Naughty Dog‘s PlayStation 4-exclusive that launched last summer has one scene that might be the most violent of them all, and it had inspiration from events that were partially similar to it.

Before we start to go into further details, we have to say that the next paragraph onwards will contain spoilers, so if you either haven’t played The Last of Us Part II (which is quite likely going to get a PlayStation 5 version) yet, we don’t recommend reading any further than this sentence.

This scene leaked before the game launched, and the developers, Naughty Dog, received a lot of critique for it. This lead to a few devs, and even some of the actors, receive death threats. This subject was discussed by Neil Druckmann, the director and co-writer of The Last of Us Part II. He’s currently the vice president of Naughty Dog.

He told The Washington Post that at the age of sixteen, Druckmann’s friend invited him to play some golf. This lead to some unfortunate events: „My friend was into it. He invited me to go to a driving range. He was showing me the ropes. I stood behind him and got smacked on the backswing. Blood everywhere. For a long time, Abby stabbed Joel in the back then twisted the knife to paralyze him. But [using a] knife felt more like an Ellie thing. We wanted [to do] something different,” Druckmann said.

So seeing Abby use the golf club wasn’t the original plan. It still led to Joel getting beaten to a bloody pulp to death. After all this, we’re not surprised whatsoever to hear Druckmann say he isn’t an avid golfer. No wonder: the first impression was downright terrible for him…

Source: PSL