Actress who portrayed The Last of Us Part II's Abby faced death threats, including against...

[midian182]

WTF?! Many people are passionate about video games, but some take that to a level of obsession that appears to confuse fiction and reality. An example of this comes from the Last of Us Part II's Laura Bailey, who says she was sent death threats, including several aimed at her infant son, after leaks revealed her character's controversial actions in the game.

In a section of the Grounded II documentary that delves into the development of The Last of Us Part II, Bailey tearfully recalls becoming the subject of a hate campaign after a leak months before the game's release revealed a major spoiler.

Note: for anyone who hasn't played TLoU Part II, that spoiler will be discussed here.

The decision to introduce Abby and have her brutally kill fan-favorite Joel in the opening hours of the game was, and still is, a point of contention among many fans. Despite Bailey only being the person who portrayed Abby, she was still subject to a barrage of online hate.

"The worst of it, the really hardcore death threats got passed along and they made sure they weren't anyone who lived close by," she said. "They were threatening my son who was born during all of it and yeah, it was rough. But, you know, more than anything it just kind of like taught me to keep a distance."

Laura Bailey talks about how people threaten her new born son when The Last of us part 2 launched.

Man this breaks my heart ð pic.twitter.com/R5zfShzlhF

– Pyo 5ï¸Â⣠(@mrpyo1) February 2, 2024

Death threats aren't a rarity within the games industry, sadly, though most of them are directed at companies rather than individual actors due to the actions of their characters.

Sean Murray, head of No Man's Sky developer Hello Games, said he received "loads" of death threats when the game was delayed by less than two months in 2016. CD Projekt Red faced the same thing in 2020 after Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed by a mere 21 days. More recently, Unity closed two offices over a "credible death threat" amid the controversy surrounding its announcement that it would start charging a fee on games made with the Unity game engine and suspicions of insider trading.

Elsewhere in the Grounded II documentary, creative director Neil Druckmann said he has a concept for the third TLoU game, and that there is probably one more chapter to the story. The making-of video also reveals that the game's director wanted Bailey to bulk up for her role. It was during this training regime that Bailey found out she was pregnant.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/101761-actress-who-portrayed-last-us-part-ii-abby.html

 

[Furriest]

Its only game, why you have to be mad?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

One again, I ask.....proof?

We hear this kind of thing all the time, from people who want attention. Kelly Marie Tran showed the entire world that her "death threat" was one bot account. Of course, she deleted her social media before proclaiming she was receiving hundreds of these "threats", and went silent when the backups of here social media went public and proved her wrong. You'd think there would be plenty of posts out there, maybe the names of the accounts sending them? Police reports, especially since sending a detailed death threat is illegal IIRC? Anything to back up these claims?

Interestingly, its always when someone is in a position of controversy where attention is easily gained that these suddenly come out. Almost like there's a pattern here....

I'd like to point out that hello games, CDPR, and Unity all failed to produce any proof either. Just claims. Conveniently after they made some very bad choices. It's interesting how that works.

Its only game, why you have to be mad?

I agree, but by the same token, studios have antagonized their fanbases for attention and publicity for years now. When you do that, you are inviting people who get extremely emotional over your product and will flip on you if you do something they dont like.

"turning brands into religions and customers into zealots" as it turned out, was a BAD idea.

 

[GreyOmega]

One again, I ask.....proof?

We hear this kind of thing all the time, from people who want attention. Kelly Marie Tran showed the entire world that her "death threat" was one bot account. Of course, she deleted her social media before proclaiming she was receiving hundreds of these "threats", and went silent when the backups of here social media went public and proved her wrong. You'd think there would be plenty of posts out there, maybe the names of the accounts sending them? Police reports, especially since sending a detailed death threat is illegal IIRC? Anything to back up these claims?

Interestingly, its always when someone is in a position of controversy where attention is easily gained that these suddenly come out. Almost like there's a pattern here....

I'd like to point out that hello games, CDPR, and Unity all failed to produce any proof either. Just claims. Conveniently after they made some very bad choices. It's interesting how that works.

I agree, but by the same token, studios have antagonized their fanbases for attention and publicity for years now. When you do that, you are inviting people who get extremely emotional over your product and will flip on you if you do something they dont like.

"turning brands into religions and customers into zealots" as it turned out, was a BAD idea.

She did display several in a twitter post in 2020. With one very clearly stating "I will find u and I will kill your kid for that just wait for that." 3 of the 6 she showed were death threats, another one was wishing she died, the 5th was a threat that they'd stab her, and the last one told her to go **** herself for what the character did.

