Is Last of Us’ giraffe CGI? The answer is both — and amazing.

Visit Last of Us’ breakout star at the Calgary Zoo, and no, it’s not Pedro Pascal or Bella Ramsey. As it turns out, the HBO series’ giraffe scene, adapted straight from the games, was created with a real giraffe and filmed inside the Calgary Zoo. The zoo has few a giraffes, but Nabo — a 12-year-old male Masai giraffe who is the tallest of the bunch at 17 feet — was chosen for the role.

The scene is question is one of the most important in the video game and show; it’s the culmination of hours worth of unrelenting violence, a moment of reprieve before Joel (Pascal) and Ellie (Ramsey) come up against more of Last of Us’ patented brutality. HBO put the scene in the game’s ninth episode, its first season finale. Ellie is in recovery from a highly traumatic encounter she had with a cannibal group. She has lost all of her senses and humor. She stumbles upon the giraffe at exactly the right moment — a reminder of the beauty and power of nature. It was important to HBO’s production team to get this moment right, which meant using a real giraffe.

Image by HBO via HBO Max

“What I quickly learned after doing the research on the game was just how critically important this one moment is to the whole story of the game,” location manager Matt Palmer says in HBO’s The Last of Us: Making of documentary. “Yes, you can create a giraffe in visual effects, but it’s just not the same.”

There were many people who believed the giraffe to be fake and completely CGI. Many people went to great lengths to attack the CGI. They were unaware that Nabo, the animal actor who plays the giraffe, was also criticizing the CGI. People might be confused: WasThe scene was pulled off with a lot of visual effects.

HBO acquired the production Last of UsTo film the scene, we went to Calgary Zoo. Nabo’s enclosure was fitted out with blue paneling to make a blue screen. John Paino, the production designer, tells Variety that it took over a month to set up the environment so Nabo could feel at home with the change and with all the other people involved, such as Pascal and Ramsey who are feeding the giraffe. And it does make an impact; even Ramsey said in the documentary that being so close to a huge animal was almost “spiritual.” So yes, the giraffe is real, but the environment is not — that’s a CGI background led by visual effects supervisor Alex Wang.

“That’s Hollywood magic of Alex isolating the giraffes and putting them on our set,” Paino said. “That was probably the most complicated piecing of VFX stage, scenery and location I’ve worked on.”