Includes a mandatory, disturbing kill of a dog by the player. Other patrolling enemy dogs can be avoided.
https://mashable.com/article/last-of-us-part-2-dogs-how-to-skip-not-kill/
There's a brief scene where the PC is dropped into rushing water by an enemy, characters swimming through harsh waves, as well as a fight scene in shallow water and an aquarium is an important location
People really need to stop using the term gaslighting interchangeably with lying. Lying is NOT necessarily gaslighting. Gaslighting requires the purposeful manipulation and deception of a person and/or their environment in order to make them mistrust their own perception of reality. In this case, it was not gaslighting.
A child is physically attacked by his mother for being transgender. He kills her in self defense. This is off screen but you see the mothers body and hear the mental scarring on the child.
While nobody is shown abusing an animal, there is a scene of an animal stuck in a barbed wire trap. The animal is visibly and audibly in pain, but it's freed.
No one is sexually assaulted but a child references her sibling being assigned as an elder’s child bride. She says this is a tradition in the religious group/cult they belong to.
(Spoilers) In the final fight of the game, a character is held underwater by another character who is trying to drown her. She eventually releases her before she can drown.
A character is shot in the head near the end of the game and their eye is visibly shown damaged, but survives.
A scene later in the game shows the main character attempting to poke someone's eye out in an act of self defense, but they're pulled away from each other before any serious harm is done.
There's so much. In addition to what other posters have said. There's a scene where you walk through a prison of sorts to talk to someone. This person is busy torturing someone. The people in cells that you walk by have clearly not been treated well and will flinch away from you as if scared.
There are several instances when the character you are playing can fall to their accidental death from high places. It is not part of the main storyline but may be depicted during game play.
Multiple npcs are seen hanging throughout the game. There is a scene where the player character is hanged, but is ultimately saved. The scene is graphic.
father figure dies brutally by a golf club in the first 2 hours of the game. later u see one of the main characters dad, dead in the hospital caused by the events of the first game.
a woman and a boy are kidnapped near the end of the game. you don’t see them for a while but later you see them attached to a pole and malnourished and not treated well.
There is a building that you pass through as Abby that has a few pure white mannequins that personally freaked me out a little, but they can’t move/make noise like in other horror games.
after finding tommy’s dead horse dina pukes, it’s off camera but there’s audio. in the theater, after dina takes a nap. she’s upstair, and it happens when you walk in room. it’s 90% audio
The two playable characters have deep psychological traumas (Ellie is implied to have PTSD) and yes they also commit violent actions, e.g. torturing. Both of them are driven by desire for revenge that was caused by very traumatic events.
The main character also has a panic attack towards the end of the game while she's in a barn and hears a loud noise. She has flashbacks about a traumatic event.
Dysphoria isn’t depicted. There’s a trans character whose experience with his dysphoria is discussed, but not in great detail.
There’s a bit of body dysmorphia in that a character struggles to eat and becomes noticeably thinner throughout the chronology of the game. Another starves due to circumstance and similarly loses mass drastically.
Potentially, it's not super apparent but Ellie says towards the end of the game (after looking a bit more thin) that she "doesn't eat" so it's implied, and she also refuses breakfast at the beginning of the game and also sandwiches around the same time. So it's not apparent but if you pick up on subtle actions, it might seem that way.
one of the main characters (and probably several others in game) visibly suffers from PTSD. there is a scene in a barn where a loud noise startles her, reminding her of the traumatic event, and she has a flashback/delusion. she is screaming and crying until her partner calms her down.
Throughout the entire game you have to squeeze through tight spaces, which could trigger claustrophobia in some people. There are multiple scenes which have the player hiding in locations such as walls and vents, with the camera shifting to reflect how tight the spaces are.
A baby cries when Ellie has a panic attack in the barn near the end of the game. It happens after she goes down stairs and tries to open the door in her flashback (you'll probably understand when you see this moment).
In a disturbing scene, a character who we earlier learned was pregnant gets stabbed in the throat. The person who stabbed her does not discover this until after she kills her. (It's not Dina.)
No, although people who hate the game frequently and transphobically refer to Abby as a trans woman because of her appearance, so be warned before entering any online discourse.
A few news outlets claim Lev is trans misrepresentation but his portrayal is pretty authentic (i.e. he is played by a non-cisgender person) and I haven’t heard any actually trans people complain about him.
A 13-year-old transgender character leaves a cult with his sister. When he encounters the cult again, they deadname him. All other characters (including enemies) refer to him by his correct name and pronouns.
The two main couples that show up in the game are around the same age as each other. Joel and Ellie have a father/daughter relationship so age gap doesn’t apply to them
A scene somewhat near the beginning of the same involves a car crashing into a pole and lake, and another scene near the middle of the game involves a car falling off of a hill while on fire. Both scenes are in a third-person perspective, and the player along with the characters involved in both situations survive.
A main character attempts to drown someone near the end of the game, but chooses not to. There's an option to ensure the player can't drown during swimming sections in the settings menu.
Blood is very common, usually coming from enemies and used as a damage indicator on the player. Gore ranges from showing open wounds to entire limbs being shot off of bodies.
Guns are a mandatory part of the game, with almost every character using them at some point. Using and customizing your guns is a core mechanic of the game.
https://mashable.com/article/last-of-us-part-2-dogs-how-to-skip-not-kill/