History Main / ZombieGait

** PlayedStraight in the ''Film/ResidentEvil'' movies until the third where Umbrella creates fast zombies.

* Both played straight and averted in ''VideoGame/GuildWars2'' with the Risen. Brutes and bigger variants of the Risen generally plays this straight, being lumbering undeads or at least just slow on the feet. Averted with normal Risen. Not only can they walk and run normally, but they can actually ''outrun living people''. Combine this with the Risen's love of inflicting you with [[StandardStatusEffects conditions]] that slows you down or stops you dead in your track, and it's guaranteed that you won't get to escape a group of them in one piece.

* The [=ReDeads=] of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZelda'' franchise (most notably ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'', ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'', and their reincarnations, Gibdos, in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'') walk slow as molasses, usually accompanied by a low groan, and then they let out a paralyzing shriek before they [[PersonalSpaceInvader latch onto you, slowly draining your health until you can shake them off.]]

* When Windle Poons becomes a zombie (an intelligent one) in ''Literature/ReaperMan'', he just feels like walking with his arms out in front of him, though he doesn't know why. It ''is'' explained why he walks with a slow, shuffling gait though: all the things his body used to do automatically he now has to control consciously, including his leg muscles.

* Course the zombies in ''VideoGame/DeadRising'' feature this. But Frank can also do this to keep zombies from bothering him. It slows him down and doesn't work on human enemies.
** In ''VideoGame/DeadRising2: Off the Record'', Frank includes a completely deadpan "Brains, gimme brains."

Although often portrayed this way in fiction (in fact, it was [[Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari a fictitious sleepwalker]] who [[TropeMaker made this trope]]), [[SleepWalking sleepwalkers]] do not walk like this. They walk with their eyes open. If they did not, they would wake up with a nasty headache, or in the hall after they smack their heads on the nearest sharp corner. There have been accounts of sleepwalkers having held conversations, and sleepwalkers who do chores, get dressed, eat, have sex (an actual diagnosed condition, called "sexsomnia", often mistaken for rape) and people have even been known to drive their cars for miles while sleepwalking. More ominously, some occasions of accidental death and even murder have been proven to have been committed while sleepwalking. [[CatapultNightmare Night terror]] (aka pavor nocturnus) adds yet more features of traditional zombies to the mix, as a sufferer may suddenly bolt upright, wander clumsily and aimlessly while sobbing, murmuring or [[TheScream screaming]] [[WordSaladHorror incomprehensible words]], and on occasion will violently lash out at anyone trying to stop them.

Although often portrayed this way in fiction (in fact, it was [[Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari a fictitious sleepwalker]] who [[TropeMaker made this trope]]), [[SleepWalking sleepwalkers]] do not walk like this. They walk with their eyes open. If they did not, they would wake up with a nasty headache, or in the hall after they smack their heads on the nearest sharp corner. There have been accounts of sleepwalkers having held conversations, and sleepwalkers who do chores, get dressed, eat, have sex (an actual diagnosed condition, called "sexsomnia", often mistaken for rape) and people have even been known to drive their cars while sleepwalking.

** And the sprinting zombies from the 2004 Creator/ZackSnyder [[Film/DawnOfTheDead2004 remake]] of ''Dawn of the Dead''. Or the sprinting and ''agile'' ones in Snyder's ''Film/ArmyOfTheDead''.

** And the sprinting zombies from the 2004 Creator/ZackSnyder [[Film/DawnOfTheDead2004 remake]] of ''Dawn of the Dead''.

* The zombies in ''Manga/HighschoolOfTheDead'' walk in this fashion. [[spoiler:Possibly because they are blind.]]
* The mannequin soldiers, the Xerxessian souls Father revives and later, Father himself approaching a defenceless Ed in ''Manga/FullMetalAlchemist''.
* The undead created by the Magical Girls in ''Manga/MagicalGirlApocalypse'' avert this violently. After resurrection, they have enhanced speed and a great deal of SuperStrength.
* In ''Manga/DragonBall'', Yamcha is scheduled to fight a mummy in a TournamentArc. He assumes that he's got the match in the bag as long as he doesn't let the mummy hit or grab him. He's wrong, the mummy speed blitzes and utterly curb-stomps him, then mocks him for assuming he was slow.

