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'''Ed:''' Why not?
'''Shaun:''' Because it's ''[[This Is Reality|ridiculous!]]''
'''Ed:''' Alright... Are there any out there, though?
|''[[Shaun of the Dead]]''}}
A story has creatures that are obviously based on some sort of mythological monster, but goes out of its way not to call them that.
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A subtrope of the [[Sci Fi Ghetto]]. Can be used to highlight how [[Our Monsters Are Different|their monsters are different]]. Suppose your monsters are rotting shambling undead that want to drink your blood. Call them zombies and every casual reader's going to assume they're after "braaaaaiiinnss," while call them vampires and, well... [[Anne Rice|Yeah]]. Of course, when it's used to force a sense of [[This Is Reality|"realism"]] (we don't call them "zombies" because zombies ''[[Not a Zombie|aren't real]]''), it smacks painfully of [[Genre Blindness]]. If ''you'' were confronted by what appears to be a member of the walking dead, how much effort would you spend coming up with an alternative name?
One of the more [[Genre Savvy]] reasons is that the walking dead technically ''[[You Keep Using That Word|aren't zombies]]''. The proper "zombie" is a person whose higher thought processes have been removed and are under the sway of a master. This original zombie is usually the result of occult vodou magic. Some books, such as ''The Serpent and the Rainbow'', argue that vodou practitioners actually can create zombies through a combination of drugs and cultural beliefs. "P-zombies", or "[[wikipedia:Philosophical zombie|philosophical zombies]]", are even more
Compare to [[Differently-Powered Individual]] (for superheroes), [[A Mech by Any Other Name]] (for [[Humongous Mecha]]), and [[Magic by Any Other Name]]. See also [[Call a Rabbit a Smeerp]], [[Fantastic Slur]], and [[T-Word Euphemism]]. When used for non-fantastic things and attributes, it may be an attempt to [[Show, Don't Tell|show and not tell]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* In Naruto these are referred to as "Edo Tensei Reanimations."
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* Despite [[Role Called|its prominence in the title]], ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' has only used the words "Magical Girl" once, during a no fourth wall moment where Nanoha described her situation to the audience as being akin to a magical girl in the third episode of the first season. Every other time, the term "Mage" or "Knight" is used.
** And in an example closer to the title, ''Nanoha'' has no zombies. ''Nanoha'', however, has the Corpse Weapons known as Mariage, which are undead armies that crave human flesh that are raised by a [[Necromancer]].
* Chiropterans from ''[[Blood
** And in Blood-C they're called... Elder-Bairns.
* In the ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'' dub, Jaden and the others keep annoyingly referring to the zombies as "Duel Ghouls".
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* In ''Defoe'', zombies are referred to as 'reeks', though Defoe himself has the title 'zombie-hunter general'.
* In ''[[Empowered]]'', reanimated supers really hate the "z-word."
* In the limited series, ''Galacta, Daughter of [[Galactus]]'' there's an in-universe example; the eponymous heroine suffers from the same [[Horror Hunger]] as her father, [[Bad Powers, Good People|craving the life energy]] of sentient beings, but sates it in ways that benefit humanity, like consuming deadly viruses in sick people. She writes on her Twitter account (yes, she does that - frequently) that she would prefer people ''not'' refer to this as "vore". Sadly, fans tend to ignore this - Galacta [[Fanfic Fuel|has ''infinite'' potential for fan works with vore.]]
* ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20150311220628/http://dotchan.com/?p=1634 Respawn of the Dead]'' is what would happen if you added zombies to ''[[Team Fortress 2]]''. Of course, [[The Medic]], being a [[Mad Doctor|man of science]], insists that his teammates refrain from calling victims of [[The Virus]] zombies. (They do anyway.)▼
▲== Fan Fiction ==
▲* [http://dotchan.com/?p=1634 Respawn of the Dead] is what would happen if you added zombies to ''[[Team Fortress 2]]''. Of course, [[The Medic]], being a [[Mad Doctor|man of science]], insists that his teammates refrain from calling victims of [[The Virus]] zombies. (They do anyway.)
