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HBO's The Last of Us terrified the viewers as much as the players of the game upon its release. Apart from humans, the show features the menacing presence of zombie-like creatures infected with mutated Cordyceps fungi. The story revolves around a handful of survivors of a pandemic of apocalyptic nature, showing various levels of infected hosts categorized as Runners, Stalkers and Clickers. Of these, the Clickers are the most dangerous when confronted.
According to the game as well as the plot of the show, The Last of Us, any human caught by a Clicker can be considered dead unless they know the ultimate move to defeat it. A Clicker is likely to grapple and bite when it lays its hands on a human, which would turn the human into an infected being.
In The Last of Us, Joel and Tess embark on the mission to take survivor Ellie to the Fireflies at the State House, avoiding any harm or peril on the way. In an attempt to avoid the long route to their destination, infested with the infected, they take a shortcut through a museum. This is where they were exposed to a whole lot of dangerous Clickers that Ellie had heard about.
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What makes the Clickers of The Last of Us stronger than other infected humans?
There are two factors that make the Clickers more horrifying than Runners – their appearance and their attributes. Clickers have the Cordyceps fungus growing for a longer time in the human host. This changes both their appearance and other qualities. Since the human brain becomes the host center for the fungus, the growth enlarges the fungal mass on the head, gouging out the eyes and turning them blind.
The head would now have layers of mass developing on what was once the face, with the fungal plates providing a hard cover to the brain underneath. This hard outer mass makes it almost impossible to kill a Clicker with a gunshot. A gunshot aimed at the head can take off a chunk of the hard fungal mass, leaving the host brain intact for further contagion growth.
The blind Clickers cannot see their enemies but can locate them by using echolocation. They produce clicking sounds, an evolved form of adaptation after the host became blind. However, the echolocation technique of the Clickers in The Last of Us is not as advanced as that of bats. While they can only sense things a few feet away, even within range, their perception is not very sharp.
What makes them dangerous is their enhanced strength coupled with the relentlessness they show in their actions. Considering how difficult it is to kill them with normal weapons and methods, they become almost invincible to ordinary fighters, even killing Tess.
How do the infected become Clickers?
While the show The Last of Us does not clearly explain this, the game specifies that an infected person becomes a Runner within 24 to 48 hours of receiving the fatal bite. A few weeks after that, the Runner becomes a stealthy and menacing version called the Stalker. Almost a year of hosting the infection will turn an infected human into a Clicker.
However, not every infected human lives that long with the infection. Episode 1 of The Last of Us showed a dead guy in the subway who had not lived long enough to grow the fungus in his body to any humongous level. As such, Clickers are not the end of the line for the Cordyceps-infected hosts to develop.
About a decade of infection in a living host can turn the infected human from Runner to Stalker to Clicker to a Bloater. As the name suggests, a Bloater has fungal growth growing in hard mass all over its body, making it huge in appearance and almost indomitable. However, the good news is that very few infected survive that long, leaving few Clickers and even fewer Bloaters to fight.
HBO Max has aired nine episodes of season 1 of The Last of Us every Sunday since January 15, 2023. The show has been renewed for season 2, but there has been no official news about its production or release yet.
