Zombie Apocalypse: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

[[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."]]

 

{{quote|''Zombies don't represent anything in my mind except a global change of some kind. And the stories are about how people respond or fail to respond to this. That's really all they've represented to me.''|'''George Romero''' (creator of ''[[Night of the Living Dead]]'')}}

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]].