Left 4 Dead/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Killing Carriers

I honestly don't understand the military. Are they just wanting to screw themselves over? The carriers (The survivors from both l4d 1 and 2) have proved themselves to be zombie genociders, killing thousands of zombies in a very short time. Properly hired (take these big, shiny guns and kill as many as possible, and have this cell phone if you want evac), they could clear out cities in short amounts of time. Considering the massive pile of bodies that the survivors pointed out as carriers in The Parish, carriers are at least not too rare. Also, apparently, they also have superpowers, able to take a beating from an entire horde for a long time, resistant to bullets and explosives, and being able to take a punch from Tanks without dying. These people aren't even soldiers, we have 4 normals people fighting like apocalypses on legs, with potential for dozens of more if the military would stop shooting them.

  • Except you can't leave the carriers alive. Their carriers. You can't ever let them back into society because they'll infect the general population. You can't evac them, certainly not by most conventional means because they'll infect whoever you send out flying the helicoptor or whatsit. Carriers as far as we can tell are sufficiently rare that aside from our "extra lives" we can confirm what, perhaps a dozen? The carriers we are aware of are apparently built of bad ass but it's never suggested in the games that we're making an actual dent in the zombie population.
    • It already seems as thought they have special planes for carrier evac (that giant thing at the end of The Parish) and you could simply isolate them or let them live somewhere else, like how the originals are living it out in the keys. There was an enormous sprawl of corpses that the new survivors said were "carriers". Imagine every single one of those corpses have their weapon of choice from the military, dropped off into a infected hotspot and have a two word instruction: "Go nuts". Any way you look at it, 30 or so survivors with M60s, Multiple Grenade Launchers, or even simple Assault rifles are going to make a difference, or at least carve a big, bloody path for future non-immune survivors.
    • TL;DR: Imagine 30 or so survivors armed with cutting edge military technology and body armor (which in-universe apparently makes you invincible from the front) with the only objective being "kill everything that moves and isn't a human" with the actual military only being needed to carry them in those massive carrier planes, occasionally dropping ammo and weapons, and finding a safe place where they can live after the entire ordeal is over. And yet the military thinks it's a good idea to not do that.
      • Would you do follow those orders once you found out that the best you could hope for after victory is being banished and its more likely someone would simply shoot you at the end to avoid the risk of someone walking up to you and shaking hands at some point and the entire situation repeating itself?
        • I'm sure the survivors are realistic enough to know that they will not be able to normally assimilate into society when (if) humanity recovers. Furthermore, the original survivors have proved that banishment isn't all that unpleasant. And, even if someone is dumb enough sail to the Keys to shake hands with a carrier, any outbreaks would be quickly and cleanly be put down by the massive force of survivors there. But, it's not a far stretch to think that the carriers would be hunted down, but that'll happen regardless. With the military offering a future, I'd say yes because it's ostensibly my last hope at not being killed.

The Z Word

  • Why do people (and Valve) insist on calling them zombies? I have never seen any of them do a biting attack animationnal poster.
    • They look like them so it's just easier to call them a zombie, though the survivors do sometimes refer to them as the infected.
    • And why would they need to bite to qualify as zombies, anyway? They're not vampires, Francis.
      • Call these freaks whatever you want.
    • The characters refer to them biting, it's just not animated.
    • Definitions evolve, Zombies African Voodoo roots didn't have them eating people at all. Nowadays a variation of zombie is used to describe a collective of beings whom attempt to diminish those not of their number. In the end the point of a name is so that people have an idea of what it refers to and "zombie" gets a rather good picture of what the infected are like.
    • Official name is "Infected". Game uses it, background material uses it, achievement use it. Zombie is only used in promotional stuff, because how do you describe game to someone who doesn't know it? "Kill hundreds of infected people" or "Survive zombie apocalypse"?
      • Both games actually call them Zombies quite often, despite the official name being Infected. They call them zombies, tell others that they're zombies and the score board says X Zombies were killed.
      • Would you rather be known as the guy who fights off swarms of murderous feral monsters or a psycho who mows down hundreds of chronically ill people who are in desperate need of medical treatment?
    • Actually, at times in Left 4 Dead 2 when a hunter has pounced you, you can see it bite the persons neck. Plus, they would have to make an animation for BILLIONS of zombies just for a biting attack. That would take to much money and take longer to make it.
      • Dude, there are like, 12 different models.
      • And furthermore, the models are really just different skins; they all support the same animations, just animate like, 3 biting animations for variation(like they did with the hitting in general), and then put it on the model.
        • I think he meant billions of zombies attacking at any one time - even with them sharing the same set of models, they'd have to put significant work into making actual biting animations that don't result in the zombies all clipping through each other and generally looking terrible.
    • They're "zombies" in that they lack higher brain function, nothing more. Sort of like how someone who's sleep-deprived and hasn't had coffee yet on an early morning can be described as zombie-like for stumbling around partly on autopilot and not being very with it; only in this case, it isn't hyperbole.
  • I know it helps to keep the names consistent between 1 and 2 for simplicity in terms of the player, but it makes no real sense why both sets of survivors would have the same names for the Special Infected. I can maybe get Tank and Smoker being logical name choices, and possibly stretch to Boomer, but Hunter and Witch are definitely not the most appropriate names to randomly pick for the Specials. You'd probably call them "jumpers" or "cryers" or even just "stay the hell away from the crying woman for the love of all things holy". So why do they still have the same names?
    • If I remember correctly, they don't start calling them by their proper names 'til Dark Carnival, up until then they just said "jumper" "big'un", so maybe the old survivors told them their names offscreen when they met in the passing.
    • Plus, in the first level of Dead Center there is a CEDA poster referring to the "Boomer" by name.
    • CEDA codenamed all the Special Infected to begin with. Obviously, the sequel's survivors haven't read up on any of them before Dead Center (though how the original survivors knew them right off the bat is a mystery).
      • The original survivors probably know them because, unlike the set from 2, they've been dealing with the Infected since before their game started. It's highly likely they came across some CEDA documents or something namedropping the Special Infected in an abandoned evac station.
        • But the intro cinematic for the first game suggests that the variant zombies are new, and the Survivors only encounter them for the first time right then and there. (Bill: "They're changing!") The first campaign starts on the roof that they get to in that sequence, and from the beginning of it they'll use those names; unlike in L4D2, there is no learning period.
          • At the same time, they do seem to know at least some of the special Infected they saw in the intro (Bill knew not to shine a flashlight on the Witch, for instance), so other than Valve who knows for sure?


Can't See The Disaster

  • Also at the end of No Mercy, if you look over the city, it's surprisingly normal looking, with plenty of lights somehow still on and office buildings with random floors lighted, there's not any noticeable destruction, and there's not even any smoke clouds from out of control fires or survivor campfires, it's almost as if nothing has happened at all. And yet with you hit the ground in the earlier parts there's multiple knocked out buildings and numerous fires going on in the distance.
    • Just chock it up to you basically playing the movie reenactment of previous events.
    • The area around the hospital could have been better defended, being an evacuation point. Also the fires you see are at ground level, you're very high up.
      • And there's no smoke?


No Mercy Under Construction?

  • At the end of the No Mercy campaign, the survivors are seen leaving the fully-completed Mercy Hospital in a helicopter. However, in the section immediately before the rooftop finale, the last few floors of the complex are shown to be under construction, with no external walls, let alone windows.
    • In the audio commentary, it's mentioned that originally, the building was fully enclosed at that part. During development, they realized that there would be a nice view of the city if they put in large windows--and during play testing, they discovered it was interesting to have the zombies and players accidentally fall out the windows, so they decided to completely open it up. Probably the finale showing a completed building is something they forgot to fix afterward.
    • Say it with me: "Renovation."
      • Renovation doesn't make entire walls invisible from the inside and visible from the outside.
      • First off, it's not "renovation", it's "construction". Construction is when you're building it up the first time. "Renovation" is tearing something off and putting something else or something more there. Is building a bridge renovation? No, it's construction. Tearing up your floor is and replacing it is renovation. Second, construction makes sense in Goldeneye's Bunker I and Bunker II. But they didn't finish construction on the building while you were on the darn roof, now did they? Commanders they ain't.
    • You can only see the top couple of floors as you fly away, you went up at least three flights of stairs to reach the roof after the open area. Simples.


