Zombie Apocalypse: Difference between revisions

[[File:zz8vphb173 en 6925.jpg|link=Magic: The Gathering|frame|"There will come a day so dark you will pray for death. On that day your prayers will be answered."]]

 

 

 

Within the past couple days or hours, something very strange has happened. Maybe the [[Synthetic Plague]] the government was working on got unleashed. Maybe a [[Hollywood Voodoo|voodoo]] priest's spell [[Gone Horribly Wrong|went awry]]. Maybe [[Applied Phlebotinum|an alien space probe]] [[Plan 9 from Outer Space|broadcast a weird signal]] at the Earth, or [[Night of the Living Dead|fell to Earth and brought radiation with it]]. Maybe [[Dawn of the Dead (film)|there's just no more]] [[Doom (series)|room in Hell]].

Due to the threat that zombies pose (they did just become the apocalypse, after all), protagonists of more serious works are required to become very genre savvy very quickly (but will demonstrate genre blindness with regard to the word "zombie" itself). [[Failure Is the Only Option|Failure is often the only option]] in these stories; [[Downer Ending|rarely do they have an ending]] that could be considered "happy" by typical standards, or indeed one where [[Inferred Holocaust|humanity survives]] as a species. Another main staple is that things will always, ''always'' [[It Got Worse|get worse]]. Either from the character's actions or circumstance which are out of their hands, no matter how improbable it is.

 

 

Subtrope of [[Our Zombies Are Different]]. A member of [[The Undead]] trope family. See [[Night of the Living Mooks]] for cases where zombies don't threaten the end of the world. See also [[Zombie Gait]], [[Everything's Deader with Zombies]]. [[Raising the Steaks]] is what happens when humans are not the only creatures that can be infected by [[The Virus]]. The Zombie apocalypse is almost always a case of [[Guilt-Free Extermination War]].

The trope Zombie Apocalypse refers to any kind of undead apocalypse — the common traits of this trope are that the undead spread rapidly, wipe out humans primarily by eating or biting them, and are usually highly infectious.

 

 

{{examples}}

== Advertising ==

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

** Anime: In [[The Movie]], the Gate inexplicably turns a group of Thule Society soldiers into zombies. They also have thick suits of armor. {{spoiler|The [[Big Bad]] has some knowledge of alchemy, and so she's able to control the zombies when she passes through the Gate. This results in armored, machine-gun-wielding zombies with militaristic capabilities.}} [[Badass]]ity ensues. About their only real weakness is that they possess the zombie gait.

* Brutally subverted in ''[[Kara no Kyoukai:|Kara no Kyoukai]]'', the zombies are around for about a minute before [[Badass]] [[Knife Nut]] Shiki shows what happens when zombie meets [[Evil Eye|very well aimed]] knife.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* A UK-original story in the [[Marvel]] ''[[Transformers Generation 1]]'' comic involves a plague of reanimated Transformer corpses overrunning Kalis city-state under the command of rogue Autobot [[Mad Scientist|Flame]], which forced Autobot and Decepticon to [[Enemy Mine|join forces]] to defeat them.

* ''Impaler'' depicts the start of a [[Vampire Apocalypse]] which, by the end of the second volume, reached [[Apocalypse How|Class 0]] proportions, with no sign of stopping. Possessing the ability to become [[Made of Air]] [[Living Shadow]]s and manifest long shadow [[Combat Tentacles]], it only takes two days for what started as a few dozen vampires to become a few million and infest New York City to the point where it has to be nuked. It takes less time for them to wipe out Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

* ''Damn Nation'' takes place five years after a [[Vampire Apocalypse]] has mostly wiped out the United States. The government has abandoned the lower 48 states, and the rest of the world has put the country under quarantine.

* The Bash Street Zombies story by Kev F Sutherland which appeared in ''[[The Beano]]''. [http://utproductions.co.uk/zom1.html Read it here.]

 

== [[Film]] ==

*** ''[[Diary of the Dead]]''

*** ''[[Survival of the Dead]]''

* The ''[[Return of the Living Dead]]'' film series resulted from a dispute between John Russo and George Romero, which split the ''Night of the Living Dead'' sequels into two branches. Russo only lived to make the first film with his new partner Dan O'Bannon. The ''Return of the Living Dead'' series is more campy and humorous as well as more grotesque than Romero's more famous films. The zombies have human-level intelligence, specifically eat brains rather than just human flesh, and are much more difficult to kill. The first film lampshades its departures from the original by acknowledging the existence of ''Night of the Living Dead'' as a movie within its world. One character even exclaims, "You mean the movie lied?!"

** The sequels:

* In Lamberto Bava's ''[[Demoni]]'', the creatures are more like monsters than zombies, but they work with zombie rules and may have been an inspiration for straight zombie films to follow.

* Blending Zombie Apocalypse with [[Our Werewolves Are Different]], ''Mulberry Street'' gives us a virus that's transmissible by rats as well as humans (''totally screwed'' was the phrase, wasn't it?), and turns infected people into rat-faced, rampaging cannibals. Subverted in that {{spoiler|the Virus goes into remission at sunrise, restoring victims to normal, albeit not until after the protagonists have killed off their loved ones in self-defense or mercy}}. Similarly, ''Reliquary'', the sequel to ''Relic'', has those affected by a watered-down virus (it turned you into a horrific cocktail of dinosaur/primate DNA in the original) turned into light-shunning, psychotic, rat/lizard faced things. The even more watered down version just turned you into something like a ''[[28 Days Later]]'' zombie.

* ''[[Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror]]'' takes this trope to its beginning phase, with zombies coming back as the presumable result of an ancient curse, and includes [[It Can Think|tool-using zombies]], along with the unusual use of [[Dawson Casting|an adult dwarf playing the role of a child]].

