Raising the Steaks: Difference between revisions

Yes, occasionally even dead animals can be revived into shambling monstrosities after human flesh. This can reach such levels of ridiculousness as (as suggested by the title) meat animating itself and moving around.

 

 

In works where zombie humans have [[Zombie Gait]], for some reason animals almost never move slower. If anything, they might even get a speed or strength ''bonus''. Can in some cases be justified when zombification reduces brain function, as it takes more dexterity for a biped to run without falling over. Can also be justified in that the zombie plague causes the higher brain functions to cease, while the animal part of the brain keeps functioning. If the subject's ALREADY an animal, then there's no hindrance. Likewise, the fact that zombies don't get tired may work in a reanimated animal's favor, as many living carnivores are sprinters, unable to sustain high speeds for long.

* Happened in [[Grant Morrison]]'s [[Seven Soldiers]].

* One of the stories in the ''[[Halo]] Graphic Novel'' involves a Flood infestation on a Covenant station. They completely wipe out and assimilate the onboard wildlife reservation.

* In one issue of [[EC Comics]], there is a zombie elephant.

* In the new 52's reboot of [[Swamp Thing]], the [[Big Bad]] is Death itself (technically, the Rot) personified. As such, Alec must face such undead abominations as zombie ''pigs'' and a reanimated woolly mammoth fossil.

* [[Resident Evil]]: Extinction has zombie crows, and all three films have zombie dogs.

* One of the ickier feats of ghostly telekinesis in ''[[Poltergeist]]'' was a raw steak that slithered along a kitchen counter.

* In the ''Re-Animator'' movies, Herbert West, like many a real-world medical scientist, tests his methods on animals first. This includes a cat in one movie and a rat in another. (A rat that, appearently, ''learnt kung fu'' by becoming a zombie...)

* In ''The Mad'', one of the characters is attacked by a zombie hamburger patty.

== [[Literature]] ==

* Used in ''[[Everworld]]''. A fight began during some diplomatic feast. Merlin reanimated the animals they were eating. He also reanimated people that died during the fight so that they could keep fighting.

** Not clear if they're technically undead or not, but Green's ''[[Ghost Finders|Ghost of a Smile]]'' has a room full of animated black-market ''transplant organs'' attack the heroes and try to [[Orifice Invasion|get inside them]].

* In [[Stephen King]]'s ''[[Pet Sematary]]'', there's a special burial ground and anyone buried there will come back to life. Burying animals there is fairly common, and the zombie animals are mostly harmless (the main character has a zombie cat, and his neighbor used to have a zombie dog), but human zombies aren't nearly as nice.

* One of the [[Magic a Is Magic A|rules]] of necromancy in ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' is that it's often not worth it to raise a zombie animal, as animals leave shallower "psychic footprints" than humans and thus don't have as much power when raised (consider that a human zombie, in deference to tradition, is typically as strong as the Terminator). Harry, however, being [[Crazy Awesome]], latches onto two of the other rules -- first, that is is ''technically'' not illegal to raise animals, and second, that the older something is, the deeper its "footprint" becomes -- and applies these rules to {{spoiler|[[Tyrannosaurus Rex|Sue, the 65 million year old T. rex skeleton at the Natural History Museum]]}}. [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Awesomeness ensued.]]

* The Kellis-Amberlee virus of the [[Newsflesh]] Trilogy affects any mammal over forty pounds. This includes large dogs, horses, cows...and ''whales''.

* Not actually seen, but in ''On Stranger Tides'', when a sorcerer animates a sunken British ship's crew to serve him, and accidentally raises up the Spanish vessel that sank it as well, one character remarks that there are probably fishes swimming about beneath them that'd been skeletons an hour ago.

* Brian Keene has notable examples of zombie animals in his books: "The Rising", "City of The Dead", "Dead Sea" and "The Rising: Selected Scenes From The End of The World." Dead Sea has examples of zombie seagulls, zombie fish and zombie rats, while the other books have a whole selection of zombie animals spanning from birds to dogs. {{spoiler|Zombie insects and zombified plants are also explored in: "The Rising: Selected Scenes From The End of The World" and with zombified plants being hinted towards at the end of "City of The Dead."}}

* A pack of zombie hyenas appears in ''Iron Dawn'', as products of the demonist's corrupted magic.

* In the humorous [[Magitek]] fantasy novel ''The Case Of The Toxic Spell Dump'', a seamstress removes a fresh bloodstain from a piece of cloth by having her pet vampster lick it clean. Yes, that's a vampire ''hamster''.

* In the third book of the Immortals series by [[Tamora Pierce]], Daine raises dead dinosaurs and takes them on a [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge]] because she thinks Numair has been executed by the Emperor.