Saferoom Doors Too Safe

  • So after successfully surviving hell and reaching the next safe room they blockade the doors behind them, not only isn't this necessary since the door proves strong enough to hold against any number of zombies (excluding a tank) but they screw over any other uninfected trying to get in. The survivors are dicks!
    • I think that if any other uninfected were around, they'd be dead by now, or met up with the group (as you do when you die). Plus, I don't know about you, but I don't want to take the chance that a tank will come up and burst through the unblocked door. After all, better safe than sorry...
      • I don't think you realize how stupid what you just said is. "I think that if any other uninfected were around, they'd be dead by now," what about you and your group? What makes them any different then other survivors that could be doing the same thing. "or met up with the group (as you do when you die)," Well why hasn't your group met up with even more groups. The writing on the walls clearly shows that there has been multiple groups before you, so why shouldn't there be multiple groups after you? Also if you are talking about the whole trapped in a closet thing, I think that is weird to say the least (I don't care if its supposed to represent how other survivors would be found, who would hide in a closet yelling for help that's just asking for zombies even if you hear human voices). And blocking the door, whether you want to keep the tank out or not is still a Jerkass thing to do, I hope you have no conscience.
        • Well, it's either me or them.And the way I see it, might as well be them.
        • Sir, clearly you have not considered the notion that if the survivors in the room HEARD someone banging on the door shouting "Let me in" they'd probably open the door for them.
          • COUGHbelltowerguyCOUGH
          • I think his point is that you enter through the saferoom door and then barricade it behind you, stay for 5 minutes, and then leave the room behind. Any more survivor groups following the signs to an upcoming safehouse will find the door completely useless. Imagine ending the first map of No Mercy after someone's set off the car alarm, confident they can get into the safehouse in time, to find the door doesn't open. When mentioning how other survivors had used the room before, they meant that those survivors had left the door un-barricaded just in case more survivors came along; which the players do.
    • The end-of-level door can block anything including a tank. He can only punch open a start-of-level door.
    • Story vs. Gameplay, man. Story vs. Gameplay.
      • I've never played the game before, only seen videos, but don't all the safe room doors have little bars in them, big enough for a human hand to reach in and pull up the bar?
      • Only the start-of-level doors. End-of-level doors only have a tiny slit for one to see out of.
    • I think this is actually debunked in-game - all the safe rooms are unlocked when you see them yet other survivors have clearly been through. It's probably common survivor courtesy to leave the door closed but unlocked when leaving precisely so that others may follow. As Infected can't use doors and have no reason to enter a safe room (other than mindless wandering), it's pretty much safe unless there are survivors in it to begin with.
    • The players find the safe rooms with one door open and one barred, and then you leave them in the same condition when you depart in the next level. So the previous group of survivors were apparently just heading in the opposite direction. Nobody knows why, but considering the general confusion it's not all that unlikely.
    • I think the point the OP was making is that your group of Survivors would be dead had previous Survivors been as selfish as you, and locked and blocked off the past doors. Yes, it's the pragmatic thing to do, but it's an incredible asshole thing to do at the same time, since you doom the Survivors left behind you. Remember also, that in some levels you can hear gunshots--meaning there are other Survivors still around.
    • It's very simple: the window in the safe room door doesn't have glass in it. That's why zombies can hurt you if you stand too close to the door. The bar is pretty high up, so all the survivors have to do to open a barred door is put their arm through the window, and remove the bar. The zombies are just too stupid to realize it.
  • Barricading the safe doors don't even make sense, really. Doors open outwards. So having barricading them from inside wouldn' help much. Although it would be kinda dick...

Survivor: Hey, safe room! *opens door* WTF? It's blocked!

    • Although it is a clever way of ensuring only uninfected can open the doors (although they could turn once inside, and it would be much harder for survivors to keep cunts out of the saferoom when they can pull out the bar)
    • Safe room doors can open both inwards and outwards. Plus, I presume that the infected don't think to pull open doors rather than push.


Alternate Zombie-Attractor Solutions

  • Its established that infected are attracted to high pitched sounds (such as a smoke alarms or car alarms), ignoring the question of why they don't attack the cars when they go off, how was this never used as the ultimate defense measure? Pipe bombs would be much more effective if they didn't explode as well.
    • Cars and non-explosive pipe "bombs" would end up getting destroyed pretty quickly. Better to go kaboom and take out a horde that won't come back.
      • They wont get destroyed if the horde is taken out by external means, get a pipe bomb, put it in a really strong safe for something, turn it on, kill the zombies who attempt to take the safe apart, pick up the safe again, risne and repeat.
        • Yes, and then get promptly mauled to death because you're lugging around a goddamn safe. When there aren Special Infected that don't get distracted by high pitch noises.
          • A safe able to survive damage from regular infected wouldn't be much heavier than the propane tanks survivors can carry round anyway, imagine you have a carryable safe with a smoke alarm which can be turned on and off with a remote in game, it's suddenly alot easier since hordes can be handled, the idles which normally slow you down can be taken out in one fell swoop, it's basically an infinite bile bomb. Doesn't matter if specials are immune, they are weak without the horde to make up the bulk of their attacking force. Tanks would become the only real threat, and they aren't as bad without everything else to wear you down first. But theres so many ways the idea can be implemented that criticizing just the incidental flaws of a certain implementation is a bit daft. The point is there's bound to be a massive use for high pitched sounds, a way to permanently distract the horde, far more than just a pipe bomb, how did the military, despite all their resources not invent one?
          • Those propane tanks don't get lugged around to the degree you want your safe to be. Plus, you're defending your idea purely based on game mechanics. In a 'realistic' situation, you wouldn't be living through a tank's punch, let alone Spitter goo or a Hunter slashing your intestines out. Finally, the military didn't invent one because they're busy killing the Horde rather than faffing around with Tropers' pet theories on safes and smoke alarms.
            • I think their ability to take damage was explained by being Carrier's for realism
            • Bile Bombs are manufactured by CEDA, so why wouldn't the military try other methods of distraction?
              • CEDA didn't manufacture Bile Bombs, they collected samples of Boomer bile to study, which the Survivors choose to use as bombs.
            • OH I know players who would carry a Propane Tank to the end of the earth, heck, loads chose to do that with the Gnome which was supposedly heavier. But this is getting silly, your still criticising a point based on the examples produced rather than the point itself. And I must say the criticisms are getting daft as well, defending an idea using game mechanics as a referance doesn't stop it from being a Just Bugs Me. While "the military didn't invent one because they're busy killing the Horde rather than faffing around with Tropers' pet theories on safes and smoke alarms." misses the point of Just Bugs Me s in general. If my "pet theory" turns out to solve the entire zombie issue without investing billions in explosives, it's well worth "faffing" around with it, it doesn't neccessarily involve smoke alarms and safes, and it's not rocket science, anyone should be able to look at a pipe bomb and say "surely we could do more with this concept?"
            • Safes that can be carried don't exist - one of the safety measures of a safe is the inability to carry it away barehanded. If someone wants to take it, they're gonna need some sort of mechanical assistance or multiple people. Which is also why safes are usually installed via bolts and things that would require a lot more equipment than can be subtle. As far as high pitched sounds, it's possibility... but the main reason I see this being impossible at the time of the games is the rapid rate of infection. There's just no time to built such things (that would be effective in the long run) when it's more important to simply gather people up and ensure a defensible position is possible.
            • Uh. There are [i]several[/i] things wrong with your statement. Firstly- There are a LOT of different kinds of safes, including portable safes. A gun safe, for example. All he's saying is put the alarm in another, harder-to-destroy object to protect it. Second-Rapid rate of infection? based on what, exactly? The only clues we have for infection is that Church Guy turned, but we have no idea how long it had been since he was bitten. Both helicopter pilots turned, but again, no idea how long, but we can assume turning time is at least an hour or so- the helicopter rides got them pretty far away, plus time to be bitten, etc. My problem with the alarm-safe combo is actually effectiveness. How loud would the alarm be? Both car alarms and pipe-bombs have clear areas with which to sound. The short wavelength of high pitched sounds wouldn't travel well through any kind of dense material.
              • ...A gun safe is about the size of a fridge. Just FYI. Anyway, you have to realize that "rate of infection" doesn't refer to how fast symptoms show, it's how fast the infection spreads, and the opening cinematic 'does' give us an idea of what that's like- about 99% of humanity became infected in two weeks after the first case.
            • We don't know for how long the infected will be attracted by high frequency noises. A big, reinforced speaker system might keep a horde contained for a matter of hours, but what will you do with them once they realise there's nothing there to kill and wander off? Better to kill them now than have to fight them once they lose interest and can fight back.
              • I think that is almost a null point in terms of what the original post was proposing. Set up some portable, yet hard-to-destroy case with holes in it to let a high-pitched noise escape from something inside. Set it up somewhere and then allow it to attract all the basic infected in a heavily populated area, then mow them all down with guns or other methods. It wasn't to set up "distraction traps" that keep the infected entertained indefinately as you leave the area far behind, but rather an infinite pipe bomb that keeps infected distracted far longer than they currently do. Also the initial question doesn't even have to be set up this way, it merely pointed out that high-pitched sounds were seemingly being glossed over as a viable tactic: there would be more ways to weaponise it, especially when the pipe-bomb proves so effective.
    • What I want to know is why no horde is summoned if you blow up the gas station in the No Mercy campaign.
      • They're attracted by high pitch noises, not necessarily loud ones.
        • What about the gas pump at the end of Dead Air? That doesn't sound very high-pitched.
        • You never heard the alarm go off when you yank its lever?
    • The problem with this theory is that the high-pitched-noise thing only works for seconds at best. When you throw a pipe bomb it goes off after a few seconds. When you set off a car alarm the Infected rush toward it, but quickly focus on the Survivors rather than grabbing at the car. While certainly there might be more uses for this technique, the time of distraction is far too short to make it worth investing a lot of time in.


