Left, SICK, Black Christmas, They/Them, Train to Busan, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and more!
