Joel's age and date of birth. HBO's TLoU vs. game: differences and similarities

This is an extremely interesting topic, because we learned the real date of Joel's birth relatively recently, with the release of the remake. This became possible via the model viewer, which allowed us to take a closer look at the documents that Joel and Tess present at the Boston checkpoint. The passport states that he was born on September 26, 1981 in Arlington, Texas.

The date makes it easy to calculate that in the opening prologue, Joel is 32 years old, and since Sarah is twelve, it means that Miller became a father at quite a young age. As the action of the game takes us way forward, Joel is already 52, and he has another birthday during his journey.

In the show's prologue, Joel says he's 36, which means he must be 56 when they arrive in Boston. Since the HBO showrunners moved the action back ten years, to 2003, we can easily conclude that the hero must have been born in 1967. Much earlier than Joel from the game.

The president of the US of A

The setting of the game in 2003 brings some interesting implications. First of all, the president of the United States at the time was George W. Bush, which is confirmed in the series, with his portrait hanging in a classroom. Bush took his first term in January 2001, and in the race for the most important office in the country, he defeated the Democratic candidate, Al Gore.

There's also a reference to the latter in the TV show, as in Boston, we can see a dude sporting an Al Gore's presidential campaign tee. By the way, it also speaks to the quality of the t-shirt itself, which has survived almost 25 years in decent condition. This detail is really about something else. Just like the developers, the authors of the show also made sure that items produced after the epidemic erupted, i.e. 2003, did not appear in the game. For the same reasons, we see PlayStation 3 consoles in The Last of Us games, but no PS4s. Sony introduced this device in November 2003, which is after the world collapsed in this universe.

Virus made by terrorists?

There's one more interesting detail associated with the change of timeline. As Joel, Tommy and Sarah flee town, the girl asks if the virus could have been released by terrorists. The question is a sound one, because in 2003 the US was in the midst of the so-called "war on terror."

Terrorism was all the rage in the media, and the US military was involved in multiple conflict in the Middle East. In the time frame depicted in the show, American forces were fighting in Afghanistan (since 2001) and Iraq (since March 2003). Sarah's question thus perfectly ties in with the fears that were quite pronounced in American society of the era.

Potential source of infection

Also while driving, another interesting dialogue about the sources of infection takes place. Sarah soberly notices that their neighbors often took Mrs. Adler to the hospital, where she could possibly get infected.

In the game, the subject of the source of infection is rather avoided. The prologue only mentions that people could get infected in large urban centers. Sarah comments that the first infected person the characters met, said Jimmy, did work in the city. However, there's no answer to the question of why some people got infected and others didn't.

The series – as we already know after the second episode – gives better exposure to this issue and devotes enough attention to it. In later episodes, the question of infection also comes up and is discussed by Joel. Miller, however, also won't be able to give Ellie specific information on the subject, which is also understandable. Actually, even the viewers know more than him, granted they watched the great flashback sequence at the beginning of episode two.