Yes, the giraffe in HBO's The Last of Us finale was real, his name is Nabo and he lives in Calgary
The first season finale of HBO's The Last of Us left viewers with a lot of questions unanswered. Chief among them: Was that a real giraffe that Joel and Ellie were feeding, or what? Plenty of viewers thought it was CGI (and not very convincing CGI at that), but it turns out that yes indeed, it was 100% flesh and blood.
The giraffe in question appears during a quiet interlude in the episode: Ellie and Joel discover the creature roaming free amidst ruined buildings, and take a moment to feed it and marvel at its presence. As Polygon(opens in new tab) noted, it's an important scene in the game, and was replicated almost shot-for-shot in the show.
«It's a joyful moment for Ellie, and for Joel seeing Ellie finally be a glimmer of who she used to be after the trauma that she faced,» Bella Ramsey, who plays Ellie in the series, said in the «Inside the Episode» documentary on the season finale.
«Everything that she's experienced hasn't just gone away, it's just this moment of beauty—so precious it's almost sad. But then, through speaking to Craig [showrunner Craig Mazin], I realized it was just living the truth of it. Which was—it was bittersweet, but still so, so beautiful.»
(There are spoilers in this video, naturally, so proceed beyond the giraffe bit with whatever caution you deem appropriate.)
But to a lot of viewers, that giraffe just didn't look quite right. Was it CGI? Was it bad CGI?
Well, no, and definitely not. The giraffe, just like Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal, is real: He's a 13-year-old male Masai giraffe named Nabo who calls the Calgary Zoo(opens in new tab) home. Ironically, given the response, part of the reason HBO employed a real giraffe was to maximize the scene's realism.
Here he is!
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