* ''[[Shaun of the Dead]]'' plays the concept for laughs, while at the same time remaining faithful to the style of the Romero films. Like those films, it includes hints that zombies retain some semblance of their former personalities. It also includes a [[Take That]] against the ''Twenty-Eight'' series.

* ''Flight Of The Living Dead'' (2007) is a zombie movie which was clearly inspired by ''[[Snakes on a Plane]]'', since it takes place in the confines of a commercial airliner. The film's zombies follow the Russo mould, in that they can move faster than a shamble, but the incubation time for the virus varies wildly - some are infected and do not turn until a good while afterwards, whereas some are zombified almost as soon as they die. The most hilarious thing about the film is that [[Alien Geometries|the layout of said plane is completely screwed up]] (access tunnels and zombies clawing their way through the floor of the cabin are two of the most egregious examples). Also, the heroes are able to ''shoot guns inside the pressurised cabin'', which would be film-endingly disastrous if they hit a window.

** Unless the movie decided to be realistic in this regard, in which case the characters would just have to deal with an annoying whistling sound for the rest of the flight.

* Heavily subverted in ''Dead Heat'', a cops vs. zombies movie with a [[Who Dunnit to Me?]] plotline. Police detective Treat Williams dies in the line of duty, but is brought back temporarily with a resurrection device concocted by the corrupt scientist he was investigating. No apocalypse is forthcoming and no flesh/brain-eating ensues, as the zombies retain their free will if they're revived immediately after death {{spoiler|and are compliant Mooks if resurrected a bit later}}.

* The fan remake for [[Plan 9 from Outer Space|Plan Nine From Outer Space]] seems to be playing this up, ''majorly''.

** On that note, the original had also had a (badly) attempted one.

* ''Stake Land'' takes place in a post-[[Vampire Apocalypse]] setting.

* ''The Dead'', filmed on location, depicts a Zombie Apocalypse in an unnamed African country.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

** His ''other'' novel ''Dead Of Night'' has an engineered version of [[The Virus]] that was meant to leave a serial killer awake in his own rotting corpse, [[Buried Alive]]. Unfortunately, instead, {{spoiler|it raised him as a zombie, and an ''intelligent'' one}}. The resulting Zombie Apocalypse got contained, but {{spoiler|they never found and stopped patient zero}}.

* Richard Matheson's 1954 book ''[[I Am Legend]]'', while it was about vampires and not zombies, is an important precursor to the genre. Matheson's novel was adapted into the films ''The Last Man on Earth'', the most faithful adaptation, and later into ''The Omega Man'', which apes the then-recent ''Night of the Living Dead'' to a degree and turns the vampires into Luddite photophobic albino mutants produced by biological warfare. The most 2007 adaptation, ''I Am Legend'', has the infected more like an odd cross between zombies and vampires.

* David Moody's ''Autumn'' series is somewhat novel in its setup: the story begins with 99% of the world population dying - in the following weeks, some of the victims get better. The most novel aspect of his approach is that for the majority of the first book, the zombies are benign, just wandering about at random, with the result that we can see that "Holy crap, dead people are getting up and walking around," is really freaking scary entirely independent of the possibility of being eaten by a zombie. Of course, at the end, the zombies do become violent, and the whole thing just slips into the mold of the standard survivalist zombie apocalypse story. It is also somewhat novel in that the protagonists plan, for most of the story, to simply ''wait the zombies out'', on the assumption that they will eventually decay past the point of mobility.

* Carrie Ryan's ''[[The Forest of Hands and Teeth]]'' takes place in a fenced-in community several ''generations'' after the Zombie Apocalypse.

* A good half of Clark Ashton Smith's work features Zombies of the non-contagious variety, generally [[A Wizard Did It|custom animated by necromancers]]. In at least one case they 'outlive' their creators and carry on with what they were doing before they died.

* ''[[Star Trek]] Destiny'' reveals that this is how {{spoiler|the Borg came to be, as a result of two humans lost in the Delta Quadrant getting "possessed" by a starving energy being called a Caeliar, capable of manipulating matter as she saw fit. Then all they did was [[Schmuck Bait|wait for the locals to come wondering what that huge racket was]]...}}

* David Wellington's ''Monster Island'' and its sequels provide Romero-style zombies with an exception: if your brain is provided with oxygen between death and before returning as a zombie, you return as an intelligent zombie which the sequels call a lich. The dead are reanimated as a result of a scientist having pierced the source of [[Life Energy]], causing the world to overflow with life energy, reanimating the dead. The trilogy is available online.

* ''[[Friday the 13th]]: The Jason Strain'' has Jason, while a "special guest" on a [[Deadly Game]], [[Halfway Plot Switch|being abducted by scientists, who want to replicate his regenerative abilities and immortality]]; Jason wakes up partway through the vivisection, rampages through the lab [[Gone Horribly Wrong|and is exposed to an experimental virus which reacts negatively with him, giving him the ability to reanimate his victims as zombies]]. Thousands of deaths later the virus is cured and Jason's rid of his new powers. Notably headshots don't stop the zombies - the head needs to be ''completely'' eradicated in order for them to be fully (re-)killed. Also, Jason fights a shark in reference to ''[[Zombi 2]]''.

* In the episodic ebook series ''Zombies!'' by Ivan Turner, a [[Genre Savvy]] 17 year old is the first to alert the authorities to the threat, thus subverting the trope because the authorities handle it carefully and sensibly enough that your average citizen doesn't even notice the undead walking among them.

* ''[[Night of the Living Trekkies]]'' is about what happens when the intial outbreak is at a ''[[Star Trek]]'' [[Fan Convention|convention]].

* Deconstructed in ''Handling the Undead'', which [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|explores]] how society would react if dead people actually came back to life, and without the craving for brains that makes it so easy to just [[Kill'Em All]]. (The zombie violence is rare and seems to stem more from their being unaware of their actions and consequences.) The first thing that happens is that the government calls an emergency meeting and decides what terminology to use, deciding on [[Not Using the Z Word|"reliving"]] because it sounds so much more pleasant than "zombies". A memorable subplot follows the [[Tear Jerker|grieving mother of a recently deceased young boy, fighting to hide her mindless zombie child from the authorities]].