* A vampire version of this appears in [[Christopher Moore]]'s trilogy about vampires in San Francisco, ''Love Bites'', ''You Suck'' and ''Bite Me''. Under the series' [[Our Vampires Are Different|rules of how vampirism works]], anything that has a vampire's blood in its system, and then dies, comes back as a vampire. Since many animals instinctively fight by biting their attacker, animals get vampirized very easily. At one point in the story there are ''clouds'' of mist made of vampire cats flying around.

** Indeed, older editions of the game included ''Animate Dead Animals'' as a low-level magic spell, useable by novice necromancers who weren't yet powerful enough to affect humanoid corpses.

** D&D also gives us "Skin Kites," patches of undead skin which fly around and can create more of themselves from the skin of their victims. Then there's the Skulking cyst, a crawling undead tumor. Still other undead include clouds of blood, severed appendages, constructs of bone and an entire graveyard able to come alive like a humanoid golem.

* [[Warhammer Fantasy]] has the Vampire Counts, who regularly employ Undead Wolves, Horses and Dragons in their service. Nurgle likewise sometimes employ decaying dragons and gigantic Toads, but whether they're revived creatures or Daemons resembling certain fauna is up for debate.

 

 

== Video Games ==

** ''[[Resident Evil Outbreak]] File #2'' had the protagonists forced to go through the Raccoon City zoo: You get attacked by zombie hyenas, zombie alligators, zombie elephants, and zombie lions.

** How can you forget the damn [http://residentevil.wikia.com/wiki/Shark ZOMBIE SHARKS?]

** Zombie penguins are mentioned as being an attraction in Fortune City in the tie-in C.U.R.E. website. None are seen in-game, though.

** ''[[Dead Rising Chop Till You Drop]]'' also has zombie parrots. They have an annoying tendency [[Stuff Blowing Up|to drop grenades on your head]].

* ''Animales de la Muerte'', a game currently in development by High Voltage Software, developers of ''[[The Conduit]]'', involves <s>zombie zoo animals</s> a Mexican zoo hit with a [[Zombie Apocalypse]].

* In the haunted house level of ''[[Time Splitters]]: Future Perfect'', racks of zombified beef attack you in a kitchen. In another room, a huge mass of flesh bursts out of a wall attached to a stuffed moose head.

** And we won't even BEGIN to discuss "Princess"...

* [[Guild Wars]] has undead dogs (or wolves), undead horses, and undead dragons (several. The [[Big Bad]] of [[Guild Wars]] 2 is itself an entirely different sort of undead dragon)

** Not technically undead, but a similar idea, are the afflicted cows in the second mission of Factions.

** "It was dead, but alive at the same time"

* In ''[[Dawn of Heroes]]'', the first Epic Monster you have a chance of fighting is a zombie-cow. It gets 'milked' for any number of [[Hurricane of Puns|bad puns]]. And then it [[Curb Stomp Battle|stomps you flat]]. (Its basic attack does 264 damage. Twice. At the time when you can first face it, your strongest unit MAY have 150 HP.)

* In [[World of Warcraft]], the undead player's racial mounts are undead, skeletal horses. There are also models for deer, bears, and wolves that look undead and are confirmed to be infected or diseased with something, but not actually undead. Although in Razorfen Downs, the undead Quilboar are happy to send a pack of undead boars to attack you. There are also undead crabs in the Ghostlands, but this is informed, since they look and act exactly like normal crabs.

** In most bodies of water there are swimming schools of fish that serve as decoration. In undead territories, they're fish skeletons.

* The popular ''[[Half Life]]'' mod, "They Hunger", has zombie dogs, bulls, and chickens.

** The Stalkers are implied to be made of both human and animal corpses, namely household pets like dogs and cats.

* ''[[Majoras Mask]]'' introduced undead fish for the water levels.

== Web Comics ==

* In a more logical instance of this trope, [[Erfworld]] combines the powers of different mages to revive a dead volcano.

* Zombie horses, mules, and even [http://www.zombieranchcomic.com/2011/08/24/88-ridin%e2%80%99-out/ prairie dogs] have been shown as part of the world of ''[[Zombie Ranch]]''. Although carnivorous, their behavior seems mostly unchanged compared to human zombies, and their bite isn't infectious to people. Zombie horses are even considered a preferred mode of transportation, but zombie cattle were put down as useless. Regardless of your former species, zombification apparently makes you taste terrible.

 

== Western Animation ==

* On [[The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy]], a two-part zombie episode includes reanimated dogs, frog's legs, a chicken and serpentine sausage links.

 

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