Urban Dead

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

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A Zombie Apocalypse, free browser-based MMORPG. The game can be played here. Notable in that there are no NPC enemies in the game whatsoever; every single character in the game is controlled by an actual human being.

Tropes used in Urban Dead include:


  • Abandoned Hospital: Any building, including hospitals, can be ruined by the zombie hordes, forcing survivours to go elsewhere. However, since hospitals are one of the most useful buildings they don't stay that way for long in most cases.
  • An Axe to Grind: the Fire Axe deals 3 points of damage with a maximum of 40% accuracy, one of the best melee weapons for humans.
  • Anti-Poopsocking: Each character gets a maximum of 50 AP, replenished by 1 every half-hour. The site will only accept 160 hits per IP per day, effectively limiting max active characters to three.
    • The IP hit limit can be removed for one character per $5 if you donate to the site, so it is technically possible to have as many active characters as you want.
  • Apocalyptic Log: While your character is inactive, everything that occurs or is said gets recorded for you to read when you Return. Radio messages, conversations, attacks, your body being grabbed and eaten in the street...
  • Badass Army: The larger zombie hordes, like the RRF and Militant Order of Barhah. The survivors have the New Malton Colossus and The Fortress.
    • The wiki lists the earlier groups. The Council and The Many are the most classic of the two factions.
  • Badass Longcoat: Uncreative humans who try to play action-movie heroes are known as "Trenchcoaters" [1] after far too many to count described themselves to be wearing one in their character description box, among other cliches. Also tend to spend their time shooting zombies (who can just stand back up) rather than doing anything useful, like barricading or healing.
  • Battle Cry: Barhah, for all zombies. Many zombie groups have their own one, as seen here.
  • Berserk Board Barricade: Barricades on buildings can be built up to max in a single character's turn, despite the fact that this involves moving tables, bookcases, and vending machines.
    • In garages, no less.
  • Blood Knight: Pretty much everybody, especially PKers.
  • Booze-Based Buff: Wine and beer both give you back one hit point. However, since they take a turn to drink, and there's nothing useful in the buildings they're found in, it's generally best to go to a hospital and search for a medkit.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: Averted. You can pay $5 to go over the normal character limit, but having multiple characters work together (A tactic called Zerging by the players) will make pretty much everyone turn their back on you, if not target you for Griefing. Even the Random Number God will desert you if two characters are too close together, and in very egregious cases, your IP may even be banned from the game altogether!
  • Curb Stomp Battle: What happens whenever the zombies decide to seriously fight the survivors.
  • Cypher Language: The "Death Rattle" ability allows zombies to communicate in a limited form of speech. (Only allowed letter are a,b,g,h,m,n,r,z,-,! and ?) People have made a language out of this called Zamgrh. It tends to be funny to read or speak.
    • Nam ahh zah harmanbargarz, mah zambah brazzahz! Bra!nz anh barhah! Graaaaaaaaaaaaagh!
  • Deadly Doctor: Just because the Doctor and Medic classes primary focus is to take care of the other survivors doesn't mean they can't kick some zed ass.
  • Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: Whether or not this is true depends on whether or not the survivors are "winning" in your local area. If they are, you can shamble to a designated revive points and expect to be back on your feet tomorrow. If not, good luck. Of course, players who are willing to play both sides have nothing to fear at all.
    • Dedicated zombie players have it easy all the time--all they have to do is stand back up.
      • Heck, if you've got the Ankle Grab ability, getting back up costs you a grand total of 1 AP.
  • Downer Ending: The escape movement getting curbstomped by a superhorde made of some of the largest zombie groups in the game, all of whom made a beeline for the suburb Escape was based in.
    • For the survivors it may have been a Downer Ending, but for the zombies it was a party with an all-you-can-eat buffet.
  • Eat the Rich: From 2006 to 2008, there was a zombie group called "Eat The Rich." They only attacked mansions, malls, banks and office buildings.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Human, Zombies, PKers, Death Cultists, nobody likes those cheating zergers.
  • Face Heel Revolving Door: Dual Nature, which follows the traditional zombie rules of survivors that get turned into zombies... acting like zombies.
  • False-Flag Operation: It only takes a few keystrokes to change the group name on your profile. With this in mind, groups have run "undercover operations" with purposes ranging from simply infiltrating another group to starting a war between two enemy groups.
  • Fan Nickname: "Harmanz", "Zambahz", "Zambah G-Zaz", the list goes on.
    • These mean "Humans", "Zombies", and "Zombie Jesus", respectively, if you couldn't figure it out yourself. Most of UD's fan nicknames are just Zombified words.
