“The Last of Us” is officially part of the HBO family.
A fan spotted a production mistake in Episode 6 as Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) travel to Jackson, Wyoming. An establishing shot shows an overhead view of the snowy terrain the duo was traveling, and one eagle-eyed viewer noticed something was off.
So, when Neil Druckmann — co-creator of “The Last of Us” video game and its adapted series — tweeted about a spoiler trending on the platform after the episode aired, the detail-oriented fan took the opportunity to point out the hiccup.
“Brilliant episode,” the fan tweeted alongside a screenshot of the scene. “Something you might want to fix and reupload, though. You can see the film crew in this shot.”
The evidence of a behind-the-scenes element making its way into the final cut of a fantasy series also infamously occurred on another popular HBO series — “Game of Thrones.”
The show’s fans went wild in 2019 when they spotted a Starbucks cup sitting on a medieval-dressed banquet table beside Emilia Clark’s Daenerys Targaryen.
The similarity of the “Last of Us” and “Game of Thrones” continuity errors was certainly not lost on the fan who originally flagged the mistake to Druckmann.
They later posted another screenshot of the crew members and cleverly highlighted their presence with Starbucks coffee cups.
Although this mistake was pretty small in regard to the pantheon of pop culture gaffes, we’d urge Druckmann not to fix it because it’s fun!
Plus, wouldn’t it be way more rewarding if the show took accountability for the mistake by possibly having the grizzled Joel explain to the young Ellie that before the apocalypse people spent their well-earned resources on an expensive cup of coffee? We’d love to hear Ellie’s expletive-filled take on that kind of absurdity.