History Main / ClownCarGrave

* In ''Gil's All Fright Diner'', the characters notice this and track down the thing that's generating the zombies from out of thin air.

The tendency of a graveyard to create more zombies than it has plots, leading to the belief that the hapless heroes have wandered into the Rubber Noses Memorial Cemetery.

Compare HammerSpace, MookMaker, ClownCar, ClownCarBase.

* ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil'' tends to respawn zombies when returning to new locations. It suggests the new zombies are freshly re-animating or else just now bothering to get up and stalk you.
** Justifiably averted in Resident Evil Zero, in which the train the game starts you on is littered with a finite amount of corpses, in which one by one they gradually become zombies the further you progress through the game.
* In ''VideoGame/ZombiesAteMyNeighbors'', there's an infinite supply of zombies, though fortunately, there seems to be a limit as to how many of them can be on the map at any given time. The same goes for various other monsters in the game.
** This is a quirk that is exploited in HundredPercentCompletion runs to prevent fast-moving enemies from killing the civilians before you can reach them.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Starcraft}} 2,'' Meinhoff has that problem. Initially, it makes sense: A refugee camp-turned city will have a lot of people. Hence the waves and waves and waves of infested terrans are understandable. But when there are a few buildings left and they still spawn hundreds of infested terrans ''every night''...well things get a bit odd.
** UnitsNotToScale - those round biodomes you're destroying? They're ''small cities''.
* Oh, ''VideoGame/PlantsVsZombies,'' how I love thee... what with your virtually endless supply of zombies that can be beaten by [[PunnyName peashooters, Snow peas,]] and the like, you provide hours of entertainment for those of us with nothing better to do. Also, tombstones regularly pop up in the player's backyard (sometimes behind your own lines of defense) during nighttime levels.

* The "Dancing With The Dead" mission in ''RedFaction 2''.

* ''VideoGame/DeadRising'' has an achievement given for killing a number of zombies equal to the town's population, mentioned in the opening. The zombies continue to spawn even after this achievement is earned.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZelda'' features a six-screen graveyard where you can get multiple Ghinis (one of the series' earliest undead creatures) from touching one grave. At the same time, no less.

* The original arcade game ''VideoGame/{{Gauntlet}}''. The monsters spawned fast enough on some levels where, if the player didn't start for (and kill) the monster spawn points immediately upon entering a level, the ''entire level'' would be wall-to-wall monsters, making the level Unwinnable on a single coin. The fact that the player's "health" decreased as a factor of both taking damage AND time didn't help, either.

* All playable undead characters in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' rise from the same exact plot of dirt. Then again, it has been indicated that the Forsaken are collecting potential recruits and storing them in the crypt to see whether they're friendly or not.
** Of course, they are also all directly hired to kill sixteen mindless undead in the nearest vicinity. Assuming only a hundred thousand undead [=PCs=] which don't kill anything they aren't given a quest for, this would mean the town has been plagued by 1.6 million of Undead by now. To compare: In medieval times the large city Cologne had 50000 inhabitants...
*** Arthas has raised some of his minions from the dead on at least three occasions. You can't keep a bad undead down...

* In ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic II'' and all sequels, this is how the Necropolis (the towns for the necromancer faction) works. All buildings seem to work as Clowncar Graves, spawning more undead to be hired every week.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} III,'' a necromancer can animate two skeletons from the bones of a single corpse--even the corpse of a small animal like a crab (which logically shouldn't have bones). The Undead also have buildings like graveyards that spawn the (inanimate- for now) skeletons of undead units out of nowhere (though they're limited to five at a time, and it takes a while for a corpse to be replaced), while their Meat Wagons (corpse catapults and storage machines) can be upgraded to produce their own corpses from nothing.
** On that note, graveyards in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' tend to be treated in one of two ways: either they're the location of a spirit healer (who resurrects dead players) and therefore safe havens, or they're avoided like the Plague (pun not intended) because they're zombie factories. A few are both, dangerous graveyards with small, safe pockets where you can resurrect.
* A similar mechanic in ''VideoGame/GuildWars'' is somewhat justified: The "bone minions" created by necromancers are not reanimated corpses, but artificial constructs assembled from the ''pieces'' of a corpse, so it's not too implausible that one corpse can provide enough bones and meat for two small minions. But making bone minions from dead jellyfish or even ''plants'' is definitely cheating.

* The very first stage of ''VideoGame/GhostsNGoblins'' seems to qualify.
** By extension, ''VideoGame/IWannaBeTheGuy'' did this in the stage based on ''Ghosts 'n' Goblins''.
** And its sequel, ''Ghouls 'n' Ghosts''.