* ''Theories of International Politics and Zombies'', a rare non-fiction case of this trope; it's an almost serious look at the subject, through the lenses of various theories of international relations.

* In the [[The Bible|Biblical Gospel of Matthew]], when [[Jesus]] is crucified, the dead rise from their graves around Judea.

* In the 1961 novel ''The Day They H-Bombed Los Angeles'' by Robert Moore Williams, mutated protein molecules invade Southern California, turning people into flesh-eating zombies.

* The web-novel ''[[Domina]]'' is about a number of super-powered zombies called "screamers" attacking an island city. Hasn't hit the actual apocalypse stage yet, but the [[Reasonable Authority Figure]] is rightly worried.

* ''[[Diario de un Zombi]]'' has this as the setting for a depopulated Barcelona. Add in unstoppable biomechanical horrors and cultists.

* Subverted in ''[[That Is All]]''; the Zombie Apocalypse is one of the few things that ''doesn't'' occur during [[The End of the World as We Know It|the Ragnarok of 2012]]. The only creatures that rise from the dead are taxidermied animals, and they are harmless because they are all mounted on wooden planks.

** ''[[The Sarah Jane Adventures]]'' did a zombie-themed story for the show's pilot episode, "The Invasion of the Bane". In this case, the zombie effect is caused by consuming a new energy drink that turns out to be a symbiotic life form. The resulting zombies try to force others to drink the stuff.

* The UK horror series ''[[Dead Set]]'' involves a zombie apocalypse in Britain, with the plot revolving around the contestants of ''[[Big Brother]]'' as they are trapped in the house.

* A season three episode of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' had people being turned into zombies due to a mask that contains the powers of a Nigerian zombie demon. [[Nazi Zombies|Zombies aren't really her thing]].

* ''[[Degrassi the Next Generation]]'' had a Halloween special called ''Degrassi of the Dead'' in which genetically-modified food turns people into zombies, leaving the few surviving students to fight for their lives to escape.

* Although they are not real, in an episode of ''[[Spaced]]'', "Art", Tim takes some bad speed and plays ''[[Resident Evil]] 2'', essentially making him hallucinate a zombie attack throughout the whole episode. The Twiglets he ate at the party didn't help either.

* Discovery's ''[[The Colony]]'' is a reality TV show that takes place after a simulated "viral catastrophe". It's basically a zombie apocalypse with the zombies cut out.

* Though not a classic example, the dark future of the ''[[Dollhouse]]'' resembles a Zombie Apocalypse. A signal was sent to all telephones on the planet that would wipe the listeners' minds, and program them to kill anybody who didn't hear the signal. In result rabid hordes of lunatics hunt down the few remaining normal people in the ruins of the civilization; a very strong similarity with this trope.

* ''[[That Mitchell and Webb Look]]'' features a recurring sketch about a game show taking place in a world where an unspecified, but clearly horrific and traumatising, "Event" has happened. Food is scarce, there are no more children, there are frequent exhortations to "Remain Indoors" and the survivors live in terror of a mysterious '''Them''', who look like us because they used to ''be'' us. {{spoiler|The latest episode has revealed that '''They''' are sephulchral voiced, red-eyed zombies with a taste for human flesh. Oh. ''And they've got in''.}} It's hinted that this is not the worst part of the "Event".

* The ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' episode "The End" has exactly this. It was more or less a [[Shout-Out]] to ''28 Days Later'' (rage virus infected, very fast Zombies, I mean Croates).

* AMC's [[The Walking Dead (TV series)|TV adaptation of]] ''[[The Walking Dead (comics)|The Walking Dead]]''.

** The Halloween episode of ''[[Community]]'' deals with a zombie plague breaking out in the college. The group must try to escape, reach the thermostat to lower the temperature, and not be driven insane by the [[Soundtrack Dissonance|"Mama Mia!" soundtrack]].

 

== Music ==

* Most of Cannibal Corpse's album covers and quite a number of their songs feature zombies (and the same goes for the bajillion gory death metal bands they inspired). The name itself, according to bassist Alex Webster, refers to a zombie who feeds on other zombies.

* Ludo's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkJ2ru68Cx8 "Save Our City"]

* The music video for the [[Gorillaz]] song "Clint Eastwood" involves zombie gorillas rising from the dead.

* "Early Sunsets Over [[Dawn of the Dead (film)|Monroeville]]" by [[My Chemical Romance]].

* Parodied in LMFAO's music video "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6zr6kCPj8 Party Rock Anthem]".

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzDmgn-G2FM "Fight 'Em 'Til You Can't"] by [[Anthrax]]. The cover for the single even depicts [[Rule of Cool|the band themselves fighting off zombies]].

 

== New Media ==

* Surprisingly enough, someone managed to make a ''[[Watchmen (comics)|Watchmen]]'' zombie apocalypse [[Alternate Universe]] fanfic, which you can find [[Watchmen (comics)/Fanfic Recs|here]], that really kicked ass. {{spoiler|Probably because Rorschach is just about the only character that would wind up happier and saner upon becoming one of the flesh-craving undead.}}

* Several [[SCP Foundation|SCP objects]] could potentially trigger this, especially [http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-008 SCP-008], which specifically invokes the trope. Additionally, SCP-093 allows access to a world where something like this has already happened; {{spoiler|though the "zombies" are faceless, legless [[Cosmic Horror|horrors]], produced by a [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]], that have absorbed so many people that by this point they're the size of ''buildings''.}}

 

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

* ''[[The Far Side]]'' once had a strip depicting the "Night of the Living Dead Chipmunks".

