The Last of Us director reveals massive change for key scene came down to the Lord of the Rings

The Last of Us showrunner Craig Mazin has let slip an interesting tidbit about how he brought the Infected to life and how he drew from The Lord of the Rings as inspiration.

During a sit-down interview Craig Mazin has just revealed more behind-the-scenes goss about that epic scene towards the end of the show's fifth episode, Endure and Survive.

So, this is your spoiler alert warning.

And if you haven't seen it already, what have you been doing? It's time to catch up.

Anywho, we are - of course - talking about that epic nighttime action scene that showed off the Bloater.

You know the one, where hundreds of Infected come out of a hole in the ground in a massive swarm, followed by the bone-chilling Bloater.

And, to make them look as scary as possible, Mazin looked to the Mines of Moria for inspiration.

Yep, it was the ruined Dwarven kingdom from Middle-earth that had a major part to play.

In the scene in The Fellowship of the Rings, Frodo and his ragtag team of pals flee through dark tunnels while they're pursued by a horde of orcs, then a cave troll and then the fiery and horrific Balrog.

New Line Cinema

It was this scene in particular that inspired Mazin to set the entire scene from Endure and Survive in the creepy darkness of night.

"It was supposed to take place in the day, but by that point in the production we’d learned that the infected tended to look best when they were more mysterious," he said, according to ScreenRant.

"So I was like, 'f**k, this is going to look so much better at night.'"

He added: "And doomed myself and a thousand other people to three weeks of night shoots."

Those poor people.

But, invariably, his J.R.R Tolkien-inspired scene looked bonkers-levels of good.

Seriously, it elicited gasps in this writer's household.

So, there you have it.

That's how a bonkers scene from a scene from a 2001 Peter Jackson fantasy film had enough of an impact that we're still feeling its effects 22 years later.

And thank goodness it did, because the end result was seriously impressive.

HBO

Praising the scene, one viewer gushed: "HBO's The Last of Us finally gave us the bloater omg. It was incredible and the head splitting scene [sic].

"The movement was so accurate. Just slow but very dangerous when they get close.

"Now I'm excited for the shambler and the Rat King."

A second agreed, adding: "The new episode of The Last of Us was insane probably my favourite so far. Finally got to see more of the infected like the Bloater."

"Just watched episode 5 of The Last of Us and I think that bloater might've been the scariest looking thing I've seen on TV," wrote a third.

"Holy f**k episode 5 of #TheLastOfUs was f**king epic!!!!," shared a fourth.