    • Also "zeds" for zombies
    • An entire survivor lingo has sprung up, mainly centered around shortened words and acronyms. It's not at all uncommon to hear a survivor saying to keep the 'cades at VSB, and also could somebody please FAK him (i.e. keep the barricades at very strongly barricaded, and a request for somebody to use a first aid kit on him).
  • Flare Gun: Fifteen points of damage... but at a shitty ten percent hit rate, made worse by the dice rolls of UD being mucked around with. Also rare and if fired into the air to tell where you are to other survivors, the zombies can see it too.
  • Follow the Leader: The game was inspired by a game with a similar system, except it had vampires. UD was made with permission from the original creators. Urban Dead has itself brought on several similar games.
  • Funetik Aksent: Zombies' solution to the limited letters they have. A basic guide to the language can be found here.
  • Griefer: PK's make an art out of this, but the other sides have them too. For humans, it's "Barricade Strafing" - building barricades in empty buildings to make zombies search for the real target. For zombies, it's "Pinatas" - ruining a barricaded building so that humans have to break into their own safehouse.
    • Generator Killers (G Ks). No power, no radio contact and lights.
  • Hell Hotel: Any of the many hotels or motels that have fallen into zombie control, especially ones that have been ruined. Also, since there arn't many useful items that can be looted from these locations they rarely have more than a few surviours inside at any one time. This can make them easy prey for a nearby horde.
  • Hit Points: 50 to start, 60 after getting the "Body-Building" skill.
  • Improvised Weapon
  • Infinite Supplies: Buildings contain an infinite amount of whatever items you can find in them. An Acceptable Break From Reality, since the game goes on forever.
  • Knife Nut: the Knife weapon does 2 points of damage but has a maximum of 50% accuracy.
  • Last Stand: Any siege, only these are usually escapable. If you're logged in early enough.
  • Le Parkour: All humans can get the Free Running skill, allowing them to move between buildings without going outside. Depending on the neighborhood and your destination, this is a necessity if you don't want to waste the AP cracking a hole big enough in the front door to wriggle into (then fixing it when you're in, if that's your thing). Obviously, this doesn't work for the zombies. Besides, most of them don't wear hoodies, much less clothes.
  • Level Grind: Don't expect to be a very effective survivor or zombie until you start filling up that Skill Tree.
  • Museum of the Strange and Unusual: While many of the museum discriptions are fairly normal a couple of these show up from time to time. Sometimes being the end result of a local Mad Artist who opened it up before the outbreack. Check the wiki for details.
  • Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie: Well, pirate fireman zombie, but still...
    • Pantless mutants with shotguns. Ron freaking Burgundy.
  • Not Using the Z Word: Averted, whenever Zombies are referred to as Zeds or Z, it's usually to save space in the limited chat box.
  • No Zombie Cannibals: subverted; zombies can attack each other for XP, though they only gain half of what they get for damaging human players. Still, "cannibalism" is a good way for a new zombie to gain experience, and is even encouraged by the would-be victims -- there's no good way for a zombie to avoid being killed while logged off, and being eaten by a fellow zombie means not taking a Headshot.
  • Play Every Day: Since action points build up so slowly, players usually set aside a specific window of time every day to play so that they can perform many actions in one go.
  • Playing Both Sides: Most players are content to fight whichever side they're not on at the moment and stick with groups only temporarily. This is in contrast to the players who insist you must be loyal to one of the two sides and defend it fanatically both in the game and out of it.
    • Even those players who do insist on keeping their characters dedicated to one side or another may have an alt character that runs with an opposition group. Usually they'll keep these characters far apart from one another to prevent conflicts of interest.
  • Power Perversion Potential: The Zamgrh word for "grab" has strong sexual connotations.
    • Not to mention "gangbang". There's even a funny sexual encounter on the wiki.
    • Also, one of the few words that can be said in Zamgrh, "Banana"
    • The abbreviation of "first-aid kit" is FAK. It's often used as a verb. Unless you have ready access to a hospital, you'll spend lots of time asking people to FAK you.
    • Reviving a Zombie is known a poking them. Example from their wiki:"Don't worry, I'll poke you."
  • PVP-Balanced: Very, very, very averted. Melee and guns may have benefits relative to each other, but their only uses are dumping a zombie into the street from a building or leveling up very fast. The AP spent killing a zombie even with a stack of shotguns (the game's highest-damage weapon) is generally far more than the AP it costs him to stand back up, even without factoring in the time spent finding ammo and reloading (which is a lot). Healing, barricading and reviving are almost orders of magnitude more efficient at actually helping survivors or inconveniencing the zombies, and also grant some XP to boot.
  • Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: So many survivor groups fit this trope that to list them all would extend this page to unreasonable lengths (not to mention impossible) just from the active groups alone.