Destruction Levels

  • The level of destruction seen in most of the levels is often inadequately justified- why has every passage ever had at least one ceiling collapse every hundred feet?
    • The military probably brought out some explosives at one point or another. That, and a few months of constant conflict would probably help. Oh, and some tanks probably got a little wild once the number of uninfected to kill dropped to low enough levels.
    • It's not a few months, its two weeks. But consider that it's two weeks of wild rioting, uncontrolled fires, gas leaks, shootouts, plane crashes, and Chicago Ted.
    • It's worth noting that the second game literally starts with a carpet-bombing run. Those can really mess up buildings, and it's quite likely that as soon as an evacuation point gets overrun the military bombs the area. Notably, the only semi-intact evac point the second group reaches is undergoing a bombing run, and they haven't even completely pulled out yet. Since the survivors never arrive at an active evac point, it can reasonably be assumed the areas were overrun and then carpet-bombed before the survivors even arrived.


Boomer Bile

  • Why would boomer bile attract the horde? More importantly, why would it do so only upon contact with uninfected human flesh?
    • Why the bile attracts the horde is a mystery, but the bile probably reacts with the sweat on the survivor's skin. Biochemistry is sometimes weird.
    • Ooh, good one. That works for me.
    • The bile attracts the hoard with its strong smell. In the opening video, the goo that bill wipes of francis is boomer bile. Note that Francis says it stinks.
      • It can't be the smell, or else the boomer would constantly get owned by the infected. More than likely, it reacts with human skin to create a different compound.
        • It actually can be the smell. He said it stank after it had been on his fingers. So the Human skin sweat thing has some merit.
          • The boomer bile attracts the horde because of the methane gas.
    • In Left 4 Dead 2, Survivors can throw boomer bile on other zombies. Haven't tried using it on the ground. I don't really know what it means for these theories.
      • It doesn't mean much. The CEDA probably kept jars of pre-mixed with Boomer Bile for use in quick escapes from infected. The CEDA workers, before they became infected, would need something to escape from the zombies, which would explain why some CEDA infected are carrying the Bile Bombs on their person, they weren't exactly going around milking Boomers.
    • Chemical messengers just like various insects (or similar anyway). It's not a literal eat this but simply a way of marking something as something to eat. Boomers don't get eaten because Infected aren't mindless just very insane. Bile is probably air activated with a short life span unless a catalyst is present to prolong it. Alternatively, the bile itself isn't inherently attractive - it requires a human catalyst to work.
      • Or the other way. The bile when freshly expelled is dark, brownish green, the stuff in bile jars is so bright green it looks like stereotypical chemicals. It is possible the CEDA workers somehow refined the bile, removing all the other shit that is usually found in a Boomer's stomach, and that made it potent enough to not require human sweat or anything to attract zombies. The zombies also retain some human sense, and don't attack each other unless annoyed - Boomer bile draws them, but then they can still tell if the bile-covered target is human, ground or infected by the remains of smell. Refined/concentrated/vivid green bile is so potent they don't judge by smell (which can be masked by the bile smell being much more intense) or sense and just start attacking.
      • So, basically, raw bile by itself is unattractive, but purified, it works. Then, in this case, human sweat makes a better reagent than whatever CEDA was using, since raw bile on a survivor is far more attractive than purified bile on anything.


The Bots

  • The AI Survivor bots. If you die (or if you and your friends die), the level has to be redone, regardless if there is a bot left alive. One can assume that the bots can't "move" on their own since they always follow the player. However, if you set up a Versus match against the Survivors that are all bots, you can see them move fluidly in the level to get to the safe house without the player leading the way.
    • It wouldn't be much fun to sit and wait for the bots to get to a respawning closet. In multiplayer at least you can scout ahead (if your have free-look enabled) and tell them what's spawning.
    • Actually, as it so happens, they will move through the level on their own if there's no player alive. They're just really conservative about it in Campaign. As far as why the game restarts if all human players die... well, that's not so much a matter of "in-universe" as "gameplay" reasons. If all the human players die, You Have Failed and should try again.
    • If a Versus match is set up normally (meaning without console cheats) the coding for the bots apparently changes so that the game doesn't automatically end as soon as it starts with no human survivors present. Evidenced by a Versus match made through console cheats needing the code for "an all bot team" to be manually inputted.
    • The AI bots are actually worse in the sequel. Granted, in the first game, so long as the difficulty wasn't expert, they were okay, although on advanced they could be rather stupid. In Left 4 Dead 2, they became unbelievably stupid on anything higher than normal. If you got hunter pounced, they might take at least 5 seconds to help you even though you're a few feet in front of them. They also never seemed to have learned the whole "You got a death wish? Leave that Witch alone!" idea.


Dark Carnival Highway

  • So, how did our heroes actually end up where they are at the start of the level? There's a ten foot chain link fence behind them and no other place that the car could have entered the area!
  • Chain link fence aside, why wouldn't our heroes just siphon enough gas from all the other cars to fill the stock car's tank (I'm sure Ellis could scavenge enough hose or tubing from the cars' engines to make a workable siphon), then backtrack and look for the first exit to go around?
    • I think the problem was more that they could drive through 20 miles of parked cars than they were short of fuel.
      • You didn't read what I wrote. Why couldn't they just turn around, get off the highway, and go around?
    • They may have done this already multiple times and just thought "this may be as good as it gets". Conversely, turning around and driving around it would eventually lead to the same problem again.
      • Would you really want to run into the countryside which you don't know and be far away form potential evacuation? Plus, they'd have to stop for things like provisions. Good luck finding ammo for a 7.62mm anything out in the Deep South.


Noises Attracting Hordes

  • In the final level of Dead Air, why does the sound of a fuel pump starting up alert more infected than the sound of a passenger jet crash landing?
    • Could they have been reacting to the plan crash?
  • And for that matter, wouldn't gunshots, hunter screams, witch cries, and tank roars all attract zombies?
    • Gunshots are a no -- it's said above, and repeatedly, that Infected are not attracted to loud sounds, but high-pitched ones. As far as the sounds other Infected make go, probably because if Infected didn't ignore the various calls and cries made by their own kind, they'd constantly be attacking each other. The Tank just plain wouldn't attract them, though; again, the high-pitched versus loud distinction.
      • Except, when you're near the infected, they are attracted to the sound of gunfire. The suppressed SMG in Left 4 Dead 2 noticeably reduces how quickly infected notice you firing the gun. Far away infected probably aren't attracted to the same degree, however, since gunshots heard from farther off sound more like a CRACK than a gun firing.
      • I figure that's less of a noise that attracts them than a noise that lets them know food is nearby. Cats and dogs can be attracted/repulsed by noises on a higher pitch than a human can hear, but that doesn't mean they won't react to other sounds.
        • Plus they might be attracted to the rather high pitched sound of shell casings falling.
        • High pitch sounds drive them into a frenzy and attract them, but it does not mean the sound of a gun shot would not get their attention. In addition to the fact all the games still have a muzzle flash that even in daylight is pretty darn bright.
  • Why do all of the zombies in the hospital in No Mercy know which floor the survivors are on by the sound of a moving elevator?
    • It could be that the infected were just there.
      • Plus, I'm sure any infected remotely nearby would've been following the gunfire and screams since you left the safe-room. The noise you make killing the infected who were closeby enough to hear the elevator will guide the infected who are further away towards you
  • What about Church Bells? Not really that high pitched...
    • Church bells have higher pitches along with the deep pitch that you actually notice.
    • Metal clanging is pretty high pitched, plus there's going to be creaking from the metal on metal rubbing.
  • Why does radioing a pilot cause Infected to swarm you? The justification is there in Dead Air when the pilot notes that the fuel pump is noisy, but in all the other three there's exactly no justification for the horde being alerted.
    • Because that's exactly when they'd attack in a zombie movie.
    • This troper justified it because most teams will not stop (unless they have to) until the finale. There's probably a mob at your heels the whole time, and cornering yourself to hold up allows them to catch up.
      • I never considered that, but thinking about it, it kind of makes sense, especially considering how the zombies make rather high pitched noises at times when you kill them and your screams are highly pitched too. Plus, the hordes almost always come from the way you did, meaning that they're aware of you. Some of the finale hordes are justified. In Crash Course, you're using generators powered by gasoline to lower a jack with a truck on it. All they metal moving is bound to be loud and high pitched, as you'd know if you've ever been to a mechanic's shop, especially if maintenance has been poor. In Dark Carnival, you're setting off fireworks (lots of loud, high-pitched noises), but alto (IIRC) vocals, electric guitars, drums and cymbals, and a ton of very bright lights. That's going to attract a lot of attention regardless of whether or not zombies are everywhere. In Hard Rain, the lightning and the storm is already making a lot of high pitched noise, and turning on the Burger Tank sign adds a lot more light. Most animals have a natural tendency to go towards lights in a dark situation, so it's only natural that they'd be attracted to it. In The Parish, you're lowering a bridge full of zombies and some sort of metal things crash to the ground ,which raises a huge clang.
        • Maybe the zombies are attracted to radio signals or sounds?
      • That also handily explains why the Director starts flinging hordes at you if you stop progressing through the levels.
      • Could be possible for the infected to better locate survivors if they stick in one area too long, though gameplay wise, it's the game telling you to move your slow ass or it will punish you for being slow.
  • In Left 4 Dead 2, Jonathan Coulton's song Re: Your Brains literally attracts a hoard at the first chorus. Rule of Funny aside, there's nothing high-pitched at that part.
    • Guitar riff and the zombie 'singers' howling = Infected swarming under the belief they've just heard another swarm go on the offensive. There you go.