She wasn't the only one though who reported receiving hate messages at the time. The director of the game, Neil Druckmann, also shared several posts sent to him which were transphobic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

She did display several in a twitter post in 2020. With one very clearly stating "I will find u and I will kill your kid for that just wait for that." 3 of the 6 she showed were death threats, another one was wishing she died, the 5th was a threat that they'd stab her, and the last one told her to go **** herself for what the character did.

She wasn't the only one though who reported receiving hate messages at the time. The director of the game, Neil Druckmann, also shared several posts sent to him which were transphobic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic.

Links to this proof?

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Links to this proof?

It’s not everyone else's job to do your research.

Sorry reality is again at odds with your worldview. Don’t worry though, people can be quite good at ignoring proof so they can still be right.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

It’s not everyone else's job to do your research.

Sorry reality is again at odds with your worldview. Don’t worry though, people can be quite good at ignoring proof so they can still be right.

What's with your hostility? I simply asked for proof of this claim, as I have never seen any of this. Burden of proof for a claim is on the claimant.

 

[ET3D]

What's with your hostility? I simply asked for proof of this claim, as I have never seen any of this. Burden of proof for a claim is on the claimant.

It seems clear that you don't actually want proof, and that linking to her post won't satisfy you. Which is why it's pointless. It's like trying to prove to a flat-Earther that the Earth isn't flat.

In case you do want to see her post with the quotes of threats, a simple web search will come up with that.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Its only game, why you have to be mad?

They are all some people have to live for I assume.

 

[madboyv1]

What's with your hostility? I simply asked for proof of this claim, as I have never seen any of this. Burden of proof for a claim is on the claimant.

I mean it took a single search query "laura bailey twitter threats 2020" but here's something?
https://www.shacknews.com/article/1...-laura-bailey-shares-death-threats-on-twitter

 

[Waris]

One again, I ask.....proof?

We hear this kind of thing all the time, from people who want attention. Kelly Marie Tran showed the entire world that her "death threat" was one bot account. Of course, she deleted her social media before proclaiming she was receiving hundreds of these "threats", and went silent when the backups of here social media went public and proved her wrong. You'd think there would be plenty of posts out there, maybe the names of the accounts sending them? Police reports, especially since sending a detailed death threat is illegal IIRC? Anything to back up these claims?

Interestingly, its always when someone is in a position of controversy where attention is easily gained that these suddenly come out. Almost like there's a pattern here....

I'd like to point out that hello games, CDPR, and Unity all failed to produce any proof either. Just claims. Conveniently after they made some very bad choices. It's interesting how that works.

I agree, but by the same token, studios have antagonized their fanbases for attention and publicity for years now. When you do that, you are inviting people who get extremely emotional over your product and will flip on you if you do something they dont like.

"turning brands into religions and customers into zealots" as it turned out, was a BAD idea.

name checks out

 

[Kotters]

I'm not sure there's anything cheaper than an internet death threat.

 

[Nobina]

Unfortunately, that's what you sign up for when you become a celebrity playing a character people despise. Remember a similar story about that blonde Game of Thrones kid who played Joffrey? He also had to deal with people who hated him for playing a bad guy in a TV series.

 

[scavengerspc]

What's with your hostility? I simply asked for proof of this claim, as I have never seen any of this. Burden of proof for a claim is on the claimant.

Honestly, it's not like there is nothing out there. It was all over twitter.
Lots of screen grabs.

Unfortunately, that's what you sign up for when you become a celebrity playing a character people despise.

NOBODY signs up for death threats against themselves or their kids. Zero.

 

[Endymio]

Honestly, it's not like there is nothing out there. It was all over twitter.
Lots of screen grabs.

A screen grab is about ten million times easier to create than a deep-fake video, and Twitter accounts all have IP addresses associated with each post. Terroristic threats are illegal. If she seriously thought they were threatening her and her son's life -- why not go to the police?

And before anyone jumps the gun, I'm not stating these accusations are definitely false. But it's indisputable that many other such accusations have been faked in the past. A degree of rational skepticism is healthy.

 

[redgarl]

Man... when you are so OFFENDED by a an artistic decision that you decide to issue a threat to an actress because you feel your masculinity have been threatened...

Seriously, there is nothing else to say.

 

[atomicgirl]

Just to be perfectly clear, these are not "fans" issuing death threats.

