The Last of Us has plenty of easter eggs; some of them goofy, some sly. And one of them a little bit naughty.
Last week a tipster sent in a photo taken from the game depicting two phone numbers on a bulletin board in Pittsburgh, both of which he said were phone-sex hotlines. I called them up and sure enough they were real. Ha, right? Good one, Naughty Dog!
Well, not really, as it turns out. I asked the game’s creative director Neil Druckmann about the phone numbers and how they got into the game.
“That was an artist’s mistake,” he said. “What happened was, they put some phone numbers in the game and then they thought they could just change the area code to 555, then it’s invalid because it’s what they do in movies. But I guess that doesn’t work when you have a 1800 in front of it.”
“We’re now working to take it out,” Druckmann said. “It was just an honest mistake.”
Aw. Well, we’ll always have Fahey’s recording of the greeting for 1800-555-2545:
Comments
18 responses to “The Last Of Us’ Hidden Phone-Sex Numbers ‘A Mistake’, Will Be Removed”
SEX SCANDAL AT THE NAUGHTY DOG STUDIOS!
Quick everyone send your copies to the classification board for disposal
lol +1 how is it this is allowed through but saints row is banned!?!?!?
Because games are rated based on the content that the classification board knows about. When even the developers and publishers don’t know about it, they can’t exactly point it out to the board for inclusion in the rating process.
also because the competency of the censorship board is questionable.
Other times, yeah that’s a major problem, just not this time.
You don’t know that! For all we know the Australian classificaion board DID find this before the couple of million people who had the game for few weeks before someone found it, but when they tested it on an Australian phone the number didn’t work so they just let it go…..
….. although that seems unlikely and isn’t how the classification process works at all.
An image of a a sex hotline phonenumber on a wall that is just a number and would require you dialing an international call to hear anything naughty, doesn’t quite match up with an alien probe weapon that lets you anally rape random strangers on the street now does it?
It’s kind of amazing how they’re completely different things isn’t it
I’d just like to know what kind of person tries calling numbers they see in video games.
Yeah, some gamers out there must really have a lot of hung-ups.
Jenny, I’ve got your number. 867-5309
Damn you. I’ve now got that song running through my head..
Again.. after all these years 🙂
Best part is, they must have been looking for pest control.
Dave Chappelle talked about the need for 555 numbers in films because of shit like this.
I thought I saw someone comment who said they found the posters in-game but the numbers were different?
Yeah, I thought I remembered someone showing that it was just a photoshopped image in the comments of the original article.
There was my self and another person who commented that. But like I mentioned it was a similar art asset in another area so it is possible there was another one with another number on it.
It looks to me like it starts with 800, not 1800.
This sounds like a freudian slip to me.
why because if there not removed, Australia will ban this game too? fucking cunts
“won’t anybody think of the children”
what a joke. like phone sex is a big deal. if it was a number for a gun shop that’d be ok but anything sex related and its the end of the world.
GTA: san andreas – kill anyone. swear. drugs. booze. hookers. be an all out criminal. – no problems.
sex mini game – “im scarred for life. i want a refund and apology. how could you put such abhorrent things in games”