The most recent installment of HBO’s The Last of Us mostly continued the heartbreaking stories of characters like Henry and Sam, while also keeping up with Joel and Ellie’s Journey.
Additionally, it significantly contributed to the further development of the post-apocalyptic setting fans of the 2013 Naughty Dog game were already all too familiar with.
This includes offering new fans their first look at a Bloater, a sizable infected even harder to defeat than clickers.
While characters like Kathleen are unique to the show, Bloaters are part of the source material too so gamers have been looking forward to seeing how HBO would tackle one.
Bloaters, a stage that takes years to reach, are, in essence, the last stage of the evolution of the infected.
Bloaters are the least common type of infected in the game, making them particularly challenging to defeat when they do appear.
At this point, viewers have only ever seen one Bloater in the show, which used its hands to rip off a human’s head and set a terrible precedent for the rest of the episodes.
Not to mention that the Bloater was super impressive, being exactly what fans of the original games wanted to see on screen.
With that being said, you may be wondering how they pulled it off for the HBO show since it’s live-action.
The live-action version of the Bloater, which features a huge suit made by Barrie Gower and some visual effects, is primarily practical.
They needed a big actor to wear the suit because it weighed about 80 pounds, according to Gower.
Adam Basil, a 6’6″ former Game of Thrones actor, was ultimately cast as the show’s Bloater.
During an interview with Variety, Gower explained how the Bloater came together, saying that “We had an entire copy of his body we modeled the bloater prosthetics over with modeling clay. We cast it out of foam rubber and foam latex, which is really lightweight. It is almost like an upholstery foam, a really spongy sort of material. That was then all molded and cast in separate sections: the top half, head, the arms and legs. We had a team that fabricated all of these parts together. We had a zipper at the back and around the waist to zip them all together. He had all of these pendulous folds of fungus which hid zippers and poppers.”