  • I don't understand how zombies attacking you from the front deal more damage than from the rear (example, damage from the front in Expert does 20, the rear causes 10). You'd think the rear being more vulnerable than the front would cause more damage from attacks.
    • Probably a balance/gamer patience issue. Responding to an attack from behind naturally takes more time than responding to attacks in your direction, therefore, it'd suck if, you took twenty damage from each back attack; even with the quick-turn feature the zombie may get one or two hits in, therefore knocking out almost half your health. It'd be cheap and annoying, even when considering how extremely tough expert is.
    • Consider this, whats on your front? Fragile stuff such as your mouth your eyes and your nose. Vulnerable stuff such as your solar plexus and gut. Whats on your back? Hard skull, stiff spine and no sense organs. The self-defensive flailing that usually accompanies a horde attack on your front is already represented by your melee attack, so any damage that gets through is equivalent to letting someone smack you in the face
      • To answer your question of "What's on your back?": The back of the head, which is illegal to strike in virtually any fighting organization due to it being particularly vulnerable to blows. The spine, which could probably be broken by infected that can kill you in a couple of aimless smacks. The vulnerable part of the legs. Hitting the inside or the back of somebody's legs a few times is going to make them a lot less capable of fighting.
  • How do the survivors end up at the beginning of each campaign, other than No Mercy and Crash Course?
    • Originally Death Toll was supposed to be the direct continuation of No Mercy. In the game files, there is an unused audio file of the pilot at the end of No Mercy talking and turning into an Infected. (In the game itself, while the survivors are waiting to be rescued, he does say he will be a little late and that there was "an incident", implying he was bitten.) The helicopter then crashes and the survivors end up where they start in the Death Toll campaign. The game designers apparently thought this made No Mercy have too much of a Downer Ending, so refrained from making it too obvious.
      • Valve have since added a new campaign that follows on from No Mercy just like that. The helicopter crashes and the survivors have to head out on-foot. It doesn't quite link up completely with Death Toll, but it's pretty close.
    • The different campaigns aren't continuations of each other, they're pretty much stand-alone, interactive zombie movies, with the same actors (The exception would be No Mercy and Death Toll, which could just be a direct sequel).
    • Actually you can see the boat from death toll at the beginning of dead air.
    • If you listen to the commentary for the game, they were all originally connected. People found it to be a downer ending to not get rescued three times in a row. So they just chopped the link though some of it still shows.
  • Please explain me,how did people wearing hazmat suits manage to get infected? Infection could be bite-transmitted or airborne,it still makes no goddamn sense whatsoever.
    • I get the impression that by the time the sequel takes place there is a Typhoid Mary kind of situation going on. Otherwise immune people get brought into the safe zone and mingle with the CEDA workers. Said workers get ready for work, then change while in the suits.
    • They can get infected because it wasn't until recently, in game time, that the CEDA realized people could be carriers without exhibiting symptoms. Chances are they picked it up while out of the suit, it incubated, and then kicked in while they're on duty. Chances are incidents like this are why the CEDA checkpoints fell apart; they were attacked internally.
    • When walking through the Dead Center campaign, Coach said something along the lines of "I guess those suits ain't bite-proof, huh!" The zombies bit the people through the suits and the CEDA workers couldn't get out of the suit in the next hour before they turned.
      • That explanation falls flat immediately when you realize that several times after shooting an infected CEDA worker the sound of air rushing out of their suits can be heard. That means they were still sealed when you shot them, which means they couldn't have been bitten in the suits since they're still air-tight (no bite holes).
      • Left 4 Dead Wiki points out that the Hazmat Infected are wearing their gloves and boots under their suits, letting air into the arms and legs, instead of keeping them airtight all over the body. CEDA employees, the people whose responsibility is handling terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and pandemics are wearing their own Hazmat suits incorrectly.
        • But from what can be gathered, the virus is not airborne but spread through body fluids such as saliva and blood. So there is not a need for them to be airtight. But as pointed above, the suits hiss meaning released, trapped air inside them. So the suits are airtight, despite the wiki evidence. So just the models are not portrayed correctly or there might be an internal seal under the sleeves and legs.
    • the Left 4 Dead Wiki also states that each major body part may have its own air pocket, which could mean that the CEDA workers may have been bitten after all.
          • This troper knows someone at USAMRIID, so I asked them about this exact situation. Let's say we're facing each other, and having a conversation. As we talk, microdroplets of my saliva are getting on you, and microdroplets of your saliva are getting on me. In other words, even though the virus is not airborne in the literal sense, it CAN be spread simply by talking to someone who's infected that hasn't turned yet, or an immune carrier like the Survivors.
    • Here's my theory: remember how the Hunters were apparently smart enough to realize that taping their clothes would make them more aerodynamic? Well maybe the infected in hazmat suits weren't actually CEDA employees, but regular infected smart enough to realize the suits are fireproof and decided to put them on in order to protect themselves. That even explains why they're wearing them incorrectly.
      • Sorry, but the Hunters weren't smart enough to do that. Assuming that all Hunters practiced Le Parkour in their previous life, they would have naturally been wearing the duct tape, since taping sleeves and pant legs is a common practice in street parkour.
    • My theory is that the they didn't put the Hazmat suits on to protect themselves, but to protect others after they had been infected but before they turned. A zombie that has every part of their skin covered can't possibly spread the infection.
  • The nature of the Special Infected has been bothering me for a while now. I guess we're supposed to assume that they're been transformed by the virus based on their bodies beforehand, turning the people into Tanks or Hunters and not not normal infected. I think that's much more plausible than random changes. So, basing my entire argument on that assumption, I have a few problems. Boomers. Yeah, I can believe there are a ton of really fat people in a big city. Same goes for Smokers. I can kind of let the Witch slide, for reasons discussed in the main page (pregnant zombie, or zombie rape victim * shudders* ). And I suppose the Charger could just be a hick. That kind of thing is rather native to the South. The Spitter... I don't know what the hell she's got going on, but I accept it. So my problem lies with the Tank, Hunter and Jockey. Do you honestly expect me to believe that in any given city, hospital, swamp, airport, or small town, there are several hundred free-runners, weightlifters, or star track & field athletes? I would really like to see an explanation, Left 4 Dead. I would really like an explanation.
    • Your mistake is assuming the mutations are based on pre-existing genetics. Valve have never offered any sort of explanation for the Special Infected, other than the original strain 'changing'.
    • Boomers are also under high internal pressure from all the bile in their belly; that's why they pop. It's possible that Boomer and Spitter are two related mutations. Where the Boomer's stomach juice turns into bile when vomited/spit, the Spitter's stomach juice turns into spit when spat. As far as the specials themselves, there's no reason to think they're based off what they were before. I don't see an explanation on just what the specials are beyond super rabies; it'd be trying to explain things that don't need to be and take away some from the faceless horde ideal.
      • There's a theory behind the Witch which comes from something said about the Jockey. The Jockey supposedly developed mania with the Infection, which is why it laughs all the time. People think something similar happened to the Witch to make her depressed, or bipolar.
      • It's also thought that the Spitter had a gastroinstinal infection before mutating, which is why she spits up stomach acid.
      • This troper always thought the Spitter was a girl with bulimia before infection, based on the whole "puking up stomach acid" attack, and the way she was dressed...
    • My guess is it has to do with the person's genetic makeup. Like someone who geneticaly has a lot of muscle mass would end up as a tank. but that less interesting so which ever you want.
      • Ever notice that ingame, all the common infected are of virtually identical height and muscular build? For instance, we never see very tall, short, obese, or anorexic common infected. But there are special infected who fit each of those categories. If you look at them, each fit a relatively uncommon physical profile. The smoker is a very tall and lanky person; jockeys are very short; and hunters are the very athletic. Tanks being those with insane muscles to begin with. If there are other physical features of the infected person with an influence on the resulting form, it would explain their relative rarity even further.
    • I can think of another reason why the Charger may have a ridiculously overgrown arm...
      • I was under the impression that it was an imperfect conversion to the tank. It has the same sort of pants and muscular deformity, only less impressive.
  • Where did we get that Bill's full name is William Overbeck? I know the surname from from his jacket, but the William part? Additionally, would it be wrong for me to think Zoey's last name is Hanson?
    • About "William"; Bill is just a shortened form of the more formal name "William". William Jefferson Clinton is known as Bill Clinton, William James O'Reilly Jr. is known as Bill O'Reilly, William Henry Cosby Jr. is known as Bill Cosby, William Scott Goldberg is Bill Goldberg (Gold-berg! Gold-berg!), etc. I can't think of anyone off the top of my head who's referred to as Bill who's formal first name isn't "William". As for Zoey, I have no clue.