* In ''[[With Strings Attached]]'', the word [[The Beatles|“Beatles”]] rarely appears in the narrative; the author refers to them as “the four.” Almost the only time the name appears is when one of the four makes a sardonic or angry reference to it, or when one of the Fans mentions it.
** Justified in that the book is set in 1980, and the four haven't been [[The Beatles]] for ten years, and the author isn't trying to reunite them in that way.
* ''[[Futari wa Pretty Cure Dragon]]'' never refers to [[
* In the ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]/[[Xena: Warrior Princess]]'' sorta-crossover ''[[Xendra]]'', When the commander of the re-organized DRI is uncomfortable using "magic" in his official communications with his superiors, Willow offers a euphemistic acronym he can use: SHADETREE, for "Symbology- and Heuristics-Affected Directed Energies Through Recondite Esoteric Egresses". He then proceeds to use it in every official communication where it's needed.
== Film ==
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* Justified in-character example: In ''[[Return of the Living Dead]]'', a character who phones 911 doesn't admit that the attackers are animated corpses, realizing his pleas for help will be dismissed as a prank if he does. He claims that they're people who've gone [[Ax Crazy]] ("It's a disease, it's like rabies, only it's faster, it's a ''lot'' faster...") instead.
* ''[[Death Becomes Her]]''. No one in the film mentions zombies, but director [[Robert Zemeckis]] openly admits in interviews it's a zombie film, albeit ''glamorous'' literally Hollywood zombies.
* Averted in the book ''[[I Am Legend]]'' by baldly calling a vampire a vampire throughout the narrative, as it was written over a decade before ''Night''. It's not hard to see why, at least in the old black-and-white movie; they're undead, they shamble, they lack proper diction, and they have the intelligence of a rotting cabbage. They have all the weaknesses of vampires, and all the weaknesses of zombies.
* The ''[[Resident Evil (film)|Resident Evil]]'' movies never use the word zombie, instead opting for "infected". This doesn't make much sense because, although the games have a wide variety of non-zombie enemies, the movies only have zombies of various stages (except for Tyrants and Crows).
* ''[[28 Days Later|Twenty Eight Days Later]]'' calls them the Infected. This has resulted in [[Internet Backdraft|rather nerdy arguments on the Internet]] on whether they are actually zombies or not.
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** It's worth noting though that during the sniper scene in 28 Weeks, one of the soldiers said something about "2 fucking zombies." They actually do use the Z word.
* The movie ''[[Ultraviolet (film)|Ultraviolet]]'' directed by Kurt Wimmer, which is unrelated to [[Ultraviolet (TV series)|the series]] but also features vampires, refers to them as "hemophages".
* They always call the ''[[Alien (franchise)|Aliens]]'' "serpents" and the [[Predator
** For the record: the term "Xenomorph"
** The Aliens have also been referred in the role playing game materials by a Latin species name, ''Linguafoeda acheronsis'' - literally "vile tongue of Acheron". The "''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]'' Quadrilogy" DVD menus, on the other hand, refer to them as ''Internecivus raptus'' - literally "murderous thief".
* ''[[Grindhouse|Planet Terror]]'' had "sickos", [[Brain Food|brain-eating]] [[Body Horror|bubbly-skinned]] not-quite-zombies.
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* Subverted in ''[[30 Days of Night]]'', where one character asks "if they aren't vampires, then what the hell are they?" after being told it's ridiculous to assume that the monsters are exactly that.
* The vampires of ''[[Near Dark]]'' are never referred to as vampires, despite the blood-drinking, extra strength, lack of aging and general vampire-ness.
* In [[Steven Spielberg]]'s version of ''[[The War of the Worlds (2005 film)||The War of the Worlds]]'' the characters go out of their way to avoid describing the clearly alien invaders as "aliens".