* ''Film/TheTerminator'': As the body of the Terminator begins to take on horrendous amounts of punishment, its gait becomes increasingly stiff and stilted, more befitting of the rods-pulleys-and-levers that it really is than the human that it tries to masquerade as. When it's reduced to an endoskeleton in the climax, it also walks with a limp due to sustaining damage to its leg in a truck crash.
* ''Film/ResidentEvil'':
** Played straight in the movies until the third where Umbrella creates fast zombies.
** Also the game-canon ''Anime/ResidentEvilDegeneration'' plays the trope out exactly like the older games. Except Leon specifically says "You can only kill them by shooting them in the brain" despite that rule was only enforced in the original game. All other games they die no matter where you shoot them.

* The Missing Link does it in ''WesternAnimation/MonstersVsAliens'', but only because he had just been in the pool and his eyes were burning with chlorine.
** Dr. Cockroach walks like this for a few seconds after his transformation in the General's video clip.
* Sometimes played straight, sometimes not in ''Film/ZombieBloodBath''. Some zombies can only stumble and shuffle around. Others can lightly jog, tackle people, and hop across small streams of water. The zombies acted like average citizens of Kansas City, Minnesota.
* In ''Film/WarmBodies'', the zombies generally move slowly (though they can lunge, from time to time...) but as they age into the skeleton-and-beef-jerky Bonies, strangely enough become ''faster''.
** R hilariously [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] this in one of his DeadpanSnarker monologues:
-->''"''God'', we walk slow.''" *sigh* "''This might take a while...''"
* PlayedForLaughs in ''Film/CockneysVsZombies'' when an eighty-three-year-old man with a walker is pursued by a zombie that can keep up with him because ''both'' of them are extremely slow.
* ''Film/InvisibleInvaders'': The dead are possessed by aliens and walk this way.
* The zombies in ''Film/ZombiesZombiesZombies'' walk this way. There is even less justification in this case than most, as the drug turns living humans into zombies near instantaneously, so there shouldn't be any damage to their muscles to cause them to shamble.
* ''Film/{{Blackenstein}}'': Eddie moves like after he is transformed into a monster: shambling from foot to foot without bending his knees and holding his arms straight out in front of him.

* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in Max Brooks' novel ''Literature/WorldWarZ'' - the groan of a zombie attracts other zombies to living humans - who, once they hear the groaning and sense the presence of living humans, also begin to groan, thus attracting more. This can have the effect of attracting hundreds, thousands or even ''millions'' of zombies to one position, depending how the chain-reaction of groaning travels and how many zombies are in the vicinity and able to pick up on it. Despite their traditional slow-moving walk, this also has the result of effectively destroying the morale of any defenders and causing complete panic; you might deal with the zombies right in front of you, but there could be the zombified converts of a ''city's population'' right behind them.
** The same applies in Mira Grant's ''[[Literature/{{Newsflesh}} Feed]]''. The "zombies" moan deliberately in order to draw more zombies to the "meal".
* Also in the ''Literature/{{Newsflesh}}'' universe, in prequel novella ''The Day the Dead Came to Show and Tell'', the protagonist sees silhouettes through a frosted window and realizes they're zombies by the way they move. Her internal monologue mentions learning to recognize this as one of the "stranger" tests she had to learn to pass to become a teacher.
* When Windle Poons becomes a zombie (an intelligent one) in ''Literature/ReaperMan'', he just feels like walking with his arms out in front of him, though he doesn't know why. It ''is'' explained why he walks with a slow, shuffling gait though: all the things his body used to do automatically he now has to control consciously, including his leg muscles.
** Reg Shoe from the City Watch sub-series, whose debut appearance was also in ''Reaper Man'', is implied to be a little stiff but otherwise capable of a fair turn of speed when needed; we eventually learn in ''Literature/{{Night Watch|Discworld}}'' that he's had some thirty to forty years to get a handle on the same problem Windle was grappling with. [[note]]He also happens to be a very different ''[[OurZombiesAreDifferent kind]]'' of zombie, a type that carries on into undeath from [[{{Determinator}} sheer bloody-minded willpower]], where as Windle's case is... well, kind of complicated; see the work's own page for the details.[[/note]] Mr Slant is never described a moving quickly but that's a matter of choice rather than capability. As one of Ankh-Morpok's three most senior lawyers (the other two are vampires), other people wait for his convenience.