    • Sometimes, if Zoey revives an incapacitated Bill, she will shout "William, get up!".
  • What's up with the unfilled swimming pool full of charred dead bodies in the first level of Dark Carnival?
    • Just an assumption, but during the early stages of the infection, a group of people at the hotel got into a skirmish with a small group of infected. After dispatching them, the survivors dragged the corpses to the pool (which had been drained of it's water), doused the bodies in gas, and set them on fire, presumably to prevent infection/ensure that the zombies would stay down. The survivors then either cleared out or were wiped out by more infected.
    • "These people must've SUCKED at high diving." --Nick
    • There may have been a CEDA broadcast to that effect. There's also a pile of dead bodies and cows that look as though they were to be burned at the beginning of Swamp Fever.
  • It's established that high-pitched frequencies and boomer bile attract swarms of infected. People have learned to take advantage of that by incorporating smoke alarms into explosives and collecting bile to sic regular infected on other zombies. So why doesn't the military just take the simple step of dipping explosives in bile/adding a siren, setting a timer, and carpet bombing entire overrun areas with thousands of them? Even if they wouldn't eliminate special infected, you've removed a vast majority of the enemy's strength with minimal cost in lives.
    • This ties into my point above, a permanent horde distraction is so exploitable in so many ways. That said if the military did invent something like that it would make an awesome gauntlet "the siren-bomb as landed, fend the high-pitched driven zombies off and get out of there before it EXPLODES".
    • One of the issues is production - as the CEDA zombies show, it's hardly a simple task of 'harvesting' bile when between the bile attracting zombies and people getting infected, just maintaining a safe haven is difficult. Second, the military needs to regroup first so that it can get resources and figure what places aren't compromised - this is precisely the scenario in The Parish. The military is retreating offshore with immune people and bomb a bridge to cover that retreat. Third, infrastructure - with rapid infection, gathering the resources to make a lot of anything would be difficult and many places may be so overrun with infected, that trying to recover anything would be more trouble than it's worth. This isn't saying it wouldn't happen eventually or that they wouldn't simply carpet bomb areas without any bait; they just have more important things to worry about. To put it in game terms - do you run after the Boomer that you see... or help your three teammates who are pounced and smoked? The former might stop a long term threat from surprising you but the latter ensures that you'll be in better shape over all and have assistance.
    • I think we're also assuming a bit too much from the army in the game. They're evacuating people, likely trying to set up safe zones near infected areas, having carriers infect people inside of those safe zones which means they need to cleanse and then rebuild new ones, control the infection as best they can AND protect vital areas of the country. In the middle of all of this I don't see them taking too much time trying to wipe out each individual infected. In reality, as shown in Parish, they're likely more interested in containment. Destroy bridges, reinforce roadways with mounted positions, erect barriers and then bomb cities to thin out the horde. All of this means that when the horde finally moves to assault an army position they are in as good of shape as possible. This works much more effectively than sitting down thinking "how can we kill each and every infected out there?" This is doubly important if you consider the fact that military procedure would likely necessitate containment, studying the infection and then working on countermeasures.
      • By distracting zombies away from your evacuation stations, you make it much, much easier to go through the process of evacuation and containment. It could be as simple as stuffing several ambulances, fire trucks, or police cars to the gills with timed explosives, turning on the sirens, and leaving. You have additional time to evacuate, fewer zombies are being attracted to your position, and it serves the purpose of reducing the overall number of shrieking cannibals that you will end up fighting one way or another, either when you go on the offensive or they follow the refugees to the safe zones.
        • The game is set to take place in the couple of weeks of infection. When you are losing forces either to infection or death from being attacked and performing a fighting retreat, stopping to think "Hey they are attracted to car alarms we should make a device to do that!" takes a back seat to survival and setting up a new AO. If the finale of Parish should be anything, there are always two pipe bombs on the fender of the hummer at the end of the bridge. By then, the army probably does know now from experience and survivors but has not been able to implement a serious solution with it just yet. They are still learning how the virus spreads, mutates and that there are people immune that are carriers of it. Suffice to say, there is a lot of crap going on and they are trying to do the best they can. As for the safe idea, even if you took a small fire safe to do that with, can you imagine lugging around an extra ten-twenty pounds while having a jockey riding your back?
          • "They don't have the time to do anything fancy" would be a nice answer if producing a really loud noise isn't exactly difficult. As had been noted, Survivors don't have much trouble carrying things of similar weight like a propane tank, and while special infected may makes things difficult they are of a much lesser threat without a common infected to help them. In the end you just have to ask yourself if the game would be easier if you had an bile bomb of infinite use provided, and the answer would be yes.
            • The new Left 4 Dead comic answers the question; The army has no idea what the hell the infected are. They don't know about the special infected or what attracts them. They don't do "anything fancy" because it would really look like a insane idea.
    • Has anyone realized that the only times that the player actually sees anything army-affiliated it's only a vehicle at the end of the game? The fact of the matter is we have never seen the military of the Left 4 Dead universe in action (save for fighter jets) and for all we know they HAVE made similar devices. There's also the possibility that the military came up with the idea first and radioed out the idea to assist survivors (though the last one might not be entirely plausible).
      • This would also explain why a highly populated area like New Orleans doesn't have way more zombies than, say, the middle of a Lousiana swamp. The fighter jet bombing runs already use these devices, and have eliminated a significant part of the horde already, but they naturally only focus on the areas where they'll kill more.
  • Once the survivors get to the safe room in Hard Rain that has the gas, why didn't they stay inside until the hurricane blew over? Perhaps that Virgil's safety was the online?
    • There you have it. The floodwater was rising rapidly, and the last safe house was at ground level. From my personal experience, the heavy rainfall from a hurricane can last for days, and the water level was already waist deep after a few hours. Virgil's small boat was out in the water during a hurricane, with scant fuel. He might also have assumed that the survivors had died if they didn't show up. By making an immediate dash back to the boat, Virgil could find a safe harbor to shelter in and the floodwaters would be low enough to let the survivors travel quickly and relatively safely.
  • Okay, in Left 4 Dead 2, you can blow off both a zombie's arms off, but they can still hit you and climb ladders! I call zombie bullshit on that. How can they even do any of that with no arms!?
  • At the beginning of Dead Center, The survivors react in surprise when they first see the infected. What bugs me is, how did they NOT run into them on their way up to the helicopter?
    • They had seen a few, but never that many at one time. Remember, they weren't armed as they were first heading up to the hotel's roof, so the zombies just caught up when they were standing and shouting at the chopper.
    • Or maybe they were rushing for the evac so much that they only noticed what they were fleeing when they had to stop and plan their next move.
    • Problem is, a few of the lines the survivors can say upon exiting the first stairwell and seeing the Commons are along the lines of "What are these things?" implying this was the first time they ever saw them. On top of that, the intro movie makes it pretty clear that they've already fought through a bunch of Infected before making their way up to the rooftop of the apartments expecting a helicopter evac.
      • I was under the impression most of what happened in the intro movie was a sort of Cutscene Power to the Max-style rendition of all the campaigns, with the parts not necessarily shown in chronological order.
  • OK, why are people insisting that Bill is going to be the one that dies in the Left 4 Dead 1 DLC/The Passing? The only thing they go by is that how the voice actor didn't record lines for Crash Course, so they assume that the VA isn't doing anymore lines.
    • Because he's the grizzled old war veteran who understands the necessity of sacrifice? Nick and Francis get into a fight while Ellis develops a little crush on Zoey. This leaves only Louis and Bill. If you compared the characters by popularity, Louis would come out on top due to GRABBAN PEELZ.
      • That may be canon when that comic is released, but gameplay wise, the survivor that will die will be determined by the players in Left 4 Dead 1, so it'd make no sense to do that and then say one specific survivor will always be the dead on in The Passing. The whole Nick VS Francis is just one of many possible outcomes depending on who the game decides to keep alive for The Passing.
        • Actually, the one who isn't there in The Passing will always be the one that canonically died, it's just that the DLC for the first game allows you to see HOW it happened. I think.
    • I think it's been confirmed that the dead survivor will be randomized, and someone different will die each playthrough. It's already been confirmed that there are thirty different dialogues that might happen, so that's about 7 options per dead survivor.
      • Nope. Bill gets it. You collect weapons from his dead corpse.