* [[Superhero]] movies sometimes do this also.
** ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man]]'' in which the term "[[Iron Man]]" wasn't used until after nearly everything was over (and the hero was named by the media, not Tony Stark).
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* The word "vampire" is never uttered in ''Rise: Blood Hunter'' to describe the cult of undead blood drinkers. That's why most people who saw the trailer thought it was about some sort of ''[[Pushing Daisies]]''-esque zombie or something.
* In the 1998 American [[Godzilla]] remake, the word "monster" is never used. Usually, it's "that thing" or "the creature" or "target" or, at one point, "a dinosaur". In fact, the name Godzilla is only used about twice.
* The granddaddy of the 'Don't use the "R" word' subtrope: Back in 1977, the world knew mechanical/electronic automata as pretty much just one thing: Robots. To look different, we suppose, ''[[Star Wars]]'' referred to theirs as something (at the time) different, an abbreviation of 'android' -- ''droid''. Of course, nowadays the word is so common that non-''Star Wars''-based shows and movies have used it, even, and it's entirely possible that there are people out there who would recognize the word 'droid' more quickly. Moreover, 'droid' is more immediately recognizable as a term for sci-fi movie
** However, the word 'droid' is a (and has been for decades) a registered trademark of Lucasfilm. One only needs to watch a commercial for a Motorola Droid phone to see the 'used with permission' fine print. If the term 'droid' has ever been used in a non-Lucasfilm movie, then the studio likely paid for the privilege.
*** Actually, the Motorola Droid was designed by George Lucas, himself. Hence, why there is a Droid R2-D2.
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* In ''[[Braindead]]'', the one time the word "zombie" is used, the corpse of Lionel's mother immediately kills the hooligan who says it. [[Genre Savvy|Maybe she took offense.]]
* The protagonists in ''[[Primer]]'' never refer to their time machine as a time machine, nor do they use the words time travel to describe their time travel.
== Literature ==
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** [[Return of the Living Dead|Did he burn the zombie in an incinerator?]]
* Subverted in ''[[World War Z]]'': they had all sorts of codewords starting with Z ("Zack" was common in the U.S., a callback to "Charlie" from [[The Vietnam War]]), and when they actually did use the word "zombie" it was self-conscious, because until the [[Zombie Apocalypse]], zombies had just been scary things from horror movies. Incidentally, the British called them "Zeds" (the European convention for the letter "Z"), and the Japanese named them after a type of ant.
* Kit Whitfield's ''Bareback'' (''Benighted'' in the US) is about a world where [[Our Werewolves Are Different|nearly everyone is a werewolf]]; they are referred to only as "lycanthropes" or "lycos." She discussed this in an interview, saying that [[B-Movie
* The vampiric narrator of Steven Brust's ''Agyar'' never once uses the word "vampire," nor does he ever explicitly describe himself feeding on blood, though he does so many times. Agyar tells the story simply to put his thoughts on paper, and therefore does not explain anything that would be second nature to himself.
* Used for humor in [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[
** Not to mention the fact that Zombies prefer to be called the [[Political Correctness Gone Mad|Vitally Impaired]].
*** Or the "Differently Alive." Though actually quite a few zombies don't mind being called zombies. Even Reg Shoe, the biggest undead rights activist in Ankh-Morpork, has never objected specifically to the ''word'' "zombie."
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** In Generation Dead, dead teenagers become [[Our Zombies Are Different|non-deadly zombies]] and emo goes out of style. However, the insanely PC folks of the 'verse insist on calling the zombies "living-impaired" and don't get that zombies don't really care; they just want to live normal "lives," so to speak.
* In [[Neil Gaiman]]'s ''[[The Graveyard Book]]'', Silas is obviously a vampire, but the word is never used.
