It took a 6'6" stunt performer and an 80-pound suit to bring The Last of Us' Bloater to life
Pushing the bloat out.
A new behind-the-scenes video reveals how HBO pulled together The Last of Us' fifth episode, including how it brought the game's terrifying Bloaters to life in the show.
Created by four-time Emmy-winner prosthetics designer Barrie Gower – who also created some of the most memorable creatures in shows like Stranger Things and Game of Thrones – the Bloater suit weights an astonishing 40 kilos (88 pounds) and was worn by the 6'6" British stuntperson, Adam Basil.
"The suit would be very soft, but very slimy and wet," Gower told Variety. "We covered him in this gel-like solution, which gave him a gloss to all the fungus. We had lots of little spines and spiky hairs punched into his body, like little growths burrowing out.
"To get the shapes to read, we had to cover them in a gloss. It was like a texture that we were building up, so we were constantly going in and slathering them in this gloss, just so the shapes would pick up in the silhouettes. We were repeatedly going in and gelling him up more, covering him in this lube, so he was nice and shiny."
There were also 10-15 other stunt performers dressed as Clickers, and another 50ish infected extras, too, which meant the team of 65 prosthetic artists spent five hours getting the horde camera-ready.
That meant artists would report for makeup around 3pm or 4pm in order to commence shooting at 9pm.
As Victoria summarised for us earlier this week, episode four of The Last of Us broke another viewership record for the series on its debut. 7.5 million viewers in the US tuned in for the series' fourth episode on Sunday - that is an increase of 17 per cent from the previous week, where 6.4 million viewers settled down with episode three.