HBO’s The Last of Us season 2 trailer has a twisted hidden Easter Egg referencing the game’s most brutal scene

Beware: spoilers for The Last of Us Part 2 and, more than likely, The Last of Us Season 2 lay ahead. 

HBO’s The Last of Us season two aired its first full trailer yesterday, and eagle-eared fans of the game are already getting flashbacks to scenes they’d rather not remember. 

The Last of Us season two has now properly reintroduced us to Ellie and Joel, now seemingly living somewhat more normal lives five years after the Firefly showdown, and added Kaitlyn Dever’s Abby to the mix. But things don’t stay safe for too long, and before you know it, clickers and survivors alike are screaming through the lens, practically begging for more Emmys.

Anyone that’s played The Last of Us Part 2 knows what all that crying is about, however, and the trailer alludes to one particularly brutal scene more than once. When things get extra intense in the trailer, a whistling sound rings out in the background of some quick cuts. But that deafened ringing is actually ripped straight from the early scene in The Last of Us Part 2 where Abby turns Joel’s head into a golf ball. You can see the side-by-side comparison in the clip below.

It’s the sound editing equivalent of HBO winking at the audience that knows of what’s to come and is already traumatized, while nodding its head at anyone still in denial about Joel’s fate, which is both twisted and sort-of hilarious. What’s extra neat about the Easter Egg is that the noise starts ringing out at the exact second that Joel and Abby first cross paths. 

Abby can be seen scurrying away from a clicker horde, crawling through snow, and cornered by a fence in the trailer. That is until the 1-minute 11-second mark where an infected pins her down, Joel’s gun flies into frame ready to save his would-be-murderer, and that awful, all-too-familiar sounds begins to play. Ouch. 

Not everything will be revealed in this upcoming season, though. Adapting The Last of Us Part 2 will require multiple seasons of television.