It started with the sound of a window breaking. Not a cinematic explosion or a heavy metal riff, just the jarring, domestic sound of glass shattering in a quiet house. When Naughty Dog premiered The Last of Us video game trailer at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, the industry didn't really know what to do with it. We were used to Uncharted. We expected Nathan Drake with a beard. What we got instead was a desperate, sweating man pinning a fungal monster against a kitchen counter while a young girl scrambled to find a brick.
It was brutal.
Honestly, looking back at that three-minute clip today, it’s wild how much of the final game's DNA was already baked into that initial reveal. Most trailers are vertical slices of "maybe" or "if we can get the engine to work." This was different. It promised a specific kind of intimacy. It wasn't about saving the world. It was about making sure that one specific person in the room with you didn't get their throat ripped out.
Why the Reveal Hooked Everyone Immediately
The context matters here. In 2011, the "zombie" genre was already starting to feel a bit bloated. We had Dead Island, Left 4 Dead, and Resident Evil was leaning heavily into action-movie tropes. Then comes this trailer. It used a real-world biological horror—the Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus—as its foundation. By grounding the "monsters" in actual science (the kind you’d see on a late-night BBC nature documentary), Naughty Dog moved the goalposts.
They weren't just zombies. They were us, but hollowed out by nature.
The trailer didn't focus on a military squad. It focused on a duo. Joel and Ellie. At the time, we didn't even know their names, but you could feel the exhaustion in Joel’s voice. You’ve probably seen a thousand trailers since then that try to copy this "prestige" feel, but the original The Last of Us video game trailer did it first and, arguably, best. It relied on silence. It relied on the heavy breathing of a man who knew he was one mistake away from dying in a dirty hallway.
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The Secret Behind the "Brown and Grey" Aesthetic
Critics at the time loved to moan about the "brown and grey" era of gaming. Everything looked like a dusty basement. But Naughty Dog did something clever in that first look. They showed us a world where nature was winning. The trailer featured lush greenery reclaiming the concrete. It was "The World Without Us" before that was a mainstream aesthetic.
That visual contrast—the beauty of a sunset hitting a vine-covered skyscraper versus the horror of a Clicker’s screech—is what stuck. It wasn't just depressing. It was hauntingly beautiful.
People often forget that the trailer also teased the scavenge-and-craft mechanic without a single UI element on screen. You see Ellie looking for supplies. You see Joel using what's available. It communicated the gameplay loop through pure narrative. That’s a rare feat for a debut teaser. Usually, you get a CGI movie that has nothing to do with the game or a frantic montage of headshots. This was a mood piece that actually told the truth about what playing the game would feel like.
The Controversy You Might Have Forgotten
Not everything was perfect. If you were deep in the forums back then, you might remember the "Ellie lookalike" drama. In the original The Last of Us video game trailer, Ellie looked significantly different than she did in the final 2013 release. She bore a striking resemblance to actor Elliot Page (then Ellen Page), who actually commented on the likeness during a Reddit AMA around the time Beyond: Two Souls was coming out.
Naughty Dog eventually tweaked Ellie’s design. They said it was to make her look more like her voice actor, Ashley Johnson, and to reflect a younger, more "innocent" persona that would evolve over the story. It’s a fascinating footnote in gaming history. It shows how much a character can change from that first "perfect" trailer to the disc hitting the shelves.
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Technical Wizardry or Smoke and Mirrors?
Let’s talk about the "Clicker" reveal. That clicking sound? It’s iconic now. In 2011, it was terrifying because we didn't know what was making it. The trailer showed a creature with a head split open like a rotten fruit.
Technically, the lighting in that trailer was miles ahead of anything else on the PlayStation 3 at the time. A lot of people thought it was pre-rendered CGI. While parts of it were definitely cinematic, the transition into the "gameplay-style" movement showed off the engine's ability to handle complex light sources in dark, cramped environments. It set a bar for the "Naughty Dog look" that they’ve been chasing (and catching) ever since.
The Impact on Environmental Storytelling
One thing the trailer nailed was the "lived-in" feel. You see the discarded posters, the overgrown gas stations, and the sense that the world stopped on a Tuesday in 2013 and just started rotting. This wasn't a post-apocalypse that felt like a playground. It felt like a graveyard.
- The debris wasn't just "clutter."
- The lighting suggested a world without electricity, relying on "God rays" and flashlights.
- The sound design prioritized "wet" noises—blood, footsteps on damp carpet, the squelch of the infected.
Moving Past the Hype
By the time the game actually launched, the The Last of Us video game trailer had been dissected a million times. But it’s one of the few instances where the final product actually lived up to the atmospheric promises of the marketing. Usually, there’s a downgrade. Here, the relationship between Joel and Ellie ended up being even more complex and morally grey than the "heroic protector" vibe the trailer suggested.
It’s interesting to compare it to the The Last of Us Part II trailers or the HBO show teasers. The original was about survival. The later stuff was about the cost of that survival. But you can't have the latter without the raw, primal energy of that first reveal.
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How to Revisit the Experience Today
If you're looking to scratch that itch again, don't just re-watch the trailer on a grainy YouTube upload from 2011. There are better ways to engage with this specific piece of gaming history.
First, check out the "Grounded" documentary. It’s a full-length look at the making of the game, and it spends a good chunk of time explaining how they crafted that first reveal to "reset" expectations for what a Naughty Dog game could be. It’s free on YouTube and is basically a masterclass in creative direction.
Second, if you've only played the Remastered or Part I versions, go back and look at the original PS3 footage. The technical constraints are obvious now, but the artistry is still there. It’s a reminder that great art isn't about the number of polygons; it’s about how you use the shadows.
Finally, pay attention to the soundscape. Put on some good headphones and listen to the Gustavo Santaolalla score that was teased in the early marketing. That simple, two-note acoustic guitar theme did more to sell the game than a hundred explosions ever could.
The legacy of that trailer isn't just that it sold a lot of copies. It’s that it gave permission for "AAA" games to be quiet, sad, and uncomfortably human. It shifted the industry's focus toward cinematic realism and character-driven narratives, for better or worse. Every "sad dad" game that followed owes a debt to that broken window in a quiet house in 2011.
Actionable Insights for Fans and Creators:
- Study the Pacing: If you’re a content creator, analyze how the trailer uses "negative space" or silence to build tension. It’s a lesson in "less is more."
- Check the Source: Watch the Ophiocordyceps segment from the original Planet Earth series to see exactly where the developers got their nightmare fuel.
- Compare the Design: Side-by-side the 2011 trailer Ellie with the 2022 Part I remake Ellie to see how character design philosophy has shifted toward hyper-realism over the last decade.