After five weeks with The Last of Us, we should be prepared for whatever atrocity the zombie apocalypse has to offer. The very first episode overwhelms with a Lots of shocking moments, when entire regions are destroyed and families are torn apart. Suddenly people turn into raging monsters and chase after their loved ones.
Several times in The Last of Us we experience how a just harmless, exhausted face turns into a completely dehumanized fury without a mind, which only follows the instinct of killing. But that worst monsters we haven’t seen yet: the bloater. It marks the fourth and final stage of development for the infected and resembles a creature straight out of hell.
The bloater triggers physical reactions in me. I get sick when I see him. But why is that? A specific phobia could be to blame.
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Horror monsters in The Last of Us: Few things are more gross than the mushroom texture of a bloater
The 6th episode of The Last of Us tears open such a gate of hell right before our eyes. First, an army of clickers erupt from the Kansas City underground, as if all things are taking their revenge displaced by people were made to survive. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. A snorting, pounding boil slumbers in the abyss with the Bloater.
You can watch the trailer for The Last of Us Episode 5 here:
The Last of Us – S01 E05 Trailer (English) HD
Why the bloater doesn’t let me go is not because of its terrifying staging, but simply because of the absolutely disgusting design of the creature. After more than ten years of The Walking Dead and every other zombie movie I’ve seen in my life, I actually thought my stomach was pretty tough when it came to zombies. I was wrong.
When I was immersed in background reports on the new The Last of Us episode after the episode, a well-lit behind-the-scenes image appeared at some point that I couldn’t tear myself away from. It shows the elaborate and impressive Bloater costume.
The fungus is spilling out everywhere and covered the whole body. The moment I started looking at the texture more closely, I almost threw up.
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To be honest, I’m writing this text with a sinking feeling in my stomach because I looked at the picture again in preparation. There is something absolutely mesmerizing about the Bloater costume, but as soon as I get lost in the details, it becomes very uncomfortable and the fascination turns to pure disgust in a split second.
The Last of Us stages the Bloater as a horror monster, but there is more to it than that
Bloaters already appear in The Last of Us video game template and are one of the meanest opponents there. Completely covered by a thick layer of mushrooms we are dealing with an apparition that provides infinite nightmare material. The clickers are terrifying because a person’s most important feature, their face, has been supplanted by a rampant fungus. Bloaters take over people completely.
This mutation has more in common with a beast from the afterlife than a person who has just gone shopping and been caught off guard by a devastating pandemic.
HBO
The Bloater in The Last of Us
I find it exciting that in the series itself I find him only half as disgusting as the above still, which lets us explore every pore of the costume. are everywhere Bubbles, holes and weird patternsturning the sight into a dizzying experience and making my knees go weak.
If I’m looking for a explanation for this I’m most likely to come up with the term trypophobia.
The gigantic bloater in The Last of Us Episode 6 is an absolute trypophobia dream
When trypophobia becomes a feeling of disgust and fear referred to, which arises at the sight of such bubbles, holes and patterns. Even an everyday object like a sponge can trigger this effect. The National Geographic writes:
The term [Trypophobie] is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association and mental health experts dispute whether it is a real phobia or rather idiosyncrasy (unusual behavior). The magazine launched a study that considered the fear of holes some kind of defense mechanism describes. Basically, people who are afraid of the sight of small clusters of holes could Fear of parasites or diseases have that are easily transmitted from person to person. The researchers hypothesized that the clusters of tiny holes in people with smallpox, measles, typhoid, or other diseases might be the reason why trypophobics overreact when they see similar patterns in everyday objects.
No wonder trypophobia combined with an end-times, pandemic narrative like The Last of Us and the monsters that appear in it become the absolute Guaranteed a spooky experience will give more than a little goosebumps. Aside from the obvious horror effect of the creature design, the bloater in The Last of Us subconsciously triggers something that makes me overly disgusted.
In a powerful moment, I feel the urge to touch the Bloater’s mushroom texture to better understand my fear of it. I would never do it, though, because even if the bloater was standing motionless in front of me, I’d be afraid the tissue would just engulf me, suck it up, and into it huge, spooky creatureswhich grows more powerful and monstrous with every day that it rots away.
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