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** It's also hinted that zombies might be the ''least'' of the world's problems. Bizarre wastelands expanding throughout the world, reports of unnameable horrors and mind-rending blasphemies in the jungles of Africa and beneath the streets of London, hints that the people of the Crimean peninsula have undergone an unwholesome transformation that makes the degenerate ghouls and feral vampires look tame by comparison, Hong Kong somehow having become a true necropolis where zombies can survive long past when they should have desiccated into immobility... clues abound that the Zombie Apocalypse is just the most visible symptom of something having gone deeply ''wrong'' with the world on some fundamental level.

* In ''[[Warhammer Fantasy]]'' zombies make up the bulk of the armies of the undead Vampire Counts (alone with other classic horror creatures like wights, ghouls and giant bats). They also use undead dire wolves. These zombies are reanimated corpses animated by the will of the vampire or necromancer who raised them and are slow and weak, relying on numbers to make any impact. Since Vampire Counts magic-users can effectively grow them out of the ground, numbers are NOT something they have trouble with...

** Plague zombies have been part of 40k background for almost as long as the Chaos powers, and are a playable gang in the spinoff skirmish game Necromunda.

* Card Game ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' has had zombies since the first set, but the plane of Grixis, one of the Shards of Alara, is in a successful Zombie Apocalypse, albeit with necromancers and demons at the forefront, caused by the crapping out of two types of magic good at fighting them off. In any case, humanity is boned on the plane. Note that in ''Magic'', zombies are ''not'' [[The Virus]]; they cannot create more of their own kind through infection, but are instead created from corpses by [[Evil Sorcerer]]s.

** The latest Innistrad block takes this [[Up to Eleven|way over eleven]], by introducing a good old fashioned zombie apocalypse, [[Vampire Tropes|vampires]] and [[Big Badass Wolf|werewolves]], [[Mad Scientist|mad scientists]] and their [[Eldritch Abomination|abominations]], demons, and central to the block's story, [[Beyond the Impossible|all of these at once]].

*** Name-dropped in the Dark Ascension card [http://media.wizards.com/images/magic/tcg/products/dka/3zfb3i9bkw_en.jpg Zombie Apocalypse], which brings back all of your zombies then destroy all humans in play.

* The board game ''Zombies!!!'', which seems to owe some influence to ''[[Resident Evil]]'' (the players have to shoot the zombies, and they win the game by escaping in a helicopter).

** The Gotha Zombies have a few differences from other zombies, though; they're semi-intelligent, and function more like a highly aggressive chimpanzee tribe in terms of organization than anything else. They're quite willing to eat zombies from other "tribes", and will even eat their own if there isn't any other food available.

* The Corpse Factories in the ''[[Feng Shui]]'' supplement ''Glimpse of the Abyss'' are Buro-created superzombies that are markedly more intelligent than the non-infectious zombies that they create. Only five of these things exist in 2056, and if just one of them gets loose, it's Zombie Apocalypse time, particularly since the Necromantic Implanter, an arcanowave device that every corpse factory is equipped with, can be used to turn regular zombies into more corpse factories.

* In ''[[Exalted]]'', this is one of the favored tactics of the more militarily inclined Deathlords. High level Necromancy can raise corpses en masse, and certain spells can even corrupt an area to the point that the dead will rise of their own accord. Eye and Seven Despairs, one of the Deathlords, has even pioneered a zombie plague that works on its own accord, but is too busy [[Revenge Before Reason|tormenting the reincarnations of people who screwed with him in the First Age]] to actually deploy it.

* ''[[Deadlands]]'' has zombies, but these things are intelligent and cunning. Makes them hard to put down. Particularly if they're intact enough to be ''shooting back''.

* ''[[The World of Darkness]]'' games actually subvert the zombie apocalypse. While Zombies do exist, they're not exactly common, and aren't normally infectious.

** While there isn't necessarily an ''infectious'' means of Zombie Apocalypse, certain ghosts and spirits in the ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' have a chain of Numina that allow them to jump into a corpse, then jump into any corpse ''that'' corpse kills, then possibly invite some friends along...

** The "Infectious Zombie" template was provided in the 4th-edition supplement ''Open Grave''. Unfortunately, actual rules for the zombie plague were not, despite being alluded to in the template.

** In the previous edition, [http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/wight.htm wights] are probably the closest thing to more traditional zombies.

** In the 3.5 edition book Elder Evils, there's a world born dead, Atropus, whose coming is marked by the undead rising from their graves in a zombie apocalypse. As in some other Zombie Apocalypses, his coming may cause anyone who dies by any means (not just killed by a zombie) to rise as a zombie (or skeleton if there's not enough flesh for a zombie). When Atropus gets close enough to the planet anyone who's dead will reanimated as a skeleton or zombie by tearing out of their graves even if they were killed years ago.

* The board game ''Last Night on Earth'' has several different scenarios to play through during a Zombie Apocalypse.

 

== Theatre ==

* ''Rhinoceros'' is a play by French author Eugene Ionesco that revolves around people spontaneously becoming rhinocerotes. They're destructive, but not violent, and one must apparently choose to become one (or at least not actively choose not to). Though mostly comedic, it still has the feel of a Zombie Apocalypse, not least because there's {{spoiler|only one man left standing at the end.}}

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

** However, the games usually take place which has been almost completely devastated at the regional level, providing a sort of local zombie apocalypse.

** And subverted in the later games where they are not, technically, zombies, though they behave much the same.

* The ''[[House of the Dead]]'' series.

** Subverted in ''Overkill'': {{spoiler|the [[Not Using the Zed Word|mutants]] were exposed to a [[Psycho Serum]] and it's not contagious otherwise.}}

** There is also a subversion to the rule that the zombies don't fight each other, but it happens so rarely that you may not see it at all at first.

** Two things throw into doubt whether this is a true apocalypse - the military's still in reasonable shape, having the capacity to launch rescue missions and bombing runs, and it's not stated what's going on in the rest of the world.

