The year took place in 2013 and the release of a highly anticipated zombie-apocalypse video game was on the horizon.
The game, called The last of usinvited the players to explore what seemed a whimsical scenario: a world devastated by a pandemic in which a pathogen kills millions of people.
Unlike many apocalypse fictions, the responsible pathogen was not a bacteria or a virus, but a fungus called Cordycepts which infects humans and takes control of their brain.
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The writers of Game Studio Naughty Dog, based in Santa Monica, California, were inspired by real mushrooms – in particular Unilateralis Ophiocordyceknown as the zombie-year mushroom. The fungus infects insects and releases chemicals in the brain of animals to change their behavior. Before the release of the game, Naughty Dog turned to scientists, notably the behavioral ecologist David Hughes, a specialist in zombie-animal mushrooms (he appointed one according to his wife), to answer questions from the media on the fungal and pandemic sciences that inspired history. Hughes, who is at the Pennsylvania State University in University Park, has since evolved in the study of climate change and food security.
The last of us Freed out a follow -up game in 2020 and a television program acclaimed by criticism, the second season of which ends on May 25 on HBO.
Hughes spoke to Nature About his experience in consultation on the game and why Covid-19 changed our appetite for zombies.
What was your involvement with the game?
Naughty Dog Studios asked me, as well as a few other people who were notable in this space, including psychologists, to talk about whether we could have a world pandemic. Of course, in the intermediate period, we all learned that the answer was yes.
They asked us to go around Europe and do a series of conferences to avoid criticism and provide support for the idea that infections that jump from one species to another – zoonotic infections – are not only possible, but in fact, they are the predominant mechanism by which humans are infected with new parasites that cause a disease. I had the chance to go to the studios and see the artistic talent involved, and to meet the team and the players in the voice of the video game.
What did you do with science in the game?
I was really impressed by how the game writers have entered the science of it and I started to understand things like mushrooms and slime mussels, and try to think about the ways these organizations make their business. They really took it by themselves and incorporated these elements into the game.
I think they were even ordering mud molds so that they could simply leave it on a petri box and examine it. And you see that throughout the game. And now in the television program, in the intros, they have these mud balls. The writers were geek, and understanding the mushrooms are not complex, so they ran with it.
The last of us Tops in a post-apocalyptic world where millions of people are infected with a fungus that takes control of their brain.
Have you played games?
I tried and failed miserably! I am just a typical hope scientist.
Is the idea of a cordycep pandemic realistic?
It is not unrealistic that mushrooms can infect humans if they come from animals. It is not realistic to think that they could cause behavioral changes in humans. Writers have taken liberties. They had different steps on how infection changes over time. All this is fanciful, of course.
Looking at the second season of the television show, it was interesting that they have this communicative nature of spores or fungal hyphae. This is interesting because we know that mushrooms are connected like that for many kilometers – for example, mycorrhizal mushrooms, which are under root systems in trees, do it effectively.
Have you been impressed by the science of the television program?
I often find that it is the bad question, because I do not think that the work of the entertainment industry is to impress scientists. Scientists are very problematic individuals. This is called the Carl Sagan effect. The more science popularized, the less your science is good. It is an opposite relationship. I think it doesn’t really matter. Science belongs to society, and people should tell stories about it. And, you know, arrogant scientists saying: “Oh, you did not understand well” – like, who cares?
What was your reaction when the COVVI-19 pandemic occurred?
I told you! In The last of us conferencesI’m talking about the same thing. I said, the problem is not to know if we have zombie mushrooms that manipulated humans. It will not happen. The problem is that if we lose 5% of our population and the world economy stops, which we have seen.
Do you think the COVVI-19 pandemic changed our appetite for the zombie-apocalypse media?
It’s very interesting. Do you build a game on a dystopian future based on a pandemic, do you live through a pandemic, then what is the relevance of the game or the film? I think our appetite for being afraid by the pandemics fell because we all have the SSPT. Or, we do not have an SSPT and we realized that some of us just don’t care about others.
It is therefore interesting to look at the history of the zombie tradition. In the 1950s and 1960s, these were nuclear weapons, because we were all afraid of that. And then he went to diseases, because we had too populated a society. Then we had a pandemic, and we shrugged and continued. So the fascinating thing is, The last of us That’s good, but that’s not what it was.
This interview has been modified for duration and clarity.
This article is reproduced with permission and was first publication May 23, 2025.