      • The death is fixed in the Left 4 Dead 2 DLC, but it's apparently randomized in Left 4 Dead 1, allowing players to choose who dies. The comic that coming out is showing how it is supposed to have happened in canon.
  • So what's the deal with the Bride Witch and her hatred of Save Me Some Sugar?
    • Most logical conclusion is the speaker is very close to her and she hates loud sounds, so she'll attack anyone who turned on the music.
    • Witches like sugar. You're reminding her that no sugar was saved for her.
    • Or, it was her groom-to-be's favorite song, and it reminds her of what happened to him. Maybe he was the first at the wedding to turn and she now associates him with the song. This makes her...angry... and she goes after whoever turned it on.
  • In Left 4 Dead 2, you have to run and get soda for that shopkeeper who has an inexplicable, intense craving. If it had been cigarettes, it would have made so much more sense.
    • Considering he is holed up with a lot of food and forgot the drinks, he would need something to wash the food down.
    • It being over coke is kind of the joke.
    • Have you ever gone through caffeine withdraw? The symptoms are headache, irritability, an inability to concentrate, drowsiness, insomnia and pain in the stomach, upper body, and joints. Being crazy prepared as Whitaker is, he probably knows what is in store for him and would like a six pack to get him through a bit.
      • I assumed the "soda" was cocaine
    • Maybe he just wanted a cola in what he felt were his last hours for some reason , like if he got bitten whilst getting up there or something.
  • From a realism point of view, it's a little strange that at the start of every campaign they lose the kick-ass Tier 2 guns they had by the end o the previous one but just happen to have all these Tier 1s sitting around.
    • Maybe they threw them away because they though they were about to be saved. It is at least explained at the start of Hard Rain when Ellis asks Nick about the flares in the gun bag.
      • After Dead Center, they could have used the same Tier 2 guns for the entirety of a very long journey (during food or piss stops) until eventually they break and the team is forced to use the backup guns
        • You're forgetting about the fact that they're going to have to keep on getting ammo supplies for them, not to mention things such as the guns getting dirty and jamming; they don't have cleaning kits or even any sort of impromptu things like brushes, bootlaces, motor oil, and screwdrivers needed to clean most of the guns. Okay, the AK-47 can be field stripped, cleaned, and reassembled pretty much without tools. However, the M16 is much more finicky about dirt and it has that direct gas impingement system which is so effective at dirtying the action. Don't forget that Magazines get busted, barrels wear our, corrosive primers eat away at firing pins, the systems eventually deteriorate and fail. Here's another thing: if the automatic weapons are legally owned and registered Machine Guns, then that means that the newest ones of them could at the latest have been made in 1986. Seeing how the games take place in the late 2000's, that means the guns are all easily pushing 30 years old by the time the apocalypse rolls around.
          • Consider this, the M 16 A 2, which appears to be the M16 in the games has a barrel life of approximately 7000 to 8000 rounds. That comes to to an approximate average of about 250 full 30 round magazines of ammo before the barrel has to be replaced. The campaign themselves average around 45 minutes to an hour, during which you can easily fire off a few thousand rounds. You've also got to remember than they're using their weapons to bash zombies pretty hard, which is not good for a weapon's condition or life expectancy. There is also the fact that the survivors are picking up guns which are found out there in the open, many of them with partially fired magazines and they possibly haven't been properly cleaned in who knows how long. The ammo isn't bound to be high quality, non-corrosive stuff; it's likely to be either from the U.S. military, police departments, or from private citizens. The first two tend to purchase everything from the lowest bidder and the military surplus ammunition that gets sold is usually substandard stuff held to rather low quality control standards. Ammo purchased by private citizens isn't prone to be heaps of the best stuff either, because good rounds are expensive and most people with guns don't keep stockpiles of bullets around in case if there is a zombie apocalypse or something else.
            • If you look at gun forums such as The Firing Line, people talk about their rifle's reliability and longevity in terms of hundreds of shots fired with many of them saying that they tend to start failing after about 200 or so shots fired without maintenance and seeing as in a typical campaign, you can easily let off hundreds of rounds in a single crescendo event and hundreds more in a single level. You're bound to fire off at least one or two thousand rounds in a single campaign.
      • After Dark Carnival, they lose their guns in the crash landing and luckily stumble upon the container with the Tier 1 weapons.
      • After Hard Rain, they give their best guns to Virgil as thanks for his help, and make do with the Tier 1 weapons he had on board.
    • I also like to think I gave my guns and gear to the pilot as thanks for the rescue. Unless I didn't manage to keep take a health-kit with me, in which case I pretend I traded my stuff for a health-kit. (I only play the first one nowadays, so I'm free to event whatever story I like for the whichever campaigns I'm between. My favourite is when I go from No Mercy to Dead Air by taking a chopper to near the airport (briefly stopping at the camp where his previous evacuees are to trade, if need be) and then after Dead Air I stop playing because I've made it to an island where there are no zombies :)
    • I just realized that there is a very strange lack of legal, easily obtained semiautomatic weaponry. Honestly, the US has tons of AR-15's, semiauto AK mimics, and the like. It is extremely wierd that the people who had guns for the zombie apocalypse all decided that they weren't going to do the sensible thing and buy themselves a WASR AK for $500, or an AR for $700. No, they were going to get a $200 tax stamp, wait at least half a year for the ATF to approve their form 4 transfer, and then pay at least $12000 for a fully automatic assault rifle.
      • Perhaps they raided a Gun Store like Whitakers.
      • Come to think of it, there's also a lack of many popular models of gun that you would think ought to be ubiquitous in the setting. Where are the M1911's, the AR-15's, the WASR-10's, the SKS's, the Mosin-Nagants, the M9's, the FAL's, the CZ 75's, the Mini-14's, the Ruger Security Sixes, the Ithaca 37's, the Mossberg 500's, the M1 Garands, the Browning Hi Powers, the Makarov PM's, and all other popular guns? Seeing how all these guns are rather commonly owned, it's surprising that you didn't run into these.
      • The M1911 and Mini-14 (or alternate-universe weapons resembling them, at least) are already in the first game. As for the rest, it's probably a matter of just simplifying things (for example: why add a civilian AR-15 when there's already army M16's all over the place, why add a ton of shotguns and 9mm pistols that have little significant difference beyond physical appearance, etc.). That said I would love to see an FAL or Garand in a future DLC or something.
    • I find it strange that in the rural campaigns, every house is probably going to have at least one gun in it, but A: you don't find that many guns and B: for armed sections of the country, rural Pennsylvania, New York, Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana sure seem to have poor survival rates. The urban campaigns could understandably have proportionally fewer guns.
  • It really bugs me that Louis, Francis, and Zoey don't even warn the four from 2 about the fact that they are carriers and the military is out to get them. It seems extremely dickish, especially given all the time they interact with them.
    • This would be because the idea was Fanon until "The Sacrifice" and related comic came out and Valve decided Sure Why Not. Not to mention that said comic also establishes that this isn't universal military policy. Different officers have different views on this issue.
    • It's also major point for the comic. Commanding officer thinks they safe everyone, up and including carriers. The guy who opposes him want to kill them on sight. Military hasn't sorted what to do with infection yet.
    • They could still have mentioned the fact that the Southerners are carriers, since they would've given Whittaker infected Cola by accident before hand, and will be in contact with Virgil in the future. And the fact that military personnel (like the ones who rescue them from The Parish) could *potentially* intend to kill/capture them. I say that it just didn't occur to them
      • Maybe they were still in shock from Bill's death and how he died. It's less dickish that way
      • Following Bill's death, they took his "the four of us are all that matters now" message to heart. They still help other survivors, since it doesn't really cost them anything, but they won't share their island or offer anything more than that.
      • It would take one breath of air to say "The army is rounding up carriers--you guys might be some."
  • Speaking of the military... In the first game, you were constantly running into zombies in Army and Police uniforms, but in the sequel, even though there are significantly MORE cop cars around, and more references to the government response, there are NO zombie cops or soldiers in the entire game, not one. What the hell is up with that?
    • Zombie cops in riot gear are the uncommon infected for the Parish campaign. Other than that, I suppose a fanwank explanation is that since 2 takes place after 1, the cops and soldiers are the infected you see in Hazmat suits.
    • Alternatively, this could just be taken as a sign that the government forces are better zombie fighters now than they were two weeks ago.
    • There is probably a more practical reason for this. In some countries (Australia as example) it is illegal to depict violence of anyone in a police or military uniform in video games. So in order to release it there and other countries they would have to go back and edit the game files to not spawn those zombies AND remove all instances of them in the game files. Simplicity sake, it is easier to just not have them in game. The riot zombies in Parish as an example have no mention of police or security on their clothing.