*** Multiple maps show that almost all the evac centers in the US have been overrun or aren't evacuating anymore. In Crash Course, the New Orleans, Midwest, and Allegheny Forest outposts are still up and running. In Dead Center, only New Orleans and the Midwest are left. The entire United States has been overrun in 2–3 weeks.

**** Of course, by the time you reach New Orleans in The Parish campaign, it seems to be largely overrun and abandoned, too. Bill says "As far as we know, zombies can't swim", so it's possible that islands are still safe, as long as air travel didn't bring The Infection to them.

* ''[[Space Pirates and Zombies]]'', of course. You are [[Space Pirates]]! There are Zombies! What more is there to say? Well, actually, there is quite a lot to say, as the Space Pirates have got to wonder why there are no sentient alien species to speak of... then they {{spoiler|[[Chekhov's Gun|open the Titan Gates]], which they'd known about for quite a time, and all hell breaks loose because of ''them''. True, they are Space Pirates, the [[Recycled in Space|terrors of the Seven Sectors]], but that's no reason for them to doom all of Humanity to a zombie fate, like ''all the other sentient species before them.'' Yes, the Zombies were waiting in the center of the Galaxy for the next species, and it it weren't for the Space Pirates' efforts, they probably would have assimilated all of Humanity.}} [[A Fate Worse Than Death|What a way to go.]]

* ''[[Project Zomboid]]'' has Knox County being overrun by zombies with you in the middle of it. Developers state in later versions of the game, later (provided you survived that long) the zombies spread worldwide, with repercussions ingame such as no electricity for ovens or refrigerators.

** ''[[Quake]] 4'' features partially Stroggified humans whom for all intents and purposes behave like zombies, this is [[Lampshaded]] by another soldier.

** The ''Doom'' novelization had especially creepy scenes where zombies, still bearing an imprint of their former lives, would mindlessly shamble to the grocery store, pulling rotting food from the shelves, walking past the cash register, and so on.

** In ''Episode One'' the entirety of City 17 experiences this, the liberal use of Headcrab Shells during The Battle of City 17 and {{spoiler|the destruction of the Citadel's Dark Fusion Reactor}} crippling Combine control of the region resulting in the city's underground infested with Headcrabs and zombies and the city itself under almost constant attack. With {{spoiler|the complete detonation of the Citadel}} they are the only living things remaining in City 17 and even ''they'' are fleeing by ''Episode Two'', creating a constant stream of zombies into the surrounding regions that attack humans and Combine alike. That Gordon Freeman, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|what a great hero]].

* The MMORPG ''[http://www.urbandead.com/ Urban Dead]''. Unlike other examples, the zombies in this game are intelligent since they are controlled by players. While they do have a limited vocabulary, zombie players have come up with creative ways of in-game communication. And that's not even counting the Metagame on the forums. It also emulates the Romero model of zombies getting smarter. As they learn more skills, zombies can open doors, move faster, attack better, talk (sort of), track you down, and make a lot of noise to draw attention when they find a safehouse full of survivors. If one counts the RP, they're also highly mutated, undying, and God help us if they break from the quarantine.

* The game ''[[The Sims]] 2'' has zombies (introduced in one of the expansions). A mod on one of the most popular modding sites, [http://www.moreawesomethanyou.com/smf/index.php MATY], changes their behavior so that they will fight and infect other characters in the game. The mod, aptly enough, is called Zombie Apocalypse. It should be noted that the zombies without the mod do not do this, and control essentially the exact same as a normal sim, the only except being that they won't die of old age. (Though they do think about brains a lot...)

* ''[[They Hunger]]'', set in a small town and acres of farmland and ruins, appears to use modified Russo rules - the zombies are tough, but they're still killable and don't drop from headshots, BUT they die if they're shot anywhere for long enough. It also includes semi-infected zombies who are smart enough to still use guns, and two of them are bosses.

** While Lordaeron and Northrend are of course the major victims of this trope, being the Scourge's bases of power, Duskwood in the kingdom of Stormwind is currently dealing with animated skeletons that (probably) have nothing to do with the Scourge. The town of Raven Hill is in ruins, and Darkshire is constantly on watch. Of course, they also have to deal with [[Our Werewolves Are Different|feral worgen]] in addition to the undead.

** What happened to Quel'thalas counts, only about ''eleven percent of the original population survived.''

* ''Possession'', which, in addition to being able to lead a variety of zombies (slow, fast, intelligent, mutated, you name it) has the main character as a sentient zombie unleashing chaos on a corporate-controlled city.

* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]'', a CRPG set in the ''[[Old World of Darkness]]'':

* ''[[Battle for Wesnoth]]'''s Walking Corpses, and their level-up, the Soullesses. They follow the Russo rules, for the most part: any unit killed by a Walking Corpse or Soulless becomes a Walking Corpse or Soulless on the side of the Corpse that killed them, simulating The Virus.

* ''[[Postal]] 2: Apocalypse Weekend'' features Mad Cow Tourettes zombies (apparently Tourette's syndrome sufferers who ate mad cow-infected meat). They normally shamble slowly, but can sometimes be seen stumbling forwards quickly (catching the player off-guard); they throw chunks of their own flesh to attack; their heads must be completely destroyed to kill them (merely cutting them off will do no good); and (for no other reason than the fact that the world of Postal 2 is already messed up as it is) you can resurrect dead zombies by ''pissing on them''.

* The FPS ''[[STALKER|S.T.A.L.K.E.R.]] - Shadow of Chernobyl'' has zombies in one part of the game, who are actually stalkers who have been [[Mind Rape|mind raped]] by psychic emissions in certain parts of the zone.

