After all this time, you’d think we would have found everything there is to uncover in The Last of Us, but apparently not. Packed full of hidden gems and cool easter eggs, the Naughty Dog title keeps on surprising us, even after eleven years of its existence. From references to Naughty Dog’s prior work, like Uncharted and Jak and Daxter, The Last of Us is a maze of surprises that seemingly keeps unraveling more as time ticks on.

While we sit and wait impatiently for HBO’s The Last of Us season two to appear next year, one player has found an important talking point in the game regarding spores and gas masks and the concept is completely baffling fans.

Spores And Gas Masks And Ears, Oh My

I’ve played all the games in The Last of Us franchise numerous times because it’s one of my favorites and I just can’t get enough of that post-apocalyptic setting and yet, here I am still learning something new and reading cool discussions to this day about it. We all know that in the games, the cordyceps plague is spread in one of two ways: by getting bitten by an infected person, or by breathing in airborne spores that tend to be located underground or within dank and dark buildings.

We have seen Joel, Ellie (even though she doesn’t need one) and the rest of the crew having to put on gas masks as soon as they spot these formidable spores lingering around so that they don’t become infected. Over on Reddit, user PlumComprehensive859 has created a post that has drawn attention to the gas masks used and why they only ever cover the mouth, nose and eyes but never the ears. Unless you’re a doctor or some kind of airborne virus specialist, it’s certainly an interesting concept to explore, and also why Naughty Dog didn’t explain why it wasn’t needed or implemented something that would block the virus from spreading into the ear channel too. That’s if the virus can.

Upon doing a little digging into other airborne viruses like COVID, for instance, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ears are not believed to be a route of COVID-19 infection due to the skin in the outer ear canal being more like regular skin, unlike the tissue in the mouth, nose, and sinuses, which then creates a barrier that makes it difficult for the virus to enter. But that’s not to say it’s impossible. And with something as savage as the cordyceps, it seems as though it would find any way possible to enter the body to take over its host.

Some of the comments in the Reddit thread said that the characters should have worn CBRN suits to really stay protected, but let’s be real, whipping out a huge hazmat suit every time would not be possible, and have you seen the small bag Ellie carries for storing essentials like…comics? I think it might have been a bit of a missed opportunity, or maybe it just wasn’t important enough, for Naughty Dog to provide some kind of ear protection as well to keep extra safe as well as add to the lore since no one really knew the depths of how the disease could spread initially or at least mention it throughout the medical areas of the game.

As for now, it seems as though it’s an unexplained question whether spores can enter the ears of their hosts, but it’s certainly a cool concept to think about. Although, I’m pretty sure Hazmat suits wouldn’t be practical in HBO’s The Last of Us either, since the creators of the show decided spores and gas masks didn’t make sense for their version of the story.