Can zombies talk in The Last of Us? What the games vs the show reveal

The Last of Us has remained one of the staples of post-apocalyptic fiction since its initial release in 2013. Created and written by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Computer Entertainment, the original game took players on a haunting journey in an infected world ravaged by the Cordyceps brain infection—a fungal mutation that infects human beings and transforms them into deadly, zombie-like beasts.

The franchise then returned with the highly praised sequel, The Last of Us Part II (2020), and re-established itself once again in 2023 with HBO’s TV show adaptation, translating this spookiest of worlds into a whole other dimension.

The video game series and television series have been praised for their well-crafted characters, emotionally impactful storytelling, and graphically realistic depiction of a decaying society.

HBO’s series, written by Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann (the latter also co-writer of the games), is very faithful to the game’s overall storyline, but adds new concepts and fleshes out some of the storylines.

As of July 2025, the series has finished its second season—which adapts the first half of The Last of Us Part II—and HBO has renewed the show for a third season, currently in pre-production. Meanwhile, the video game franchise continues to be a pop culture touchstone, sparking ongoing speculation about future games or spin-offs.

At the center of both the game and the franchise are the infected zombies. Their spooky presence sets up interesting questions about the nature of the line between man and monster, particularly in terms of their mental abilities, social roles, and potential for communication.

Most contentiously debated by the fans and commentators, perhaps, is whether or not such infected creatures are capable of speaking or communicating at all.

Here is a closer look at both the TV series and the games’ characterization of the infected zombies, what that says regarding whether or not they can talk, and how it fits with the rest of the themes in the story.

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The state of The Last of Us franchise in 2025

The games

The original game, The Last of Us (2013), follows Joel and Ellie on a perilous road journey across a devastated America, with the risk of death from the infected and hostile survivors. It is celebrated for its emotionally powerful narrative, expressive settings, and all-rounded characters, who have a story of their own to tell in subtle ways.

The sequel, The Last of Us Part II (2020), takes place a few years after the first, venturing into a fresh world of revenge, trauma, and a cycle of violence. It broadens the game’s world, introduces new infected classes, and delves further into the subtext lore of the Cordyceps infection.

Until now, in 2025, there are rumors and speculations regarding a third one under development, but nothing has been released as yet. Remastered copies and porting to other platforms keep the games at the center of the cultural discourse, ensuring that the franchise is as relevant as ever.

The HBO series

The Last of Us Season 1 (2023) follows essentially the same narrative path as the original game, but never holds back from occasionally going off track to add more depth to backstories or amplify the social impacts of the pandemic. This gives the audience not just the primary events but also a greater understanding of the world unraveling.

The second season, which was released in April–May 2025, adapts only the first half of The Last of Us Part II. It was spread across seven dense, character-driven episodes.

Season 3 (and likely still more in the future) will address the rest of the game’s narrative, delving deep into Abby’s side of things—what motivated her during those fraught days in Seattle, as well as some world-building such as how the Seraphites came to exist, the dirty W.L.F. civil war, and key figures like Isaac.

HBO officially confirmed on April 9, 2025, that Season 3 was greenlit. Currently, writing and pre-production are progressing through the last part of 2025, with cameras getting ready to roll in 2026.

If everything goes according to plan, fans can probably mark late 2026 or early 2027 for the grand premiere—at least that’s the rumor mill in the business.

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The infected in The Last of Us: Their biology and behavior

Origins and types

Both the video game and TV show draw from the concept of a mutant Cordyceps fungus inspired by an actual parasite that infects insects. In this fictional world, the fungus has evolved to infect people, eradicating higher-order brain function in a coordinated fashion and promoting random, senseless violence.

There are established infection stages with their own identifying features:

Runners: Newly infected, who have retained many human traits and move with unsettling familiarity.

Stalkers: In this middle stage, the infected become more aggressive and stealthy, with fungal growths becoming more extensive.

Clickers: Characterized by distorted fungal plates overtaking their heads. Clickers are blind but have developed echolocation and emit unsettling clicking sounds.

Bloaters/Shamblers: Rare and grotesquely deformed, these higher-level infected have bodies covered in thick fungal armor, making them incredibly resilient and difficult to kill.

Social behavior and communication

The infected are not entirely mindless; they are driven by the fungus’s biological urge to spread. In both media, the infected are seen wandering alone or in hordes, usually reacting to sudden motion or noise.

One of the most intriguing additions to the TV show is the inclusion of a fungal network—a vast mycelium network connecting infected subjects across huge distances.

This network effectively allows them to sense disturbances in the world and act as a single entity, spurring gigantic-scale swarming behavior. With the actual fungal communication that occurs in the real world, this element adds yet more threat and sinister interdependence to the infected in the TV show.

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So, can zombies speak? Communication in the games compared to the show

The Last of Us (Games)

In the games, the infected are characterized by their otherworldly sounds ranging from gurgling bellows and fractured screams to the notorious clicking of Clickers.

The sounds contain an air of tension and serve as warnings to players of impending threats. The infected don’t speak or produce any sound that can be interpreted as human language but instead produce noises animal-like in nature, thanks to the fungus taking over their nervous system.

Runners will at times emit anguished cries or their own form of moaning, which is remarkably like human pain, particularly shortly after infection. These noises are haunting, but have no purpose or meaning.

Clickers use rhythmic clicking to re-create their world by echolocation, a replacement for their blindness.

Bloaters and other higher-level infected produce low, monstrous grunts that enhance their terrifying presence.

This absence of speech isn’t incidental. It serves a profound thematic purpose. By taking away language from the infected, the game reminds us how far they are lost from being human. It juxtaposes the bleakness between the surviving human and the infected, making their meetings even more tragic and horrific.

Sometimes, there are moments when players can hear a newly infected person release a broken, dying scream, making what was lost all the more sorrowful.

The Last of Us (HBO series)

The HBO version of The Last of Us sticks closely to the non-verbal representation of the infected. Their sounds are also unsettling, with the typical animalistic clicking and screaming fans are accustomed to from the games.

The biggest new addition—the Cordyceps network—is what enables the infected to sense threats and clump onto prey over enormous distances. It is biological communication, but entirely non-verbal and intuitive.

The infected do not speak or attempt to convey thoughts through words in the show. They move and behave according to the intention of the fungus to infect, not due to any retained human consciousness.

Most famous of all the additions to the TV series is the so-called “Cordyceps kiss,” which happens in the second episode. In this, a host infects a victim with the fungus through tendrils expelled from the mouth. While this is visually striking—and has caused a great deal of debate about horror and intimacy—it is not a communication system. It is purely a biological infection transmission system.

Both the show and the games interrupt periodically to remind us of the humanity lost in the infected. Initially, the infected will slow down or display anguish that briefly resembles their pre-infected state. But these soon pass away.

As infection progresses, though, the transformation is a regretful stripping away of self, and words and communicative speech are among the first to disappear.