* In ''[[City of Heroes]]'' and ''[[City of Villains]]'', zombies are counted among the servants of the Banished Pantheon and the minions of [[Mad Doctor|Dr. Vahzilok]]. Also, the Halloween events feature zombies that spawn from trick-or-treating, and the 2008 incarnation featured zombies crawling from the ground en masse. Finally, the Mastermind Necromancy primary set lets player villains summon their own zombie minions.

* An [[Clown Car Grave|infinite number]] of zombies usually appears early on in ''[[Castlevania]]'' games. Fortunately they're much easier to kill than the average movie zombie.

* A new game call ''The Last Guy'' features the zombie hero(?) rounding up the various survivors of a zombie apocalypse. From the looks of it, the zombies have devolved (or evolved) into large, dangerous, non-human things, however.

* The PSP game ''[[Infected]]'', as in the quote above, features a massive zombie apocalypse in New York City, played ''Smash TV'' style. The player is Officer Stevens, whose blood is not only immune to [[The Virus]], but actively destroys zombies, who are nigh-invulnerable to everything (it's implied they destroyed a tank battalion, and were able to wield weapons) by causing infected blood to explode. This results in the guys in charge of the quarantine to strap a blood gun to one arm of Stevens, give him/her weapons, and run around NYC, splattering zombies. For the record, the game is hilarious and fun, but short.

* ''[[System Shock]] 2'' had zombies as the first stage of infection by alien parasitic worms, including shambling, strange speech patterns, no vital signs, etc. Oh yeah, and they're still conscious, aware of what they're doing against their will, and ''apologise while they attack you and beg you to kill them''. Later stages were considerably more monstrous, and quite un-zombie like.

* ''Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ''. A grown-up [[Little Red Riding Hood]] vs. zombified versions of classic Fairy Tale characters. [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]].

* In ''[[Elite Beat Agents]]'', one of the missions involves helping a peanut salesman fighting off against giggling zombies that start to attack the town. By sheer luck, the zombies happen to be allergic to peanuts. Huh.

* The early 80's [[Edutainment Game]] ''[[Agent USA]]'' is a G-rated Zombie Apocalypse, with people turning into walking balls of TV static and infecting others.

* ''Arma'' and ''Arma II'' both featured popular zombie mods that turned an ultra-realistic tactical FPS into a zombie survival game. The use of massive maps and realistic effects and equipment makes them extremely immersive.

* ''[[Dead Space (series)|Dead Space]]'' features the necromorphs, these zombies are not just reanimated humans but 'reshaped' necrotic tissue who don't go don't until you blow of a limb or three. Head shots are useless against them.

* The curse of the Darksign in ''[[Dark Souls]]''. Those born with it are marked as Undead and never permanently die, always coming back, losing a bit of their humanity each time. Eventually, they all lose their minds and become Hollows, highly aggressive, near-mindless beings that attack all others. This, plus the habit of throwing the Undead into the Undead Asylum, has destroyed countless nations.

* ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' had the [[The Plague|Gray Plague]], which, as players found out through [[Time Travel]] to [[After the End|Seaside Town, 28 Days Later]], killed the infected population and brought them back as zombies.

* Downloadable PC Game ''[[Zombie Driver]]'' casts the player as an [[Action Survivor|Action]] [[The Taxi|Taxi Driver]] in the midst of an infested city where the outbreak was caused by a chemical explosion. The cabbie must rescue people trapped in various buildings and return them to an extraction point. He gets paid by the mayor for zombies killed and survivors rescued, so he can buy bigger and badder cars and weapons to run down zombies.

* In ''[[Adventure Quest Worlds]]'', {{spoiler|Vordred creates this in the Doomwood Part 1 finale if the hero chooses to betray Artix and let Vordred become the Champion of Darkness}}.

 

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[Brawl in the Family]]'''s third Halloween episode started with [[Kirby]] walking towards Dedede, zombified. Soon, the entire cast was zombified. They all moaned 'braaains...' and began closing in on [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Mother Brain from the Metroid series]]. Now there are a bunch of zombies roaming the land, moaning, 'braaaaaiiiinss....' (except Mother Brain, who moaned, 'Meeeee....') {{spoiler|The zombies then found a schoolhouse and studied hard and graduated, achieving the 'brains' they wanted. Then, it turns out the characters where just telling scary stories, and Kirby was the last one to add his part to the story. He apparently tells a disgusting and creepy tale, [[The Un-Reveal|but the comic just skips to when he says, "The End!"]] with a very cute face while the rest of them look [[Nausea Fuel|nauseous.]]}}

* According to the Demononlogy page in ''[[Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures]]'', one becomes undead only if they die within 24 hours of receiving a scratch or bite from an undead creature. This implies that the wound itself is not automatically fatal, and that if one died more than 24 hours after receiving it they will stay dead.

* ''[[Dead of Summer]]'' is one of these, as experienced by the city of Baltimore. [[The Protomen]] have a key role later on.

* Played with in ''[[Dead Winter]]''; the city is full of zombies, but they're normally ''not'' a threat until a large number is encountered without an escape route. Other humans are far more dangerous.

* ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'''s titular Dr. McNinja has faced one, of course. [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|Zombie ninjas,]] no less. And zombie Ben Franklin. {{spoiler|1=The zombies are contained thanks to McNinja and the mayor of the town (who is secretly a time-traveling survivor of a future ravaged by this very apocalypse) having set up anti-zombie defences for the city}}. McNinja is convinced the zombies have risen in revenge for him mass-murdering them in the previous storyline (for the greater good, of course). {{spoiler|However, it is revealed the zombies are just a side-effect of a resurrection drug used by the clone of Ben Franklin after he was murdered in the previous storyline. The resurrection itself actually turns out to be part of a larger plan by Dracula.}} It's that kind of comic.