* The vampires in ''Peeps'' by Scott Westerfield are pointedly not referred to as vampires, instead they're called "Peeps" which is short for Parasite-Positive. They're explicitly acknowledged to be the source of vampire legends, but the modern [[Doing
* Explicitly parodied in the fourth book of ''[[The Dresden Files]]''. Harry is attacked by a fairy plant monster that he insists on calling a "Chlorofiend", a term he just made up because he'd feel silly saying he was attacked by a plant monster. He does call Zombies as such though.
* [[Stationery Voyagers]] has ''[[Our Vampires Are Different|Mosquatlons]]'', who consider it mildly offensive to be referred to as "vampires," though they've come to accept it. Likewise, the Aviatets are in their bird form all the time, and mildly object to the [[Transformation Trauma|morphic]] slurs "werebirds" and "werecanaries."
* Lian Hearn's ''[[Tales of the Otori]]'' series centers around a secret society of Japanese assassins. The author never once drops the word [[Ninja]]. Similarly, the feudal warriors are never referred to as [[Samurai]].
* ''Saturn's Children'' by [[Charles Stross]] justifies this in regard to its
* In ''[[Pride and Prejudice And Zombies]]'', while no effort is made by the author/narrator to not refer to the zombies as such, the characters occasionally refer to them as "unmentionables" or "the afflicted", apparently because calling them zombies isn't proper. They sometimes do so anyway.
** The euphemism results in a bit of [[Narm]] for readers to whom "unmentionables" means "underwear".
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== Live-Action TV ==
* ''[[Ultraviolet (TV series)|Ultraviolet]]'' never used the word vampire. Instead, the government called them "Code 5" (that is, V). Also 'leeches' as a slang term.
* The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story ''[[Doctor Who/Recap/S26/E03 The Curse of Fenric|The Curse of Fenric]]'' has undead which drank blood and are repelled by strong faith, but are never called vampires. (Another ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story, "[[Doctor Who/Recap/
** In the Big Finish audio production ''Loups-Garoux'', in which the Doctor meets a group of Werewolves, they're usually called "Loups-Garoux" (the French word for "werewolves"), but one character calls them "Lobos", sometimes they're referred to as "wolves", and "Werewolf" is used sparingly.
** The television story "[[Doctor Who/Recap/
** Then you have the "Vampires of Venice" which inverts this trope by constantly saying how similar the [[Monster of the Week]] is to vampires, only for them to turn out to be {{spoiler|not vampires but alien fish creatures.}}
* The 2007 ''[[Flash Gordon (TV series)|Flash Gordon]]'' series avoids referring to any of the Mongo peoples as the human-animal mashups or mythological constructs that they're based on, and by which they are known in most other adaptations. Thus, Hawkmen are "[[Hollywood Meaningful Name|Dactyls]]", Lionmen are "Tuuren", Amazons are "Omadrians", and so forth. Being that it's an installment of '''[[Camp|Flash]] [[So Bad It's Good|Gordon]]''', it doesn't work. At all.
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'''Will:''' Oh, right, right. It's, uh, HAP.
'''Henry:''' It's a hyper-accelerated protean, thank you very much. }}
* In the ''[[Star Trek:
* The "Wizards vs. Angels" arc of ''[[Wizards of Waverly Place]]'' features "Angels of Darkness" ([[Our Demons Are Different|demons]]), led by Gorog, an [[Expy]] of [[Satan]].
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** The trope is incompletely sustained, but justified where it is. Vampires know they're vampires, werewolves know they're werewolves, everyone else in on the Masquerade knows they're vampires and werewolves. But they call themselves by something more flattering and the others more insulting. Vampires, for instance, tend to call werewolves and mages "lupines" and "warlocks," whereas those groups might call vampires "bloodsuckers" or "leeches". The same thing extends to humans; few people refer to themselves and others as 'humans', and the vampire label them the more condescending 'kine'.
** ''[[Promethean: The Created]]'' establishes that the name used for the [[Walking Wasteland]] supernaturals that are the game's subject is mostly just for-the-players's-convenience shorthand, and that most of the titular species wouldn't even ''recognize'' the term. There are simply too few of them for the Created to have an accepted species name.
