The last of us did a pretty fantastic job of letting us see sides of our favorite characters that we didn’t get a chance to see in the game. The last episode in particular gave us a closer look at a more vulnerable side of Joel as he suffers from panic attacks due to the mental trauma he’s been exposed to throughout his life and journey with Ellie.
It’s an opportunity for the show to explore his sensitive side, but the internet has done what it does best and turned Joel’s suffering into a meme you’ve likely seen if you’ve been on social media recently. The meme itself consists of three images, each showing Joel in a different state of panic, and people on Twitter couldn’t help but notice the similarities to themselves and their everyday lives (thanks Kotaku).
People used the image to mock the end of the show, send emails, play the recently released PS VR2 with chunks blown, and more. It’s such a perfect set of reaction images that you can easily joke about it, which has become obvious because you can’t scroll through social media for two minutes without coming across another one.
That being said, there are a few people out there very pleased with how The Last of Us approached the subject of panic attacks and how suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere they can appear. It’s another heavy subject that the show has managed to handle flawlessly, though we’ll have to see if it manages to pull it off as well when it adapts Riley’s story in the Left Behind DLC next episode. Based on what we’ve seen so far, this will probably knock it out of the park.