* Done both ways in ''Day by Day Armageddon''. Normal zombies are the typical, Romeroesque shuffling ghouls. Then the joggers show up: zombies that were radiated by nuclear fallout. Joggers can move faster, are smarter, can use weapons, and worst of all: they case radiation poisoning in anyone they make contact with. [[NiceJobBreakingItHero Good job, US Government]].

* In ''Literature/TheDeathGateCycle'', the undead (whether the [[OurZombiesAreDifferent ordinary dead]] or the more dangerous [[OurLichesAreDifferent lazar]]) tend to move in a clumsy, jerky manner owing to general decay (particularly older ones). The lazar, however, are fully capable of using necromancy to repair their bodies and can thus move extremely quickly when they want to and aren't slowed down by injury -- don't be fooled by their usual shuffling gait.
* In the Literature/{{Boojumverse}} story "The Wreck of the ''Charles Dexter Ward''", the reanimated move at a slow shuffle but are capable of lunging with surprising speed at anything that gets too close to their reach.
* In Asi Hart's ''Literature/UnderAFreezingMoon'' the Zombies don't bother walking, [[SubvertedTrope they drive.]]

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E8SilenceInTheLibrary "Silence in the Library"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E9ForestOfTheDead "Forest of the Dead"]], the [[LivingShadow Vashta]] [[TheSwarm Nerada]] get inside several people's spacesuits and strip them to the bone. They are then able to walk inside the suits, but in an awkward gait befitting this trope.

* ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'''s zombies, including zombified villagers, walk like this. Their slow movement combined with their melee attacks made them strictly entry-level {{Mook}}s until an update added a swarming behavior, along with the possibility to spawn new zombies when attacked on Hard difficulty.
%% ** In ''VideoGame/MinecraftDungeons'', the zombies also have it.
* ''VideoGame/{{Blood}}'' zig-zags the trope. Axe Zombies jog at a decent pace and don't stop unless knocked down or [[XRaySparks shocked]]. Their [[DeadWeight Bloated Butcher]] brethren walk far more slowly. [[ParasiteZombie Soul Drudges]] in the sequel limp towards prey as fast as they can – that is to say, not very fast.
* ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'': Zigzagged: actual zombies move anywhere from slowly to average speed, but they're not standard units, being found only in the campaign. Regular units are as fast as the living for balance reasons, ghouls can get a speed boost (as they're also their race's lumber gatherers), the hulking Abominations (reconstituted corpses with too many arms and exposed guts) are as fast as cavalry, and the Death Knight hero has an aura that greatly increases movespeed.
* Zigzagged in the ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' franchise; [[ParasiteZombie Flood Combat Forms]] will normally shuffle slowly around, but when they become aware of hostiles they can break out into a slow run or even a surprising sprint. Played straight with Carrier Forms, if only because their legs are so stubby that they ''can't'' move at anything quicker than a tottering shuffle.
* While the ''VideoGame/FatalFrame'' series have no zombies, this trope applies to some of the [[CreepyDoll dolls]] that attack you.
** Watashi from ''[[VideoGame/FatalFrameIVMaskOfTheLunarEclipse IV]]'', who stumbles like this towards the player when hostile.
** The dolls that attack you in ''[[VideoGame/FatalFrameVMaidenOfBlackWater V]]'' limp around slowly as they move towards you. Fortunately, they have low health.
* In addition to actual zombies walking this way in ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights'', you can use the [[LevelEditor toolset]] to give any npc the "zombie walk" trait, presumably so you can create zombified versions of other monsters.
* Mentioned but ultimately averted in the VisualNovel ''I Walk Among Zombies''. Zombies are fast and relentless, much to the surprise of the protagonist who expected them to be this. Their speed is also generally unaffected by injury, barring their limbs being crippled beyond repair.
* The zombies in ''VideoGame/OutbreakTheNewNightmare'' have the typical outstretched-arms walk.
** Same for the zombies in ''VideoGame/OutbreakTheNightmareChronicles''.

