The Walking Dead’s new creature is an egregious ripoff from Last Of Us’ Rat King
The Walking Dead is also a favorite of mine. I am well-known in this area for my love of The Last of Us. The two franchises, which are both set in a zombie apocalypse and feature a similar setting, have felt very different to me.
The Walking Dead also has Walkers. The Last of Us features its Infected. The Walking Dead increased the tension by adding semi-sentient “Variant Walkers”, while The Last of Us added its Shamblers, and Stalkers. Both projects feature distinct survivor groups and government villains, but these are just ingredients for a great post-apocalyptic story. The two projects have never seemed to be ripping each other off… until recently. The Walking Dead’s new Maggie and Negan-centric spinoff Dead City shamelessly copied The Last of Us Part II’s most frightening creature, The Rat King.
I’ll admit. As it’s not aired yet in the UK I haven’t watched Dead City, but I can’t ignore the social media chatter from US viewers. Yesterday, I was scrolling through Twitter when I came across the Walker King. It’s basically several Walkers fused into one. That sounds a lot like The Last of Us: Part IIs Rat King, which is essentially several Infected fused into one.
DomTheBomb, a content creator, made the comparison. wrote “Looks awfully similar,” along with side-by-side pictures of both creatures. There’s more to it than just visual similarities. It’s obvious. Lauren Cohen , the Maggie actress, spoke with Entertainment Weekly to discuss the threat. She said, “It is the Walker King, because it was based on the idea that rats tangle up their tails, and then become a Rat King.” We had three puppeteers controlling this Walker King monster.
You now know why the Last of Us Part II called it simply The Rat King. fan commented that “they definitely copied the Last of Us”. Another commented that the game “definitely ripped off The Last of Us”. This is an exciting move to increase the level of intensity in the Dead City franchise. However, it is also a risky one, especially since we will likely be seeing the Rat King on season 2 of HBO The Last of Us. This gives me some insight into what we can expect.