  • While I love the comic, there is a canon discrepancy that bugs me to no end. The survivors raise the bridge in order to escape on the large sailboat, Bill dies to restart the generator, and they sail away after the horde dissipates. All fine and dandy... except they lowered the bridge again for the second batch of survivors carriers. So then... how did they sail away, exactly?
    • They got on the boat, sailed it past the bridge, then noticed the Left 4 Dead 2 survivors and went back on to it to help them. After they get past the bridge, it doesn't matter whether it's up or down by that point. And if I remember right, you can even see a boat of some kind in the water on the other side of the bridge in The Passing, while it's partially beached in The Sacrifice.
    • The new stuff just raises more questions. For example, why is the "Green Flu" so inconsistent? Why does Mora refer to himself as acaptain when he is a first lieutenant? When did Bill become such a b*stard toward redshirts? When did Francis become even more of a b*stard toward Louis?
    • I think I've got this: while the zombies are swarming Bill's corpse, Zoey mentions they have to wait for the horde to dissipate before they can get back to the boat. The Passing must begin right before Zoey, Francis, and Louis head back to the boat.
    • The 1 survivors need to hang out on the bridge until Louis is good enough to walk. While they're hanging out, the 2 survivors show up. Realizing they need to lower the bridge, the Zoey and/or Francis move the boat to the other side while the 2 survivors are making their way through the campaign, then go back to help them lower it. Alternatively, they had already moved the boat but had to stay on the bridge until Louis could make it down.
  • The ending of the comic bugged me to no end. They could have gotten away so easily!
    • A: Ship the mast. Cut it down if you have to - putting it back later in an unstable fashion is still safer than waiting around long enough for the bridge to rise that far.
    • B: Put Louis on board, and cast off into safe water. He'll be perfectly safe as long as he's out away from the shore. Tell him to wait until the bridge is high enough (only about 10 or 20 feet, max) and then steer under it.
    • C: Go hit the generator and climb up onto the bridge, waiting for it to rise. Even if it stops at only 10 or 20 feet? No worries, because you shipped the mast beforehand.
      • They didn't know about the generator until the regular button didn't work. You're still assuming a lot more knowledge of boats than our heroes actually displayed.
    • D: Jump off the bridge into the water as soon as it's high enough for the boat to pass under it. Not a very long wait, or a very high jump, eh? Swim to the boat, where Louis can throw down a line for you.
      • Which could easily result in a broken limb, or worse, hitting the boat themselves if they miss.
    • E: Cruise to freedom.
  • I mean, seriously, is it that hard to come up with this plan? I appreciate Bill's sacrifice and everything, but reading those final pages was like watching them fighting to the possible death to defend a heavily armored, fully-fueled tank because nobody thought of starting it up and driving right over the horde to safety.
    • Yes, it is "that hard", because you're basically metagaming. You're like the guy who tries to make automatic gunpowder weapons in Dungeons & Dragons based on the player's knowledge instead of the characters.
  • It just bugs me that it always looks like the characters are chugging whole bottles of pain pills when they use them!
    • Maybe the bottle was nearly empty and they're just getting the rest. They'd have to get by with dregs in an after all.
      • That seems the most likely explanation, given all the rattle heard when you equip the pills.
  • When a survivor draws his pistols, what is holding his primary weapon onto his back?
    • For some probably hyper-technical reason that I wouldn't understand, straps are a total bitch to render in real time. Most games just completely ignore them and let people fill in the gaps on their own. Notice how guitars float in pretty much every rhythm game for another example.
    • Can anyone think of a way that the weapons (and Medkits) could feasibly stick to the Survivor's backs?
      • Straps and harnesses most likely, again, we just dont see them in game because it would be a pain in the ass for the designers to work on little details like that.
  • The explanation behind the crescendo events is that zombies are attracted to loud noises and lights. Apparently fire, the Survivors' shouting, muzzle flashes, gunshots, and explosions all don't count.
    • The infected are attracted to high-pitched noises not loud ones, and they do react to gunfire in the area (usually by charging straight at the gunfire.)
  • I made a Wild Mass Guessing about this... but if the Carrier gene is passed down solely from the father, wouldn't Zoey and Rochelle have to have an XY Karyotype? The Y chromosome is the only bit of the genome that can be solely inherited from the father, and if it were on anything that could be received from either parent, it wouldn't pass down solely on the father's side.
    • The mother's egg has one X chromosome and the father's sperm contains the X or Y chromosome to determine gender. That would not determine immunity, it would be another gene in the sequence that would do so. Some people are not allergic to cats while others are, this is from a different gene than the sex determinant gene.
      • You misunderstood my point. Quite badly in fact. Cat allergies, for instance -- and most genetic traits -- can be inherited from either parent, as barring the X and Y in males, you get one copy of each chromosome from each parent. The comic establishes that the Carrier gene is solely and specifically passed down from the father, rather than from the mother or from either parent. But the only bit of the genome that passes down solely from the father is the Y chromosome... so it would seem impossible for the Carrier gene to pass down in this way if it was on anything but the Y, as any other part of the genome is either equally obtained from both parents, or, in the case of the X in males, obtained solely from the mother. My entire point was that, if it were on another chromosome, as you suggest, there would be no mechanism I am aware of which could restrict it such that it was only passed down on the father's side, rather than your having a chance to obtain it from either parent.
        • Unless the mothers' immunities can't be passed down because the immunity gene (or whatever) needs a boost from Y-Chromosomes
        • If immunity were linked through sex chromosomes, a whole 22% of the population (males and females) would be immune. It's implied that the actual immune population is significantly smaller than that.
    • Backing up to the root question: It's not "passed down solely from the father", it's sex-linked. Carried on the X chromosome and recessive. (Almost) any man who has the gene will express it, possible exceptions being Klinefelter (XXY) males. Women, however, would not, at least not automatically. They would carry it, but to express it, they'd need to inherit it from both parents. Men would pass it on to all their daughters, but not their sons, unless those sons are XXY (which is itself a sterile karyotype due to some developmental issues). Carrier women pass it on to about half their children, male or female, and immune women to all their children. If those children are male, they're immune; if they're girls, they're carriers if the father wasn't immune, and immune if he was. The best-known sex-linked conditions are detrimental - certain forms of color-blindness, hemophilia - and occur in far less than 22% of the population. In this case, the gene was benign, and became actively beneficial when the Green Flu hit. Its lack of adaptive value means there's no reason for it to become well-established in the population (and by the way recessive genes works, there might be some mild detrimental effect that helps to keep it rare, but isn't enough to outweigh the benefits of being immune to the Green Flu - see heterozygous sickle-cell anemia vs malaria); thus, when the Green Flu arrives and the gene's effects become significant, immunes are rare. Female Survivors had carrier or immune mothers, and immune fathers, excepting the very rare cases where the mutation arose anew in that child. (Which makes the fate of Zoey's father cruelly ironic - odds are her mother was a carrier but only had one copy of the gene, while her father had it on his sole X chromosome and wouldn't have changed.) Male Survivors got the immunity from their (probably carriers of the gene but not immune themselves) mothers, full stop.
  • Why did CEDA decide that evacuation was a good solution for an infectious disease even before they realized it turned people into zombies? It's not exactly a surprise that attempting evacuations just spread Green Flu.
    • Maybe they figured people would try and evacuate on their own, so the best chance would be for CEDA to provide evacuation paths they can filter. If it weren't for carriers, I'm sure CEDA wouldn't have such a bad rep
      • Even discounting carriers, which by the way are a fairly common thing with real diseases, there's this thing called an incubation period. CEDA didn't seem to impose any sort of quarantine period.
        • "Carriers" seem to work differently with the Green Flu than with everyday sorts of disease (see the sex-linkage discussion above - there's a specific gene at work). Admittedly this doesn't address why CEDA wouldn't have considered the possibility, as the discovery of "immune" carriers seems to be recent.
    • This actually makes sense when you take into account the whole "The Virus is mutating" idea. When the virus first happened, it just made everyone sick. This was shown in the comic where Louis was the only one coming into work. CEDA was completely a hundred steps behind at all times, as shown with those posters about watching your hands. They were out collecting samples of Special Infected while trying to evac regular people, showing how little they actually knew about the situation. One can only assume that studying the infection when the first infected cropped up, they realized it could only get worse and decided the country was doomed.
      • See, that doesn't answer the question of why they evacuated people in response to a highly contagious disease, regardless of whether it turned people into zombies, apparently without a 48-hour quarantine period. The theory that at first it just made everyone sick explains everything else they did, but not why they decided on a course of action that would inevitably spread the disease even further. When there's a contagious disease, you isolate people and prevent them from leaving the area they're in, something well understood as far back as the Black Plague.
  • You know the greyscale-vision you get near death? Is there a (Watsonian) explanation for that that anyone can think of?