* In ''VideoGame/UrbanDead'', zombie characters walk only half as fast as human characters until they buy the Lurching Gait skill. Feeding Groan is a purchasable skill that can only be used while in the same room as human characters, and is heard farther away when more humans are present. The most common use of it is to alert other zombies as to the whereabouts of juicy brains.
* The [=ReDeads=] of the ''Zelda'' franchise (most notably ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime'', ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaTheWindWaker'', and their reincarnations, Gibdos, in ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaMajorasMask'') walk slow as molasses, usually accompanied by a low groan, and then they let out a paralyzing shriek before they [[PersonalSpaceInvader latch onto you, slowly draining your health until you can shake them off.]]

* ''VideoGame/HalfLife's'' zombies follow this trope; in [=HL2=] however they do have fast zombies along with the slower types.

* In ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'', zombies can run at considerable speed, which varies from just slower than players to ''slightly'' faster than them. Unnerving with the regular hordes sprinting at you too fast to outrun, and pants-wettingly terrifying when a muscle-bound Tank gallops your way at the same speed you can run when healthy, knocking over several vehicles en route and possibly [[CarFu sending them to hit you for an instant incapacitation]]. Again, though, these are [[TechnicallyLivingZombie Infected]], not undead. If you observe an Infected that hasn't spotted you yet, however, they do shuffle around like traditional zombies up until the moment they make a dash for your face. If you watch them shuffle around long enough before they spot you, some will just lie down and die, right there.
* The zombified Stalkers in ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}} - Shadow of Chernobyl'' are slow, but still remember how to use their assault rifles and are annoyingly accurate with them.
* The [[spoiler: ghosts of people you killed]] in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid3'' during [[spoiler: the Sorrow's battle]] do this.
** The Skulls from ''[[VideoGame/MetalGearSolidVThePhantomPain The Phantom Pain]]'', [[Franchise/StarTrek Borg]]-like cyber zombies, also do this. [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] as well; when they spot you the can run fast enough to keep pace with a horse, but their stance doesn't change. Instead they speed up the zombie gait like they're on fast forward.
* All three ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' games feature varying classes of zombies that fit the trope perfectly. In ''VideoGame/DiabloII'', some of them will poison the player with each hit and/or release a cloud of poison gas upon death, though this poison will not [[TheVirus turn the player or his/her minions into zombies]].
* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}} 3'' features a wide array of zombies, most of which fit this trope perfectly (minus the "braaaains"). A few are faster than the rest (speed shambling) and usually either wield chainsaws or have been set on fire, but otherwise exhibit similar behavior. Zombie Commandos move quickly (no shambling), don't moan or grunt, and often wield guns and hide behind cover; however, they're closer to actual demons than zombies, given that they burn away after dying.
* Played generally straight in ''VideoGame/PlantsVsZombies'', with a few exceptions. Many zombies would rather rely on trickery than speed, such as pole-vaulting over your defenses or riding on dolphins. Others prefer brute force, like the giant zombie who smashes defenses flat with his [[ImprovisedWeapon road sign/powerline pole/other zombie]] or the Zomboni, who as his name implies, runs over your plants with a magic zamboni that leaves a trail of solid ice behind him that cannot be planted upon and summons a zombie bobsled team.
* Zombies, shambling with arms outstretched, appear in some of the ''VideoGame/ArmyMen'' games.
* Used in ''VideoGame/FortZombie'' extensively. Most zombies have an awkward shuffle that you can outdo with a jog -- besides these, there's football player zombies that can manage a brief tackling charge, and "fast" zombies in tracksuits that can manage roughly a jog. They also can't get over obstacles nearly as well as your character. It's highly recommended you use this to your advantage, especially in the early game before you have many weapons or other survivors.
* Both played straight and averted in ''VideoGame/GuildWars2'' with the Risen. Brutes and bigger variants of the Risen generally plays this straight, being lumbering undeads or at least just slow on the feet. Averted with normal Risen. Not only can they walk and run normally, but they can actually ''outrun living people''. Combine this with the Risen's love of inflicting you with [[StandardStatusEffects conditions]] that slows you down or stops you dead in your track, and it's guaranteed that you won't get to escape a group of them in one piece.
* While they're not actually zombies, in ''VideoGame/TheCatLady'', the cannabalistic wife of the pest control guy has a zombie walk, as does anyone who is on drugs.
* Would you believe this makes zombies ''harder'' to kill in ''Sniper Elite: Nazi Zombie Army''? They never stop moving and their heads bob as they shuffle around, making it hard to get a bead on them with your rifle even if they're coming right at you.
* Mostly played straight with the fairly slow zombies in front of you in the ''Earn to Die'' browser-based games, but averted with ones that come charging up from behind (starting in the 2012 entries), which can run at 50mph and so can catch up to your car unless you're using the booster.
* Zombies in ''Videogame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic'' tend to be pretty slow and move in this manner. This makes them a less than useful unit, since the distance a Hero can travel on the map depends on the slowest unit in their army. Leaving them behind in garrisons, not recruiting them at all to save gold, or even converting them into the lower level but far more versatile Skeletons are all preferable to actually fielding zombies in your army. They are especially bad in the third game, since they don't have any particularly outstanding stats for their level to make up for their abysmal speed.

