The Last of Us 2 is widely seen as one of the most impressive games ever made from a technical standpoint, but that does not mean fans are incapable of finding bugs. For example, one recent The Last of Us 2 clip highlights a hilarious visual glitch involving Joel.
This bug occurs during the game’s opening scene, which sees Joel singing and playing guitar for Ellie. While this is normally a brilliant moment that showcases the love Joel has for Ellie, the mood is completely ruined by the silly bug. Throughout the entirety of the scene, Joel’s forearm is pressed against his head, with the grizzled survivor looking quite goofy as he paces back and forth in front of Ellie.
The clips in question were provided by Asleep-Individual-15, and they explain that the glitch happened because of a previous sequence where Joel is on horseback. During this opening, he shields his eyes from the sun, though for whatever reason his arm gets stuck when he tries to block out the light. With all the cutscenes in The Last of Us 2 being rendered in real time, the exact same character model for Joel is used, ensuring that the bug carries over from gameplay into the cinematic. While seeing him walk around with an arm up is funny, the next part of the scene is even better.
Joel’s arm got stuck from the opening scene where he shields his eyes from the sun on the horse 🤣🤣 from thelastofus
As shown in the second clip, Joel has his hand above his eyes when he goes to play guitar for Ellie. While he eventually puts it down when the player is tasked with strumming in The Last of Us 2’s guitar mini-game, his hand does not move to play the proper notes. Instead, it rests flat on the side of the guitar, not moving until the song has properly started and control is taken from the player. Once Joel begins singing, both hands work properly.
More of Joel glitched with his arm frozen 😂 It was like this from the opening scene riding the horse all the way to the end of this video!! from thelastofus
Alongside numerous upvotes for each clip, The Last of Us 2 fans left several memorable comments. Some players joked that it was the brightness of the lamp or Ellie being the sunshine of Joel’s life that caused him to keep covering his eyes. Others said that they were glad this did not happen to them on the first playthrough, as it would have ruined the tenderness of the scene. Reddit user leeroycharles made a good point, as they pointed out how a shadow of Joel’s hand can still be seen on his face despite this being a glitch.
With gamers set to play as Joel again in The Last of Us Part 1, hopefully they will have full control over both of his arms. If a bug like this happened during combat, it would be a lot harder to fight off Clickers and other enemies.
The Last of Us 2 is available now on PS4.