* ''Last Blood'' with one hand plays along with this trope and with other hand subverts it. While that world, indeed, had experienced Zombie Apocalypse and majority of zombies are near mindless, hungry creatures, {{spoiler|the First Zombie was, in fact, a vampire, who starved for too long, and completely retained his intelligence after transformation. This is also true for any other vampire-turned-zombie but not for their zombie "children".}}

* ''[http://www.nightzero.com/ Night Zero]''. Professionally made webcomic/graphic novel utilizing staged real-life photos.

{{quote|"Humans taste like chicken! Zombies taste like crap!"}}

** Also worth noting that Sluggy has so far had: straightforward ordinary zombies; people turned into socially dysfunctional geek zombies by brain-eating mosquitos; ghouls from another dimension which were treated with similar tropes to zombies but turned out to be of different origins; military research into weaponising zombies; and a zombie-themed restaurant. Not in that order.

* The printed version of ''Van von Hunter'' has zombies that crave brains, but are actually intelligent. After they have tasted some really good brownies made by gnomes, they changed their chants from "braiiins" to "brooownies" instead, and raid gnomes for more brownies.

* In ''[[The Whiteboard]]'', the two weeks to either side of Halloween 2010 featured a zombie uprising that Doc and Roger had to take down. This story arc updated daily, instead of the strip's normal M/W/F schedule.

* ''[[The Zombie Hunters]]'' [[Reconstructed Trope|reconstructs]] this against the backdrop of a [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future|near-future]] [[After the End|Post-Apocolypse]]. It's been a few years since [[The Virus]] nearly [[Depopulation Bomb|wiped out]] the human race and turned Earth into a [[Crapsack World]], where [[Our Zombies Are Different|multiple]] [[Superpowered Mooks|subspecies]] of [[The Undead]] roam freely. The known [[Endangered Species|remnants]] of humanity and [[Government in Exile|government]] have settled on an [[Island Base|Island]] [[Police State|Military Base]], to attempt to [[Find the Cure]] and [[Fighting For a Homeland|rebuild society]], which would be fine if it weren't for the tensions between the two [[Fantastic Caste System|castes]], uninfected and Infected. The Infected are a minority population of [[Zombie Infectee]] [[Action Survivor]]s who contracted a dormant form of the virus due to low exposure [[Fighting for Survival|at close proximity]]. [[Typhoid Mary|Highly contagious]], they can infect others through their own bodily fluids, and will inevitably [[Came Back Wrong|reanimate]] after death. Consequently, Infected are both [[Fantastic Ghetto|segregated]] from and forbidden from [[No Sex Allowed|romancing]] the uninfected. They're also [[Dystopian Edict|required]] to wear [[Fantastic Racism|identifying armbands]] and ID tags, [[Big Brother Is Watching|pass through checkpoints]], and [[Fascists' Bed Time|obey curfews]] while among uninfected, and the young and unskilled are [[Fantastic Caste System|exploited]] as [[We Have Reserves|highly-expendable]], underequipped, yet vital [[Disaster Scavengers]]. The story revolves around a [[Ragtag Bunch of Misfits|motley]], [[Shell-Shocked Veteran|dysfunctional crew]] of these [[Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom|so-called]] "Zombie Hunters", living within the margins of their [[Dystopia]]n society, and training in an [[Older Sidekick|older]] [[Half-Human Hybrid]] [[Token Heroic Orc]] (who's contempt for his station parallels their own) while trying not to get eaten on the job.

* ''[[Bob and George]]'', in a Halloween special.

* ''[[Wapsi Square]]'': [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/zombie-apocalypse/ Discussed]

* ''[[Squid Row]]'' : [http://squidrowcomics.com/?p=429 here] in an [[Imagine Spot]]

* ''[[Zombie Ranch]]'' takes place over two decades since the dead began to walk. In this case humanity not only managed to survive the disaster—they have adapted so thoroughly to the reality of the undead that they not only have new laws and customs regarding them, but have managed to turn zombies into a prized consumer commodity.

 

== Web Original ==

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* ''[[The Simpsons]]''' third "[[Halloween Episode|Treehouse of Horror]]" episode has a segment involving Bart getting a book from the "Occult Section" of the school library and attempting to reanimate deceased family cat Snowball I with it; he accidentally reanimates the human graveyard instead.

** In a "Treehouse of Horror XX" segment, a tainted Krusty burger causes a ''[[28 Days Later]]''-style outbreak, which leads to the Simpsons barricading themselves inside their house, where they learn that [[The Chosen One|Bart is immune]]. The zombie hordes burst in, the family escapes, Homer gets bitten but it's hardly much difference, and Bart gets to cure the masses by bathing in their soup.

* Although the entire incident was a prank, in a Halloween episode of ''[[Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends]]'', the "zombies" seem to follow Romero Rules (if you excuse their cry for brains); Mr. Herriman is "killed" and returns as a zombie soon after, a zombie bite turns someone else into a zombie, etc.

* ''[[Mighty Max]]'' had an episode where Max had to travel to Haiti to help his mother investigate the strange behavior of the locals. They had a [[Zombie Gait]] and were pretty strong, however they were possessed by slug-like symbiotes (you could kill the slug to free the victim) and tried to attach more slugs to make more "zombies". Eventually Max finds a hive full of them and kills the Queen slug. The victims were fully aware of what they were doing, a unique trait for these zombies.

* There is an episode of ''[[The Smurfs]]'' called "The Purple Smurfs" in which Lazy gets bitten by a "purple fly". This turns him purple, makes him aggressive and causes him to bite other smurfs. The same thing then happens to those smurfs. Check it out for yourself [http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1okrh_smurfs-the-purple-smurfs_family here].

** As noted above, this is an adaptation of a storyline from the original Smurf comic book.

* ''[[The Batman]]'' had a zombie apocalypse in the episode "Strange New World", courtesy of a toxin created by Professor Hugo Strange. It was eventually revealed that {{spoiler|the apocalypse was just an illusion Strange created to trick Batman into releasing the real toxin into Gotham, which Batman figures out at the last moment}}.