* ''VideoGame/ATechCybernetics'': The early enemies in the game walk very zombie-like walks.

** And the sprinting zombies from the ''Film/DawnOfTheDead2004'' remake.

* Near the end of ''Film/FridayThe13thPartVIIIJasonTakesManhattan'' Jason develops a Zombie Gait after getting toxic waste hurled into his face - he stumbles around bumping into walls in a pretty comical fashion.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''Cockneys Vs Zombies'' when an eighty-three-year-old man with a walker is pursued by a zombie that can keep up with him because ''both'' of them are extremely slow.

Although often portrayed this way in fiction (in fact, it was [[Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari a fictitious sleepwalker]] who [[TropeMaker made this trope]]), [[Sleepwalking sleepwalkers]] do not walk like this. They walk with their eyes open. If they did not, they would wake up with a nasty headache, or in the hall after they smack their heads on the nearest sharp corner. There have been accounts of sleepwalkers having held conversations, and sleepwalkers who do chores, get dressed, eat, have sex (an actual diagnosed condition, called "sexsomnia", often mistaken for rape) and people have even been known to drive their cars while sleepwalking.

Although often portrayed this way in fiction (in fact, it was [[Film/TheCabinetOfDrCaligari a fictitious sleepwalker]] who [[TropeMaker made this trope]]), sleepwalkers do not walk like this. They walk with their eyes open. If they did not, they would wake up with a nasty headache, or in the hall after they smack their heads on the nearest sharp corner. There have been accounts of sleepwalkers having held conversations, and sleepwalkers who do chores, get dressed, eat, have sex (an actual diagnosed condition, called "sexsomnia", often mistaken for rape) and people have even been known to drive their cars while sleepwalking.

* When Windle Poons becomes a zombie (an intelligent one) in ''Discworld/ReaperMan'', he just feels like walking with his arms out in front of him, though he doesn't know why. It ''is'' explained why he walks with a slow, shuffling gait though: all the things his body used to do automatically he now has to control consciously, including his leg muscles.
** Reg Shoe from the City Watch sub-series, whose debut appearance was also in ''Reaper Man'', is implied to be a little stiff but otherwise capable of a fair turn of speed when needed; we eventually learn in ''Discworld/NightWatch'' that he's had some thirty to forty years to get a handle on the same problem Windle was grappling with. [[note]]He also happens to be a very different ''[[OurZombiesAreDifferent kind]]'' of zombie, a type that carries on into undeath from [[{{Determinator}} sheer bloody-minded willpower]], where as Windle's case is... well, kind of complicated; see the work's own page for the details.[[/note]] Mr Slant is never described a moving quickly but that's a matter of choice rather than capability. As one of Ankh-Morpok's three most senior lawyers (the other two are vampires), other people wait for his convenience.

* ''VideoGame/GreyAnAlienDream'': The zombies Grey encounters in the ZombieApicalypse [[DreamLand Dream]] move slowly with their arms outstretched and slouching forward.