‘The Last of Us’ designers name their pick for the show’s scariest character

It was a particularly strange end to the weekend yesterday. Since what was effectively the start of 2023, all we’ve known is Sunday being The Last of Us day, but with the first season having wrapped last week, we’ll just have to get used to life without any new episodes.

There’s a silver lining, of course; beyond finally giving audiences a chance to process all of the trauma that The Last of Us no doubt inflicted over the course of its nine episodes, our nightmares will have a little bit less to work with from here on out, as no new episodes mean no new terrifying creatures or heinous human beings.

New nightmares or no new nightmares, if we chiefly take into account the sheer display of body horror offered up, there’s one character whose fear factor will no doubt continue to tower above the rest, and she seared herself into the minds of many with just a few seconds of screentime.

Speaking to ComicBook, Wētā VFX supervisor Simon Jung, who oversaw much of The Last of Us‘ visual effects, named the child clicker, who crept into the car Ellie was hiding in during the climax of “Endure and Survive,” as the creepiest character in the whole show, making a special note on what the character’s mere existence implies.

“It took a very long time to sell both the fact that this is a child, or used to be a child 20 years ago before she fully matured into that Clicker status. That she’s a child, because of the proportions of her were really hard to sell because you don’t have the eyes or you don’t have a nose, you don’t have really a forehead or anything that you immediately would recognize visually as the proportions of a child where everything is kind of a little bit out of scale.”

Animation supervisor Dennis Yoo also chimed in with praise for the actress behind the character, whose terrifying movements were entirely natural given the actress’ background as a contortionist.

“She was a contortionist, so all that creepy motion that was done, it was her, it’s a hundred percent her.”

Indeed, David may take the cake as the human that makes our skin crawl the most, but when the Infected are thrown into the mix, there’s just no topping those The Ring vibes exuding from that child clicker.

The first season of The Last of Us is available to stream on HBO Max. A second season has been announced.