Did The Last of Us Part 1 make Joel look more like Pedro Pascal?

The Last of Us Part 1 has us asking — did Naughty Dog change Joel's face to look like Pedro Pascal, the actor portraying the character in the super successful HBO TV show?

The Last of Us Part 1, one of the best PlayStation games ever, launched with a top-to-bottom graphical makeover of Naughty Dog's original 2013 game for the PS5, and one of the lesser discussed changes is that made to the face of lead characters Ellie and Joel. With the success of HBO's The Last of Us now evident, it's time to ask an important question — was Joel's face changed to look more like Pedro Pascal ahead of the HBO show?

Joel vs. Pedro Pascal

Does Pablo Pascal look like Joel from The Last of Us Part 1?

Rather than pester any official sources or spend money on this, we quickly and cheaply used a free online AI face checker to generate some hard numbers on whether Joel from The Last of Us Part 1 looks like actor Pedro Pascal. The results? Well, not to jump the gun too soon, but the answer, in our opinion, is clear: absolutely one-hundred per cent yes.

To prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Joel was changed to look like Pedro Pascal, and that this is absolutely not a case of good casting, we had to get a little thorough. So, please join us in checking the math.

PS3 Joel vs. Pedro Pascal, normal human man.

To judge whether Joel's face had been significantly changed to match Pedro Pascal's for this latest PlayStation Studios venture, we first had to find out how similar Joel's face was to Pascal's before the latest release. To do this, we compared Pascal's face to the in-engine face of Joel in the original PS3 hit The Last of Us and its excellent PS4 port, The Last of Us Remastered. Doing so, we got a lowly 22% — the face checker we used was kind enough to let us know that the two faces were, in fact, not the same. This is a good start.

PS4 Joel vs. Pedro Pascal, smiling politely.

To make sure we weren't making absolute fools of ourselves, we then checked whether Pedro Pascal's handsome face matched up with an upscaled, pre-rendered version of Joel's face. This was done in the name of fairness — after all, why should Pascal be the only one who gets a glow-up for his headshot? On a more even playing field, we saw a 1% increase in similarity to 23%. Still seemingly not the same person.

PS5 Joel vs Pedro Pascal, the Man(dalorian).

So, comparing The Last of Us Part 1's Joel with Pedro Pascal, our first results are not very promising. Sure, technically, Part 1's Joel looks 1% more like Pascal than his earlier iterations, but is that really the kind of similarity we can rest easily on? Surely we can do better. So, we know Joel only looks marginally like Pedro Pascal 'the man' — but how about Pedro Pascal, 'the Joel?'

PS3 Joel vs. Pedro Pascal, the Joel

Comparing PS3 Joel to a screengrab of Pedro Pascal playing Joel in HBO's The Last of Us, we see a massive shift in face similarity, with the two now looking 50% like one another. That's impressive, especially given this is the in-engine Joel that performed the worst against the previous picture of Pascal. We thought this would likely yield obvious success — until we saw how the pre-rendered Joel performed.

PS4 Joel vs. Pedro Pascal wearing Joel's brow

Yikes. Honestly, we're not sure whether the AI was just messing with us, as how pre-rendered Joel looks less like this version of Pedro Pascal at 45% similarity we have no idea. Look at that simmering rage and that trim beard — this is a mirror image of Joel. Either way, it was starting to look like we had wasted our precious time on this Earth making these comparisons when suddenly a miracle happened.

PS5 Joel vs TV's Joel, Pedro Pascal

At first, we weren't entirely sure which Joel we were looking at — where does Joel the game character end and Pedro Pascal, the real-life Joel, begin? An arbitrarily higher score of 52% was enough to prove our hypothesis — Joel from The Last of Us Part 1 looks at least 2% more like Pedro Pascal than he did on the PS3, and 7% more Joel-like than the PS4 version. We're now fully convinced that Naughty Dog has changed Joel's face to cash in on the handsomeness of Pedro Pascal, bump up The Last of Us Part 1 sales with star recognition, and inevitably gaslight us all into thinking this is how Joel has always looked. We won't be fooled so easy, Naughty Dog.

Make sure to check out our equally statistically satisfying The Last of Us Part 1 review, read about the emotional trials of the hardest trophy in The Last of Us Part 1, and read the latest The Last of Us Part 3 PS6 rumours. Also, let us know in the comments whether you believe Naughty Dog have maliciously and connivingly altered Joel's face for broader, Pedro Pascal-levels of appeal, in the comments below.

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Written by Lee Brady

News Editor Lee covers the latest upcoming PS5 games like Ghost of Yotei while making sure PlayStation Plus’ classic PS1 and PS2 games are given enough respect. Lee leads the charge on our original data analysis courtesy of GameInsights. His 25 years of PlayStation experience compliments his love of Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Sonic the Hedgehog.