The Last of Us: 8 biggest changes from the video game in season 1
By Daniel Roman
3. The Kansas City QZ
The show made a lot of changes to the Kansas City Quarantine Zone plotline, which spanned Episodes 4 and 5. In the game, these story beats happen in the Pittsburgh QZ, which the show nodded to in Episode 8.
In the game, Henry and Sam are two survivors who just happened to get trapped in Pittsburgh when their group was attacked by local raiders. In the show, they’re Kansas City QZ natives involved in the overthrow of FEDRA. The story of how FEDRA fell in Pittsburgh is totally different in the game; it’s suggested it happened a good long while before Joel and Ellie arrive.
On the show, Kathleen and Perry are new characters, as is everything having to do with Kathleen’s brother, the fallen revolutionary leader. In the game, the raiders are basically a faceless bunch of strangers we never get to know. We understand them much better on the show.
This was also the first time the show started introducing bad guys with names (“They killed Bryan!”), which showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann revealed on The Last of Us Podcast was done so it would be more difficult to “other” these people. They don’t want the viewers to just see them as faceless bad guys. The Last of Us Part II video game leans into that idea. And Kathleen’s group wasn’t the only one to get this kind of treatment.