Zombie Apocalypse: Difference between revisions

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}}

* ''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.]

 

*** ''[[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:

* The [[Zombie Blood Bath]] trilogy (1993, 1995, 2000) proves to be capable of bringing forth [[Narm Charm]] unlike anything you've ever seen.

* 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.

** 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.

* [[John Wyndham]]'s 1951 novel ''[[The Day of the Triffids]]'', while concerned with genetically engineered [[Man-Eating Plant|Man Eating Plants]], foreshadows many themes of the contemporary Zombie Apocalypse. Society collapses after an atmospheric event causes mass blindness. The sighted and unsighted alike struggle to scavenge a living while being hunted by this new predator. Eventually the sighted protagonists retreat to the countryside and barricade themselves in a farm house, fending off repeated Triffid attacks. The book is heavy with social commentary and contains memorably hellish imagery of shambling, groping masses of humanity. The Triffids themselves have a rickety, limping gait and are slow moving, awkward creatures of little threat individually (unless they catch you unawares). In large numbers, however, they are a serious menace; able to force their way in anywhere and seemingly capable of rudimentary communication and organization. The most effective way of stopping one is to 'decapitate' it using special blade firing weapons. It has been adapted as a lightweight 1962 monster movie (casts the Triffids as extraterrestrial plants) and a more faithful (albeit stagey) 1981 television series, and then again as a TV series in 2009.

* ''[[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]].

* Peter Clines' [[Ex Heroes]] is a story about the end of the world at the hands of zombies, only to be opposed by superheroes.

* 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.

* The entire point of [[Can YOU Survive the Zombie Apocalypse?]].

* 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 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.

** 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.

** There was an adventure done by Thomas "Wanderer" Wilde (best known for his [[Resident Evil]] plot guide) that took this trope head-on, called ''The Last Escape''.

** 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 ''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.

* ''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.

* While the text/ASCII-based [[Hell MOO]] doesn't feature an actual zombie apocalypse (they go for the standard nuclear warfare), there is a zombie virus and some locations, especially the basement of the Bradbury hotel in Slagtown, are filled with them. Since all NPCs can be killed (with varying degrees of difficulty) and anyone who dies of zombie rot rises as a zombie if their corpse isn't butchered, one or two tough NPCs getting infected can easily result in a zombie plague hitting Slagtown; usually the Freedom City Police is skilled and tough enough to keep the spread outside their borders, but it can make wandering into Slagtown or Gangland suicide for a newbie.

* One of many possible creations in the Pandemic series, you can create shambling, insane, rotting([[Fate Worse Than Death|though technically still alive]]) infected who spread across the planet.

* [[Call of Duty]] first gave us [[Nazi Zombies]], which was the reason many played World At War. The game mode returned in ''[[Call of Duty: Black Ops|Call of Duty Black Ops]]'' where it got so bad zombies attack the Pentagon, [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|four]] [[A Nightmare on Elm Street|cult]] [[Danny Trejo|monster]] [[The Walking Dead (TV series)|hunters]] had to be called in and at the end, the [[Big Bad]] reveals it's all an [[Evil Plan]] to cause an apocalypse.

{{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]]

* 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.

* ''[[The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy]]'' no surprise has a few cases of zombies. One caused by an evil metorite that sucks out people's brains, another caused by the smell of tainted brownies.

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

* [http://65.127.124.62/south_asia/4483241.stm.htm This fake BBC article] claimed that a Zombie Outbreak had occurred in Cambodia and was hushed up by the government. It was [http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/zombies.asp debunked on Snopes.com] but is still passed around from time to time.

* The BBC [http://www.islandcrisis.net/2009/05/h1z1-zombie-swine-flu-hoax-invade-world/ put out another article], this time playing on the Swine Flu scare (H1Z1, a mutation of the H1N1 virus that reanimated the victim after death, who then showed signs of the usual zombie behaviour). It is of course, fake, but the comments on the page are well worth reading.

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