* Due to a [[Moral Guardians|religious flap]] about the presence of demons and devils in the game, ''[[Dungeons
{{quote|Most berks think that the Blood War's nothing more than the battle between dem-- no, wait. That ain't the right word. For one thing, it's a sure road to woe. Calling the fiends by the d-words is no better than insulting any other group of folks because of the way they look or act. Not only does it infuriate them, it marks the speaker as a crass boor, someone to be shunned (or killed). Might as well call a bariaur a randy goat, or a slaad a slimy toad. It's a mark of ignorance, plain and simple, and it'll paint a body to be as Clueless as they come.
When speaking of the evil creatures that fight the Blood War, just call them "baatezu" and "tanar'ri", or "the fiends." Or [[The Scottish Trope|call them nothing at all]]; that way, a body's not as likely to draw their attention. }}
** Though, in 3rd Edition and beyond, they're back to being demons (tanar'ri) and devils (baatezu). Though both terms are used in places and almost interchangeably, as the majority of demons belong to the Tanar'ri race, and most devils belong to the Baatezu race.
** Technically, it's not the same: "demons" and "devils" are collective nouns the Clueless (Prime mortals) use for "[[Chaotic Evil]] fiends" and "[[Lawful Evil]] fiends", while "Tanar'ri" and "Baatezu" are names of races, dominant on their respective planes. There are ''other'' chaotic and lawful fiends: a Quasit and Bebilith are [[Chaotic Evil]] fiends from Abyss, but not Tanar'ri. On the other hand, a [[Chaotic Neutral]] or [[True Neutral]] (20%) [[Half-Human Hybrid|Alu-fiend]] who was born on Prime and never left
* ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' encountered [[Moral Guardians|a similar problem]] as D&D did several years into its rise to power; for many years, cards which depicted a horrible monster from the Underworld were "Beasts" or "Horrors" without fail, and never too closely resembled the demon stereotype. At about the same time, images such as "Unholy Strength"'s flaming pentagram disappeared, and this was later Handwaved as a choice to "avoid using real-world iconography in our fantasy universe". A few of the creature-type changes have since been Retconned. Lampshaded in Unglued, where Infernal Spawn of Evil has the type Demon crossed out with Beast scribbled in. (Wizards of the Coast have since realized that the game is popular enough to ignore such silliness, and demons now appear in almost every set. They even released a duel deck set for "Divine Vs. Demonic.")
* In the ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh Card Game]]'', any card in the "Demon" archetype becomes an "Archfiend" for its US release.
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* The enemies in [[Killing Floor]] are referred to officially as Specimens. Another in-universe name for them is Zeds, but no one who plays the game actually calls them that.
* The [[Resident Evil]] games do use the term, quite a bit. There's even a moment in the fourth one where Leon observes the villagers trying to kill him ''aren't'' zombies, appearing perfectly human (if rather pale) and interacting intelligently with one another, and the first Majini Chris Redfield or Sheva shoots in the fifth, Chris notes that they don't move like any zombie he's ever seen.
** Totally averted in all the rest of the pre-[[
** Although they are the least zombie-like in the new series beginning with 4 and 5, as Capcom wanted to move away from the old "Romero-style slow zombies with a few mutated bosses" set up and moved to the "normal people just converted by Las Plagas" approach. This also marked a [[Genre Shift]] from survival horror to action, though ''[[Resident Evil 5]]'' does ''very'' briefly bring Zombies back into the mix; and after going two games without them, it's actually surprising again when they grab you.
** [ResidentEvil:Revelations\] ditches the word "Zombie" almost completely, as Jill and Parker generally refer to the zombie-ish Oozes as simply "things" or "infected" - this gets rather odd, as none of the monsters they encounter have their actual names (ie Ooze, Sea Creeper, Scagdead) ever said. The only exceptions to the Z-word is when Jill calls Rachel a zombie.