* Hilariously subverted in ''[[Invader Zim]]'', where the zombies unleashed by mall cop Slab Rankle in ''FBI Warning of Doom'' prove to be just as stupid as almost everyone else in the show.

{{quote|'''Zim:''' Nothing stops Zim. '''Nothing!''' Not even this filthy army of zombies!}}

** Also played for a [[Noodle Incident]] in ''Backseat Drivers from Beyond the Stars":

'''Dib:''' It's nothing you need to worry about. ''And I said I was sorry about that!'' }}

*** "He's not trying to raise the dead again, is he? Always with the dead, that boy..."

* ''[[South Park]]'':

** A bad case of pink eye was going around. Due to some Worcestershire sauce being used to embalm Kenny, he comes back as a zombie and starts infecting people. The local doctor, when visited by some of the infected, mistakes the condition for pink eye and prescribes some topical cream. Stan, Kyle and Cartman, with the help of Chef (who does a great Thriller bit) attempt to stop the zombie threat.

* Mad Snail Disease in ''[[SpongeBob SquarePants]]'', though it was entirely fake.

* In a season 3 episode of ''[[Transformers]]'', the Decepticons are tricked by the Quintessons into releasing a powerful creature called the Dweller. The Dweller drains the energy of any transformer it can capture, turning them into an "energy vampire". Despite this title, they behave almost exactly like zombies - they move slowly, though not quite shambling, and drain the energy from others to make more energy vampires. They even lose all color, becoming gray and lifeless in appearance.

* An episode of ''[[Jimmy Two-Shoes]]'' had everyone in Miseryville turn into pickle zombies.

* ''[[Superfriends]]'' had one of the series' scariest stories with "Day of The Plant Creatures" when a meteorite crashes into a swamp and cause a flood of plant creatures who rampage and infect every animal into one of them while the Super Friends race to find a way to stop the disaster.

* Parodied on ''[[The Amazing World of Gumball]]'' episode called "The Joy". Miss Simian plays the role of the protagonist, and even has a video camera that she uses as an [[Apocalyptic Log]]

 

== Other ==

* For their April Fools 2008 issue, The University at Buffalo's ''Spectrum'' college newspaper reported, among other things, about the emergence of the Necro-Animatory Syndrome virus, and the rise of the ambulatory dead ("zombie" being an "outdated and offensive term," though Bush is quoted as nearly using it) out of Cape Canaveral, where the NAS virus had apparently come back with a space shuttle crew. Articles included general information, survival guide, how to recognize an NAS sufferer (not very hard), and what to do if you're bitten (die with dignity, and with a friend to take you out immediately).

* And then there's this [http://jalopnik.com/5587000/la-county-zombie-control-keeping-socal-safe-for-brains joker]

 

* [http://zombiehunters.org/ Zombie Squad] is a disaster-preparedness group that uses the metaphor of a Zombie Apocalypse to encourage people to prepare for real-life emergencies, on the principle that if one is prepared for the dead to rise from their graves en masse to feed on the living, and the collapse of civil order that would inevitably ensue, that dealing with something as prosaic as an earthquake or hurricane is small potatoes.

** "Zombie Apocalypse" is a common brainstorming scenario for first responders because it's widespread enough to implicate all of the major disaster relief agencies, but also fictional so it doesn't flare up the usual interservice rivalries.

* The [[Humans vs. Zombies]] massively multiplayer live-action tag game.

* Most nerds/geeks/etc. have put some amount of thought into the subject. Pretty much all of them have plans.

** While nearly every (pick your term) has put some amount of thought into it, there is now an entire nerd subculture dedicated to zombies in the same way trekkies are primarily dedicated to Star Trek, with the amount of thought put into their discussions making the Zombie Survival Guide look like Plan 9 From Outer Space.

* [http://www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~rsmith/Zombies.pdf Mathematical modelling of an outbreak of zombie infection] produced by the University of Ottawa, published in the academic journal Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress, which basically comes to this conclusion unless the undead are eradicated quickly.

** The author of the article, Dan Drezner of the Fletcher School for Diplomacy (aka the best foreign affairs school in America), has published a monograph called Theories of International Relations and Zombies. It covers the major paradigms of IR theory and the "corpus" of zombie literature and film. It's an excellent introductory text to IR theory for beginners, and the results show that while a zombie apocalypse would suck, it's unlikely to be the end of humanity. It's also really damned funny.

* [http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/02/2784139.htm Any day now...]

** [http://www.cracked.com/article_18683_7-scientific-reasons-zombie-outbreak-would-fail-quickly.html 7 Scientific Reasons a Zombie Outbreak Would Fail (Quickly)] debunks the lethality of a zombie apocalypse, showing how it would never get very far. A notable example is pointing out how rabies doesn't exactly sweep through the world, so why would zombie infections? That and maggots and gut flora would devour the undead.

** Covering all the bases: in the event that it does happen, [http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-famous-zombie-movie-weapons-that-would-get-you-killed/ this article] discusses how [[Hollywood Tactics]] would promptly get you zombified.

** Other organizations have done the same as the spread of a zombie apocalypse apparently models highly infectious epidemics pretty well.

* It's possible that zombie tropes may be partially rooted in rooted events during [[The Black Death]] or similar [[The Plague|plagues]]. Mass graves were used at times, and high fevers can cause delirium or even brain damage. So if someone was buried haphazardly but recovered from the plague enough to free themselves, witnesses would see an inarticulate, clumsy person covered with sores leaving a graveyard, which would look a lot like a "zombie" even when the [[Unbuilt Trope|trope was unbuilt]].

** There may have even been plagued victims supposedly "attacking" random people, uninfected or not. Though this is all likely due to severe Hallucinations and clumsy walking.And of course, no Plague infected people would actually eat people they came in contact with.

* There is also a group called the Zombie Research society dedicated to fact gathering (as such) about zombies.

 

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