* ''VideoGame/CastlevaniaCircleOfTheMoon,'' as seen above, has mummies who appear endlessly out of a clearly man-sized sarcophagus; bizarrely, they spawn three at a time.

* Although they at least always start in actual graveyards, the ''{{Onechanbara}}'' games feature zombies who will visibly crawl out of the ground even inside buildings, and in one case onboard a moving vehicle. Although it is possible to clear areas of zombies, they will almost always respawn on re-entering an area, and in some instances will spawn infinitely until a particular zombie is killed. Remarkably, after three games of not giving a damn that all of this makes no sense at all, the fourth title in the series attempts to lampshade it by revealing the zombies are not actual corpses, but creatures spontaneously generated by the Earth itself.

* According to ''Literature/TheGraveyardBook'', every graveyard has a ghoul gate. A grave which will open a [[HellGate portal to Hell] when the right incantation is spoken in order to let ghouls come and go.

** Justified, to an extent, as it's a town with a large mall. A fair amount of hapless shoppers from the nearby area would've likely been there when the zombies started appearing and the military barricaded the town.

* The "Ravenholm" level in ''VideoGame/{{Half-Life 2}}'' features an infinite number of Zombies. Of course, given that Half-Life zombies are formed by coupling alien crabs and human heads, this is more a case of Ravenholm having a very large population (and, presumably, getting hit by far more headcrab shells than are seen in-game) rather than a very large graveyard. Ironically, it ''does'' have a very large graveyard. In an inversion of most examples, however, headcrab zombies aren't formed from corpses, so the large graveyard has no impact on the number of zombies.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}} III,'' a necromancer can animate two skeletons from the bones of a single corpse--even the corpse of a small animal like a crab (which logically shouldn't have bones). The Undead also have buildings like graveyards that spawn skeletons and undead units out of nowhere.

* In the ''Ewigkeit'' scene in ''TanzDerVampire'', there are more horrible, shambling vampires than there are graves in the castle's crypt. For logistics reasons this is because of trapdoor placement but in execution it's like they just keep coming...

** The necromantic magic of the Tomb Kings, however, doesn't follow this trope. They can only restore their own casualties to unlife, rather than using the enemy dead to swell their numbers.

* In ''{{GURPS}}'' the Mass Zombie spell raises "(R*R)/2 undead(round down), where R is the radius of the spell in meters" when cast in graveyards. Not sure if that's played straight or an aversion. This comes out to 6.28 square meters per zombie. To put this in another perspective, were the spell cast upon a graveyard the size of Arlington National Cemetery it would produce approximately 402,000 undead. The real Arlington National Cemetery has 300,001 grave sites but also has large memorials and decorative landscaping. Given these numbers, it seems easily feasible that a lower class medieval fantasy graveyard could be as densely packed as the spell claims.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Majesty}}'', graveyards on the map serve as spawn points for zombies and various other undead monsters. Although only a limited number of graves are shown in any given cemetery, graveyards will still continue to spawn monsters until they are destroyed.

* The Lychfield Graveyard in ''VideoGame/FableI'' spawns legions of Undead as you tramp around it.

Note that this trope may be justifiable in settings a few centuries before modern times, as mass graves were more common in the past. Where burial space (graves, tombs) is at a premium, bodies may be buried only until they completely skeletonize -- then the bones will be removed and stored in an ossuary (hence the Biblical expression "X died and was gathered to his fathers"). The [[http://www.sedlecossuary.com/ Sedlec Ossuary]], in the Czech Republic, is an atypical but ''striking'' example of this.

* PlayStation2 version of ''VideoGame/BaldursGateDarkAlliance 2'' (not to be confused with the RPG-style PC games of the same name). It has a place called the Battle of the Bones. You can't take five steps without waking up a skeleton. Moving to hit him wakes up another one, or two if you're lucky. And there are THREE incredibly long screens of this hell. Bring potions, be they healing or mana. A lot of them.

* Zombies near-constantly spawn in the Swamp area of {{Shantae}}, but thankfully not on the small platforms. Likewise, many rooms in the Cackle Mound dungeon found in the Swamp have a never-ending supply of Cackler skeletons, though the title character is safe in shadowy spots.

** VideoGame/{{Diablo III}} has loose stones inside crypts. Sometimes when opening them, you get one skeleton, not unreasonable. Sometimes, lifting a stone around the size of your body, ten skeletons will come boiling out all at once.
** Diablo III also has Wretched Mothers, which are human-sized zombies that ''vomit'' up zombies up to 5 times. Later variants can puke up 2 to 3 at a go. One must wonder how these manage to fit all those zombies inside without getting bloated at all.