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* The [[Orphaned Series]] ''[http://lacunae.comicgenesis.com/ Lacunae]'' has photosensitive bloodsuckers that are called "haemophages" or just "phages", but never "vampires."
* ''[[Linburger]]'' always has a different word for their [[Demihuman]] races. So thus the elves are called Cyll, the [[Catgirl|Cat Girls]] are called Mirrakae, and the orcs are called Trokks. Granted, [[Catgirl]] would be a pretty silly name for a race.
* Lampshaded in ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20150811231136/http://deadmetaphor.comicdish.com/ Dead Metaphor]'', a 'zombie comedy' webcomic. People call the undead 'zombies', but it's considered a politically-incorrect term, on par with calling someone a retard.
* Sort of discussed in ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'':
{{quote|'''[http://www.egscomics.com/?date{{=}}2010-05-21 Susan]:''' You know what? Screw it. It was a vampire. [...] Not really, but it was a monster that used to be human, hypnotized young women, and sucked blood out of their necks. It doesn't matter what I say. You two are going to hear ''"vampire"''.}}
* Very, very much averted in ''[[Zombie Ranch]]''. Not only does the [[Show Within a Show|in-universe show]] have the same title as the comic, the characters are constantly referring to the zombies as zombies. Justified by it being over twenty years since the dead first started to walk. There's no denying their everyday existence, so why make up new words?
== Web Original ==
* In the universe of ''[[The Descendants]]'', there's a sort of culture war going on over using the term 'superhero'. As comic books exist in that world and there are presumably legal issues involved in using it, the media calls the real super humans emerging 'prelates' even though many of them call themselves 'superheroes' and their enemies 'super villains'. It gets better when you note the extent the series goes to to call their mutants anything but.
* The online furry comic/graphic novel ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20130727074523/http://www.vitenka.com/Rtd1/ Rework the Dead]'' and its sequel, ''Rework the Dead II'', by David Hopkins, has zombies referred to as "Reworks"--- which makes sense as the dead are reanimated immensely stronger, faster, incredibly violent and with claws and razor-sharp fangs ('''Warning:''' this "funny animal" comic is anything but cute and cuddly).
* To certain sects in the alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die USENET newsgroup and it's sister website The Jihad To Destroy Barney On The Web, use of [[Barney and Friends|It Of The Ol' One Tooth's]] name is blasphemous and is believed to give him power. Thus many derogatory names were invented to label that Purple Pedophile in place of the monster's name.
* ''[[How to Write Badly Well]]'' [http://writebadlywell.blogspot.com/2010/08/beat-around-bush.html parodies it.]
* [[
* [[Xombie]]
* Averted by [[The League of STEAM]]; their zombie manservant is even ''named'' "Zed".
== Western Animation ==
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** Historically, the mamluks were the soldiers of slave origin used by Muslim rulers to fight their wars. They became a powerful warrior caste, and some did reach the level of sultan (including one named Ala'a ad-Din (Aladdin)). Therefore, it would be correct to call them mamluks, which has nothing to do with their status of being undead. Strangely enough, one of the original sources of ''[[Arabian Nights]]'' was written down in the second half of the 13th century in the Mamluk kingdoms of Syria and Egypt. However, the undead of Persia/Arabia were typically referred to as "ghuls", or "ghouls".
** Iago does refer to them as zombies in the episode "Black Sands": "Big blue zombie at twelve o’clock!"
* ''[[The Secret of Kells]]'' never uses the word "bible"
** Considering that Bible comes from the Greek for "Book," maybe its just a case of [[Translation Convention]].
* In ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' "Treehouse of Horror XX" there's is a 'muncher' outbreak started by eating infected hamburgers. Notably, the segment is mostly an extended parody of ''28 Days Later'', listed above.
== Real Life ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Tropes of the Living Dead]]
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:Horror Tropes]]
[[Category:Name's Not
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