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."

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.