    • My guess is it has something to do with the survivor in question's senses failing them because of all the punishment they'd have to had taken by that point.
    • This troper once asked a friend how did it feel like to black out, as she was prone to it. The way she described it seems very similar to what happens in game: black edges slowly comes into your view, world getting fuzzy, finally succumbing to blackness...
  • I've just now remembered that the Hunting Rifle is a Mini-14, meaning it should be firing the exact same bullets as the M16 and SCAR. Beyond gameplay reasons, why is it so much more powerful per shot than the others?
    • The Hunting Rifle is based on the Mini-14. It says 'Patriot 809' on the receiver.
      • That doesn't really help. In all but name, it is a Mini-14. Or maybe a Mini-30. You know what, let's just say it's a Mini-30; it fires the same bullet as the game's AK, which makes more sense.
        • No, I have to disagree with you there. The Pills look identical to Ibuprofen bought from Target (http://left4dead.wikia.com/wiki/File:Ibuprofen.jpg) but that doesn't mean the fictional drug has the exact same chemical formula. There are contradictions between most of the guns and their counterparts. I believe the Submachine Gun's clip size is a point of some contention. This verse contains fictional characters, fictional locations and fictional (so far) struggles, why not fictional weapons?
    • How do you explain that all M16's have 50 round clips, yet those types are very rare? How do you explain that when you get new guns you automatically get extra ammo despite no ammo is around it when you pick it up? How do you explain how the pistols have infinite ammo? dude, your asking how come a gun's bullets does more damage than one with the same types of bullets in a game that isn't realistic.
      • Regarding your third question, I've always assumed that pistol mags are so ubiquitous that The Law of Conservation of Detail demands they be invisible. So, like, there are extra mags to be found on every corpse, but The Developers felt it would be tedious to actually pick them all up.
      • And you could say the same thing for the second question. That there are specialized magazines scattered around the guns that aren't shown for the same reason Everything Fades.
      • As far as the first question goes, the M16 has American Armoury' written on the side. It's not the same M16 that Colt makes in the real world. (As a bit of trivia, the fact you can carry 360 bullets in reserve implies they originally planned on giving it the RL 30-round mag)
    • Funnily enough, you all missed my point entirely (why does the Mini-14 Hunting Rifle do more damage per bullet than the M16) to focus on something wholly irrelevant ("it's not a Mini-14 even though it looks exactly like one"). And to counter that point, let me remind you that the Desert Rifle has "CAL 5.56mm" written on the side. The same as its real-life counterpart, as well as those of the Hunting Rifle and the M16. So, as I've stated, names and magazine capacities aside these are the exact same weapons as they appear to be, just being used to shoot zombies instead of something that exists in the real world. Oh well, in any case I found the best fix for this: a model replacement that turns the Hunting Rifle into an actual M14, both justifying the increased power and ensuring I will never use anything else ever again.
  • Just noticed something after dusting off the old disc. In No Mercy 2, there is a part of the subway tunnel where the wall is blown out. That seems reasonable enough. But continuing off of that is a smooth-lined tunnel which was clearly bored out and if you follow it, it eventually reconnects with the main subway line and smashes through the concrete wall. How did that get there? There doesn't seem to be any drilling equipment nearby and a tank couldn't do it even if it were inclined to.
    • They had just begun construction of a service tunnel when The Infection struck. The big hole by the fire is the result of a hastily prepared explosion used to draw Infected away from the fleeing construction workers.
  • I understand it from a gameplay standpoint, but I still find it funny that in Hard Rain the survivors go to all the trouble of reaching a gas station 2 miles inland when they could have siphoned plenty enough gas out of the several dozen abandoned vehicles and conveniently placed hyper-volatile gas cans. Heck, if willing to chance getting some dirtier fuel, they could have extracted the gas from all the molotovs laying about.
    • The gas they need is diesel, which it's possible -although a bit of a stretch- that the majority of the vehicles and gas tanks are simply normal gasoline. The gas cans they need in Hard Rain are green, which is usually a color associated with diesel gas.
    • The gas cans in Hard Rain do, in fact, have the word 'diesel' written in big letters on them, for what it's worth.
  • Excuse me for being Captain Obvious over here, but the infected look like they're in pretty bad shape: they've got grey, decaying skin, there's blood caked around their every orifice, and they frequently vomit or just lie down and die. In the sequel, they look even worse off. And it's not as though the infected are traditional, undead zombies who can continue to shamble around even as they fall to bits; the infected are alive, but barely so. Seems to me that if the survivors just gathered up some canned goods and hunkered down real quiet-like in a saferoom they'd stand a pretty good chance of outliving the disease, whereas the cross-country sprint is an unnecessary risk. (Admittedly, Left 2 Eat Cans of Beans in the Dark 4 a Couple of Months would be a much less compelling game.)
    • There are three problems with that. First, cabin fever. Both groups of Survivors are a fractious bunch at the best of times, give it three, four days in a small space before they kill each other. The second is food. You see any food during your campaigns. You even pass through several stores and the shelves are picked clean. Hardly surprising, given in an emergency the first thing most people loot is food. Our Survivors would starve long before the Infected died out. Finally the Survivors cannot be sure that the Infected will die out; it's a very odd illness, what with the massive mutation. I wouldn't risk my life on an unproven assumption.
      • You do find food throughout the game -- boxes of Chocobites and cans of beans aren't plentiful, but they're at least present -- and I suspect that if the survivors focused their energy on finding hidden caches of food and bringing it back to a safehouse rather than running and gunning their way down the East Coast they'd burn fewer calories. Good point about the survivors being likely to kill each other, though.
      • Remember those olive drab wooden crates in most safe rooms that you all seem to have forgotten? Yeah, it says "U.S. ARMY "K" RATIONS" right on the front
        • That came off different that I wanted it to, but yeah they are in most safe rooms keep an eye out for them. It does bring up the question that "Did the military set up the safe rooms"
    • Keep in mind there aren't just infected out there. There are also huge ass Tanks that can punch its way right through a saferoom door (and they will if you dawdle too long in the opening room). The survivors probably would hunker down if there was a place that could survive an assault, but you never come across one.
    • And, of course, in The Last Stand, they do try and settle somewhere to let the infection blow over. Take a good, hard look at the name and see how that turned out.
  • What was with everyone assuming 2 took place one week before the first game? I don't remember if Valve ever officially stated anything about a timeline prior to release, but I'm never right with wild guesses so they must have said something on the matter beforehand. For that matter, there were the new zombie types too - did these people just assume that these new four survivors, who clearly aren't an indeterminate number of Chicago Teds, were able to make those new zombies extinct within a week?
    • Not sure where the "one week earlier" thing comes from, but the new infected types could be explained by the different setting. Or maybe Bill & co. just never ran into any of them.
    • The "one week earlier" thing was a misunderstanding that was repeated in a few early previews.
    • The fact that The Passing clearly takes place after the first game and near the beginning of the second directly contradicts this, anyway.
  • Is that instrument used in Dark Carnival a theremin or a saw?
  • So I'm on page 86 of the comic. Is that a Hunter attacking the guy? I honestly can't figure it out. Because if it is, why does he have eyes? And if it isn't, then why aren't there any Hunters in the comic? There were like five Smokers, three or four Boomers, a whole boatload of Witches, and six or seven Tanks. Even if that is a Hunter ripping the guy's guts out, that's still a pretty uneven distribution.
    • In answer to your first line of questioning: Yes. That is a Hunter attacking the guy. The reason why he still has eyes could be explained multiple ways depending on which fanwank you want to go with. 1. They haven't decayed yet, and this Hunter was recently infected. 2. Only certain people who become Hunters claw their eyes out, maybe because they react to the infection by going insane(I have a fanfiction that uses that theory, an infected traceur losing his mind and ripping out his eyes to blind himself from the horrors he's witnessing just before turning). As to why there aren't that many Hunters in the area? Well, the location in which it was happening seemed pretty remote. Not a lot of places to practice Le Parkour. Thus, fewer Hunters. Of course, this is all non-canon fanwankery. Nobody but the creators know the real answer.
    • It is definitely a Hunter because that is the only type of Special Infected capable of jumping over the 20-foot security fences. This was foreshadowed earlier in the comic.
    • There ARE more Hunters in the comic, just harder to spot since many don't wear hoodies like the ones in the game. In panel 2 of page 125 a Hunter (notice the sharp claws) is seen jumping through the air. In Bill's flashback it appears that another Hunter killed the doctor. That alone is 3 different Hunters, with likely more in the backrounds surrounded by the horde which makes them harder to notice. The reason Smokers and Tanks seem so common is because they are very hard to miss (big ass muscles and super long tounges, not exactly subtle) while the only way to identify a Hunter is its claws. Any common infected are drawn with normal hands so the Hunters are fairly easy to find if you know what to look for and where to look for it.
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