Greetings, survivors! Today, we are celebrating the 10-year anniversary of The Last of Us Wiki! This is a huge milestone for our community, and I'm honored to be celebrating it with all you who still contribute and browse the wiki to this day.
In this blog post, we're gonna go over the history and the future of the wiki, and just commemorate the past 10 years of everyone's hard work! :D
A brief history[]
The newspaper Easter egg in Uncharted 3.
Ten years ago today on December 4, 2011, user Sackchief founded The Last of Us Wiki on the wiki hosting platform named Wikia and made his first edit. For those who may not know, The Last of Us is first referenced as an [accidental] Easter egg in Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception—another Naughty Dog game—and the Easter egg began to make the rounds in December 2011. In the first chapter of the game, the player can find a newspaper with a headline of "Scientists are still struggling to understand deadly fungus", referring to the Cordyceps brain infection. Sony would later officially unveil The Last of Us on December 10 at the Spike Video Game Awards. I'm honestly not too sure how the title "The Last of Us" was known on December 4 before the formal announcement (if you know, comment it below), perhaps some kind of leak? Nonetheless, we are one of the earliest The Last of Us communities, and perhaps the first one ever established!
Created by Klock101.
Anyways, after the game's announcement, Sackchief promoted Klock101 and Samuelcd1997—then-administrators of the Uncharted Wiki—and later Doctor Drake, to admins of this wiki. Together, they helped build the foundations of our wiki. After the game was released in 2013, the wiki became very active, and we were finally in business!
As the previous admins began to slowly retire over the years, a new admin team consisting of M67PattonZippo, Fireburn12, and myself took over the reins of the wiki, and continued the administrative duties of the previous team. When The Last of Us Part II was announced at PlayStation Experience in 2016, we eagerly anticipated its release. Around the same time, Wikia rebranded as Fandom, and we had to adjust to a lot of new changes. After Fireburn12 retired in early 2018, we brought Snivystorm onto the admin team. Together, along with our then-moderators Riley Heligo and Brainwasher5, we continued our duties.
After The Last of Us Part II released in June 2020, the wiki began to pick up activity once again. Earlier this year, we promoted RinasaurusRex and Swedgin to moderators for their commendable contributions. Recently, we even released a new design that's fully optimized with FandomDesktop, as well as several other new updates. Fandom also featured Manny Alvarez from Part II in their celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, and highlighted the wiki for our new design in their November 2021 blog post.
Thanks to our many contributors over the years, we were able to build the most informational encyclopedia about The Last of Us series! We currently house over 900 articles and 3,000 files combined by over 100,000 edits. We are still continuing to improve the wiki to this day, and I'm proud of our community's current state!
The wiki over the years[]
Below you can see selected iterations of the wiki throughout the years. You can really see how much the wiki progressed over time!
Please note that these screenshots were grabbed from Wayback Machine archives, so not all assets or designs may be displayed correctly. The dates are also when that page was archived, not when that specific design was put in effect.
Which previous design was your favorite? We're curious to know, so feel free to comment it below!
The future of the wiki[]
HBO TV series[]
Teaser image for the HBO series.
How does the future of the wiki look? Well, it's looking pretty bright! We are currently waiting for the release of the upcoming television adaptation of The Last of Us, expected to air on HBO sometime in 2022. The first season consists of 10 episodes written by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin. It stars Pedro Pascal as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie, and will feature new original characters and dialogue that "greatly deviates" from the game.
Standalone multiplayer game[]
In addition to the TV series, we are also anticipating the announcement of Naughty Dog's standalone The Last of Us multiplayer game! Even though they've confirmed they're working on it, no additional details have been announced. Can we expect Factions 2? Something much bigger? Keep an eye on the wiki for when new details emerge.
Thank you[]
Even though I've been here for only about 8 of the wiki's 10 years, I still can't believe we're already here. There are too many wikis that focus on single-player games and end up falling off the map years after their release. Luckily, thanks to everyone at Naughty Dog and the dedicated The Last of Us community, as well as all of you, we've managed to survive all these years, and we have an even more promising future in store for us.
To everyone who has participated in our community or contributed to the wiki, even if you made just one single positive edit, we sincerely thank you! Without your help, the wiki wouldn't be where it is today. To all the former staff, including our founder Sackchief and Klock101, thank you for all of the hard work you put into the wiki and for laying the foundations of our community. Thank you to our current staff who continue to work on the wiki, including our wiki representative, I appreciate all of you guys! Lastly, thank you to everyone who views the wiki, our community has always been for the fans, by the fans, without any official support or endorsement from Naughty Dog/Sony.
That's all for today's anniversary blog. We hope to continue seeing familiar faces around the wiki, as well as many new ones! Feel free to join our Discord server to stay connected to the community.
Here's to another 10 years, and as always, endure and survive!