'The Last of Us' stunt performer who played the massive Bloater in episode 5 says the monster 'seems to be a bit of a sex icon'

• Adam Basil, who played the Bloater in "The Last of Us," said the monster has become a "sex icon."
• The Bloater is a terrifyingly large type of Infected that emerged in episode five of the show.

Adam Basil, the stunt performer who played the Bloater on episode five of "The Last of Us," is ready to accept his character's position as a "sex symbol."

The Bloater is an extremely large and powerful variant of Infected on "The Last of Us," the HBO drama that takes place amid a fungal pandemic based on the video game of the same name. In both the game and the series, those who have been infected by the cordyceps fungus take different forms. Episode five of the show touched on the Bloater, the biggest of them thus far, played by stunt performer Adam Basil.

"He seems to be a bit of a sex icon," Basil told Entertainment Weekly of the monster. "He's captured a lot of people's imaginations. Someone asked me if I'd come to their wedding. I've had people sending me love messages. He really brought out something in people that I don't think even they knew they had. He's the big daddy mushroom, I think there's been a [meme]."

In "The Last of Us" video game, Bloaters are the stage of Infected that come after the terrifying Clickers, Inverse reported. The monsters are large and covered in fungus, making them difficult to penetrate with bullets. While Bloaters in the game create toxic clouds that can damage players, per Inverse, the bloater in the show didn't display the same ability in its several minutes on-screen. It's just big, freaky, and strong enough to rip someone's head clean off their body.

Memes about the Bloater on Twitter have compared its iconic entrance from an underground tunnel to other iconic walks, like Rihanna performing at the Super Bowl or Ben Stiller in "Zoolander."

Basil told Entertainment Weekly that prosthetics designer Barrie Gower, with whom he had worked previously on "Game of Thrones," specifically had him in mind for the role. The performer's 6-foot-6 frame was ideal, as the role required wearing prosthetics that weighed over 40 pounds.

"'I don't wanna put it like this, but you're just perfect for this character,'" Basil recounted Gower telling him. "'What's he called?' 'The Bloater.' 'Oh! Huh.'"