  • Redshirt Army: What happens when survivors can organise themselves at all, instead of running around like decapitated chickens.
  • Revive Kills Zombie: Combat Reviving (Using the reviving item as a weapon). Not a good idea, since you don't know if the zombie in question will prove to be The Mole once they stand up.
  • Revolvers Are Just Better: The only pistols available in the game are six-shot revolvers.
  • Scavenger World: The only way to get items in the game (including weapons and ammo) is to find them.
  • Shout-Out: An alternate city that was available for a while is named Monroeville, after the George Romero zombie movie Dawn of the Dead.
  • Shotguns Are Just Better - Actually somewhat averted. Shotguns are plentiful and do the most damage, but can only hold two. Additional shotguns add to weight, and you can only find one shell at a time.
    • Played for Laughs with one survivor character, described as a trenchcoating shotgun golem. A golem made of shotguns, carrying multiple shotguns, with a shotgun tattoo scratched onto his shotgun arm.
  • Shrug of God: As above, Kevan stated he purposely left the details of Necrotech, Malton, the survivors, the zombies, and the city backstories blank to let the players act out as they wish.
  • The Siege: Essentially a never-ending series of these, played out in miniature all across the city.
    • This also happens to malls a lot; as malls have just about everything a human player needs to survive, it's a high-priority target for zombies. There have even been a few hordes dedicated specifically to destroying the 19 malls that are in the city.
    • The fall of Caiger Mall marked the true end to a survivor-dominant Malton. Survivors are still winning, but by a much smaller margin than before.
    • Rumors are going around that the infamous zombie group The Dead are coming back for round 2.
      • They're back, and now credited with laying waste to almost all of Malton - survivor numbers have dropped off fast and whole stretches of the map are perma-ruined.
  • Socialization Bonus: Working with an organized group offers a lot more opportunities than going solo.
  • Talking Is a Free Action: Averted as it costs an Action Point to talk in-game.
  • Thriving Ghost Town: Inverted. The city of Malton has 100 suburbs each containing 100 buildings, 10,000 buildings total. At the time of this writing, there are about 25,000 active characters, with living humans outnumbering the walking dead by over 3000 (though if you count corpses and revivifying humans, it's only by about 1200). The zombie apocalypse and associated quarantine here has been going on for over four years.
    • On an individual suburb level, however, it's possible for the whole suburb to be practically devoid of both life and unlife for a time. People inevitably start filling in the gaps, however.
  • Troll: Most P Kers. (Humans who kill other humans, that is. Zombies killing humans and vice versa is just business as usual.)
    • When generators were implemented we had Generator Killers (G Kers).
  • Useless Useful Non-Combat Abilities: Inverted. Combat skills are not entirely without a place, but in any and every situation far, far more of every other kind of survivor are needed than fighters, be it a neutral suburb, a well-controlled suburb or a siege.
    • Played straight with the radio. In theory it could be useful, but in practice it's filled with spam. Generally it's much more efficient to use message boards and the wiki.
      • Not to mention that it actually costs AP to talk or use the radio. If you only earn 1 AP every half hour, which are you going to do: say something, or do something useful?
  • Victory Is Boring: Shacknews, a group that had existed since before the game's creation and were the key factors in both the Battle of Blackmore and the Siege that ultimately destroyed Caiger Mall. Shortly after this, they issued an open challenge to anyone and everyone, and when this was not met, they retired en mass. Even three years later, the name Shacknews can terrify veterans. Even the RRF.
    • DARIS, The Many and The Dead says "Hello".
  • Whole-Plot Reference: A character named Codename V, using a Guy Fawkes mask as his avatar, urging the citizens of Malton to march on Ridleybank (home to the RRF, a giant zombie horde), on November 5th. Made his first appearance at a gigantic fireworks display. Sound familiar?
  • Zerg Rush: One of the main reasons it's better for zombies to join a horde than go solo.
  • Zombie Advocate: In a game like this, this sort of group is almost guaranteed to pop up. One of the more notable and successful groups is / was the Quartly Study Group, dedicated to keeping the Quartly Library free for both breathers and shamblers.
  • Zombie Apocalypse: Zombies mostly follow the classic Romero Rules, including getting cleverer (leveling up) or moving faster as time passes. However, from both IC-roleplays and the backstory, they're capable of wielding weaponry, such as shotguns and pistols (whole teams for zombie groups have "human" characters who PK others).
    • Partly Subverted, as only a part of a city has fallen under the control of the zombies. The area is quarantined and the area even gets outside support from the military.
  • Zombie Gait: Zombies initially take twice as much AP to move as humans, though they can get an upgrade that makes them faster.
  1. ↑ or trenchies
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