The ideation stage of The Last of Us began with the team originally planning to reboot Jak and Daxter but becoming dissatisfied with the direction. Druckmann's original idea came from pitching a zombie game to George Romero as a student, about a cop protecting a young girl. This evolved into an idea called "Mankind" about a virus infecting only women. The story then took shape as The Last of Us, about Joel protecting Ellie across a post-apocalyptic America. Naughty Dog drew inspiration from documentaries to create mutated humans called the Infected, establishing the main threat, and then added other enemies like bandits and militias.

1. IDEATION
The ideation stage of the Last Of Us began with the shipment of ‘Uncharted 2’ when the
original plan was for the team to work on a reboot of the ‘Jak and Daxter' series,
featuring a radical rethink of the original games' visual style. However, Neil Druckmann
notes that the team were dissatisfied with the direction the project was going, and began
to question whether or not they were doing it for the right reasons.
Druckmann says that his original idea for The Last of Us came about during his time as
a grad student at Carnegie Mellon when he had to pitch a zombie game to legendary
zombie movie director George Romero. Druckmann’s original uni pitch included a cop
trying to protect a young girl and play would switch between being the cop or the young
girl. Druckmann and fellow director Bruce Stanley kicked around a few idea’s and came
up with “Mankind” which involved a virus that could infect only women and
‘Elle’ (character idea at the time) was the only one imune to this infection.
The idea then moulded into ‘The Last Of Us’. The story is about a man named Joel
protecting a girl named Elle on their journey across post apocalyptic America. Naughty
Dog didn’t get fixed on the idea of the current zombie stereotype as they wanted to
branch out to do something different but in the same genre. A member on the Naughty
Dog team had watched a documentary on a fungal infection that effects ants; it gets into
their heads and takes over them resulting in death. Naughty Dog took this idea and a
few others to make what they call the ‘Infected’. The Infected are mutated humans,
reshaped into horrific new forms by a fungal infection. The resulting creatures are highly
aggressive, and will attack any uninfected human on sight; with the main threat and
storyline mapped out; Naughty Dog started to bring other enemies into this new world
such as bandits, cannibals, hunters & militia groups