Ever since Gamergate, there's been a cottage industry of hate baiters on social media and YouTube latching onto IPs along racist, sexist and political lines to foment outrage and "rally the troops" into something very similar to George Orwell's "Daily Hate," except for them, it's "Here's Video #6,364 this year explaining why should hate The Little Mermaid/Kathleen Kennedy/George Lucas/Kevin Smith/Disney/Indiana Jones/Star Wars." These hate baiters make a lot of money doing this, and almost 99% of the time, none of them or their followers have seen, played or watched the IP in question. They just follow a deranged ***** on YouTube or Twitter who claims to have seen the IP and is outraged because it's supposedly "anti-male/anti-white/spreading agenda/forced feminism, etc." The deranged ***** will pretend to have seen it, but will only be going by leaks, stills and rumors, not anything else.

Their followers will then do his bidding to astroturf, reviewbomb, cyberbully and SWAT. None of the followers will be actually viewers or gamers of the IP, just sociopaths who use these hatebaiters as an outlet for their psychosis. It wasn't video games, movies and TV shows they were sending death threats over, it would be something else.

 

[Endymio]

Ever since Gamergate, there's been a cottage industry of hate baiters on social media and YouTube latching onto IPs [very] similar to George Orwell's "Daily Hate,"

Orwell's "Daily Hate" was mandated virtue-signaling, demanded by an authoritarian society to demonstrate the individual's adherence to their Leftist ideology. In the real world, it was widespread in the 1960s counter-culture movement, which culminated in such anti-establishment acts as the Patty Hearst kidnapping and Obama mentor Bill Ayers' terror group, the Weather Underground. It died down a bit during the 1980s and then resurfaced with a vengeance, with legions of young "social justice warriors" poring over every single act and uttered word of an author, actor, director, or any other public figure -- even going so far as to high school tweets and yearbook inscriptions. Look at the campaign against JK Rowling, or the actual acts of violence against women like Riley Gaines, merely for asserting that men shouldn't participate in women's sports.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

The reality is that the world is full of horrible people, and even worse people who defend them.

 

[Furriest]

We do have a diagnosis for these sort of people, its called terminally online. Death threats vary in seriousness so much that its better to learn that death threats only really matter (so in this case, they don') if they're rallying in number and enough to create an organized attempt on your life, with is almost never if the offenders (people giving the threats) are starting at a monitor all day thousands of miles away from the artists, creative directors and actors. Journalism loves to take death threats (or any statement that resembles violence or any kind, sarcastic or not) to a zenith of seriousness (which isn't unwarranted mind you, its still a verbal threat). It's what happened to Ruben Sim, its what's happened to many others, and it will always continue to be a headline because it drives far more internet traffic / engagement than it does a physical or manifested attempt against a human life.

 

[atomicgirl]

Orwell's "Daily Hate" was mandated virtue-signaling, demanded by an authoritarian society to demonstrate the individual's adherence to their Leftist ideology.

What I'm talking about has nothing to do with anything Leftist or even politics. It has to do with the fact that Big Tech culture is dominated by Techno-Fascists, who studied 1984 intently to figure out how to exploit the techniques in that book to weaponize and financially benefit from anger, hatred and outrage. The reason why they're doing this is that what the measure of a platform is worth is based on a false metric of engagement, and nothing creates engagement more than hatred.

How do I know this? I've had my finger in every pie in terms of interests Every single campaign against someone or something has followed the exact same playbook, to where I know that there was never such a thing as SJW trolls or MAGA trolls, just disinformation agents, bots and bad actors posing as these groups on platforms to generate negative engagement. If you put all the hate campaigns from the past together, you would be shocked to see how every single one of them unfolded the exact same way, regardless of whether we're talking about someone as obscure as a soap opera showrunner or famous celebrities, public figures and companies that couldn't diverge more widely in terms of interests, audience and personalities. Part of the gaslighting of Big Tech is to claim, "Oh, no, it's because every fanbase has its toxic fans." That may be true, but how does every single "toxic fanbase" express its toxicity in the exact same way?

 

[toooooot]

When I read stuff like this I always remember a girl who sang on YouTube and was shot by a crazy guy on stage when she got famous.
On one side, you can do the thing you like, getting paid for a very creative work you like.
On the other, most of well-known people will attract so many more sickos.
And I guess it did not help that refreshed ND became a fairly toxic place to work for
I can tell a lot about their boss based on just few things he was responsible for that are a common fact.

 

[dirtyferret]

Unfortunately, that's what you sign up for when you become a celebrity playing a character people despise. Remember a similar story about that blonde Game of Thrones kid who played Joffrey? He also had to deal with people who hated him for playing a bad guy in a TV series.

Celebrity? She's in a booth reading lines someone else wrote. These trolls need to stop reading Qanon, leave mom's basement, go for a walk and feed the birds or do something productive with their lives.

The reality is that the world is full of horrible people, and even worse people who defend them.

truth